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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Bob Aberton" data-source="post: 439583" data-attributes="member: 1518">"Now what?" Diesa asked grumpily, a hood pulled low over her eyes.  She, Nystyra, and another Dwarf, named Fjal, were standing on the crest of the hill known as Greytop Knoll.  Like most of the other mornings Nystyra had encountered in the region, it was drizzly and bleak.  Below them, the stony, hard road that they knew so well snaked away, toward Urglath and Dwllyn and Greattree to the south and west, and slithering northward across bleak moors and stony harshlands to the Pillars of the Sky.  It was early fall, and there was a bite in the air, a little edge to the breezes swirling emptily across heather and bog, boulder and hemlock tree.Nystyra suddenly remembered a lesson she had learned from Adrin Emberlord on the history of the region.  It had once been a profitable area for raising sheep, and it was dotted with thoroughfares and small landholdings, of which Urglath, Dwllyn, and Greattree were the last remnants.That was before the Ruinous Wars.  When Nerwyn Nherianthir, High King of Avalon, and the only living descendent related even indirectly to the fabled Pendragon bloodline, had rode through here and in the shadow of the Pillars of the Sky done battle with the Grey Hordes of the Wizard, a southern warlord and the only living descendent of Mordred Pendragon the Slayer of Arthur, the land had been wounded beyond repair.  Towns and freeholds were burned.  It was said that King Nerwyn had razed half the castles in the land, and the Wizard had razed the other half.  Now only one other building, and that ruined, remained that Nystyra could see.  It was and old tower a mile away, rearing its shattered crenellations to the sky like a broken middle finger, in defiance to fire, sword, and wind."Empty monuments in an empty land," Nystyra whispered.  What kind of a leader could callously do this to his own land, his own people?  Though he was still sung of by the bards as a hero, Nystyra in that instant knew better than that.  No hero-king would have turned his realm into a battleground and let his people be trampled under his own armies.  "I will lead better than he," Nystyra vowed to herself, and she meant it with all her heart.    "Scacth," Diesa said to her companion, and they both laughed.  "Scacth" meant "moonstruck, crazy, or stunned" in Swifthammer Dwarven.Nystyra didn't understand what they meant, however, but she was jolted out of her musings by the rumbling of...mine carts?  At the foot of Greytop Knoll, a shower of dirt-clods and small rocks flew into the air, and then a great hole appeared in the ground.  Then, Dwarves began climbing out of the hole.  There was half a hundred of them, dressed in plain miner's clothes and carrying chisels, axes, picks, hammers, plumb lines, quadrants, surveyor's tools, forge tools, woodworking tools, seemingly every kind of tool know to man, and some that weren't.  After the Dwarves finished climbing out of the hole came mine carts after mine carts after mine carts.  Pulled by straining, sweating dwarves while other dwarves laid out rails in front of them and other dwarves collected the rails they had already rolled over, which were them laid out in front of them again, the carts were loaded with all manner of supplies.  Some had blocks of cut stone.  Others seemed to carry tents made of the skin of mountain-goats.  Others were piled high with coal, and yet others with iron ore to be smelted.  One appeared to be a wheeled forge (probably a rolling repair kit for mining tools), and another, a wheeled kitchen.  Still more were piled high with kegs and kegs marked: 'Haelu,' seemingly a Dwarven word for "liquor.""Who are these?" Nystyra asked, bewildered at this sudden rush of activity."Min eaxlgestall," Fjal replied proudly." 'My comrades in labor; my workforce,' he says," Diesa translated.  "You wanted a castle, did you not?  My clan brothers can build you one.  For the right price, of course (but my interest is in spiritual matters; I know little of such things)."****************************************************Sure it's a little short, but just think of it as an overly long BUMP.Thanks for the reply, Taboo.  I'm glad you like the way I handle Eliad.  The game occassionally gets a little grim, and Eliad is the humor that brightens everything up.  Speaking of which, his Character History has been posted to the "Elfblood Wanderers Dramatis Personae" thread in the Rogue's Gallery forum, if you're interested.</blockquote>

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