Ridge's Mission I
I arrived at the fort with a caravan out of the Dwarven Isle via High Castle. It was quite the exciting trip. Many a bandit was seen on the road, but only the most foolish would ever dare mess with the stonish races. I held my own during the trip, offering healing where I could and engaging the dwarves in quite interesting debates on topics from the philosophical virtues of a unified magical source, to the relative benefits of various alchemical distillations fungi and alga, to the ever popular question: Does whiskey count as beer? I also took this opportunity to practice the Northern Eiredosian dialect. I had not really studied it much since I graduated from the academy, and Bartemis told me that the humans have a very peculiar accent. Therefore, I took every opportunity to speak the local language with the dwarves. The trip was the longest I had ever been on. This island was more than twice as large as the one I had come from, and the population on the Gnomish Isle is highly centralized. There was this one time when I walked around the entire city in order to test the durability of a friend’s new material for making the soles of boots, and it had taken less than a day. Then again, the material started to heat up as I walked, so much so that my socks soon caught fire, and thus I ran the last few hundred yards to a water barrel to douse the flames. I guess I never did make it all the way around the town. Never the less, this trip was considerably longer, but at least I had good company.
My first impressions of Fort Eclipse? It was more incredibly massive, more delightfully rustic, and more mostly unfinished than I could have ever imagined. I mean the gates were working and there was a place for all of us to stay, but the sheer number of masons running around the place was unexpected. And so many of them dwarves. I guess the Mithrilheart clan has a lot invested in the place. Frankly, I was expecting some sort of wooden palisades with a cart for a gate, you know, the kind of half baked operation a motley assortment of heroes drafted from the different socio-political regions of the Western Isles might throw together last minute as they raced to have a shelter before the winter snows arrived. But this was top notch, with partially constructed towers and everything.
While I had arrived with the caravan, I was there for slightly different business. I wanted to join on as a member of the Warriors so that I could work as the apprentice of Arcadius the mystic theurge. I found the duty captain, one Rurik Mithrilheart, and he assigned me a bunk in the barracks. The barracks were quite comfortable, though much more open than I was used to in the cloisters back home. I spent the next day becoming familiar with the grounds and learning all the twists and turns of the fortress. If this was to be my home for a while, it seemed I should make it so.
On the morning of my third day at the fort, I received a summons to the courtyard. When I arrived, I recognized Rurik right away, but the others milling about around him were unfamiliar to me. I nodded to Rurik and took my place with the others.
“Ye all have petitioned to join our ranks here at the Fortress o’ the Eclipse,” said Rurik in perfect Northern Eiredosian. I knew I still had a bit of an accent, but in my travels with the dwarven caravan, I had worked on it quite a bit. “Since ye have all arrived at about the same time, we have decided to assign ye to a single patrol.”
“The land ye are standin’ on has only been tame goin’ on a year or two,” he continued. “We have cleared out most o’ the surroundin’ region and new adventurers and nobles have been moving in to claim some land and help keep the peace. Unfortunately, the edges are not as safe as is the central region. One o’ the noble lads, Lars Larsson, seems to have gone missing in the southwestern region. Ye’ll need to take the road west to the outpost set up by a man named Trent. He’ll have some more complete information for ye. From there, ye’ll head south and investigate. Ye all have a small credit with the quartermaster. Get ye’re gear ready. Ye’ll be movin’ out at dawn tomorrow. Dismissed.” And with a sharp turn, he strode off toward the smithy in the far corner of the fort.
The rest of the day was a blur of anxiety, apprehension, and nerves. We started by looking at each other blankly for a few minutes. Next, we decided introductions were in order. As I looked around, I was glad to see we were a rather large group, six in all. I was surprised, however, to notice that there was not a heavily armed or armored one among us. I figured with the name and reputation of the Warriors of the Eclipse would attract a more physically adept bunch, but apparently the magical exploits of Arcadius and Seamus had reached just as far. There was a pair of warmages, with their horses, from the main continent to the east. Arrideus and Fendus they were called. Also from the continent was an old man named Adoras, a priest of some goodly ethos, not of any specific deity. The three of them had just arrived with a caravan originating from Rema. Kelvin was a . . . suddenly I noticed an elf in the group. At first I thought it might be Arcadius, but quickly ruled that out as we were all new recruits. His name was Eldian, user of a strange type of restricted divine magic. Neither Eldian nor Kelvin had arrived on one of the caravans, so they must have arrived in some other way. Our next bit of business was to acquire our necessary equipment. We requisitioned a donkey and a cart to carry tents, equipment, and a large number of rations for the group.
The next morning, we were assembled before dawn, ready to go. It would be a long trip and we were all excited to be involved with such an adventure. The reality of the trip turned out not as we had expected. There were no evil bandits or horrid zombies. Not even a curious doe. I managed to pass the time going over my notes from some mouse-light experiments I had been conducting and documenting some of the new plants I found that were not native to the Gnomish Isle. On the evening of the fourth night, we finally met some unfamiliar faces. It was a dwarven patrol out from Trent’s outpost. We shared a camp and some stories, and then went our separate ways in the morning. It was not until we had been on the road a full week that we saw our first action. A trio of gnolls attacked our band, but we were able to drive them off with little trouble. The next day, the dwarven patrol caught back up to us and we traveled together to Trent’s outpost.
Trent was a good man. He gave us what information he had, which was not much more than we already knew from the fort. Apparently gnolls were plentiful in this area and Lars had made his claim a few days travel to the south. We stayed the night at the outpost and made preparations to leave the next morning when a man named Regulus approached. Regulus was lightly armored and armed with a quarterstaff. He must have been some sort of wanderer looking for a more permanent situation. We decided to have him along. If he could use that staff, it might do us some good. And as it turned out, we really could use the extra muscle.
A few hours south of Trent’s outpost we spotted a large patrol of gnolls marching in the other direction. Knowing we were outnumbered and therefore likely outmatched, we quickly made a plan to try to distract and divide the gnollish force. Regulus mounted Fendus’s horse and rode out into the open in an attempt to attract the attention of the gnolls and encourage them to march right past the copse of trees where the rest of us were hiding with the cart. Unfortunately, and unbeknownst to us at the time, gnolls are excellent trackers and immediately noticed evidence of our scrambling. In moments, they had discovered our hideaway and were upon us. The battle was fierce and it seemed like our side was lost. One by one, we fell to the axes of the gnolls. A few well placed spells helped reduce gnoll numbers and bought us enough time for Regulus to make the ride back and join the battle. Too soon, I too succumbed to the overwhelming attack.
When I woke up, the gnolls were gone. Arrideus and Regulus had managed to drive off the last two then went to work patching up the rest of us. When we had recovered somewhat, we searched the bodies of the ten gnolls we had slain. In addition to their equipment, we also found the noble insignia of Lars Larsson and a horribly disgusting string of eyeballs that was being collected by one of the gnolls. The eyeball collection was bad news and the blood on the insignia seemed to be evidence enough of the unfortunate demise of Lars. We made the return trip to Fort Eclipse, taking the next eight days of travel to recover from our wounds and relive the events of our first victory as Warriors of the Eclipse.