Yoshi Legacy: Heroes of the Mushroom Continent - Prologue

I kind of miss making my series. A little bit too much. Therefore, I'm making this. It's a text version of my series, and I hope you all enjoy.

Anyways...onto the story and stuffs.

I have failed in my duty as a king. I am a craven and a fool, for my attempts to keep duty to my country were in vain.

Perhaps it was inevitable. My rule over my domain was always quite loose, and I admit, I was a bit careless in my rule. I have long since changed from who I used to be. Now, I am naught but an irritable deterioration of what may expect from an individual of my stature.

Although I am embittered and lost in my own soul, I still remember how it was like back on Yoshi's Island. My beautiful wife Yoshephine and I... living so warmly together. Until it all fell apart. At first, my firstborn child, still in its egg, was spirited away by a kidnapper in my sleep. The anguish I felt after learning of its disappearance is still clear in my being. My frenzied panic had me accuse my advisor and my closest friend, Marcellus, of the thievery. Yet, I knew even at the time that Marcellus had no desire to have a child, and even to love a woman. 

A second egg was produced by my wife and I to compensate for my firstborn's loss. However, I would be reminded of my sadness cruelly by my wife's strange and sudden death. It happened one afternoon when Marcellus returned from the market to report that my wife who had gone to peruse the merchants' wares had been slain. We both rushed to the market and he showed me her corpse. I wept and wept, and couldn't stop for days upon end. Thinking back to the incident, nobody could confirm her cause of death, for her body seemed... unscathed. As odd as it was, my dear wife was buried that evening in the castle's courtyard to everyone on Yoshi's Island's misery and grief.

To my relief, my secondborn hatched successfully. I named the child Edward, after a historic great king from a faraway land. Edward's birth brought me back from my depressed stupor, and I then ruled alone for four years. His creation is perhaps the only source of happiness I can draw from in this world.

Perhaps the strangest tragedy to befall myself is how I lost my kingdom. Late at night almost a full decade ago exact, I was awakened abruptly by my advisor, whom told me to flee the island. I quickly questioned the reason for doing so, but seeing the injuries he had sustained, I already knew something grim was happening and I couldn't do anything about it, just like how it had always been for me. I quickly grabbed Edward and any immediate belongings I could find, and followed Marcellus on his escape route. He led me to a secret passage out of the castle, got the nearest boat, and started to sail away. The oddities began to show themselves as the entire island was engulfed in pulsating dark energy, and pulled directly into the sea in front of my very eyes.

When he had a chance to explain, Marcellus explained the situation and who was behind this assault on my homeland. It turns out, he said, that the kidnapper of my firstborn was much more powerful than a normal street crook. The thief had taken my child as soon as it had hatched, and warped it with dark power. He had been gathering dark energy into my son, slowly making him ever more powerful, and struck my island eight years after the kidnapping. Marcellus, who had been part of the initial resistance force, fled after most of the force was incapacitated to warn me.

You might wonder why I haven't suspected Marcellus for setting this all up, since he was seemingly a prime suspect in these events. It's quite simple: the one responsible for these acts was attempting to take my life as well as my family's. If Marcellus had really wanted to kill me, he could have done so during my firstborn son's takeover without personal consequence. Yet, he continued to help me, and without him, I wouldn't be still alive today, nor would my son be.

And that is the story of how I lost my kingdom and country, a saddening, yet strange tale. I docked on the nearest island to create a settlement for Marcellus and my son. We have lived in this place for ten years, and it seems like we will be spending the rest of our days on this remote location, dwelling in how we lost what we had.

My name and title is King Yoshius IV, and I have failed in my duty as a king.