The twistings and turnings of the alleys and gangways of Greyhawk’s Slum Quarter were such that anyone not intimately familiar with them would be lost in minutes. Even the thieves avoided its crumbling ruins and decrepit shacks. Beggars, crazy men, and the desperate were the elite of its inhabitants. Gord, a short and skinny orphan, had spent all of his dozen years within this warren. Somehow he had managed to stay alive, thanks to his quickness, cleverness, and luck. Being called “Gord the Gutless” by the other urchins of the Slum Quarter didn’t bother him… much. At least he had managed to stay alive, unlike more of his fellow dwellers in this place than he cared to think about.

Gord slowed his pace abruptly, then stopped and huddled, gasping, under a partially collapsed wall of an ancient warehouse. He had been using various refuges of this sort, one after the other, for several months. Each gave him someplace to hide and be alone with his thoughts, and more recently, since he had been rid of Leena, served as his home for a while.

His panting subsided, but as his wind returned so did his hunger. The hollow ache of an empty stomach was nothing new to him. Even his earliest memories of Leena, the closest thing to a mother he had known, were linked with hunger. The main concern of all who lived within the decaying labyrinth of the Slum Quarter was getting food-each day enough to exist until the next.

Leena had died last winter. Many of the poor failed to survive that season, even though there were few really bitter days. The dampness and the weeks of nagging chill were sufficient to winnow out the weak. Gord had managed well enough without Leena since then, for he had actually been the provider for the last couple of years anyway. In fact, he had come to resent her whining and demands, her treating of him as something less than a son. Once, Leena had showed him a simple, unremarkable box, telling him that it had something to do with his natural parents. Then, with cruel glee, she took it outside and buried it deep in the ground near the shack they shared. “Best that this memory remain buried,” she had cackled, and she never spoke about the box again.