Ink & Chord: Field Interviews

This is not another tale

Thaddeus the Bard of Kaer Maga by Midjourney

Yes, you heard correctly, friends. Tonight, I am not here to sweep you away with another tale of questionable courage and thunderous battles.

Tonight, we’re doing something different and much more important. This gathering is for the unveiling of a book… or, to be precise, an introduction to a collection of interviews bound in a series known as Ink & Chord. In them, you will not find pages filled with my embellishments or polished epics bards like me are far too fond of crafting.

What I bring you tonight is something I’m unreasonably proud of. Because what lies within these pages will do more than compliment the tales I have yet to tell.

It will anchor them.

It will ground our heroes’ legend in the voices of those who walked beside them, met them, feared them, loved them, or simply stumbled across their path even briefly.

These interviews are the pulse beneath the myth. But, before you get to read them, you ought to know the hands and hearts that wrote them.

Davina's Request

The whole idea began with Davina, because… well, of course it did.

If you knew her, you'd understand why. But since most of you only know her through the stories I tell, let me shed a little light.

Davina was a straightforward woman with precisely zero amount of patience in her. A lot of things irritate her, but what she hated most wasn’t danger or chaos; it wasn't even incompetence.

It was rumor.

Rumors creeping into their deeds. Rumors twisting who they were. Rumors painting them as saints one day and villains the next. And even when those rumors made the Misfits sound more heroic than they truly were, she still got annoyed. Not because she worshipped truth like some philosopher, but because she despised secrets. She’d seen too many things rot under the weight of a buried truth. So she decided to stop it before their story died choking on exaggeration.

One morning - far too early for mortal decency - I received a message from her. And not a polite one, mind you. Her voice boomed straight into my skull just as I opened my eyes. I hadn’t even had my morning coffee.

I still remember her exact words: "This is getting ridiculous. People are already believing the nonsense about us. Find someone who can speak to witnesses and record what actually happened. And yes, Thaddeus, I’ll pay for it.”

She didn’t want praise or myth. She wanted accuracy. She needed the kind of record that didn’t fall apart the moment someone questioned it.

She needed a chronicler. Only one.

Naturally, I misheard that part - or, more honestly, chose to ignore it - and sent her two names instead.

"Thaddeus, why?" she demanded. "I asked for one.”

To which I replied, as calmly as any man can while being stared down by an arcane caster with a fondness for fire: "Because truth has two faces, dear. One you see, and one you feel. If you want the full story captured, you need both."

I remember she muttered something unkind about bards, but in the end she agreed and so, the commission was set.

Two bards. Two approaches. And one impossible task:

Follow the Misfits’ trail and gather the world’s testimony before time erases it.

Quillon & Calla

THE INK

The first name I sent her was Quillon Brambletack, a gnome investigator whose relationship with facts bordered on religious devotion.

Quillon was... precise. Painfully so, at times. He collected facts the way a dragon hoards treasure: ruthlessly, tirelessly, and with a certain dangerous glint in his eye. He was the sort of fellow who would correct your phrasing before you’ve finished the sentence, not because he wanted to embarrass you, but because the exact truth mattered to him.

He once told me: "Accuracy shows respect. Anything less insults the living and the dead alike." And that, I admit, is why I recommended him.

If you gave him three conflicting witness accounts, he would sift them like grain until only the kernel of truth remained. Truth is, when Quillon wrote something down, it was because it happened - even if you wish it hadn’t.

THE CHORD

The second name was that of Calla Waywillow, a halfling bard - trained in the Academy I once directed in Kaer Maga - with a voice soft enough to calm tempers and sharp enough to slice through lies. Where Quillon listened for inconsistencies, Calla listened for people.

She could hear a truth hiding beneath a laugh, a confession tremoring behind a swallow, a story sitting quietly in someone’s eyes waiting for the chance to step forward.

Calla stronly believed that every person carries a melody. Not literal music, of course, but a rhythm to how they speak and what they choose not to say. Find that rhythm, she claimed, and the story unfolds on its own.

Once, while watching her coax a tale from a witness who’d sworn she had nothing more to say, I asked how she did it. She just shrugged and replied: "People talk when they feel seen.”

What the Field Interviews are

The task Davina set before them had been simple to describe and far more complicated to carry out: they were to follow the Misfits’ trail and gather the world’s testimony before rumor or reverence distorted it beyond recognition. And so the two of them, set out to speak not just to passersby, but to the people whose lives had truly crossed the Misfits’ path. Friends, rivals, allies, mentors, the injured, the indebted, the grateful, and the furious. They sought out anyone who had known them well enough to care, or long enough to judge, or closely enough to be changed by them.

Some of those interviewed admired the Misfits fiercely. Others feared them. A few despised them. And one or two, I suspect, never fully made up their minds. From each of them. Quillon captured the facts with relentless precision. Calla coaxed out the heart with patient warmth. Together, they shaped a chronicle that was neither praise nor condemnation, but something far rarer: a living account, gathered before time had the chance to sand its edges smooth.

Those collected testimonies became their series - Ink & Chord - a tapestry of voices preserved exactly as they were spoken, flawed and human and unrepeatable.

It was never meant to be tidy.

It was meant to be true.

A Closing Word

Ink & Chord is more than a record; it is an echo of the world the Misfits walked through. Every interview and recollection - whether fond, bitter, or painfully honest - adds weight to their story and offers something even I cannot always provide: perspective.

These pages may argue with each other. That is their nature. Truth rarely arrives in a single voice. But listen long enough, and you will hear the harmony beneath the dissonance, the shape of something real, something earned.

So pour yourself a drink and settle in. Walk with these memories a while. Hear what the world remembered, not as legend, but as lived experience. And when you’re ready, we will return to the tales themselves; richer for the voices that carried them