GM: Alex
The new heroes of the Dalelands, revised list:
Hornikatta Brightblade (Dwarf Fighter (Daughter of Dorn the Red))
Wic of the Border Watch of Anthar (Human Ranger)
Willen (Human Cleric of Saranrae)
Ilorath Balcadiz (Noble High Elf Duelist)
Erik The Bard (Human Bard), nephew of Beren The Bard
Hornikatta Brightblade (Dwarf Fighter (Daughter of Dorn the Red))
Wic of the Border Watch of Anthar (Human Ranger)
Willen (Human Cleric of Saranrae)
Ilorath Balcadiz (Noble High Elf Duelist)
Erik The Bard (Human Bard), nephew of Beren The Bard
Dear Diary,
What a lovely morning it was! Or, should I say, noon, because it took a while until I was rested enough after all the partying yesterday. Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t have a hangover – only humans and other weaker races suffer from it – I just needed my beauty sleep. And the dreams I had… they felt almost real. In my dreams I was an eagle, gliding high in the skies above some mountain tops… The mountain tops I know by heart. I see them every day on the tapestry that is hanging in my room – the snowy mountain tops of Eagles Eyrie, the place our forefathers lived at. I felt like something was calling me from under the mountains, urging me to come. The eagle I was in the dream suddenly become to dive and started intently falling towards the ground, or rather, towards the things hidden beneath it. The clouds were swooshing past me, the mountain tops grew larger and larger… then I heard a wolf howling… and I woke up, startled. What a weird dream…
As soon as I was ready to eat some breakfast (Have I written down the whole menu of a proper dwarven breakfast? No? I’ll do it next time, then.), I went to the dining hall. To my utter surprise, almost all of my dwarven kin were there, clapping hands, shouting: “Hurrah for Hornikatta!” and congratulating me on winning the Beer Drinking Contests. It was a great surprise! Even my father, Durn the Red, was there, and he winked at me, smiling. I was happy that I made him proud. After finishing my breakfast, I made a move to get up and get back to the Inn to meet my new friends – but to my astonishment, Fero Smallblad… umm… The Fist approached me, with two young short bearded dwarves behind him. He started mumbling something, then flushed, then coughed again… then he grabbed a mug of ale from the table, gulped it to the last drop, fell to his knees (I told you, he can’t hold his liquor!) and said with a clear voice: “Oh, Hornikatta, you are the pride of our clan! You won the contest yesterday – and my heart with it. Will you do me the honor and marry me?”
I so did not see it coming. No one ever asked me for my hand before. As a matter of fact, no one asked me for anything before, except for the humans wanting to borrow some money, as usual. Where do they get those notions that we, dwarves, are supposedly rich? We’re as poor as all other living creatures in Dalelands. Yes, we are. Really.
“Hey!”, interrupted one of the dwarves standing behind him Fero, his name is Filo. “I was supposed to ask her first!”.
“Wait a minute”, started the other one, his brother Falo, “I was to surprise her with my beer poem before you!”
It turned out that both Fero’s friends wanted to fight him for my hand, without even asking me for it first – and before the dinner, too! Unheard of, dwarves preferring to fight with each other instead of eating some roasted wild boar. (And by the way, it is not true that I blushed after Fero had popped The Question. I did not! I just drank a bit too much of the breakfast beer and blood began pumping faster through my veins, a completely natural reaction to a tasty and filling meal. Real dwarf women DO NOT BLUSH!)
As soon as all three suddenly love-stricken gentledwarves started quarreling with each other and showing their fists, I sneaked out quickly of the dining hall. Pheew, they didn’t even see me go out! Love is blind, they say. I tend to agree…
I went to the “Prancing Pony” Inn to meet my new friends (and an old one too, since Wic was already there). As I was coming in, a grumpy Halfling passed me by, mumbling something under his nose. My new companions looked amused – apparently that guy, Zert, wanted to join our group and travel with us, searching for adventures or trolls to kill, something of that sort. But we’d had enough of short, feisty creatures at that point – everyone remembered the HalfGoblin Menace. Zert even looked similar to that goblin, except for his blue nose. Suspicious. Maybe it was some disease after all. Or maybe they were related. The world is full of mysteries…
While sitting at the inn, we met a pair of traveling innkeepers searching for a new home (meaning, an inn to run). Their old inn was burned to the ground by some minions of the Iron Circle. (Have I mentioned that I and the Iron Circle have developed a hate-and-hate relationship?)
Anyway, the temporarily unemployed innkeepers, Kobos and Tornka, were looking for new business opportunities. Then I remembered that there was an old dwarven tavern called “The Crossed Sword”, somewhere on the way to Albridge. It was destroyed in mysterious circumstances (meaning: I didn’t listen to my dad that much when he told me that old story…) many years ago and no one settled there since, even though its location was perfect. The problem was, it was haunted. Or maybe it still is? The villagers keep spreading rumors that there are some specters or ghosts roaming around the place and scaring off the travelers. We agreed with Kobos and Tonka that we’ll travel with them, since we’re on the way to Albridge in a few days anyway, and we can check the inn and its ethereal inhabitants when we’re there. I bet those ghosts will like the taste of my urgrosh blade!And that’s how my urgrosh looks like, by the way.
Then Kobos started reminiscing the past…
“Oh, our old inn was so fine, so splendid and comfortable. And the bread oven was just perfect! All our guests loved the place, and you should know that we hosted not only everyday humble pilgrims, but also some of the most important figures from Bern!”
“Oh, really?”, Ilorath looked really interested. I bet he wanted to show off his posh connections. “I know so many important people in Bern, I come from there. I’m sure I know some of your guests. How about you tell me who visited you recently?”
“Well, why not”, Kobos agreed happily, “The noble Kvava from Bern visited us many times and…”
“Ah, I know Kvava”, triumphed Ilorath, “He’s a member of my closest family!” – I told you, he wanted to impress everyone.
“Is he really that close to you?”, the innkeeper looked all too happy. Suspiciously too happy, I thought.
“Of course! He is my brother!”, Ilorath nodded vigorously.
“Are you sure?”, Kobos started rubbing his hands, but they didn’t look dirty…
“Sure as I live and breathe!”
“It’s so good to meet one of his kin, I’m honored.”, continued Kobos. “You should know that noble Kvava owed me 500 gold pieces for his last visit…”
I think that finally Ilorath managed to convince Kobos that his beloved brother Kvava will return the debt personally (really?) and the innkeeper left us to check on his wagon. At that moment I heard some familiar sounds:
Then I recalled! It was that human song I liked to listen to when I was a little dwarfling. I turned around to see who was playing the lute. It was a young human blond-haired bard. I think I’ve seen him or heard him before. I listened to several of his songs and they reminded me of the most famous singer of the Dalelands – Beren The Bard. He visited our village years ago, just in time for the harvest feast. His music made this occasion much more special than usual. Even my father danced once or twice! One just couldn’t resist Beren’s “lute magic”. Now when I think of it and look at this young man… I think he looks a bit similar to that seasoned bard. But, of course, I may be mistaken, almost all humans look alike to me, with greasy hair and those long sticks they call legs. What do they know of real dwarven beauty ideals… Do you want to see one or two? Okay, these are the parchment posters that hang in my wardrobe. Just don’t tell my father, he says I’m too young for these things (like a giant dwarven battleaxe, for example). Here you are:
Dreamy… aren’t they?
After a while we decided to visit a local woman, Myella, at her farm. William says she has some problems of spiritual nature and he as a cleric has to look into her needs. I bet it’s all about money. It’s the usual way when it comes to gods and temples, both human and dwarf. Only my goddess Gozreh is different. She is above such earthly things. And she should be, the trees in her famous hidden forest temple have leaves made of gold…
I won’t bore you with the description of the way to Myella’s, I’ll just say that we’ve got ourselves a new companion! The young bard, his name is Erik, by the way, decided to join us after this exchange of words he had with William:
“Will there be a place for my mule?”, asked Erik.
“But of course, no problem!”
“What about my pretty birds? I have several pigeons with me, to carry the messages.”
“Well, it depends…”, William started wondering aloud. ”How many birds do you have?”
“Only four, they don’t take much place…”
“Sure, we’ll take them! We will need them!”, answered William, grinning.
“Really?”, Erik wouldn’t believe his luck.
“Sure thing! Four birds – that means four proper dinners!”, said William. I wonder what kind of meals they serve at the temple…
While we walked, we were discussing the best way to position ourselves if something was to attack us suddenly. Everyone was concerned about our feeble inexperienced (as opposed to us, heh, heh) bard with his precious lute. And tasty, I mean, useful, birds.
“Let him walk in the middle, this way we will protect him.”
“I have a better idea. Let him run around us all the time and keep singing his songs. He will scare off everything within an earshot and we will have Surround Sound!”, said Ilorath.
I think that Erik wasn’t too happy to hear it, because he started singing a peculiar tune. It goes without saying that it didn’t motivate us at all…
We arrived at Myella’s Farm and talked with her. It turned out she had some problems harvesting the land. The farmhands who used to work there, four young men called Bif, Bof, Buf and Baff (yes, they were brothers…), were too scared to work for her. They said that the nearby shed was haunted and they simply ran off, instead of going there with axes, torches and bombards, like any decent dwarf would do. Sometimes I just don’t understand human behavior… Anyway, as a result, Myella couldn’t pay the tax she owed to the temple (I knew it was about the money!), so we decided to help her. The shed was placed on the edge of a marshland, by a small lake with a tiny island in the middle.
GM says: “You’re walking through the marshes and…”
A player: “Marshes? This means crocodiles! Lots of EXPERIENCEEE POINTS!”
GM continues ruthlessly: “No, there are no crocodiles. There are brownies instead.”
Another player: “Hash brownies?!”
When we came close enough to the shed, we heard a song, sung by a group of unhappy brownies.
The Brownie Song:
Thanks to Ilorath, who was able to talk their weird language, we got to know that brownies moved to the shed (Just think such small creatures scared off the human farmhands! Come on! Shame on them! My friend Wic The Ranger is human too and she is really brave, she can hit a raging bear with his arrows and not even flinch. That’s what I call real courage, we dwarves appreciate it. I find it puzzling to know of other humans being so whiny. What a disgrace for their ancestors. A decent dwarf would go and punish himself by cutting his beard short in their place.). Where was I…? Ah, the brownies moved to the shed, because their tiny island on the lake as well as the whole area nearby was infested by Giant Toads.
And that’s how it started. First I heard a strange lapping sound and then the frog hell broke loose. Erik, our talented bard, got somehow caught by a long and sticky, monstrous tongue of one of the giant toads (they looked really ugly and smelled worse than Fero’s grandfather after not washing himself for three months as a sign of protest against raised beer taxes). After this sudden toad assault, we all took out our weapons and started THE EPIC FIGHT!
Okay, there were about seven ugly toads and only us, five brave heroes against them. I don’t need to say that it was a piece of cake and we won. They were just some slimy, stinking toads. The thing that made me happy during the fight was that we acted as a real battle unit, fighting to help each other and stand together against the danger. Very inspiring, maybe there is some dwarf spirit in them after all… (And when I say “spirit”, I mean the proverbial, ethereal entity, not my favorite drink… at least not now!)
Wic managed to hit a toad straight in the eye with her arrows, Erik cut out the tongue that attacked him, Ilorath made the monsters taste some elven steel… And I mostly jumped on those beasts (I like my heavy armor, my urgrosh and my heavy shield. DWARF POWER!), chopping them with my fine weapon. At the end of the fight I was happy to make few new cuts on my urgrosh, marking the kills of the day.
The brownies were very happy to be able to return home and they gave us a few interesting gifts, like, for example, a small bag with Dust of Dancing Lights… I wonder what kind of dust this is and what we are supposed to do with it. Ilorath suggested sniffing it in order to see the lights, but I’m not convinced. I heard a lot about strange elven tradition and I think it may be dangerous to dwarves. What if my ears start growing and changing shape to pointy, thin, elvish ears? What a shame it would be for my poor clan…
Myella was very grateful as well and we got a few coins from her along with an invitation to stay and rest for a day or two after the fight. We welcomed her invitation convinced by our noses that informed us about a very tasty stew waiting for us on the table. There is a dwarven saying, “When an empty belly calls, its dwarf always follows the master’s bidding.”
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