Ban the Clever was one of the five founders of Blind Midshotgatepool. An adventurous Thringman, he and the other four founders arrived on the shores of the Shrouded Lands. It was he who figured out how to stop the waker worms from regenerating, allowing them to be dealt with and the five fishing villages to be founded. Ban’s fishing village is Banshot.
Ban and his four companions were captured by the Maddlows and geased into their service. Ban ended the rule of the suspicious Maddlow king by convincing him to geas all his relatives to travel to the far borders of the Shrouded Lands, whereupon the king was killed by a Dunger.
Ban and his beloved are immmortalised in Trimueil’s The Song of Ban and Ulena. The Song was originally intended as a play, and describes fair Ulena being imprisoned in a tower by the Black Duke of Thring with only a firebird for company before Ban rescued her. According to the Green Witch in the play, without Ulena Ban would die of misery within a year and a day.
The epic poem version of the Song retells the founding of Blind Midshotgatepool, beginning with the arrival of the five founders on the shores of the Keening Sea and ending with the companions’ tragic death.