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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Isida Kep'Tukari" data-source="post: 3090720" data-attributes="member: 4441">Darvekis claps his hands.  "Splendid!  Te'koth!" he calls firmly.  The book, much to Raynard's surprise, grows three bony feet out of its spine, hops off the log and walks over to Darvekis, where it hops into mid-air, stays there, and opens.  "Thank you, thank you very much, I would hate to lose this, I've invested so much in this it's almost like having another familiar.  Except it doesn't talk back..." he comments idly.  The small black bat that had been hanging on Darvekis horns gives an indulgent squeek.As the group discusses cutting across Ambria, Darvekis nods.  "A good idea.  I have... some bad memories of the sea.  Nothing that can't be gotten over if needs be, but overland will be fine."The group can get an exhausted night's sleep, setting watches as usual, but the night passes uneventfully.  Up early the next morning, the group sets out on the first steps of their long journey.  The terrain is rugged and the weather is cool, and everyone is sore from climbing up and down and up and down and up and down and sideways.  Occasionally you spot forms watching you in the distance, but they bear the kilts of the highlanders and seem to be watching over you.  It takes you a nearly week to get over the worst of the mountains, and by that time Darvekis seems to be nearly healed of his beatings and privations from his time in the slave pit.He talks to you at night around the campfires, or sometimes on the trail, what it was like to grow up in the Dominion.  He talks of casual cruelty and maiming, of betrayal necessary for survival, of having to think "of me and me and me" if one was to get ahead at all.  Like all young tieflings with any aptitude for magic, he was taken from his family and thrust into the wizard academy.  Forcibly bound to the aspect of Dominion and made to learn the art of the summoner to swell the ranks of Valhedar's hellspawn, it seems a little beating and starvation were a walk in the park, by comparison.On the eighth day you were going to start hunting for a suitable campsight when you came across a most annoying delay.  A very large tree, apparently blown down during one of the torrential downpours you had slogged through, had crashed down and blocked the road entirely.  As the terrain on either side was rocky and treacherous, this was more than annoying.  A very dejected-looking dwarf was seated on a stone next to the tree on the far side, a donkey and a tinker's cart tied up next to him.  He was sighing extravagently as you drew up, and lifted his drooping face towards you.  "Hail and not well met, fellow travelers!" he calls in almost reflexive hospitality.</blockquote>

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