Goldforge's travels

[orangetree]

my hand shook every time I cast that spell... it was the one thing I knew that could result with a total party kill.

Hey! She wasn't just a magic missile machine! (She was pretty too)

My one regret is that I was a little too late to get into the Amn stuff.

[kid]

Badass.

[Twin Axes]

NOTES FROM A SPELLJAMMER
or
Faerun seen from above

Many moons have passed since we found those bodies in the woods. Several humans, arranged around their camp fire, throats slit. And nearby, the red wizard still hovering over his victims. His final mistake. That night I first tread on a path that would take me all across the northwest of this continent, over mountains, into caves, mines and ancient halls, under water even, and finally all the way up here in the heavens, floating on a contraption only glimpsed as a rumour in the tales I used to pore over in Sundabar’s great library. The Butterfly, Spelljammer ship! How my family used to worry that I never showed aptitude for their finicky goldsmithing, or any hunger for the gold coins that it garnered. I seek a different treasure. My eyes have seen things that nary have grazed their deepest dreams. Who could have imagined what the light of Selune would look like reflected by a sea of clouds – beneath you! And all around, the countless stars! This is richness.

Gradually the world of the spheres has shifted from hazy notions to reality as hard and visible as this writing hand before me. Mysterious, unknown races have come aboard our ship, we have heard tell of powerful magic, traders and pirates, wars and alliances, all strangely similar to the life on Faerun, yet coloured by the fantastic strangeness and glory of life among the stars.

Yet, Toril calls me back to itself. Ever I lean over the railing, gazing down through the rifts of clouds of a morning, and Faerun goes drifting by down there, hills, forests, rivers, fields…and all the small creatures with all their small business. Plowing, mining, trading, ruling, robbing, killing. It all seems so far away, like one of those tales from the library that led me out into the world. Yet I feel the pull of the earth that would gather me to itself, send me plummeting and bury my broken bones in a pile of dust. Such is the fate of dwarves. We come from the solid rock, and we are reclaimed by it in the end. No matter how far we drift.

Little Susana has already left the ship. She was set down among the isles we visited on our travels. She thought she might still have some friends there. I wonder if they will recognise her, she being doubly removed from them – first by losing her memories at the Well of Kanaglym, then by having spent these months traveling the heavens with the rest of us. I doubt any one of us could walk the ground again with the same unshakeable belief in its solidity.

Hala and Robert seem the most at home in our new setting. It is as though they were made for this life, and just didn’t know it until The Butterfly shook loose from the frozen waste and rose with a shudder to the skies. Being a mage, Robert was always attuned to the arcane energies that exist outside our senses, and he certainly has had dealings with otherworldly planes before. And there are some places where your bulk is reduced to the weight of a feather, and then he doesn’t have to huff and puff so much when dragging that great belly around. Hala has found the perfect backdrop to her colourful persona. Faerun always seemed to small to contain her. There was constant drama swirling and eddying where she went, and she seems just right on the deck of a space travelling ship.

My shield cousin Gwylla, on the other hand, seems less of a natural inhabitant. She was born to cut swathes through orcs and trolls, and I wonder if she finds the squishy flesh of space pirates to her axes’ liking. Still, she will survive. Like so many of our shield maidens, she is hard on the outside, and the inside too. She is already a household name in Selune’s taverns.

And Ander, that silverhaired rogue of a half elf. Taken away by pirates, yet to judge by the stories that have drifted to us from the outer sphere, he lived to tell the tale. And more than that, he is reputed to have taken over the command of that bunch and now spreads terror among the traders! That lad always had a dangerous streak in him, and after tasting the Water of Kanaglym, something dark and sinister came over him. Maybe he is yet another one who has found his unlikely place among the stars.

And so it will be. Either you adjust and stay, or you drift back to Faerun. One by one we go, we who have too much unfinished business left down on the ground. Soon it will be my turn. The ancient secrets of Kanaglym, which we stumbled upon when working for Dina, call to me in my dreams. Sender, the axe masterfully wrought out of living, untarnishable metal, that I claimed in the sad, abandoned halls, was mayhap made to one day help free that place from its dark shadows. And dark those shadows were indeed. Would that I could bring to light the glory of the past, so tantalizingly revealed in the line of kings inscribed on the ornate shield we recovered. I pray to the Morndinsamman that the ancient kingdom will one day resonate with dwarven voices again.

The light of Selune fades as The Butterfly sinks into the clouds. Soon we are enveloped in a thick mist, through which the stars above are faintly glimpsed from time to time in the rifts. Then a darkness begins to appear below us. Shapes of brown and green appear. A mountain. A river. And far off, the twinkling lights of Faerun’s houses as their inhabitants prepare for the oncoming night.

[Rumple C]

He can RP, draw, and write.

A triple threat!

Great tale TA.

[Twin Axes]

Susana saves the day!

[Rumple C]

Love it

[orangetree]

*squeals*

You are a master!

[Ithildur]

Wow, hats off to you TA, really.

[Twin Axes]

I decided it's time for Golinar to get serious about being a bard, so here goes:

THE SONG OF THE SHORT ONES:

A spellweaver’s diary told of a plan
To weld into one the opposing schools
Of conjurer’s tricks and the death-mages’ hand
But Ulcaster had not suffered the fools

Dwarf, gnome and halfling descended the stair
Seeking a stolen vase from the past
Into the dark of a goblin's lair
Deepening darkness enclosed them fast

To speak with a keeper of treasures old
The adventurers boarded a bark without fear
The storm-daring ship clove the ocean cold
They saw in the distance the Isle appear

Mythical beast from the sky did descend
Form of a lion with spiked tail and wing
Long-fanged face seemed to tell of their end
Away ran the gnome as fast he could spring

The dwarf he stood up with his shield so bright
Striving to save his friends on that day
Despite mighty axe ‘twas an unequal fight
But halfling so small by his side she did stay

Sorcerous magic swift death did deal
To the frightening beast who finally fell
Then did the three deeper inland steal
Til they came to a cave lying deep in a dell

Wandering past rows of skeletons old
They came to a hall with a spring so clear
Rising within was a snake-woman cold
Speaking with voice that they all could hear

The vase they had brought she now did demand
In return then she told them of Ulcaster’s place
Where the dabbler of magic experiments planned
Soon to the ruins they hurried apace

There in the darkness they found what they sought
The tale of unholy magical days
Home did they wend with some artefacts wrought
Then they parted, each to their wandering ways

[Rumple C]

[Twin Axes]

Gwylla and Njall fighting marsh ogres in the Moonshaes.



edited: uploaded a more contrasty version

[HEEGZ]

Sweet! For a second I had a flash back to Xavier's last gasp.

[loulabelle]

I think I just won alfa. Your drawings are so exquisite, twin axes and I'm excited that a pc of mine made it into one! Thank you!

[Twin Axes]

[Mikayla]

Over a decade in ALFA and do any of my PCs' make it into these awesome drawings.


Noooooooooo.

Hmmph. Color me jealous.



Great drawings!!!