Horker's Law

Horkers are thieves of an unusual sort. Trained from childhood in skills of deception, misdirection, slight of hand, confidence, etc., they are also taught a strict code, a code that governs their decisions and strategies. They are taught to avoid violence, and live by their wits. One of the most important lessons in this code is that Horkers never use magic. Magic is notoriously unreliable and hard to control, and Horkers must control their environment.

Spivver MacAnders is one such Horker. A young man, working his way through life, Spiv horks enough to meet his needs, trying to get ahead (while taking only from people he figures truly deserve it, and trying to do a good turn for common folks, from time to time.) All this, while staying one step ahead of his marks on his way out of town. But when Spiv comes across the aftermath of a heinous crime, he is drawn into a commitment to deliver a valuable object; an object which he realizes is a powerful artifact, steeped in very specific magical properties. A secretive and skilled Horker is perhaps the perfect messenger to transport such an object unnoticed, especially because the one who seeks it is a powerful wizard, who has already sent his army to invade the realm Spiv must travel through on his mission.

That wizard, known as "the Sath," is the unexpected remnant of a secret sect of wizards; a sect thought to have been wiped out hundreds of years ago, in a final battle with their mortal enemies, another group headed by a wizard of equal power, the Frith. But no one expected that the Sathist sect had survived the final battle between the Friths and Sathists of ancient times, and there are no more Friths. A small group of scholars is researching the ancient Frithic knowledge, uncovering scraps of documents in the ruins of an ancient fortress. To have any hope of stopping this new Sath, the knowledge of the ancient Friths must be resurrected. Can Spiv help with this, even though he is forbidden the use of magic, himself? And why is the Sath himself also focused on the same ruins of that ancient Frithic fortress? Is it the artifact that Spiv brought with him, or something else… perhaps Spiv's own hidden and unknown link to the ancient Sathist sect?