The aftermath of the battle is more than a little surreal;
the bodies lie strewn over the field where they fell, covered by a light frost,
a last touch from a long winter. Your
new companions are as weary as you are.
Sleep was found in short one-hour shifts, but you are now all awake to
see the light of the new day. It is
Darkday, the day of the week when the red sun overtakes the yellow sun and
covers it in the sky. The buildings have
a pall of death on them, the colour has been bled from them leaving reds, blues
and blackness. The feeling is mutual.
Still there are signs of life returning; the people that
survived the night, thanks to your efforts, are starting to stir, awakened from
the ministrations of the Great Wyrms’ Curator.
The spring rain that fell the day before has swollen the river so that
is covers the three bridges, two broken wooden ones and the stone bridge
too. The village feels surrounded by the
flood waters, but you know that this is the start of a New Year and planting
will be soon to come. Maybe.
From the gentle rise of the village you survey the land
around, only two pillars of smoke can be seen, the chimney of the Great Wyrm
and the chimney that is the remains of Dhewtudum. Nothing else.
The countless villages that you past two days ago to get here, appear
snuffed out, like so many candles on a celebratory cake. It is time to go. After you thank the curator and return his
artifacts and a very brief search for things that were in your rooms from the
other inns. But where?
For Keylesh, the choice is temptation, all are dead around
her, she too could have been killed in the destruction. If she could only remove the coffle around
her neck and scar the tattoo on her left cheek, she would then be free, free
forever. For Tiarah the choice is less
clear, home to Causnaught and the recrimination of one parent’s one night of
‘slumming it’ with a human and the other who is now considered old for humans,
somewhere different would be good. For
Nerwen her thoughts stray to her clan, briefly, but only briefly. The Zebra Clan is to the North where it is
warmer, where the sweet spring grasses are just coming on, they will be here
soon in a single turning of Hestuim, three months about, in Mortal Time. You will send word, the grasses here abouts,
may no-longer be safe. The Dwarf, his
eyes have little strayed from the ruin of Dhewtudum and the great mountains
beyond. The mountains, whose summits are
always cloaked in snows and be clearly seen, there is not a cloud in the sky in
that direction, which is a rare enough sign that it can be taken as an omen; a
sign that he should go back to where he will be safe. If it is a sign it is one that he ignores and
he takes a single step for the only road out of here, the North Road to
Trandle’s Stand. Keylesh’s shoulders
slump and takes a step too.
Years you have all felt directionless, an average member of
your society, but for last night. Last
night; you all feel as if you have taken a new first breath and are ready now
to go out into the world as you never have before. You are going to make some changes in your
life, and then you are going to make the world sit up and take note. Yes that’s it, it will take note of you, and
maybe one day you will come back to the Great Wyrm, stay in its rooms and donate
a weapon or a piece of armour, to decorate the wall and inspire someone else to
do great things . . ..
Three months has past since that night, you have all learned
new things and gained a certain amount of area knowledge in this new town,
barely a city, Trandle’s Stand. The city
has aspirations; it will one day be a as big as Dhewtudum was, or so the
mystics have said. Technically it IS
bigger than it now, now that there is only a single resident of Dhewtudum and
there are over 15 thousand in the Stand.
It is a city of commerce; every day a caravan heads out from the city
gates and heads up to the Empire, that is one heads out when there isn’t three
or five. Each caravan is filled with all
manner of products, a long line of twenty wains, drivers, mounted guards and a
wide wagon to hold provisions; over a hundred people in each one. When they return it is often with only five
cart loads of finished dwarven made items and a trunk full of gold and a long
line of horses and walking men. The
dwarves so lazy with their wealth would rather purchase the cart included with
the wares than unload it. But the people
don’t mind, the wainwrights build more and more every day and the wealth
flows.
Three new immigrants, battle hardened with skills
abound. The guilds accessed each of you
for membership, offered you a little wealth to tempt you to their
membership. The Dwarf was offered prize
starting positions in the Guild of Arms and the Guild of Alchemy, both have
given him a place at their benches and their forges. Tiarah was offered a place among the Guild of
Luxury. Nerwen was approached from two
of the most important guilds, the Culinary Guild and the Guild of Navigators
and Astrologers, it seems that her experience herding is valuable, but as a
navigator more so as she could lead one more caravan per week. But you all, including Keylesh, are offered
training in the Guild of Mercenaries.
Keylesh you learned is a slave, owned by the leader of the Builder Guild,
a slave of, what counts as, Royalty in these parts, but a slave
none-the-less. The cost of her training
is being added to her Freedom Price.
The Dwarf trained as a warrior, he fights with a two-handed
axe, but he also has a huge heavy crossbow and a odd device that he re-forged
from parts he recovered from his room the night after the attack. He calls it his Blunderbuss. He claims that it will spew death to all it
will reach, but you all have doubts, it looks like it might just blow up. Nerwen trained as a different type of
warrior, she has a bow, one of the legendary Grass Elf longbows, unstrung it
stands nearly ten feet tell, but strung only nine, and when she pulls back, the
stave tips are only 6 feet apart. Her
arrows will fly further than any at the range; it is a bow only she can
draw. Tiarah learned a little of this
and a little of that, she learned to fight and she learned book stuff too, but
mostly she learned to sing and to play her instruments; she learned to cast
spells with her songs and her music. She
has become a Bard. Keylesh, you assumed
because of her training being added to her Freedom Price, was learning mostly
to fight with her claws and to use her body as a weapon. Clearly, she was planning to be a warrior too,
of a sort.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
There are a few questions that remain unanswered where did
these attackers come from and what was their purpose? There are experts in every pub or inn that
you have been to. They all say the same
sorts of things, the plain swallowed them up, or there were unexpected floods
that wiped the villages out, also, the villages that died had blasphemed
against the gods and they got what was coming to them. The theories change as the night matures,
those that know talk about the Dragon and how all the villages near Dhewtudum
are gone and most of the rest too, but not all of them. A few have heard about a bunch of heroes who
stood their ground and fought. The Race
of the heroes varies with the teller, (“They were stalwart Dwarves, from the
Empire,” “Nay, they were Halflings”) but the elements that stay the same: they
were attacked by kobolds and an odd race called Dragonborn. Lastly, they also state at the end of each
story that they are coming again and next time it will be the Stand that will be
in their sights.
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