Breakstone
First Post
Amazing stuff, Doc.
Just. Plum. Amazing.
Just. Plum. Amazing.
The Adventures of the Knights of Spellforge Keep
- Thread starter Dr Midnight
- Start date
- Status
MasterOfHeaven
First Post
DARTAN!! DARTAN!! DARTAN!!
I was away for a bit... Fantastic job, Doc. Good to see Dartan won in that poll. Clearly, he would be the victor!
By the way, does Nanny have DR? I assume he does... I'd have to go check, I suppose. If he does, Dartan would either have to do major damage with his head, or perhaps he's now a Forsaker? It would make sense. Regardless, I eagerly look forward to more. Thanks for the story, Doc.
I was away for a bit... Fantastic job, Doc. Good to see Dartan won in that poll. Clearly, he would be the victor!
By the way, does Nanny have DR? I assume he does... I'd have to go check, I suppose. If he does, Dartan would either have to do major damage with his head, or perhaps he's now a Forsaker? It would make sense. Regardless, I eagerly look forward to more. Thanks for the story, Doc.
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Broccli_Head
Explorer
Thanks Doc for bringing back Dartan!
Dr Midnight
Explorer
Wow, two "amazing"s and a "soooooo coooooool"! Excellent.
The next and LAST Interlude chapter comes up tonight. You know what this means:
DARTAN
Then, on Saturday, the game begins.
I'll be back with Dartan's story tonight- see you then!
The next and LAST Interlude chapter comes up tonight. You know what this means:
DARTAN
Then, on Saturday, the game begins.
I'll be back with Dartan's story tonight- see you then!
Dr Midnight
Explorer
PRESENT DAY
DARTAN
I Am An Outcast On The Path Of No Return
Punisher And Swordsman I Was Born To Burn
Black Wind Always Follows Where My Black Horse Rides
Fire's In My Soul
Steel Is On My Side
-BLACK WIND, FIRE AND STEEL, Manowar
The small cabin was appointed with only a few necessities, and no luxuries. Everything lay in dust and mess. Things were shattered: Old mirrors, plates, pieces of wall, bits of chairs. It seemed the only things left unharmed in the place were the holy symbols of Pelor- though coated in the leavings of time, they were left hanging on the walls beside bashed shards of framed paintings.
Dartan looped his foot under a chair and turned it upwards. He set it on the ground. “Put Crow in this, tie him up,” he said. “I’m afraid the rest of you will have to sit on the floor. I’m fresh out of chairs.”
He sat on the bed and said “Tell me of your parents, child. Tell me everything.” Kizzlorn began to speak. She talked of her parents, their quest to destroy the dragon, how they’d never returned. She talked about her childhood in Castle Greyhawk, growing up with her brothers and friends, and leaving to find her fortune. She spoke low about Acessiwal and how they’d not yet been confronted by him, but they would, for they were the Foes of the Winter Wyrm. She came to the quest to find the gold dragon. She took Snooky out of her bag and held him on her lap. The poor thing had been lying near death in a coma for a week. She petted him sadly as she finished her tale.
They didn’t say anything for a while, and Dartan stared into his unlit fireplace, thinking. “I missed them. I should have gone with them to fight the dragon.”
“Why didn’t you? You were sent an invitation,”
“Don’t ask me that,” warningly. Kizzlorn sat silently, but after a moment, Dartan began to speak again. He sighed and rubbed his forehead. The skin on his hands looked like old leather. “Shortly after the Knights disbanded, I joined another group. To feel sane again, you know. There, I met and fell in love with a woman… the Lady Arlen Naramis. Gorgeous. Kind. Everything I’m not. Long dark hair that looked like the surface of a lake at nighttime. After a time, she came to love me as well, and we left the group to be married. We bought this quaint little cabin in the woods. It was our honeymoon palace.
“We were so happy. I’d never really been happy before. Bloodspray and battlecries were all I’d known. Now, I had a wife, who was soon with child, and I felt so full of hope and gladness that I began to let her god into my heart. Pelor. I’ve known many of his faithful, and they all seemed a decent lot. I thought maybe I was being too hasty in forsaking religion. I was once called ‘Dartan the Godless’, did you know that, child?” She shook her head.
“No matter. I began to believe, and we hung Pelor’s trinkets about the house like fools. Faith was with me again and it felt good. The children were born: twin boys. We named them after aspects of Pelor. Blaze, whose black hair and kind demeanor mirrored his mother’s. Nova, with a head of dull, dark blond as mine had been before it went gray. Everything was wonderful.” He silenced for a full minute, staring into the fireplace. The group knew from the sad surroundins that the story did not there.
“She was called off to fight another holy war. High priests and warriors of Pelor only. Otherwise, I’d have come with her. She said it was forbidden, and besides, someone had to watch the babies. I wished my wife well and stayed here. One week. Two. A month. I began to worry. I sent a carrier pigeon off to the local temple of Pelor to ask what had happened. I received a reply within a few days: ‘We regret to inform you that your wife was killed on the field of battle, serving the Shining One. She was cremated and her ashes were given to the land where she died, so that Pelor may glare upon it in His goodness. May He grant you strength in this trying time.’ That was it.
He sat there. They looked at him. He turned his head upwards to them. “She was mine, not HIS,” he said. “Leave alone that my wife died in some holy war for this ‘god’, never mind that I was not TOLD until I ASKED that my children were left motherless… but SHE WAS MINE. Her ashes should have come to ME. The damned church of Pelor took even that from me. That would at least be something. All I had to remember her by was this house and those holy symbols we covered it in.”
Kizzlorn said “You had the boys.”
He shook his head. “Pelor found a way to take THEM from me, too. I was mad with grief. Near suicidal. I was no kind of father. I took them to town and left them in the care of the Church.”
Ziad asked “If you hated the Church, why would you leave them there?”
”It’s what she would have wanted,” Dartan replied, his mouth twisting with the pain of it all. “I came back to my empty home. I sat here in hell for some time, doing nothing, hardly existing. I received your parents’ letter. ‘Come fight the dragon with us,’ it said. I couldn’t even muster the interest. Hate and despair had consumed each other, and left me broken on the floor when they were done. I crumpled the letter and threw it in the corner with one hand, and lifted a bottle of wine to my lips with the other. That’s how I lived after for years after my wife’s death.”
He stood up. “Now, I’m burned clean. I’m done with gods and their cursed holy wars. I’m through with it all. My boys have been raised to believe, and they’ve grown fine and strong. Me, I’m just waiting to die.”
He looked down at his right arm and said “Could I trouble one of you for a healing potion? I think Nanny broke my arm.”
He was healed and the subject changed when Jamison began to stir in his chair. Dartan drew his sword and watched with predatory eyes.
“Garren,” Kizzlorn asked. “Do you know anything about what Dartan has accused you of?”
Jamison raised his head with a frightened look and said “Yes. It’s true. All of it.”
The group looked around at each other, not really believing it. “Garren” had seemed very kind and childlike to them over the week they’d had together. They were coming to like his earnest way.
“Well then,” Dartan said as he stood up, positioning the sword at Jamison’s chest. “Let’s get this over with.”
“NO,” Orthos said, standing up. “I can detect NO evil in this man.” The look Dartan gave him almost made him sit down again, but dwarves are stubborn and he remained standing. “Whatever was in him that made him commit these crimes you say he did is gone now.”
“I used to DETECT EVIL all the time, too, cleric. I used it as a crutch. It’s not always reliable.”
“I will not allow you to execute a man for crimes committed under the influence of evil that is no longer with him. He can pay for what he’s done, perhaps, but this is no way to do it.” His voice was fierce, and he meant it.
Dartan stepped closer and towered over the dwarf menacingly. “You are a guest in my house, holy man.” The last two words he spat out like a curse. “I will do as I wish… especially with the madman that murdered his- and my- friends in cold blood.”
Kizzlorn stood. “I’m with Orthos, who is as good and true a person as I’ve ever known. If he says this prisoner has no evil left in him, I believe it. I also side with him in that you will NOT be allowed to kill him for these crimes.”
“As I,” Ziad said, also standing.
“Nan-ny,” Nanny said, somhow sensing the tension in the air.
Dartan eyed them all. He sheathed his sword. “Very well. However, I will make a demand, and this will not be refuted: If Jamison Crow will be allowed to walk the world, I will be there. I will come along and watch. If he so much as gives me reason to believe he’s pilfered a loaf of bread, I will destroy him.”
Jamison spoke. “I will do as best I can to right the wrongs I have done.”
And that was that. “Fine, then,” Kizzlorn said in an annoyed voice. She was secretly happy to have Dartan volunteer to come along… they’d come in hopes that he could help in their quest. This was working out well.
Dartan said goodbye to his sons. They were like younger versions of him, but one had dark hair and grey-green eyes, and one had light hair and hard, drawn features. Both wore the symbols of Pelor on their chestplates. They bade their father a good adventure and Dartan told them to go back to town.
They set out. The daylight was coming, and they walked for Spellforge Keep. Kizzlorn worked up her courage and asked “Dartan, our quest is to find the gold dragon Gorgoldand. We came to you because we had learned that you quested to find him yourself some years ago. We were hoping you would be able to tell us something that may help us.”
Dartan blinked, then laughed. It was a cold and cruel sound- not so much like laughter as it was like the baying of a direwolf. “Why not ask Crow? He’s the dragon’s bloody adopted son.”
Kizzlorn looked at Jamison in surprise and asked as much as she could. As they walked, it became clear that Jamison knew no more than they did. If he’d known any part of it during his time of evil, he’d forgotten it now. All he had to go on was that the cowled figure had held up a gem and trapped him- which, as Snooky had recounted a year earlier, was how Gorgoldand had disappeared in the first place. Was he in some mirror, somewhere?
They reached Spellforge Keep and walked down to Vek, stepping around his traps as he’d shown them. Dartan looked uncomfortable to be back in the Keep, now so long after his friends’ deaths. Jamison had no recollection of the place at all, except of course for his brief time as Garren the other day.
Vek was standing there like a spectre as the door to his chamber swung open. The old familiar stench greeted Dartan’s nose. “Dartan,” Vek acknowledged with a nod.
“Vek,” Dartan nodded back. The two had never been terribly close, but always respected the other’s power.
“Why have you returned,” Vek asked. “You’ve found your brooding warrior. Have you forgotten something?” That tone was ever in his voice, that seemed to hint that there was something comical about all this.
Kizzlorn was much too tired to mince words. “Sir Vek Mormont, we are on a quest to find a gold dragon. We will be righting the wrongs done by Jamison Crow in his time of confusion. We will be finding and defeating the white dragon Acessiwal. We ask if you will join us.”
“Certainly,” Vek hissed. His eyes flashed red with excitement. “It’s been too long in this dungeon. Besides, I should love to repay that dreadful creature for killing my friends.”
“I thought you didn’t have friends, Vek.” Dartan eyed him with an icy appraising glare.
Vek looked back. “Do not think to know my mind, paladin,” he said mockingly. “You may think you know what I am. You do not know WHO I am.” He spread his arms and laughed. “Of course, few do. At any rate, I will travel with you. I owe you that much for the rent, Miss Spellforge.”
“You do?”
“Of course. This is, after all, your castle… Is it not?” He took Snooky from her arms and poured some concoction he’d make down the cat’s throat.
Orthos perked up. “That’s right! This IS Kizz’s keep, after all. We have a base of operations now!”
Ziad said “We should change the party’s name accordingly. I mean, we’ll always have been the Foes of the Winter Wyrm, but perhaps something with less of a vindictive tilt. Something that will show that we’re a powerful group… landowners. Besides, it looks like we need to cleanse the name of Spellforge ‘round these parts of their taint.”
“I like the idea,” Kizzlorn said, becoming excited. “Spellforge as a home and name. The Spellforge Keep Heroes! The … uh… Warriors of Castle Spellforge? The…”
“May I make a suggestion,” Dartan asked, almost meekly. He proposed a name. It was a tribute to the old group he’d joined with his childhood friends Bree Thornberry, Dekker Roughfoot, Kryn Thorbald, Tenchi Foxfingers… and even Jamison Crow. It was also a tribute to Gorgoldand’s last adventuring party. A party that had saved Oerth from ruin.
Best of all, it struck the others as a fine name.
It was done.
This Saturday: THE WHITE QUEEN'S GAMBIT
DARTAN
I Am An Outcast On The Path Of No Return
Punisher And Swordsman I Was Born To Burn
Black Wind Always Follows Where My Black Horse Rides
Fire's In My Soul
Steel Is On My Side
-BLACK WIND, FIRE AND STEEL, Manowar
The small cabin was appointed with only a few necessities, and no luxuries. Everything lay in dust and mess. Things were shattered: Old mirrors, plates, pieces of wall, bits of chairs. It seemed the only things left unharmed in the place were the holy symbols of Pelor- though coated in the leavings of time, they were left hanging on the walls beside bashed shards of framed paintings.
Dartan looped his foot under a chair and turned it upwards. He set it on the ground. “Put Crow in this, tie him up,” he said. “I’m afraid the rest of you will have to sit on the floor. I’m fresh out of chairs.”
He sat on the bed and said “Tell me of your parents, child. Tell me everything.” Kizzlorn began to speak. She talked of her parents, their quest to destroy the dragon, how they’d never returned. She talked about her childhood in Castle Greyhawk, growing up with her brothers and friends, and leaving to find her fortune. She spoke low about Acessiwal and how they’d not yet been confronted by him, but they would, for they were the Foes of the Winter Wyrm. She came to the quest to find the gold dragon. She took Snooky out of her bag and held him on her lap. The poor thing had been lying near death in a coma for a week. She petted him sadly as she finished her tale.
They didn’t say anything for a while, and Dartan stared into his unlit fireplace, thinking. “I missed them. I should have gone with them to fight the dragon.”
“Why didn’t you? You were sent an invitation,”
“Don’t ask me that,” warningly. Kizzlorn sat silently, but after a moment, Dartan began to speak again. He sighed and rubbed his forehead. The skin on his hands looked like old leather. “Shortly after the Knights disbanded, I joined another group. To feel sane again, you know. There, I met and fell in love with a woman… the Lady Arlen Naramis. Gorgeous. Kind. Everything I’m not. Long dark hair that looked like the surface of a lake at nighttime. After a time, she came to love me as well, and we left the group to be married. We bought this quaint little cabin in the woods. It was our honeymoon palace.
“We were so happy. I’d never really been happy before. Bloodspray and battlecries were all I’d known. Now, I had a wife, who was soon with child, and I felt so full of hope and gladness that I began to let her god into my heart. Pelor. I’ve known many of his faithful, and they all seemed a decent lot. I thought maybe I was being too hasty in forsaking religion. I was once called ‘Dartan the Godless’, did you know that, child?” She shook her head.
“No matter. I began to believe, and we hung Pelor’s trinkets about the house like fools. Faith was with me again and it felt good. The children were born: twin boys. We named them after aspects of Pelor. Blaze, whose black hair and kind demeanor mirrored his mother’s. Nova, with a head of dull, dark blond as mine had been before it went gray. Everything was wonderful.” He silenced for a full minute, staring into the fireplace. The group knew from the sad surroundins that the story did not there.
“She was called off to fight another holy war. High priests and warriors of Pelor only. Otherwise, I’d have come with her. She said it was forbidden, and besides, someone had to watch the babies. I wished my wife well and stayed here. One week. Two. A month. I began to worry. I sent a carrier pigeon off to the local temple of Pelor to ask what had happened. I received a reply within a few days: ‘We regret to inform you that your wife was killed on the field of battle, serving the Shining One. She was cremated and her ashes were given to the land where she died, so that Pelor may glare upon it in His goodness. May He grant you strength in this trying time.’ That was it.
He sat there. They looked at him. He turned his head upwards to them. “She was mine, not HIS,” he said. “Leave alone that my wife died in some holy war for this ‘god’, never mind that I was not TOLD until I ASKED that my children were left motherless… but SHE WAS MINE. Her ashes should have come to ME. The damned church of Pelor took even that from me. That would at least be something. All I had to remember her by was this house and those holy symbols we covered it in.”
Kizzlorn said “You had the boys.”
He shook his head. “Pelor found a way to take THEM from me, too. I was mad with grief. Near suicidal. I was no kind of father. I took them to town and left them in the care of the Church.”
Ziad asked “If you hated the Church, why would you leave them there?”
”It’s what she would have wanted,” Dartan replied, his mouth twisting with the pain of it all. “I came back to my empty home. I sat here in hell for some time, doing nothing, hardly existing. I received your parents’ letter. ‘Come fight the dragon with us,’ it said. I couldn’t even muster the interest. Hate and despair had consumed each other, and left me broken on the floor when they were done. I crumpled the letter and threw it in the corner with one hand, and lifted a bottle of wine to my lips with the other. That’s how I lived after for years after my wife’s death.”
He stood up. “Now, I’m burned clean. I’m done with gods and their cursed holy wars. I’m through with it all. My boys have been raised to believe, and they’ve grown fine and strong. Me, I’m just waiting to die.”
He looked down at his right arm and said “Could I trouble one of you for a healing potion? I think Nanny broke my arm.”
He was healed and the subject changed when Jamison began to stir in his chair. Dartan drew his sword and watched with predatory eyes.
“Garren,” Kizzlorn asked. “Do you know anything about what Dartan has accused you of?”
Jamison raised his head with a frightened look and said “Yes. It’s true. All of it.”
The group looked around at each other, not really believing it. “Garren” had seemed very kind and childlike to them over the week they’d had together. They were coming to like his earnest way.
“Well then,” Dartan said as he stood up, positioning the sword at Jamison’s chest. “Let’s get this over with.”
“NO,” Orthos said, standing up. “I can detect NO evil in this man.” The look Dartan gave him almost made him sit down again, but dwarves are stubborn and he remained standing. “Whatever was in him that made him commit these crimes you say he did is gone now.”
“I used to DETECT EVIL all the time, too, cleric. I used it as a crutch. It’s not always reliable.”
“I will not allow you to execute a man for crimes committed under the influence of evil that is no longer with him. He can pay for what he’s done, perhaps, but this is no way to do it.” His voice was fierce, and he meant it.
Dartan stepped closer and towered over the dwarf menacingly. “You are a guest in my house, holy man.” The last two words he spat out like a curse. “I will do as I wish… especially with the madman that murdered his- and my- friends in cold blood.”
Kizzlorn stood. “I’m with Orthos, who is as good and true a person as I’ve ever known. If he says this prisoner has no evil left in him, I believe it. I also side with him in that you will NOT be allowed to kill him for these crimes.”
“As I,” Ziad said, also standing.
“Nan-ny,” Nanny said, somhow sensing the tension in the air.
Dartan eyed them all. He sheathed his sword. “Very well. However, I will make a demand, and this will not be refuted: If Jamison Crow will be allowed to walk the world, I will be there. I will come along and watch. If he so much as gives me reason to believe he’s pilfered a loaf of bread, I will destroy him.”
Jamison spoke. “I will do as best I can to right the wrongs I have done.”
And that was that. “Fine, then,” Kizzlorn said in an annoyed voice. She was secretly happy to have Dartan volunteer to come along… they’d come in hopes that he could help in their quest. This was working out well.
Dartan said goodbye to his sons. They were like younger versions of him, but one had dark hair and grey-green eyes, and one had light hair and hard, drawn features. Both wore the symbols of Pelor on their chestplates. They bade their father a good adventure and Dartan told them to go back to town.
They set out. The daylight was coming, and they walked for Spellforge Keep. Kizzlorn worked up her courage and asked “Dartan, our quest is to find the gold dragon Gorgoldand. We came to you because we had learned that you quested to find him yourself some years ago. We were hoping you would be able to tell us something that may help us.”
Dartan blinked, then laughed. It was a cold and cruel sound- not so much like laughter as it was like the baying of a direwolf. “Why not ask Crow? He’s the dragon’s bloody adopted son.”
Kizzlorn looked at Jamison in surprise and asked as much as she could. As they walked, it became clear that Jamison knew no more than they did. If he’d known any part of it during his time of evil, he’d forgotten it now. All he had to go on was that the cowled figure had held up a gem and trapped him- which, as Snooky had recounted a year earlier, was how Gorgoldand had disappeared in the first place. Was he in some mirror, somewhere?
They reached Spellforge Keep and walked down to Vek, stepping around his traps as he’d shown them. Dartan looked uncomfortable to be back in the Keep, now so long after his friends’ deaths. Jamison had no recollection of the place at all, except of course for his brief time as Garren the other day.
Vek was standing there like a spectre as the door to his chamber swung open. The old familiar stench greeted Dartan’s nose. “Dartan,” Vek acknowledged with a nod.
“Vek,” Dartan nodded back. The two had never been terribly close, but always respected the other’s power.
“Why have you returned,” Vek asked. “You’ve found your brooding warrior. Have you forgotten something?” That tone was ever in his voice, that seemed to hint that there was something comical about all this.
Kizzlorn was much too tired to mince words. “Sir Vek Mormont, we are on a quest to find a gold dragon. We will be righting the wrongs done by Jamison Crow in his time of confusion. We will be finding and defeating the white dragon Acessiwal. We ask if you will join us.”
“Certainly,” Vek hissed. His eyes flashed red with excitement. “It’s been too long in this dungeon. Besides, I should love to repay that dreadful creature for killing my friends.”
“I thought you didn’t have friends, Vek.” Dartan eyed him with an icy appraising glare.
Vek looked back. “Do not think to know my mind, paladin,” he said mockingly. “You may think you know what I am. You do not know WHO I am.” He spread his arms and laughed. “Of course, few do. At any rate, I will travel with you. I owe you that much for the rent, Miss Spellforge.”
“You do?”
“Of course. This is, after all, your castle… Is it not?” He took Snooky from her arms and poured some concoction he’d make down the cat’s throat.
Orthos perked up. “That’s right! This IS Kizz’s keep, after all. We have a base of operations now!”
Ziad said “We should change the party’s name accordingly. I mean, we’ll always have been the Foes of the Winter Wyrm, but perhaps something with less of a vindictive tilt. Something that will show that we’re a powerful group… landowners. Besides, it looks like we need to cleanse the name of Spellforge ‘round these parts of their taint.”
“I like the idea,” Kizzlorn said, becoming excited. “Spellforge as a home and name. The Spellforge Keep Heroes! The … uh… Warriors of Castle Spellforge? The…”
“May I make a suggestion,” Dartan asked, almost meekly. He proposed a name. It was a tribute to the old group he’d joined with his childhood friends Bree Thornberry, Dekker Roughfoot, Kryn Thorbald, Tenchi Foxfingers… and even Jamison Crow. It was also a tribute to Gorgoldand’s last adventuring party. A party that had saved Oerth from ruin.
Best of all, it struck the others as a fine name.
It was done.
This Saturday: THE WHITE QUEEN'S GAMBIT
Malachai_rose
First Post
WOOT !!!
WOOT !!! WOOT !!! WOOT !!! WOOT !!! WOOT !!! WOOT !!! WOOT !!! WOOT !!! WOOT !!! WOOT !!! WOOT !!! WOOT !!! WOOT !!! WOOT !!!
______________________________
heh, sorry as just a little excited about the new game
Also great way to get the group together and I like the way you have pinch hitters ready to step into the game if a player should die, heh. Kizz's two brothers, Dartans two sons, lol, thats four alternate pc's right there just waiting for someone to die so they can get into the game 
Very cool Doc.
WOOT !!! WOOT !!! WOOT !!! WOOT !!! WOOT !!! WOOT !!! WOOT !!! WOOT !!! WOOT !!! WOOT !!! WOOT !!! WOOT !!! WOOT !!! WOOT !!!
______________________________
heh, sorry as just a little excited about the new game
Also great way to get the group together and I like the way you have pinch hitters ready to step into the game if a player should die, heh. Kizz's two brothers, Dartans two sons, lol, thats four alternate pc's right there just waiting for someone to die so they can get into the game Very cool Doc.
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