Johnathan was a man of little means. Ever since he was a child his destiny had been laid out before him in the form of the flocks of Wooly Rams that his father had kept and herded across vast Sea of Grass within the Tartorus Valley. He was raised on the move; never settling in one place for longer than the week or two it took to sell their goods to the markets in the Dwarven city of Deep Iron in the high foothills of the Boreal Mountains that bordered the valley when the snows abated from their hilly paths, as has been the custom of his family for as long as there had been writing. 

His days were filled with fields of grass that held it's green even as snow dusted the Sea during the harshest parts of winter, and the vast moving herds of the white and gray rams. Wolves would occasionally come in from the Anchored Forest during the lean years in attempts to harry the flock, which he and his father would drive away with crook and spell. The only other source of excitement would come whenever a lamb would wander off and fall into an unseen pit or crevice, or get swept up by an eroding river bank, or when he had to help bring a pregnant ewe bring new life into the world. Overall, it was a peaceful life compared to the lives of other the other wandering types.

Sometimes the black feathered Night Hawks and the translucent feathered God Owls would swoop in and carry off a lamb in their dagger sized talons. In all of his time shepherding, he had only tried save one such catch in his with a cleverly shot blast of wind to the creature's wing. The wing yanked backwards as the gust whipped by, and the joint snapped causing the Night Hawk fell to the earth in a heap of torn feathers and grass. It thrashed on the ground in an attempt to stand, still clutching tightly to the screaming lamb. Before it could recover, however Johnathan rushed forward and brought his iron headed crook down with all the strength he could muster onto it's head. The night hawk screeched and attempted to attack the then twelve year old with its beak, but Johnathan was quicker, bringing the iron head of the crook in the path of the peck. It recoiled as it slammed against the enchanted head of the crook. His father came in from behind and finished it off with a heavy strike to the back of it's head. The lamb had quieted down and quickly died as the bloody daggers finally relinquished its hold. Much too early for something so young. As was customary, they broke down the body of both the lamb and the Night Hawk. They sold off most of both their next time in Deep Iron. He still carried a knife made from one of the talons of the bird.

Occasionally, he'd see teams of adventurers from some of the nearby towns and cities dotting the plains crossing the Sea to explore the far, unexplored reaches of the Anchored forest, or into the labyrinthine depths of Liar's Folly, a cursed mine bored through one of the sides of the Boreals. But he never though of joining them. Sometimes he'd have dreams — passing fancies, really, of one day joining them and seeing the world and finding riches beyond compare in the depths of some forgotten place built by the Ancient Ones so that he'd never have to hike through the sword grass plains again, but he always shook out of it. He was born a shepherd. And he would die a shepherd. Like his ancestors before him.

During the autumn of his thirteenth year, his father passed away. A wound that he had received when he was a child when he and his father were herding their rams from a wolf reopened and got infected. The sickness lasted only a few weeks, but they were agonizing for both of them. Johnathan buried his father beneath the branches of the Linden tree that had been planted at her death among the countless others within the Shepherd's Rest during the fall equinox.

The Rest was a place that only the shepherd's knew. It was a place of peace and rest where there was always plenty of grass and fresh water, no matter how large of a flock one had, but was only opened a few days before and after the two equinoxes, and two solstices of the year when the wild creatures and monsters of the world would grow fierce and swarm after anything without regard for their own lives. Johnathan had asked where the Rest had come from, and his father told him the story of a shepherd that cried out to the Goddess of Nomads, Shepherds and Travelers, Auriel, for one good night's rest during the few days before and after a solstice. He fell into a deep sleep and when he awoke in the morning he had found himself in a different place, with all of his herd accounted for, and a holy aura keeping the swarming monsters at bay, and keeping the snows of the passing winter out . There were other Rests found throughout the Sea of Grass, and wherever else Shepherd's roamed around the world, according to him.

It was also a place where the Shepherding Families brought their dead. A Linden tree had always been planted when the first among a couple died, and the other would be buried beneath it's ever flowering branches. The Linden was one of Auriel's symbols; its white flowers representing the wool of the rams, or so his father had told him.

Since that fall that he placed his father in the ground to rest beside the mother he had never met, he inherited his father's crook, and with it, his herds. And like his father, and his father's father, stretching all the way back from when the first Galvin got the idea to raise a breeding pair of Wooly Rams from the herds that populated the high reaches of the Boreals, and brought them down the slopes into the Sea of Grass to graze and breed. It was a long and noble lineage, and one that he was proud to shoulder.

And so it was, for the following four years that he lived the life that he was destined to live — of wandering through the knee high grasses of the Sea of Grass, leading his flock from pasture to pasture to graze and to drink from the unseen streams known only to him, and taking the herd up the mountain paths to sell off the wool and milk and meats to the market city of Deep Iron for the things he needed to live — sharpened shears, fruit preserves and the like, once a year, where the only Gate in that region stood.

He had seen only seen it once, when he wandered off from his father when he was nine. A passing glimpse was all he could take. It was in a gate house surrounded by the city's shining guards who took sheets of papers from those exiting or entering the strange thing. There was an image in his mind already, ever since he had heard of its existence. Something strangely stony and beautiful, like some of the grander buildings in the ruins that lay scattered among the Sea of Grass that they avoided, but it was anything but. It was simple in design — a stone circle about as large and wide as the space between the legs of a Stone Deer. Swirling in the center was what looked like a pool of water that stuck to the top of the circle, and seemed to reflect a dozen different places at once. It was a dizzying sight and he couldn't look at it for longer than a few moments. Johnathan's father had found him near the gate house, leaning against a wall trying to stop what was in his stomach from emptying on the stony ground. The Goddess didn't like the Gates, his father had explained, and by extension those who follow her were not allowed to utilize them.

“Why?” Johnathan asked.

“Because they take the entire point of traveling away.” His father had answered.

“What do you mean?” He had asked.

“All the troubles.” His father said, “And the suffering.”

“Isn't that a good thing?”

“Suffering is a part of life, John.” His father answered, bending at the waist and ruffling his son's ruddy brown hair that had been inherited from him. “Besides, you also miss out on all the good parts of traveling — the cloudless nights when the stars are out like thousands of candles, and when the moon hangs as heavy as a pregnant ewe.” He said, leading his son by the shoulder towards the front gate of the city, they had sold all that they needed, and it was time to lead their sheep back down to the Sea, “Those times when the wind blows through the grass and sweep through the grass where you swear you'll be blown away and the seedlings detach and find new places to grow. Those times you chance across something so magnificently big that you can't help but feel small.”

And Johnathan couldn't help but agree, even then nearly a decade later. Those times were the best part of his life; the cloudless nights after a day of suffering through the endless trek through the Sea. A warm and crackling fire keeping the cold out of his bones and the warmth massaging the soreness in his muscles as his flock slept as sound as they could in the middle of the wilds, and he never thought that they would change. And he never wished that they would.