Kolek Krzak was a great one-eyed giant of a man, with enormous apatites to match.  A renown fighter, drinker, fornicator, and shrewd businessman, in the span of some twenty years, he took a quiet seaside town and turned it into a powerhouse of trade and industry.  His son, who inherited his lands and titles upon his untimely death, was none of these things.  Taking after his mother, Jagoda Krzak was small of frame, delicate of feature, gentle of manner, and had a long mane of golden hair.  For many years people thought he was a girl who his father was dressing as a boy to quell uncertainty about the succession, a suspicion only partially eased by his persistent failure to sprout womanly curves.

However, his large eyes and economy of words cloaked a razor-sharp mind, developed by strong friendships with his father's learned men, and the priests of the city.  Not the Salubrine preists, but the Triarchists.  Far less wealthy or influential than their rivals, the grim stone churches and rigid discipline appealed to the boy, who was ever aware of his physical deficiencies.  Now, on the eve of his 17th birthday, he ascends to rule over a troubled duchy: while economically powerful, it is militarily almost a non-entity.  Crime is chronic, and even his own men are uneasy at the devout young lord's plans to reshape the land in the image of his gods.  A challenge awats him, certainly, for the times are troubled for all, and not even his father's wealth may be enough to save him.