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By Hohn Cho

When he was young, then-Prince Antornin Nirosht was even lustier than the eventual King who fathered half-a-dozen fey princes. One of his lovers was a beautiful young girl named Hepsiba, the youngest daughter of a struggling baker who, as a widower, was far too busy to keep track of any of his five daughters. Hepsiba's dalliance with Antornin was short-lived, but after he broke off the affair, she realized that he had left her with a lasting keepsake. Immediately upon realizing that she was pregnant, Hepsiba moved from Imsoul to the City of Wine, where her oldest sister had married a prosperous wine merchant. There, she gave birth to a healthy young boy, who she named Ananais. She told no one of the boy's parentage, saying only that the father was long gone, and a big mistake besides. Hepsiba's sister and brother-in-law accepted the story, and did their best to provide a good home for Hebsiba and Ananais.

A few years passed. One evening, a valued supplier of Hebsiba's brother-in-law was visiting, and when Hepsiba's beauty was mixed with a night full of revelry and wine, well, it was less than two months later when Hepsiba married the winemaker, Kalub Lazarus. Kalub was a loving man, even to his adopted son, but when Hepsiba bore him children of his own, his attention toward his adopted son waned significantly. As a result, Ananais Lazarus grew up slightly neglected but exceedingly ambitious, and he ultimately decided to strike out on his own as soon as he reached the age of majority. With some supplies and coins bestowed by Kalub, Ananais kissed his mother goodbye and journeyed to Imsoul, where he hired on as a deck hand for the trading vessel MORDANT'S LUCK. A few years passed, and Ananais proved himself to be a skillful sailor, a doughty fighter, and a shrewd businessman.

Ananais eventually became the first mate of MORDANT'S LUCK, at which time he felt established enough to take a wife. He had visited his relatives in Imsoul a few times, and through his aging grandfather, he happened to meet a sweet young neighbor girl named Rueth, whose father was also a baker. It was a love match of compatibility, and the two were soon married. Rueth gave birth to a son, Joshua, followed three years later by identical twin girls named Lea and Rebekah. As the years passed, Ananais became the captain of MORDANT'S LUCK. Being more of a visionary than the previous captain, Ananais used his business acumen to start a merchant trading operation, and by the time Joshua was 14, Ananais had five ships that traded all the way from the Near Coast to Antorium, with Ananais constantly looking for ways to expand his business and seek out more and more foreign ports.

Like many Lochnirrians, Hepsiba, Kalub, Ananais and Rueth were all Mordants, and with Ananais being an up-and-coming merchant, he had the means to send his children to excellent Mordant schools. There, they received a solid education and a foundation in the tenets of Mordantism. To Ananais' surprise and displeasure, however, his only son Joshua became an ardent and devout follower of the faith, to the point where he clearly wanted the priesthood to become his calling. Ananais wanted his heir to continue on in the family business, but Joshua would have none of it. There were stormy fights aplenty, but Joshua held firm. Finally, having little other choice, Ananais relented and allowed his son to enter the Mordant clergy. Joshua excelled in his studies beyond all of his peers, and by the age of 18, he was an ordained minister of Mordant. During the later years of his study, his grandmother Hepsiba began to ail, and with her family around her, she passed away peacefully, but not before beckoning her son Ananais close and whispering in his ear. Ananais turned pale, and appeared to be in disbelief, but he continued to listen. What Hepsiba told him, he has not yet shared with anyone.

Afterwards, Joshua returned to his seminary studies. As he grew more and more confident in the faith, Joshua began to express his own strongly-held views on Mordant doctrine and theology. After much study and thought, he became an advocate of a borderline heretical doctrinal viewpoint called Mordant Monotheism. This theological argument contended that the different gods are actually mere facets of a larger whole, and that in actuality there is one single GOD above all, who encompasses all of the portfolios of the current facets, and that as the mysteries were divined more and more deeply, the individual facets would begin to fade and fall away in importance, and that the interconnections and common threads would become more and more apparent, until only GOD remained. This theological difference caused a rift between Joshua and many of his fellows, and he was pondering striking out on his own when he received a letter from a Mordant priest teaching in Relum. This priest had, apparently, come up with a doctrine quite similar to Joshua's, and the elderly priest invited Joshua to meet him. Joshua did, and the priest asked Joshua to stay with him, to assist him in his duties to the small flock of Mordants in the area and, shortly, to take over his church should he pass away. Joshua's time as an assistant was short, as the elderly priest passed on a year later. Now, Joshua is a new priest running a small church in southern Relum.

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