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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Snipehunt" data-source="post: 1109299" data-attributes="member: 13142">Baldor SoulstoneBaldor has returned home to his clan from his long travels, more skilled, a little richer, and much more powerful.  He is greeted with cheers, as the greatest craftsmen his clan has produced in centuries has become even better.Baldor's father greets him with mixed news.  Baldor has a new nephew, named Datham'or, a bright, stout, stalwart little dwarf with bright eyes and already a firm hand.  But the clan has been suffering attacks from goblins and their kin, and many are suffering from a strange, wasting sickness that saps their strength and leads, in the end, to madness.  Baldor's brother-in-law, Kalok, was killed in an ambush that nearly took the life of Baldor's sister, Valodar.Valador was not home when Baldor returned, and Baldor's father said that she had grown fierce and angry since Kalok's death.  She often patrolled the clan borders alone for days at a time, and refused any company or to tell anything of her adventures.Initially angry that no one had contacted him about these troubles, Baldor immediately began researching and using his strange (for a dwarf) arts to find a cure.  He fell asleep, still in his armor and travelling gear, at his old workbench puzzling over the fierce sense of evil coming from his own home.A thin scream woke Baldor up.  It was the unfamiliar sound of an infant crying in terror.  Baldor immediately thought of his new nephew, Datham'or.  His darkvision lighting the way, he grabbed his warhammer and shield and ran down the hall when he stopped cold.It was his sister, Valador, holding Datham'or, but holding next to the infant's heck a long, curved knife engraved with black and red runes.  "Stand back, brother.  I know what I'm doing.  And you do not," she said.Valador then ran out the front door, and down a passageway into a small room Baldor had never seen before.  She closed and locked it.Baldor heard an eerie, almost formless chanting in his sister's voice, taht soon seemed to be joined by three more female voices, strange to him and sounding as if they came through a long tunnel.  Baldor smashed the door off it hinges.  A dark mist blew out of hte room, revealing Datham'or lieing bound in a small stone cradle.  Valador had cut her forearm, using the blood to make a thin circle around the cradle.  Her eyes were closed, but she chanted with an ecstatic expression on her face - joined by three voices arising from the very air!Baldor ran forward and grabbed Datham'or in the crook of the arm holding the warhammer.  Eyes rolling in fear, Baldor realized he could not leave the circle made of blood!"You are too late, brother mine.  I have bargained for the power I need to avenge my husband!  Go with that reminder of all I once had - you who abandoned us to our fates."A low rumbling noise erupted, and suddenly a phantom image of a dark coach drove through the walls.  Barely slowing down, a female human opened the coach door, reached out a pale arm, and grabbed Datham'or.  As the door opened, Baldor heard a femine voice in his head wailing and speaking faintly - ah, no, another, so, another wee babe, oh, so many but what's this, oh, ugly, mishapen, it would never live, not in Mordent, thing? well worth, ah, but so many, I did not know so many, the price well worth my Davey - which breaks off as the carriage door closes.  Baldor chases after, reaching for his spell components.  A wave of mist stirkes him from behind, pulling him after the coach and through the wall .  Baldor stumbles and finds himself on a cobblestone street in a small town.  The coach disappears in the the distance.</blockquote>

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