General Summary
Endor, the First Mountain
The Gilded Gnoll
In the early morning of 20 Sedaena 5A 178, Luyos arrived at the Gilded Gnoll in the city of Endor, the First Mountain. The tavern was busy with prep for the upcoming Harvest Home festival. Luyos sat at the back of the room. As a dragonborn, he drew looks from other patrons in the tavern, but with grumbles and glares, he was not approached by any of them. He was waiting for a contact from the Ritivan Cartographers Guild for a posted job looking for skilled rangers. A few hours into the morning, Luyos was joined by a lone dwarf man. He introduced himself as Thelman Krestwall, a member of the guild, and asked if Luyos was the dragonborn ranger he was sent to meet. Luyos confirmed he was. Thelman said the guild had been commissioned by the city to map potential locations for the next Kings Towers in the Galaz Forest to the south. They needed a ranger for the task for escort and assistance. Luyos asked if they were the only two. Thelman said others had been supposed to meet them, but no others were present. Thelman said he looked capable and asked about Luyos’s skills. He seemed to look Luyos over, and this irked Luyos. He grumbled, saying, “Aye, I’ve got an axe, and I know how to use it, too, for people who cross me. But, you want ranging, I can range. You want hunting, I can hunt. Hopefully, anything we come across is going to be scared off by this here axe.” Thelman had heard of Luyos before as he was Endor’s first dragonborn. While they waited for any others to arrive, Thelman said, “With a face like that, I imagine you could get pretty much anything you want, yes?” Annoyed, Luyos replied, “Aye. A lot of people be wishing to dote on me thinkin’ it’ll give ‘em favor with one Dragon or another.” Thelman said it was curious that a dragonborn who could do well in the faith would be taking mercenary work. Luyos curtly said he preferred spending time outside.The Iron Range
Outside Endor
Despite the rain, Thelman wanted to head out immediately. The guild was paying extra to expedite the job, and Thelman seemed motivated by the promised payment. They departed the Gilded Gnoll and exited the city out the Doors of Goldroar into the rainy outskirts of the mountain. In the farms and fields near to the city, Luyos asked about Thelman. It was Thelman’s first time outside the city and taking this type of assignment, so Luyos asked if Thleman was new to the Ritivan Cartographer’s Guild. He was interrupted by a dwarvish farmer taking shelter from the pouring rain. The farmer offered Luyos the warmth of their hearth and to share some dwarvish ale. Luyos recognized it as an attempt to curry favor not with him, but with what he represented as a dragonborn. Luyos grumbled and continued walking without addressing the farmer. They continued in silence for a time, which cut the conversation about Thelman’s experience with the guild short.Foothills
Beyond the range of Endor’s farms, the pair headed into the crags and foothills of the Iron Range. Luyos aided Thelman as they went and steered them towards easier paths, as Thelman seemed inexperienced with ranging. Along this easier path, Luyos noticed a large snare trap set in the way among a copse of pine trees. He stopped before triggering it and called it out to Thelman. Luyos looked around for who had set it, but there were no others in the area. The snare was for a larger creature and appeared well-crafted and well-placed along a natural funnel in the terrain. There were strange tracks in the region that seemed to pierce the ground. It wasn’t a creature Luyos recognized from his time in the area, but he could tell it was large and monstrous. He decided it was best to leave the trap as it was and move cautiously around it. He felt it was better to leave such a trap in place to catch whatever had made those marks rather than coming across it themselves. Thelman agreed and seemed to be more aware and alert. Luyos told him to turn and run from such a monster if Luyos couldn’t scare it off.Waterfall Gully
Near the end of their day’s travel, nearly twenty miles away from Endor, they heard falling water, shouting, and strange cries from across a rise. Luyos carefully crested the ridge and looked over into a gully. A mountain stream swollen from the continued rainfall was falling over a rocky ridge into a large pond. On the pebble banks of the gully, Luyos saw four people armed with torches and weapons. They were jabbing two bound creatures with spears and goading them into pained, trilling cries. The chitinous monsters appeared to be part-insect and part-lizard, with long legs leading into sharp points. Luyos felt these kruthiks would make tracks like the ones they’d seen earlier, but much smaller in scale. Perhaps these were the young of a larger monster these hunters were after. The hunters were three dwarves and an orc. Their armor was all decorated similarly, with a dwarvish copper disk of some kind attached or emblazoned on their left shoulder, which held their rain-slicked cloaks. Their leader was a dwarf man a bit farther back who directed the group’s actions while pointing towards a cavern hidden behind the waterfall. Thelman asked what they were doing. Luyos replied they were trying to draw out an adult monster with the pained young as bait. Luyos felt uneasy about the tactics of this group. As they watched, in his head, Luyos heard a strange voice. It didn’t speak in words but in feelings and emotions. It seemed to convey to him a feeling of “woven duty”. The tactics of these hunters weighed heavily on Luyos, and he suddenly felt tied to the fate of the kruthiks. Luyos said, “I’m not necessarily one to get myself involved in others’ business either, but something tells me this isn’t right.” Luyos asked if Thelman was capable in a fight. Before he could answer, sudden deep, trilling cries shook the area. A pair of adult kruthiks emerged from the waterfall cave and attacked. The hunters were ready and fired their crossbows.The Kruthiks Attack
Luyos felt compelled to intervene and jumped over the ridge into the gully. He yelled to the hunters, “Leave ‘em be!” Luyos shot a line of bubbling acid from his mouth onto the bindings holding the young kruthiks. The leather burned and snapped, and the young pulled free. The young retreated towards the cavern and the adults charged the hunters with their piercing limbs. An orc and dwarf traded heavy blows with them. The leader saw Thelman on the ridge and shot at him, but the bolt went wide. Luyos held his axe at the ready, but called out to stop the attack. He tried to urge the kruthiks away. Their young were freed, but they attacked once more before they fled to the cavern. The hunters couldn’t pursue with Luyos standing there as an unknown threat. Luyos held his hands up nonthreateningly. The leader reloaded his crossbow, aimed it at Luyos, and threatened to shoot it through his eye. He demanded, “Who are you and why are you getting between us and our duty?” Luyos introduced himself and said he didn’t want any trouble. He leaned into the popular perception of his race and said attacking young things might not be the best way to “go about showing good faith”. A hunter called out as the kruthiks shot barbed attacks from the cavern entrance. The call was made to fall back as they had lost the advantage. The leader turned to Luyos. He seemed to judge Luyos with a look and said, “You’re coming with us.” Luyos knew he might have had a chance to get away alone, but that would certainly lead to Thelman being captured.The Copper Dozen
The hunters brought Luyos and Thelman away to a rough campsite sheltered from the continuing rain beneath a rocky ridge. There were a number of other figures bearing the same dwarvish copper sigil. They were rough looking and hardy and seemed not threatened at all by Luyos’s presence. Luyos asked what they wanted. The leader said he wanted to know why Luyos interrupted them. He came across as conniving and abrasive. He said the continued rain would swell the Immrinni Stream and make that cavern entrance to the Horukzul Caverns impassable, and he seemed frustrated with the missed opportunity. As repayment for interrupting their hunt, he told Luyos to find them a new entry into the kruthiks' caverns so they could eliminate these unnatural creatures so “good, dwarven citizens of Endor aren’t threatened when they're going about.” He continued, saying, “Dragonborn aren’t necessarily natural things either, from my understanding. But they’re aligned on the divine, right?” This frustrated Luyos and he grumbled. He replied being a dragonborn didn’t give him the ear of the Dragons. The dwarf said either way, black scales were a bad omen of the faith. The dwarf introduced himself as Krummer. They were called The Copper Dozen and were invested in hunting down “monstrosities and things that shouldn’t exist.” Luyos was unsure if the dwarf was telling the truth about their motivations. Luyos asked what he needed a dragonborn ranger for that they couldn’t already do themselves. Krummer wanted to complete their task quickly, and he gave a thinly veiled threat against Thelman if Luyos refused. Krummer was very hard to read and was intimidating, and Luyos felt he didn’t have any choice but to accept. Krummer said they would set out in the morning. Other members of The Copper Dozen arrived with hunted game. These others looked at Luyos; some laughed and others stared at him with interest, which continued to annoy Luyos. Luyos and Thelman kept to themselves off to the side during the night. Thelman suggested if they did what they wanted, they could hopefully be on their way quickly. Luyos sighed and said, “Something about it makes me feel like they’re not necessarily going to let us off the hook that easily, aye?” Luyos thought back to the feeling he felt back at the gully, saying “woven duty”. As he set himself to an uneasy rest, he wondered what that had meant and if he had made a mistake following that feeling.
Related Time
20 Sedaena 5A 178
20 Sedaena 5A 178