From Ostenso he took ship to Absalom, and from there, when it proved too city for him, to Andoran. 'Exiled repentant noble trying to save his soul and earn a place in Andoran' sold well to the adventuring investors there, and he, some of his old guards, and a priest of Erastil they picked up to help him reach plant growth, cleared out several monster dens and patrolled a new stretch of shore. He found that the peasants were happier to see him arrive, and much happier to see him victorious. Some of those celebrating were quite pretty, too.

Prettier still, though, was the status it eventually accorded him with the Andoren nobility. Much reduced in power, and lands, they were happy enough to accept a successful, well-spoken adventurer with good blood into their ranks, even if it had been corrupted for a slightly longer time in Cheliax than most of theirs.  He was strong enough to read, and read Evil at first, but he seemed perfectly pleasant and within a few more years he was Lawful Neutral, a proper young man, and began to notice he was being considered as a potential suitor.

He was not in any great hurry, and while his first cleric was gone back to the farms, an aggressive Shelynite was open to adventuring with him occasionally, and he did, as much to keep up his reputation as for the pay or the power. Eventually, one of the more cautious fathers in the crowd; Marchese Cosimo Aspotico, whose sons were partly dead and partly sickly, and had been looking for a good adventurer to marry his daughter Gisella (a minor wizard) and likely succeed him. And as he had learned at many parties, while she was not especially lovely, she was a delightful personality.

And so, shortly before his 29th birthday and her 23rd, they were married, with his longest-serving guard, who'd probably be a burglar if he hadn't started adventuring, as his best man.

And then the Four-Day War happened.

News was chaotic, of course, but it wasn't hard to pay some ships stopping in Ostenso and Remesiana to pay some fishermen to relay the state of the local lords in Lestdemarc, which revealed that, as expected, Ximo had been deposed -- dead, as it turned out -- and there was no current ruler of Roda-Mar.

Well, he had two sons already, and could expect another one at least. The new rulers were, frankly, terrifying, but more from the memory of what the last Queen could do than from actual expectation that the new one would do to a claimant she disliked. He made sure Gisella was healthy and as content as she could be, and traveled to Westcrown to ask for his old county back.

And got handed a duchy. Apparently 'Chelish, verifiably not Evil' was the only bar you really needed to clear to get one of those, and adventuring experience and connections made them want to insist.

Oh, he got Roda-Mar as well, but all of Lestdemarc was his, now. He made his apologies to his father-in-law for leaving his shores without a local lord, gathered as many of his old adventuring companions and their associates as he could to be his ducal soldiers, left Romà in charge of the defense in Andoran, and moved his family back to his homeland.

He visited Roda-Mar as soon as he could, and found that most of the old fishermen still remembered him. "The young trident is back!", they teased him, and he admitted he wasn't going to be back very much, which suited them fine in any case. The captain whose boat he took hadn't made it; he avoided suspicion but his new boat got struck by clams. He heard complaints, introduced his eldest, and left some hunters, then left, back to his new ducal (!) seat.

And nearly a year, enough bandits and monsters that most of his casters gained a circle each, and a bad harvest later, there came a summons to Westcrown.

His best wizard had just hit teleport-capable, so after debating with Gisella, he decided to bring the whole family and enough servants to keep them in proper style. He somewhat regretted it when he found how expensive lodging were after the destruction of the Tarrasque and the influx of people for the convention.

He doesn't have particularly strong goals for the convention, but bringing Gisella's Andoren perspective can't hurt. And he'd certainly rather get something that looks like Andoran rather than like Galt. And he ought to meet some of his peers.