Eralde Missenaire

The famed bard and fighter Eralde Missenaire is noted for her love of exploration, and the tales she tells about her many voyages have become the stuff of legend. They would be considered fictional if it were not for the fact that they have been independently verified by other sources.
Eralde keeps a detailed journal of her travels, recording everything from the weather conditions to the scenery and the people, as well as discoveries she makes and monsters she encounters. As she fills each journal it is sent off to her publisher in Bajapur where it is published as a new volume in the continuing series of The Voyages of Eralde Missenaire. Adventuring societies all over the Sundered Lands have standing orders for multiple copies of each new volume as it is released.
Even as a young girl Eralde Missenaire was unsatisfied with the life of a farmer's daughter. She always wanted to know what was over the next hill and more about the natural world around her. Being both tall and exceptionally sturdy and well-formed, she learned how to fight from her brothers and was soon more than holding her own.
When she heard that she was to be married to an older man in an attempt to enlarge the farms of both families, she decided that she was uninterested in being a brood-mare for the family's wealth, and instead left home to join a mercenary company. There she found the life she loved, travelling to see the world and finding new and interesting people to fight. It was also during this time that she met and briefly fell in love with a bard who was accompanying the unit to send reports back to her patron. The bard taught Eralde much more of her letters and numbers than the basics Eralde had learned at the church school, as well as how to turn a phrase to make it stick in the memory, before she and Eralde parted ways.
Reaching the end of her term of service with the company, Eralde struck out for herself, accompanied by two friends she had fought beside who were also leaving the unit to make a fresh start. Eralde had started keeping a journal of her travels during her time with her bard lover, and when the trio were passing through Bajapur, she decided on the spur of the moment to visit a fledgling publishing company as they passed it. The publisher was interested in Eralde's tales of places he had never seen, and decided to gamble on a small print run of the first volume of what would become known as "Eralde's Voyages".
Once she had tidied up the journal and readied it for printing, a small run was made and sample copies sent to the Moguls of the Great Houses and several of the adventuring societies with offices in Bajapur. The book was an immense success, written in Eralde's easy, flowing and informative style and illustrated with pictures drawn by herself and Joffan, one of her companions. As word spread, the entire first print run was sold out, as were the two successively larger print runs which followed. Eralde hastily prepared her subsequent journals for printing, and the publisher arranged to stagger their printing slightly to buy time, while he urged her to venture out on her travels again to find more material.
Eralde has been travelling for many years since, and is welcome at the hearth of adventurers and lords alike around the globe.