Something M.Y.T.H. Inc.

PROLOGUE

Like wildfire, word spread throughout the land—from town to village, from peddler to peasant—that their once-idyllic kingdom was now under the control of a mighty magician who held the queen in thrall.

Though it was customary for the common folk to pay little attention to who it was that ruled them, much less the antics and machinations of palace politics, this time it was different.

It was clear to even a casual observer that the magician dabbled in the Black Arts. He openly associated with and sought counsel from demons, who even now roamed the corridors of the palace. As further evidence of his otherworldly nature and preferences, the magician kept a fierce dragon as a pet... a rarity that even the animal-loving ecologists of the land found disquieting. For those who would scoff at the existence of magik and other supernatural powers, there were frightening rumors of another sort. It was said that the so-called magician was connected to the criminal underground, trading political influence for their assistance in keeping the populace under control.

Even considering all this, the people might have been willing to ignore the power shift, were it not for one thing ... their taxes were being raised. While it was true that, even with the new increases, their taxes were barely half of what they had once been, the populace saw it as a grim foreboding of things to come. Once the magician succeeded in reversing the trend from lowering taxes to increasing them, it was asked, where would it stop?

Clearly, something would have to be done.

People who had never thought of themselves as heroes began to ponder and mutter, both singly and in groups, about ways to bring down the tyrant. Though they varied greatly in both skills and intelligence, the sheer volume of the plotters virtually insured the eventual downfall of the villain currently growing fat off the kingdom ... the man they called Skeeve the Great.