The song and dance event in Emerald Leaf Town was, at its core, merely a small-scale celebration. Most of those attending were poor townsfolk or traveling merchants. Although the elves capable of singing and dancing, as well as the girls willing to enter the contest, generally possessed some artistic refinement, their actual standards could only be described as fairly ordinary.
In truth, although this grand festival was lively enough, the five or six performers who appeared one after another mostly just came onstage to display tunes they had practiced in daily life. Since most songs in the Multiverse had to recount at least one widely circulated tale, their voices did little more than praise ancient heroes in Common Tongue or sigh over familiar major events from Faerûn's history.
Indeed, because the devastation caused more than sixty thousand years ago by the battle between two Blazing Sun Thrones had been too immense and terrifying, the arias popular in Faerûn now had grown accustomed to invoking the fallen Kalamus Empire to express sorrow and grandeur.
If there was anything worth mentioning in these rather formulaic tales, it was probably the legend of an Evil Archmage called Whisper of Destruction, which was especially likely to draw gasps from the Good alignment audience.
Yes, that was right. To these poorly informed mortals, the true culprit behind the destruction of the Kalamus Empire lay beyond the bounds of their knowledge. The evil spellcaster who had participated in every event and whose actions had carried immense weight was instead far more widely known.
Like many famous "evil legends," Punk's notoriety had now reached the point where even mortals lamented him in songs and poems. Although most bards who sang of such matters could not clearly tell whether the terrifying being they described was a fictional legend