Hey, look at that, another well-rendered party of five adventurers! Flo ordered up a a rogue/assassin type, a magician/wizard type, a healing priest type, and a crossbow user.

This is a particularly strong example of our fractal approach to storytelling in Guilded Age. The Five may be a bit special in that they’re linked to another world and only they can avert one particular apocalypse… but there are many more adventuring bands out there that you don’t get to see or hear about, and most of them would have equally exciting careers if we had decided to focus on them instead! So we could’ve done a story of Harky’s old band, or Ardaic’s days in the military, or the formation of the Kick-Backers, or Peter the Blest… the world’s full of exciting possibilities, and we could’ve gone on for decades without sampling them all.

Instead, this brief highlight reel tells us two things: one, Harky’s disillusionment with humans is grounded in his own experience, not just his people’s. And two, even more surprising: his relationship with Gondolessa antedates the World’s Rebellion.