Averill, while a good friend, was an avaricious fortune-hunting power-mad villain who would do almost anything for just a bit more power. Despite many friends, including myself, telling him that spending all night lying on his back looking up at the sky was a bad idea, he never seemed to get the message. I blame his father for largely letting him run wild and getting his head full of Arthurian stories. This would never have happened if he hadn’t started wanting to be Arthur (without the unfortunate romantic history). First he got himself tangled up with the Lady of the Shadows, then he started asking the Sleepers for help, and before anyone could help him he was an all-consuming evil thing that tried to prey on his dear friends at Godstow. It was only thanks to my intervention that we didn’t end up with the all-consuming Ichor – the Totalising Will – on the throne of England, as such was Averill’s intention, and the damage wrought by King Averill can scarcely be imagined. Not that we didn’t have some good times, mind you – the time he and his mate Demetrius set me up to shoot a trebuchet at the Knights of St George was a great day indeed. Not enough trebuchets around these days, that’s the problem…

Extract from Averill: An Expose , the bestselling scroll of 1206, by Sir Percival of the Knights of St George.

Averill of Forthwick, knight, was the last known victim of the ichor. Slain by the then Sheriff of Nottingham, Samuel of the Fens, at Godstow Abbey, for years he was seen as a traitor or a fool, a view not helped by the poisonous biography written by his former friend, the dragon Percival. However, new research into Forthwick Estates has shown that Averill was a kind master and a good friend to his people, and any experimentation regarding emotions which happened to the inhabitants of Forthwick at the time was largely down to the actions of Martin, called the Devout, who became the Demiurge of Deception and is currently sitting at the back of this lecture hall. Now he’s gone. Averill took care of his people, was a true friend to Demetrius Khages, and probably was taken over by an entity larger than himself over which he could not have exerted any form of control.

Extract from Forthwick Manor , a lecture by Stanley the Abiding at the Collegium Profanum, sometime in the 1500s.