EMP-436: Murkmoss

Murkmoss was Mantis's cousin. He never agreed with the selfish values of their family - they only cared about themselves. Their family was a high ranked family of scholars, with extremely big influence. They cared not about those less "important" than them, and used their influence to gain access to more resources than they were allowed, despite the fact that meant that a less important grifix might go hungry that day. Murkmoss was repulsed by all that. Especially since it wasn't just his family that was like that - the entirety of the Scholars Guild believed themselves to be better and more deserving than the rest of the Empire's citizens.

At the first opportunity he had, Murkmoss ran away from the Herbalist Guild, and for a few years he wasn't seen at all, only to show up one day and join the Merchants Guild, as an independent Merchant. Against all odds, he quickly became a self sustained merchant. He always seemed to have just the right thing to trade for food and goods. Soon, other merchants started to wonder what he was up to - he always had anything he might need to acquire something, but nobody knew what he did with all that food and goods he would buy.

The Frozen Empire is a wonderful place to live - you needed no money to get by: as long as you belonged to a guild, anything you might need was distributed to you. And you were gonna live happily - for as long as you believed in this reality.

The Empire was corrupt. It mattered not how much money you had - influence was what mattered. Those in the working guilds had close to none - so they had to live by the system, and only had what was distributed to them. But those at the top did not care about no system, they used their influence to get anything they wanted. And it was all a beautiful fairytale on the surface.

There were some grifix that refused to live by this. They refused to join a guild and further fuel the system. But they couldn't live on the surface of the empire, after all that would scratch the beautiful image the Scholars have built for the lower class. The only way for them to live is if they hid themselves. And so they did, in the dark, forgotten catacombs of the Clerics Guild: a place that was dug out in the early days of the Frozen Empire, over a thousand years ago. The catacombs were never mapped, and dangerous. So nobody would follow them there.

But these grifix often had nothing, and had to rely on stealing and hunting rats in the catacombs. That's where Murkmoss came in: while he was away, he lived in the catacoms amongst those grifix, and he got to understand them and want to help them. So when he came of age, he left that place and joined the Merchants Guild in order to help out these grifix, especially those who had to way of leaving that place.

Since he came back, his family didn't even want to hear about him. He somehow found out about what happened to his cousin, Mantis. He showed no sorrow. They all had it coming. He did go to visit Mantis's daughter, Shadevine. She thought he was the coolest uncle, and is always excited to see him.