Know, O prince, that between the years when the oceans drank Atlantis and the gleaming cities, and the years of the rise of the Sons of Hairyass, there was an Age undreamed of when shining kingdoms lay spread across the world like blue mantles beneath the stars - Hyperbolea and Bongia with its dark-haired women and towers of spider-haunted mystery, Stingia with its shadow-guarded tombs, Funkia whose riders wore mantles of silk and gold. But the proudest Kingdom of the world was Aquaviti, reigning supreme in the dreaming west. Hither staggered Barf the Barbarian, black-haired, sullen-eyed, intellectually challenged and ale-addled. He bore before him his magical sword, Humdinger. He was a thief, a reaver, a slayer. He was a man with great melancholy and gigantic mirth, and of him, the prophecies all said that one day, o prince, he would tread the jewelled thrones of the Earth under his sandaled feet...
