Vasco is a young man, recently shipwrecked into the southern reaches of the Umbrias, his boat tortured and rended, sunk by inclement weather off the rocky shores of Alphos. Before this happenstance, he had been born into a large family of farm-workers in a somewhat isolated community in a deep, craggy valley far east of the wooded crownlands of Astrya, where the unknown world touches that which is known. He led a simple life, surrounded by the warmth of family and familiarity, with the happenstance mischief he might cause the senior villagers. This simple, quiet existence would come to shift drastically when the Fading began, first from the east-winds, and then surrounding the old Valleys Vasco called home, a doom like no other, merciless and indiscriminate.

A group of men and women of able body and mind gathered in the valley's cliffs, from all the peoples who lived there, and they decided to dare an escape through the northernmost canyon, one that had been forsaken eons ago, but now was their only way out. The valley folk, Vasco in tow, fought off beasts and monsters as they traversed the treacherous crags, finally arriving at a fishing community in the Northern Realm of Astrya, paying with what gold they could all muster to pay for ferrying into the unknown lands west. This sea voyage would be calm, and reassuring, until a few months in, when storms ravaged the boats, and a few of them fell to the fiery gods of the sea, including some that carried some of Vasco's family. Nevertheless, his boat survived, though lost and restless, between strangers and the ones who dwelled within this island sanctuary.

It is unknown what happens next. Vasco may try to rekindle the spirit of the valley folk, and seek out kinship, or perhaps he will strike out on his own, and seek a fortune of his own making.