SHINBOZ
Shinboz was once a member of the Brotherhood of Ur'agoth, to whom he
swore undying fidelity. These blood brothers, the ancient masters of
the dark lore, welcomed him in when he was but a young conjurer of
cheap tricks, and taught him everything that he knew.
This
tiny wizard, who tended to easily be flung into unbridled rages, later
left the Brotherhood of Ur'agoth lived in a small mobile hut which
sported a pair of huge flamingo legs and stood well over 20 feet tall
with shuttered windows. He frequently rode across the land inside his
pet (which, like any other, needed its daily walk), never staying
in one location for too long. During the Great Monster Uprising, one of
these locations included the Miznia Marshland, where he planted an
incredible garden of chrysanthemums. Shinboz loved Double Fanucci, but
depised when the daft made an appearance. Thus when he moved, he always
coded his invitations to make sure his less-intellectally inclinded
readers could not understand them. One of such messages included binary
coding (which forced the farce, Farthingazz, to miss several games).
While
Shinboz made home at the Miznia Marshlands during the Great Monster
Uprising, he was visited by an anoynomous man by the alias of
"Detective Softly" who had managed to solve an encrypted message which
he had sent to Farthingazz. Since Shinboz had once been a member of
Ur'agoth, "Softly" was seeking to have the destination of Ur'agoth
teleportation runes identified. Shinboz was unwilling to sell out his
brothers unless "Softly" was willing to recover the Amulet of Aggthora,
to be used to assist him in placing a few bets on fighting adventurers
in the Bozbarland arena. The magical artifact was located by "Softly"
and shipped to Shinboz at the Marshlands.
Since "Softly" was in
pursuit of someone in the family which Shinboz had once belonged to,
when the Amulet arrived, he was prepared to steal the artifact and
take flight without providing any authentic guidance in return. But on
reflection, since "Softly" seemed to be incredibly adept at finding
lost things, he realized that escaping this vengeful adventurer might
not be as easy as he thought. Shinboz sent him a reply
identifying the runes, but left the location of The Gray Mountains
Ur'agoth hideout encoded in the following riddle: "Morality is rarely black and white, but you’ll
have more than a hill to climb if you want to find the Ur’agoth Brotherhood."