Being dragged from turbulent seas from the wreckage of your ship is one of the three worst ways to possibly start a morning. Finding that your rescuers are Elves is another, finding that you owe them a "life debt" for them saving you meaning that you will be their virtual slave for life the last of the three. To encounter one of these events is unlucky, to encounter all three as I did surely means that the God in your corner has just thrown a particularly bad roll of die on your behalf.

Given little chance to argue my cause, I was dragged to the place which would be my home for the foreseeable future - Rather cheap poorly constructed barracks filled with the other flotsam and jetsam - the collection of beings in Life Debt that the Elves had amassed. How could I, Xander Du'Blanc, even contemplate living without the luxuries in life I had become accustomed to? The food was a tasteless slop laden with alien fish and vegetables, the wine a sour tasting obscenity - and the worst thing at all about the wine was that it would not even get me half drunk enough to even consider a "coupling" with the women staying there (and of course, I use the word "women" in the loosest possible sense).

Now, if you know me like I know me you will know I have certain standards where women is concerned. Whereas other mens only minimum requirements for a woman are two legs, two arms, a head, torso, body and working orifices - I have standards to set. I have wined and dined with beautiful Baronesses, laid down with pretty Princesses and roughly shagged quite a few Stablemaids - all of which have been feminine works of art. Not for me the coarse hair-armpitted hairy-warted bloated Barmaids found across every Kingdom - I consider myself an artist, with every beautiful lady my canvas. Not for me a lust for travelling around splattering my brush over any easel I come across..

Anyway, I digress from the story. Life carried in in a boring routine within this place; the day was spent chopping and sawing wood (or rather, doing a damned good impression of it - not for these delicate artists hands the trials of manual labour) and playing dice back in the barracks with some of the miscreants imprisoned there. My skill with the dice nets me a few copper pieces, but it doesn't seem to be making me any more popular. During one game, I attempted to give some of my winnings back to someone who had spent their last copper pieces gambling - but they were pushed back in my face, to the murmurings of "I'm not a charity". Some people don't know when to stop it with the Pride thing. An individual known as Tarvin seems to be the "man with the Dice" in these parts, and I have spoken with him on more than one occasion.

"Treat a dice entirely unlike you would treat a woman. With women, the less black spots they have - the better." - The Wisdom of Xander Du'Blanc Volume 1; "Dice Games; Poker Faces and Wandering hands"

Day followed day, as it is wont to do in that irritatingly regular fashion. New souls arrived at irregular intervals, more unfortunates with Life Debts to our Elven jailers. My spirits rose slightly to the appearance of an attractive woman prisoner in our midst, but dropped sharply again when it became apparent that she was a bard. "Never bed a woman, no matter how attractive, who is likely to compose a song about it afterwards" was a motto I created shortly after that unfortunate incident with the Queen Songmaiden of the Relding Mountains and I was not about to make the same mistake twice. It's bad enough to have your bedroom exploits sung about in the first place, without having them attributed to some individual known as "Xavier The Blank".

The only incident of note was another dice game involving Tarvin and some other individuals, most notably a huge figure of a man sitting directly next to me (who I had seen involved in a fight the night previous). My expert gambling senses detected something amiss right from the very start - I felt that the game was rigged, and decided to cut my losses. After winning a sum of copper pieces, I decided to quit - which upset one of the players, a man who had been losing quite badly, who accused me of cheating. I denied the accusations obviously, but it took the intervention of the huge individual next to me to calm him down. The fellow introduced himself as Darius, and I thinked him for saving me the job of giving the man a sound thrashing. Obviously, if the fellow had continued to insult me I would have had to embarrass him in front of his friends by defeating him in a fight - and I did not want him to hazard any feelings of revenge towards me that this might cause.

That evening I was approached by an Elf who lived within the barracks (another in life-debt, a sneaky looking fellow known as Kookabar). He asked me if I were interesting in leaving this accursed place, to which I answered carefully - For all I knew, he might be a spy for my jailers and my words could cost me my life. He said if I was then there would be a meeting held after the evening meal the next evening, and I was more than welcome to attend - I told him that I would be there.

"Elves can only be trusted for one thing - and this is Archery Practise.. and even then, without the aid of strong drugs, they can't be trusted to stand still." - The Wisdom of Xander Du'Blanc Volume 2; "Elves; Why they should be trusted about as much as you would trust a Brechtian Spiral Lizard"

Those present at the meeting were Kookabar, Darius, an enthusiastic youngster known as Will, the Bard Melody and myself. The Elf told us that he had procurred a ship for our escape, and that we would be setting sail in two evenings time. Kookabar reassured us that we would be given arms, and we all agreed to keep all elements of this a secret. We were worried about Will - the young lad did not seem to be all there, and it would only take one carelessly spoken word to have us all executed.

Still, we seemed to avoid suspicion while we waiting for our escape plan to reach fruition - despite employing the services of the local Loan shark to obtain us a dead unplucked Goose so that Darius might use the feathers to construct flights for arrows. The evening of the escape saw Kookabar arm us all with weapons - It felt good to have a Long Sword, however shoddily constructed, within my grasp again. Under the cover of darkness, the stars our only light, we walked quite a distance before Kookabarr went on ahead.

We waited for a while, and then were alerted by the sound of somebody approaching. All of us darted for cover as we watched the silhouette of an armed and armoured Elf approach us. Darius was heading our party, and the Elf stopped a short distance away from us insisted that we step out from our cover and surrender. Darius leapt at him, and a furious battle ensued - Darius fought for a while, his own moves with a blade crude but effective. His opponent was vanquished, falling to the ground. Two other Elves emerged from the darkness screaming at us, weapons held aloft, and I leapt into combat. My own opponent was no match for own swordsmanship, and was dazzled by my proficiency with a blade. I leapt aside from furious swipe after furious swipe, countering with a single stab through his Elven Heart. As his eyes glazed and he began to slide from my blade, I thanked him and took the other sword from his hand. He slumped to the ground dead, and I wiped the foul Elf blood from my blade's edge.

Meanwhile my new found companions were faring less well. Darius lay dying on the ground, with Will kneeling over him chanting some magical words. Melody was striking at an armed figure while in an undignified heap, her blade bouncing off his thick mail armour. I headed towards him with the intention of assisting when Darius, now magically healed, leapt towards this figure and garotted him. His opponent flailed wildly and then fell limp - the fight nigh-on choked out of him. The conflict was over.

"I have fought against a number of Elves in my life, and can suggest no strategy in beating them. Some of them are experts with the blade, wielding it as if it were a precision instrument - whereas other Elves can't tell the sharp end from the end that you hold. One thing you CAN be sure of is that an Elf, no matter what his skill with the blade happens to be, will be as arrogant an opponent as the day is long" - The Wisdom of Xander Du'Blanc Volume 5; "Swordsmanship - the hard and dirty way"

No-one was as shocked as I to discover that one of our attackers was Kookabar himself! After a brief discussion everybody agreed with me that the best thing to do was to take the unconcious form of the betraying Elf elsewhere and question him. We would leave the corpse, and the other unconcious injured Elf - (This route was rarely travelled, and I would stake my reputation on the fact that nobody would come across them for quite a lengthy period of time). I searched the Elf that I had killed and was pleased to discover 3 silver pieces - to the Victor the spoils, no matter how meagre those spoils may appear!

Rousing him with a hefty slap, we questioned Kookabar for some time - He claimed that he had been forced into attacking us after having been captured by some Elfs who were beside the boat. However, after further questioning he told us the truth - that he had told Terendor, Solimar's son that he had some "dirt" on him - His plan was for Terendor to turn up and be ambushed by our troup of escapees. Kookabar would save Terendor's life by killing us, and then have his life-debt to Solomann retracted for having saved his son's life! However, it would appear that he had not accounted for the great swordsmanship of Xander Du'Blanc and his feisty companions. Will and Darius went to fetch the other survivor, Terendor himself, and bought him back to our party. We roused him, and spoke at some length about what to do next.

The way we saw it was that we had two options available. Terendor seemed quite reasonable, and said that if we attended a trial as witnesses against Kookabar then we would have our life-debts taken away and would be given safe passage back to our own homes. The other alternative was taking the boat, and relying on the navigational skills of Melody. After a discussion, we decided not to trust the Elf and to rely on our own skills to escape this accursed island. We untied Terendor to leave him alone with Kookabarr - He could dish out judgement to this sorry individual himself. Hopefully bidding a permanent farewell to this place, we boarded the ship and set sail. With both Darius and myself rowing, the going was difficult but we made quick headway away into the night. In the darkness only the screams of Kookabar could be heard as we headed onwards - as Terendor exacted his painful sounding revenge.

With Will looking out and Melody navigating, we sailed deep out into the waters. The stars looked down on us, our light and navigational aid.. until danger struck. We felt a sudden tug on the ship and our course altered as we found ourselves heading towards an outcrop of rocks surrounded by bubbling foam - With all of our strength we rowed faster and faster, our efforts eventually paying off as we escaped its deadly pull. We could see another vessel beyond the rocks, a single light swaying from its rear.

"The Sea is a fickle mistress, and at all times will attempt to throw anything she can into your path in an attempt to bugger up your life completely." - The Wisdom of Xander Du'Blanc Volume 5; "Sea Travel and how if the Gods had meant us to travel on the sea they would have given us Fins"

Another set of rocks attempted to dash us to pieces, but we escaped this also. At one point during our escape we rowed directly over rocks beneath the surface, and for a moment feared for our very lives - but we passed over them safely and continued our passage. We rowed long into the night, the sail leading us the direction we wished to go - the Gods of the Winds being kind to we lonely travellers. We were aching and weary as the sun rose into the sky, and to our joy Melody said that she could smell dry land. With the sun now high in the sky we looked to the horizon and saw dry land there - just as I was beginning to think we would die out here. With renewed efforts Darius and I rowed towards it, our spirits lifted greatly at the success of our eventful escape from the Elves..