Structure of Book

- Theft of artifact
- Puffin interrogated by Cardinal Zin
- Puffin returning to family, realizes Minx’s mistake (Minx is the exiled Princess, but the crown
belongs to her younger brother)
- Finds Minx, warns her and her resistance group (including the young exiled Prince)
- They and Minx’s group escape out of the city
- Flee to the one place where church has no reach, the Dwarfen mountains
o Hijinks on the way
- Reach mountains, meet dwarfs, all that fun meeting stuff
- Church invades mountains anyway, but just a distraction for Zin to sneak in with elite team and
steal artifact back
- Heroes despair
- Puffin sneaks off to speak with the old dragon of the mountain (this is sacriligous, and likely
deadly)
- Dragon (Vahagn) is intrigued, and they engage in a battle of riddles and wits
o Dragon has feathers
- Dragon is stumped by “What is your destiny” (thinks back to the First War of Giants and
Dragons)
- Dragon is convinced by Puffin to aid, and decides to fly Puffin/Minx back to city in time to foil
ritual
- Ritual summons Infierna, one of Lady Flame’s generals
- As the dragon and Infierna battle, Puffin/Minx engage Zin (he is cursed in the ritual, his head
becoming a black flaming skull)
- Heroes are victorious, Zin escapes, church loses power and monarchy is returned to power

Mythology
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vahagn
- The Creator, Ar
o Ar is the creator but moved on after making the world. Ar is said to travel from rock to
rock in the cosmos creating diverse life, never making one world the same. But they
never stay long as they soon become bored with their own creation
o Ar is technically not the parent of the other gods; they were all either formed through
the sheer power of belief, or were once mortals who ascended from the faith of their
followers
- Nane, goddess of wisdom and war
o The chief goddess of the Ignisterium, and most often referred to as “Our Lady Flame,” as
her name is commonly taken up by the poor as names to honor her
o Nane dwells in the Overworld, in her Fortress of Fire. There she is served by her flame
giants, and lays her plans to conquer the world, the ultimate goal to unite the cosmos
under her divine authoritative leadership
o Nane is the definition of Law, being smart, strong and stubborn. She believes that if only
the world bent the knee to her, she would rid the universe of evil and sin and build a
 new utopia. But she aims to do this through war and flame, so the other gods usually
stand against her
o Nane was the first female giant of Ar’s. She slew her mate in single combat and became
the first Queen, and ascended hundreds of years after when she established the Empire
(now known as the First Empire).
- Vanatur

Cosmology
The Underworld
The Overworld
The Betwixt
https://wyliebeckert.com/index.php?show=wickedkingdom

Mix between Alice and Wonderland and the Wizard of Oz; a fairytale world like the Fey

World
The Kingdom of Barbenia
- Ruled by the Aracid Dynasty, a vassal state of the Elvish Shashanid Empire
- Across the western mountains and the straits of cyclones lies the human Cyzantic Imperium,
frequently at war with the Shashanids but currently in détente
- Berbenia converted to the Church of the Lady Flame, and established the Ignisterium sometime
during a brief period of Cyzantic occupation

Cyzantic Imperium
- Medusa

Chapter 1
“I would like to make a withdrawal please.”

Puffin blinked. He had, for perhaps the third time that day, slowly drifted into that hazy form of
napping where one is awake and aware of where they are, their eyes slightly open, and still able to sit
up, albeit with one arm propping up their head. You know, that type of napping you do when you
appear to be awake but are really not seeing or hearing a thing.

So Puffin blinked that hard blink to snap back to the waking world. He looked up, put on his best
customer smile that he was no longer capable of matching with his eyes, and automatically replied,
“How can I help you?”

The words were out as a reflex, and Puffin knew as he said them that he now looked like a
complete fool as the woman before him had already said exactly what she needed help with. Normally
he wouldn’t care about looking like a fool in front of customers; on a busy day at the Bank of the Holy
Ignisterium, there were countless customers coming in for various business affairs. Puffin was quite a
good and diligent bank teller on such days, but even the most diligent of workers makes mistakes when
working log hours with no rest. And when such mistakes were made and the hapless victim cussed
Puffin out for his incompetence, he would normally shrug knowing that he was doing his best and the
person would likely forget about the whole incident by the next norm.

Of course, that is how Puffin would normally feel. But the woman standing before him was
decidedly, in his opinion, not normal.

The first thing Puffin noticed was the clothes. People typically wore traditional, formal wear to
the bank. It was after all the only moneylending and money-safekeeping institution in the city. The
whole country, in fact. Add on top that the bank was property of the Ignisterium, shepherds of the holy
faith of our Lady Flame, and there was a certain amount of respectability one should show in their dress.

So people wore some of the best robes they owned, nothing too flamboyant but usually
something with a dash of color, in order to accord the proper respect to the building it was owed.

This woman did not wear robes. She wore tight pants, a loose blouse exposing her fit midriff, a
wide-brimmed hat, and leather gloves. As an ensemble it seemed both entirely practical if one meant to
go hunting by horseback, and entirely impractical for any banking related affairs.

Puffin then took in the woman’s actual physical appearance. Her height was entirely normal for
a young woman, which she clearly was. She looked fit, like a baker’s daughter having to work long hours
in the day. She had a smattering of red freckles on her cheeks, bright blue eyes, and a clean wide smile.
Puffin assumed that humans would probably think her attractive, but he really didn’t know what
human’s were into.

But it wasn’t the freckles, or her midriff, or her beaming grin that Puffin was startled by. It was
the ears; ears that tapered upwards to points, ears barely bigger than the average humans.

“I would like to make a withdrawal,” the woman repeated. She had an odd accent, a slur in her
words, that made it sound more like with-drawl than how the word is truly spelled.

“Of course,” Puffin coughed nervously into his hand, averting his eyes from the woman’s ears. It
was impolite to stare, and he wouldn’t break good manners just because the woman’s ears were both
too pointed and too short to make proper sense. “Under what name is your account?”

“I don’t have an account.”

Puffin looked at her again. “You can’t make a withdrawal without an account ma’am.” He
purposefully said withdrawal how he though it should be pronounced.

Before Puffin properly noticed what had happened, a long-pointed stick was held to his neck,
the end poking lightly into the apple of his through. “I think you can make an exception for me, gobbo.”

Shit. Puffin thought. He thought to swallow but decided against it. “Ah. Um. I…”

The woman vaulted over the counter to stand over Puffin. She was, as previously stated, of
normal height for a young human woman. But Puffin, being a goblin of normal height himself, was
barely taller than her waist. So, without the counter separating the teller from the customer, Puffin was
suddenly feeling very small.

“I would like to be shown around, please.” The woman waved her wand in Puffin’s face as if to
remind him.
 He risked a glance over his shoulder. The two templars, posted as a caution for exactly this sort
of situation, were for the first time in Puffin’s career not in the chamber.

Shit. Puffin repeated in his head. He finally swallowed. “I assume you want to see the vaults.”

“You assume right, gobbo.” The woman clicked her tongue. “Well, one specific vault. The big red
one.”

Puffin closed his eyes. “That’s… are you… I think…”

But the woman shoved the wand in Puffin’s face again, and his stifled his modest protest,
nodded, and turned into the hallway behind him.

As they walked the marble hallway, one terrified goblin bank teller and his new unidentified
tormenter, the woman twirled the wand in her hand expertly, like an idle knife-thrower.

Puffin stopped at the end of the gilded hall, where it made a sharp turn right. For a moment, he
considered bravery, but that moment was brief. He turned back to the woman.

“The red vault,” he hissed, “Always has a templar posted on guard. The vault is around the
corner.”

The woman looked at him with blank eyes. When Puffin said no more, she placed a hand on the
goblin’s shoulder, lightly turned him around, and walked around the corner while pushing Puffin forward
like a mother would her child to a front desk.

While the previous walk had been lightly decorated with some mostly dull artwork, this hall had
no decoration. Nothing hung on the walls save for the candle-holders, giving some light illumination.
This hall wouldn’t have any natural light; windows were impossible here, as this vault was in the center
of the Bank of the Ignisterium. The center of a maze of hallways.

Puffin walked forward with the pressure of the woman’s hand on his shoulder. The templar
stood down the hall, his tall helm with it’s t-shaped slit seeming to stare at the goblin and this woman.
When they were halfway down the hall, the knight stamped his spear.

“State your business, teller,” intoned the templar. Puffin had heard the same words the handful
of times he ever visited the red vault.

Puffin waited, hoping the woman would answer. She did not.

“The lady here,” Puffin struggled to say, “Would… like to make a withdrawal.”

“She does not wear the cloth. And you go no further without an anointed one.”

The woman withdrew her hand. “Gobbo,” she looked down at him. “You’re able to open the
vault, right?”

When Puffin nodded, her face broke into her earlier grin. “Tremendous!” she drew the wand
from behind her back and fired green light at the knight before them.

The templar had already hefted his spear before the wand was revealed, and it was thrown
before the light struck him.
 The woman had, much like a boxer at the fights Puffin’s brothers gambled their money away on,
swayed on the balls of her feet, allowing the spear to brush against the cloth of her shirt before it
embedded itself in the floor behind her.

Puffin saw only a green flash, and heard the clattering of metal as the templar’s armor collapsed
like a tower of cards.

As a second passed in silence, then another, Puffin took advantage of the peace to keel over and
vomit.

“Ugh,” Puffin heard the woman say. “What did you eat for lunch?”

Puffin kept his face to the ground, still horrified. “You killed him!” he gurgled. “A templar! Sir
Dabhiti was a knight of the Ignisterium, trained in arms and war, sworn to protect the realm and you
killed him!”

“No I didn’t.”

Puffin straightened and moved over to the collapsed suit of armor. “You turned his body to
nothing, sent him to the ether, you-“

“Ur-UP.”

A brown-speckled toad crawled out of one of Sir Dabhiti’s greaves, staring at Puffin with large
eyes, looking just as shocked as the goblin.

“He’ll be back to his imperious self in an hour or two,” said the woman. “Plenty of time for my
withdrawal.”

Puffin nodded dumbly, turning to the vault that Sir Dabhiti had been guarding.

The Red Vault. Puffin didn’t think the clergy actually called it that; to them, this was the only
vault that really mattered, so on the odd days they actually turned up to deposit or withdraw anything,
Puffin took them to their vault without being asked. But it was the Red Vault, red to match the robes of
the Ignisterium. Red to match the Lady Flame.

Puffin looked up at the round red door, looming over him. It had always given him a little shake
in his step. But this visit was by far the worst. The spokes on the vault’s handle looked too much like the
shaft of the spear that had nearly gored the woman next to him.

He pulled his key chain from his belt with shaking hands and drew the largest rust-colored one.
He pushed it into the center of the spokes, and the woman twirled them for him. With a light by audible
click, the door unlatched slowly swung open.

They stepped into the room together. A room better described as an underground warehouse.
Ever-burning torches with fire an unnatural carmine shade hung from the rounded stone walls, giving
the shaft the glow of a sunset through smoke. Puffin didn’t know how the torches burned when no one
tended to them, or why they burned their color; he never dared to ask the clergymen he brought here.

He stepped onto the wooden elevator, hanging from thick ropes on the ceiling. The woman
followed, and Puffin undid the knot, allowing the weight of the lift to gently fall down the stone shaft.
Minx