Kuralia

“So the story goes…”

You’ve probably heard any number of tales begin in such a way.  This phrase suggests that the person telling the story isn’t exactly the primary source.   That really is the problem with storytelling, but I’d argue that it is also the main reason for its success.  Primary sources get in the way of a good story.  It is where you get unpleasant, uncompromising truth, and that is a Good Thing.  The problem comes in when people enter the mix.  People like a good story.  The primary source may not meet that criteria.  It is up to the storyteller, be it the scribe, the historian, or the songwriter, to turn what is likely ugly into beauty.

Ark-amedes has taken it upon himself to write down everything that has happened to the group and placed it into a bound book that, when the time for diplomacy arises, he gives away a copy to whomever they are speaking.  This tome is the hard truth version, as close to the primary source as the group can touch.  As such, it is completely inaccessible to most people the party encounters.  It takes the storyteller (Sho Tao) and the diplomat (XaXa) to make it accessible.  It isn’t Ark-amedes’ fault, either.  The primary source is ugly.  No sane person wants to believe it. Perhaps we should begin at the beginning.

Grant Stoneridge and Ark-amedes arrived in Morville from the east at a very busy time for the northern Theshian city.  The two Durga, or dwarf-kin, had been traveling for only a short time when they arrived at the “Gate to the North.”  Morville guards the entrance to a dangerous mountain pass that is only clear for a few weeks per year.  Merchants and other travellers gather in Morville, awaiting the time when the snow recedes enough to allow the dangerous eight day passage to the neighboring kingdom of Nysond.  Our priest and scribe arrived just days before the opening of the pass, with plans to set up shop in the town for a while, hoping to buy some goods, and hear the news from arriving merchants that were passing through.

The two encountered Sho Tao, who appeared to be a foreigner, but his manners were local.  It turned out that his Zuihou parents who were killed in a war, so Sho Tao had been raised Theshian.  He made fast friends with Ark-amedes, and the group decided to travel together to explore the folklore of the Dragons*.  However, three things happened to sidetrack our intrepid heroes from that destination.  First, Grant joined the Guild of Craftsmen of Morville. Second, Ark-amedes got in trouble.  Third, Sho Tao met a girl.

Grant is a priest of Arguth.  Arguth is the patron God of the Dwarves, though some other groups also hold Arguth in high regard. Arguth exemplifies all the qualities present in Dwarven culture, and it is his teachings that have formed the lives of the Dwarves. Other races follow him as a deity of war, smithing, and knowledge, but to the Dwarves he is their progenitor. They are his children, and serve him faithfully.  As an acolyte of the order, Grant opted to become the liaison for the temple of Arguth in the Guild at Morville.

A smith by clan-trade, Grant attended a few of the meetings of the Guild, and found out a few important things.  Firstly, Morville has no furnace, and as such, no place to actually smelt steel.  Secondly, the Peterson Foundry, where most Morville craftsmen purchased their piglets, had sent some rotten steel – brittle, shoddy, low in carbon.  In short, steel that would not be serviceable for weapons of war.  Grant was to accompany a Guildsman, Mercy (another Durga) on her investigation of the Peterson Foundry.

Ark-amedes is a kid.  Seriously, he’s only about 7 or 8 in human years.  He’s a runaway gnome child with a head full of book learning and very little walking around sense.  As such, he’s fine when he’s supervised, that is, when he’s in the company of friends.  He was left on his own the day Grant went to the Guild meeting.  He was “minding his own business” (looking for trouble), got noticed, and proceeded to get attacked in an alley.  He managed to compel the two toughs to start fighting each other while he fled.  The authorities questioned him and let him go.  He was then, against his wishes, introduced to a local fence, a minotaur named Mackey, who demanded he take a package to a man in the village of Swanvale, about a week to the south.  He didn’t realize until it was too late that the “package” was two young women who had likely been recently purchased by one of Mackey’s clients.

Until very recently, Sho Tao had been  a ward of the Conclave.  His adoptive father, Mortimer, is an agent of the Conclave who endowed him with a good education and small bit of material wealth.  He had been visiting Morville looking for information about the Dragons, when he met a young conclave apprentice named Galswintha (Winny, for short).  The two hit it off and, when Sho Tao decided to travel with Ark-amedes, Winny opted to go along as well.  Sho Tao didn’t know it at the time, but Winny had been ordered by her master, a paranoid archmage named Cunare, to keep tabs on him.  According to Winny’s later admission, Cunare and Mortimer were rivals, and Cunare didn’t trust Sho Tao.

So, the short of it is that Grant was sent to the Peterson Foundry on official Guild business as an escort to a Guildsman, Ark-amedes was sent to a village near the Foundry on very unofficial business, and Sho-Tao went along with his new gnomish friend to the south, with a spy in tow.  It is at this point, when the group leaves the relatively safe walls of Morville, that their path swerves from the wide and sunlit to the narrow and choked with weeds.  It will be months before they return to Morville.

—

*I’ll devote an entire post for the Dragons of Kuralia, since they are indirectly related to what’s going on with this campaign, and because Sho Tao digs ‘em.

Tags: Add new tag, Chronicle, Dice Game

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