Northern Gutheria and Duchy of Weidsmuth

  ”If you wanna know what’s going on realms-wide from the mouths of the adventurers and heroes who roam these lands far and wide, go to the Limping Centaur. You’ll get more there than you will in any public announcements.”

  - Jarik Just One, patron of the limping centaur.

  On the last fork of the Maer Dane River in the northern part of that kingdom, just south of the Abbelene wine country stands the small but prominent city of Pelleas. Birthplace to countless artists and poets and more than a few renowned adventurers the city is considered a pillar of Maer Dane’s high culture and a shining example of contemporary social refinement.

  Fashion trends and the next style of expensive art emerge from Pelleas like decrees from the monarch. The outdoor theatre represents the epitome and pinnacle of performance art; young actors and playwrights travel across the realms for the opportunity to work on that stage or behind its curtains.

  On the tidy streets of Pelleas, within walking distance of the market square and artist’s quarter, tucked into the newer homes of the growing residential sector sits an inn and tavern like no other. Large and robust, resembling a barn, the structure has a second and third story of rooms and suites to rent, with the entire ground floor occupied by the tavern and game room.

  On any given day the tavern overflows with drinkers, gamblers, and diners. Street beggars often brawl over the corners and alleys in the vicinity.

  On this night business was strangely slow. A score of people ate in the dining room while another two dozen patrons sat around the card and dice tables.

  Behind the bar a centaur named Bineferious stacked recently washed glasses in columns according to height. He looked a great deal like the centaur in the painting on the wall behind him.

  The latter’s name was Bonifatus, and he had founded the Limping Centaur in the year 1261, Age of Empires. At that time he was one of the last surviving centaurs in Maer Dane.

  “You look more like him everyday.” a male voice with a long, refined accent interrupted Bineferious’s work.

  “Is that so?” the centaur asked suspiciously.

  “It is and do you know why?” asked the well-dressed gentleman with shoulder-length white hair passing the bottom of his tight, thimble-shaped hat.

  “I can’t wait to learn.” remarked Bineferious.

  “Because you’re getting old.” the gentleman explained.

  He took hold of the side seams of his vest with both hands, pulling the garment forward and tight, standing up a bit taller in the process. Gold rings adorned three fingers on each hand – a somewhat dated look – and the symbol on the gold watch that hung from his lapel matched the symbol on the scabbard of the short, narrow sword at his side.

  The centaur chuckled, or pretended to, at the aging taunt. “Your friends are back there now.”

  “Very good.” the gentleman nodded and walked past the bar.

  He continued to the back of the dining room and passed through a curtain into a short hallway. Familiar voices in conversation reached his ears before he touched the curtain. The hallway ran four paces then opened into a large room with a dozen or so people drinking and conversing around a massive wooden table in the center.

  “Sirro!” A large bearded man called to the gentleman. “Sirro the Sabre come here and sit with us.”

  “Taul.” the gentleman named Sirro returned the greetings. “Good to see you in one piece after all these years.”

  “How long has it been? Nine years?” Sirro recalled.

  “About that.” Taul affirmed.

  Taul the Terrible, a Nar man ruined by the civilized ways of the lower north, he’d left the freezing shrublands of Nar for the milder climes of southern Maer Dane. A ruthless swordsman and fine companion-at-arms, Sirro had seen Taul flay open more men and orcs than he could count.

  “How’s this town treating you?” asked the Duarden known as Gord the Grouch, who sat to the left of Taul.

  “It was the right choice.” Sirro replied. “I find it very easy to live here. People are nice, there are often things to do, and its much less expensive than Exquistia.”

  Gord the Grouch had the look of a typical dwarf. The shiny bald head was of course standard for the males of his people, who grew no hair up top but made up for it with their beards.

  In Gord’s case the beard was neatly braided and cut level across the bottom; even the heavy mustache and thick eyebrows were braided into square locks. This choice of hairstyle strongly suggested a lineage from the midrealms clans or perhaps the dwarven city of Wahdwor in south Ziliador.

  Of course Sirro knew better. Gord himself had admitted years ago to hailing from Danbhelm under the peaks of the Azrea Mountains.

  “Good to see you Gord.” Sirro removed his tight cap and stuffed it into his vest pocket.

  “You as well Sirro!” the dwarf bellowed in his usual cheerful tone; his cheeks were already red from the ale.

  Gord had a personality quite unlike most Duarden. The moniker “Grouch’ was intended to be ironic or humorous.

  Despite his love of laughter the dwarf proved an unholy terror in battle. His epic Duarden strength also was unphased by his uncharacteristic demeanor.

  Directly across the table from Taul sat the Yunni female named Temil. She smiled at Sirro in a way that made him happy; a flood of memories came rushing back to him.

  Tiny Temil as he often called her was a sight to behold. Her proportions were exquisitely human, and not childlike in the least. She looked like a perfectly scaled down human woman, three and one-half feet tall with wonderful curves and voluptuous dimensions. She had the face of a working woman, plain and gently lined and streaked with a few subtle wrinkles, especially around her eyes when she smiled.

  Quick of wit and a master equal to Peloni and Stakado in her chosen art. As Peloni worked vivid, lifelike wonders with his brush and Stakado could make an orc weep with his surreal voice, so Tiny Temil could weave the most wonderful things with her magic, often in a unique and whimsical way that was her signature approach.

  “As lovely as ever my dear.” Sirro spoke the truth to Temil.

  “Thanks honey; always so sweet.” the sorceress replied in her folksy way. “Boy your hair sure turned white, every bit of it!”

  The four of them laughed at the brutal honesty.

  “So you’re really heading back home? Back to Narwald?” Sirro asked Taul.

  “I am.” said the big man. “I have an inheritance. An uncle of mine was made a minor noble, a Hurn. Very minor title but it comes with an estate, including land, livestock, and servants.”

  “Look at you then.” the gentleman pointed to his friend.

  “Gord is coming with me. I’ll need a master-at-arms I know and trust.”

  “Retirement for the both of you then.” Sirro pointed out. “Won’t you need an estate sorcerer as well?”

  Temil laughed. “No. Way too cold up there for me. I’m staying in Pelleas for a while, thinking about settling in here.”

  “Temil that is great news.” Sirro’s mind raced. Strong feelings he once had for the Yunni spellcaster began to roll over and wake up.

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  I shall maintain my bearing this night and not make an ass of myself. He affirmed silently, smiling at Temil all the while.

  “My feelings on the matter are mixed if I’m honest.” said Taul.

  “What?” Sirro sounded stunned. “Feelings on what?”

  “Moving back to Nar of course.” said Taul.

  “Of course.” Sirro laughed. “Forgive me; go on.”

  “In one way I’ll be glad to be off the mainland, things have gotten so strange these past few months.” The Nar man shook his head and continued. “On the other hand I hear the orcs along the spine are swelling to record numbers and starting to act up again.”

  “Oh dear.” Sirro bit his thumbnail. “Orcs coming off the spine could spell trouble for everyone.”

  “True enough.” said Gord. “Still at least that’s a straightforward problem one can meet head on. Some of the strangeness happening elsewhere right now is… unsettling.”

  “Such as?” Sirro asked.

  “Disappearing villages for one.” the dwarf answered.

  “What villages?” Sirro wanted to know.

  “A Shai village west of Iaxta with eighty residents vanished overnight. The huts and such are still there I mean every man, woman, child, and animal is just gone.”

  “The Yunni homestead a little ways off from Spundle.” Temil added. “Twenty-six Yunni up and gone. Farmhand came in to work one morning after working the day before and everybody was just gone.”

  “Spundle is the Yunni town east of the Crescent Forest, yes?” Sirro checked himself.

  “It is.” Temil verified.

  “Strange, these disappearances.” Sirro noted.

  “Surely you heard about the mining camp on the Daverium Peninsula that vanished?” Taul pressed Sirro.

  “A whole mining camp?” Sirro was stunned.

  “You been living under a rock?” Gord chided.

  “He don’t come in here much these days.” said Ptar with One Eye from down the table. “Too good for us I reckon.”

  A short, stocky fighter of mixed Baaltari and Umbrige heritage, the old retiree had lost an eye in a fight with an angry dwarf. He had seen much in his time as an adventurer – despite the handicap as he was often reminded by his uncouth associates.

  “I suppose I have been otherwise occupied.” Sirro admitted. “Otherwise I surely would have heard these things before now at this very table.”

  “Same thing happened to an Al Dandi village up in Weidsmuth.” An Alu-Haben-Ka called simply Rubik announced. “I just came back from there yesterday.”

  Silence hung for a moment.

  “Gotta be related to what’s happening on the Khelt, right?” the burglar Rhonsa spoke up.

  “I don’t know.” Ptar admitted. “Could be. But no signs point to that yet.”

  “The Khelt?” Sirro half-whispered to Taul, not wanting to catch grief from the regulars for not knowing this either.

  “An octag from the field of bones rose up and got after some Khar Tain.” Taul said almost casually.

  Sirro flinched visibly. “I’m sorry?”

  “Yeah.” Gord chimed in. “Can you imagine? Eighty skeletal warriors in old imperial armor coming at ya across those plains?”

  “Barely” Sirro stammered.

  “They say as long as the undead can see you they will pursue and one can see for miles and miles on those grasslands,” The dwarf shook his head. “They’d never stop chasing and you’d never get any rest from it.”

  Gord gave two stout laughs at the end of his observation. He smiled broadly and looked at each of his three friends then finished off his ale.

  It occurred to Sirro for the first time that perhaps the dwarf’s constant cheer was more of a defect than a disposition, for what was funny about never being able to rest as tireless undead soldiers pursued you?

  “Same thing happened to a caravan my team escorted to Umbreth from down south.” Irdeth Ironhand spoke up.

  A grizzled old warrior who specialized in moving security, he founded and led the Adamantite Wagon mercenary company based in Mord. With over two-hundred regulars and usually half that again in retainers his operation had secured hundreds of small and medium-sized trade trains going into and out of the Midrealms to the Great South or the lower Three Kingdoms.

  “About an octag – eighty or so in rusted out imperial armor.” Irdeth added.

  “You obviously got away.” said Sirrus. “Good for you.”

  “No.” Irdeth corrected. “No. We led them for a while, to see what they were about. They just kept following. I keep a cleric on detail, high ranking, so we stopped and let em’ catch up then she did the whole ‘in the name of Verum the Truth and Light’ blah blah. Zapped the whole octag then and there; off we went.”

  Sirro sat speechless. It occurred to him he was perhaps more faint of heart than he had been on the day he retired nine years ago. He cared none at all for the ideas of vanishing villages and walking dead soldiers.

  “You done look like you seen a ghost.” Temil laughed.

  “Oh.” Sirro snapped out of his stupor at the sound of her voice. “Just heard about one I suppose; or eighty.”

  Gord laughed. “We better not tell him about hobgoblin army running its exercises south of MiddleShire.”

  “What???” Sirro blurted.

  “Estimated about six-thousand strong.” said Taul. “Full complement too; pikes, assaulters, Tharnwolf riders, crossbows, the works.”

  “You’re on Vorrigan’s wall with maybe a hundred other guys covering your mile and you see that.” Gord once more invited everyone to live a moment in the shoes of the experiencers. “You’d have to shit right then and there.”

  “Probably just a show of force.” said Irdeth. “Every military power does this from time to time.”

  “Not likely.” said Ptar. “I heard they were Zorai military. Them don’t bark much. When they move they’re looking to bite.”

  Vedzgar Who Sees Far, seated offset from the crowd sipping his gin beneath his low-hanging cowl spoke up. All heads turned towards the old seer, who had not spoken before this point.

  “What is likely, brave souls and sharpened minds here gathered, is that all of these things happen in tandem with one-another and with other things not here said.”

  “Why do you say that old man?” challenged the thief Nimbul, dressed as always in nondescript gray garb and wearing a stout utility belt with half a dozen tool pouches and boxes.

  “Other things not said?” Sirro spoke over the skeptical thief.

  The gentlemen didn’t care much for Nimbul. He understood him to be part of a thieves’ guild – which somehow allegedly legitimized his occupation – but had never fully appreciated the idea of having pickpockets and burglars around.

  “I speak of what I have seen.” Vedzgar first addressed his skeptic, then replied to the gentleman. “Oh yes. Many other things: The storm in the Baaltaran Sea that capsized half a merchant fleet; the sudden illness in the temples of Madris; the statue of the Old One moving across the Burning Wastes.”

  “Statue of the Old One moving?” Sirro gasped.

  He had seen that very monument before. Once part of a foursome of identical statues it had stood solo for thousands of years between the Scorched Barrens and Burning Sands – collectively called the Burning Wastes at times, though no map reiterated this. The thing stood over one-hundred feet tall, chiseled into the likeness of an ancient creature known as a Zaphorim.

  “Walking as if it were in fact the dreadful and immense, two-headed, four-armed, three-legged thing it is made to represent.” said Vedzgar.

  “Well you’re sure lining up all the recent news to fit into one of your play-prophesies now aren’t you?” said Nimbul. “Remember all, he who sees far is a regular actor down at the Pelleas Open Air Theatre.”

  The old seer continued his list after responding to the interruption, ignoring the thief. “The king’s viceroy in Maer Mael announced a royal decree for the conscription of ten-thousand fighting-age men and the acquisition of any known illicit magical practitioners. It seems the war across the channel to the north returns. As the prophesy states. the third time the despot in the heartlands crosses the channel to Myrrha shall be a sign that a new age of darkness has arrived.”

  “Baloney.” Nimbul kept heckling. “That’s not a prophesy it’s something you said last year after reading that damn book from the Wise Towers. A book by one Corrulius who still calls himself a sage, but who I later found out had been thrown out of that order in Baaltar.”

  “That’ll do burglar.” said Quellan the Quiet, also speaking for the first time that evening.

  An immense figure, the warrior dressed in the colorful and layered attire common far to the south. His dark brown skin contrasted the pale complexions of the region he now called home. Encircling his clean-shaven head were tattoos that followed his ancestry from his parents back three-thousand years to the Time of Resurgence, when his ancestors renewed their warrior traditions after years of oppression.

  “Vedzgar has brought much insight into these conversations in the past.” Quellan continued. “Easily more than your lewd jokes. Let him speak.”

  Nimbul shrugged and went back to drinking his beer.

  Vedzgar nodded his thanks to the big, dark warrior. “Of course most intriguing of all to me are the reports of the spectral dragon flying north.”

  “Dragon?” Sirro had just about heard his fill but could not walk away before hearing news about a dragon spotted in flight.

  “Indeed.” the old man affirmed. “A green giant seen in its spectral form flying high above this city and nearby areas. I saw it myself by chance as did four other reputable individuals.”

  Nimbul made a sound and shook his head.

  “Spectral form?” Sirro questioned. “What does that mean?”

  “When a noble dragon slumbers in body, its Zoathonic form is still free to travel the realms.” the seer explained. “We saw the spirit of a sleeping dragon headed north. For what reason who can say?”

  “If you can’t say then how do you know it’s connected to anything else?” Nimbul demanded, unable to remain silent. “If you saw it at all. You’re rehearsing for another part on stage at the expense of the gullible among us.”

  “Gullible?” Sirro complained.

  A look from Quellen the Quiet shut Nimbul up.

  “Fine.” said the skeptical thief as he stood and left the room.

  “Dark things are stirring.” the seer added cryptically.

  “It would so appear.” said Sirro.

  The table sat in silence a moment. Everyone present pondered what had been said.

  “I’m ready for another drink.” Tiny Temil broke the silence.

  Many voices agreed. Ptar with One Eye rang the gong on the wall behind him, which would signal Bineferious to send a server to take more drink orders.

  “So…” Gord the Grouch rubbed his hands together. “A goblin, a dark elf, and a dragon walk into a pub.”

  Already chuckling, those at the table leaned in to hear the rest of the joke.