A minor noble from a minor kingdom, Bandele the First took kin, scatterlings, exiles, the landless and those in bondage, those desperate for food and those desperate for station and the men and women of any land that look for an anointed leader to follow and founded an Empire. He gathered up realms and peoples by means of his sword and his vision and made them speak to each other in a common tongue and adhere to common laws that reached across most of the continent, living long enough to make firm the grasp of his heirs who have reigned for over three hundred years down to the present day.

Before the city that bears his name had its first stone set in the ground, Bandele stood on a tree stump and addressed his army spread out before him. He promised justice for them and all they would conquer or embrace and he held up an emblem of an eye fashioned from blue glass and brass. By name he called out for twenty of his followers to come forward. None knew the other, they were young and of different origins, and as they knelt before him, Bandele gave each of them a title and a charge. Thus the Inspectorate came into being.

This is the story of one of those descendants, a young man from a distant province who was taken in hand by one of the Emperor’s traveling Bards and sent at the age of twelve to the Capital to begin his education as an Inspector. Now, at twenty one, he is on his first mission, to a far corner of the Empire to install a veteran as the first Magistrate for that man’s native hills and to perform his duty to observe and correct what he may encounter. We will read of his path as he makes his way through the strange and unfamiliar world, a realm both strong and unsettled, and, in alternating chapters, read of his passage from his childhood and his training to come to wear the ring of an Inspector.