Borrowed from the Dawnflower Library by Ja-ja, due back on Desnus 13th. Vandy Banderdash keeps records. Its four chapters, as written:
Exiled from Nidal in her youth, Vol Rajani carried out of that shadowed country only her ancestral longsword, the Rosa Argentis, and a claim to a throne she would never sit upon. She made her name in the fighting pits of the Inner Sea and in the slaying of monsters, and it was her family's silver rose that gave the adventuring party its name, the Roseguard. It was Vol who first proposed, on the Absalom docks with a dead beast at their feet, that four strangers should become one party.
It is recorded that when offered a crown restored, she answered: "I would rather be a hero than a princess." The line is carved above the door of the Otari garrison, and every child in the town can recite it.
She lived out her years in the town she helped raise, and died some four decades after its founding, in 4285 AR, of a fever taken from an old wound that had never truly closed. Her body was interred in a mausoleum in the Otari graveyard. The Rosa Argentis now sits on display in the Dawnflower Library.
The youngest of the four — barely more than a girl when the company formed — and by the reckoning of every source, its true leader. A cleric of Erastil and an archer of rare gift, Aesephana Menhemes was the one the others looked to when the choice was hard. Those who knew her wrote of a quality in her presence that made frightened people brave. She was never seen without the Cloak of the Huntress, a mantle of mottled green and grey said to have been blessed by Erastil himself, which turned aside the weather, hid its wearer among leaf and stone, and would not be taken from her shoulders by any hand but her own.
She and Otari Ilvashti were betrothed, and had exchanged vows only shortly before the party set out for Gauntlight.
Aesephana survived her companions and died in 4290 AR, the last of the Roseguard, mourned by the whole of the town. Her place of burial is unknown. The town was abandoned within four years of her death, and its local archives were lost; when Otari was resettled two generations later, no one living could point to her grave. The Menhemes family descends from her and holds her holy symbol still. Of the Cloak of the Huntress there is no record after her death.
Least known of the four, a dwarf of uncertain origin, Zarmavdian was a wizard of formidable learning and a collector of secrets, some of them foolish. He wrote poetry, mended clocks, painted landscapes, and pursued conspiracies that his companions indulged with affection.
It was Zarmavdian who first read the signs that a sorcerer had built a lighthouse on an empty coast for no honest purpose, and Zarmavdian who convinced the others to go and see.
It was rumoured in the town that Zarmavdian kept a laboratory of elemental magic somewhere beneath Otari — a vaulted workshop of fire, water, air and stone. No such place has ever been uncovered.
He did not die in Otari. In the town's early years he departed one night without farewell, leaving his rooms in good order but taking with him his great grimoire, Thresholds of Truth, in which he had set down every spell he had mastered. This great tome is held today in a warded collection in Absalom.
The common account holds that he returned north to his studies. He left no descendants, and no grave.
IV. Otari Ilvashti, the Osprey
An orphan of Absalom, a thief by necessity, and for some years a pirate. Otari Ilvashti was spared by a cleric of Cayden Cailean, the Drunken God, when his crew lost a battle after boarding the wrong ship. After that he turned away from piracy and used his talents against the slavers of the Inner Sea, falling upon their vessels out of thin air. This gave him the moniker osprey, the name of the bird that hunts along the coast.
From that day he carried the Cailean Key, a slender skeleton key he named for the god who had spared him, and which would open any lock — a thief's tool turned to honest work.
He was the company's conscience and its humour.
At Gauntlight, in 4244 AR, the evil sorcerer Belcorra Haruvex brought down the ceiling of the chamber in which they fought. Otari Ilvashti was buried beneath it. His companions avenged him within the hour. They returned afterward to dig for him but found no body that could be brought home.
His dearest ambition, often spoken of, had been to give up adventuring and settle in a small town by the sea. His three friends spent the bulk of their savings building one, and gave it his name. He has no grave and no descendants.