Dwarves, as a rule, dream big

Duncan couldn’t sleep. 

The events of the past day kept forcing him awake as soon as his eyes started to droop.  As the calm of sleep would start to come over him, the memory of the energy maelstrom he fought on the node slipped in and filled the void, causing him to start awake.  There was something else, something, tugging at the back of his mind that he could not grasp. 

After a few restless hours he gave up.  Getting up from the bed he walked over and lit one of the smaller candles on the small desk in his room.  The faint glow was enough; his Dwarven vision making maximum use of the candle’s soft light. 

Duncan started to pace, his bare feet move back and forth across the floor.  As he paced, his mind worked.  He was not as quick as some of the others mentally – he knew that.  However, the stubbornness and logical nature of his Dwarven heritage allowed him, if given the time, to work through problems.  Unfortunately he never seemed to have that much time anymore. 

He started by focusing his thoughts on the node and the battle upon its surface.  Somehow he had hit the Oni harder, faster and with more accuracy than he had ever done so before.  Was it related to the purple flames he “inherited” from Kernosh?  The extra damage his axes seemed to inflict on each hit surely was, since it happened after the flames had appeared around the axe heads.  The accuracy of his attacks, he felt, were all his own.  The Oni was large, after all, and Dwarves excel at attacking creatures larger than themselves. 

So what was that purple energy?  He mulled this over for the next 20 minutes but was as confused about it as when he started.  There were just some things he did not understand, and arcane power was one of them.  He could see the effect and feel the benefits of magic, and he appreciated that, but he just couldn’t understand it.  It was not tangible like metal or stone or wood.  It didn’t leave a track like an animal or monster.  It didn’t behave by a fixed set of rules like nature does.  And for that, Duncan didn’t really trust it. 

Dwarves, as a rule, do not like chaos. 

Still irked by his lack of understanding of magic, he had a thought; was magic as chaotic as he imagined?  Cabal seemed to be able to touch it, work it, shape it.  He seemed to be able to sense its presence after it was gone.  The effects Duncan witnessed did not seem to change each time Cabal used it.  Maybe it was not that foreign to him as he originally thought.  He would have to ask Cabal about it sometime, if the boy would ever stop being a prat. 

Duncan stopped to take a drink from his tankard.  Wiping foam from his beard he paused momentarily and tried to remember when he had stopped pacing and filled his mug from the small keg in the corner of his room.  Shrugging off such a mundane an unimportant question, he got a refill and continued to pace. 

What was Duncan’s opinion of Cabal?  In a strange way he liked the boy.  Cabal had a certain zeal for life that Duncan envied and a sharp sense of humor that he appreciated, when it wasn’t directed at him.  Luckily, for the boy, after that first joke with the buzzing insects that seemed so long ago, Cabal had left him pretty much alone.  He didn’t like his incessant arguing with Kernosh or his seeming disregard for the acceptable practices of society.  Much like that strange compass he carried, Cabal’s “moral compass” seemed erratic as well; very “un-Dwarven”. 

Did Duncan trust Cabal?  He was not so sure that he knew the answer to that question.  Did he trust Cabal to engage an enemy with the same intensity that Duncan did; certainly.  Did he trust Cabal to help the group with his power; for now.  Duncan had the feeling at times that Cabal was just traveling with the group, but not really part of the group, and at some point he would go his own way when he felt the others were no longer any benefit to him.  This scared him.  But Duncan had to remind himself that Cabal was, unfortunately, only a human and not a dwarf.  The same steadfastness to clan and company that was as natural to a dwarf as his beard was not always shared by the other races, humans in particular. 

At the thought of clan, Duncan had to pause and clear his eyes, now moist with tears.  Although he tried to hide it, this change from the land of his birth to this new world has been hard on him.  He had no family, no clan here – only himself and the others.  He did not know what had happened to the rest of Stonewarden.  Did they perish?  Were they still back, if back was the right word, where they were and had no knowledge that Duncan was no longer with them?  Did they happen to travel here and are now located somewhere on these “Realms” to be reunited with again?  This last one, while comforting, was probably not to be.  In these lands, Duncan was the totality of the Stonewarden clan.  He was the last, and it saddened him.  Stopping, he wiped his eyes with his beard and chastised himself for his breakdown. 

Dwarves, as a rule, do not show emotion. 

He paced for most of the night, slowly turning things over in his mind, trying to peel back the layers of fog to uncover that thought which kept at him.  Suddenly Duncan stopped short, the look of inspiration on his face.  Sitting down at the desk he grabbed some blank paper, a quill and started drawing, the crispness of the lines a telltale sign that a dwarf was at work.

As the sun started to peer above the horizon Duncan sat back, ink staining his fingers, with one errant spot on his nose, and held up a sheaf of papers.  On it, in subtle and bold lines, was a design for a weapon the likes which had not been seen in Stonewarden before. 

Looking at the drawing, Duncan was surprised at how closely it resembled his inspiration – a carving found in the temple they had recently searched.  There were some modifications to design, of course – no Dwarf would ever mimic another’s weapon exactly.  The basic design was from the carving, but the intricacies and details were all his, all his clan. 

Duncan 

Throwing on his boots, armor and pouches and belting on his other, now seemingly mundane, axes he grabbed the papers and went to visit the Aberbluff smith.  Luckily the weaponsmith was a fellow dwarf, albeit a different clan, so he knew his idea was in good hands.  The first step, of course, was a prototype to see if Duncan could even wield such a weapon.  Then, if that proved successful, he would have a real one made, hopefully out of adamantine … if he could find any. 

He would have to check with Cabal and see if the mage could enchant it, possibly transferring the power of his other axes into this one, or creating an all new weapon with powers unthought-of at the moment.  As he left Duncan wondered if he shouldn’t have played that joke on Cabal with the wagon and the grin sacks.  Smiling, he dismissed that thought. 

Dwarves, as a rule, do not feel remorse. 

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