Trouble had been brewing on the mountain for years, in fact the mountain had been trouble since the end of the last war some two hundred years ago. In the days of the war the tiny farming village of Mudhollowe had grown and swelled to supply the mountain fort called King's Beacon, but the end of the war had meant the end of the wartime funding the villagers were getting, and now, two centuries past, the once rich city had shrunk to a ghost town and was once again a tiny farming village a day's ride off from the root of the mountain. In recent years, not more than a decade ago, trouble began to really pick up in a most unusual way. The goblins who had retaken their mountain after the war of men had ended, had grown for some reason bolder than they had before, with no real reason why that any man could figure out. Then, even stranger than the goblin activity, was the weather, which had grown colder and colder with each passing year. Some say it was a fell magic that was the goblins' doing. Some say it was a warlock controlling the goblins. But there was one rumor, the most commonly dismissed, that the driving force behind the goblins… was a dragon. A young white dragon who had chosen the mountain fort of King's Beacon as her home, and had spent the past decade amassing a small hoard and had been using magic fueled by its own elemental breath and arcane arts to transform the mountain and the warm country surrounding it to an icy waste more to its liking.
This rumor was what caught the attention of a small band of travelers.
They called themselves the Bloodmoon Company, a party of freelance monster hunters. Mathias Craven, a novice mage who decided that the best way to learn his craft was not through years of study of dusty tomes in a shadowy library, but to learn from books and practice on the field of battle. Red, just Red, a young rogue who honed his skill through the years he spent in the dark alleyways of a bustling city, making a rich living off of others by the use of a nimble hand and a natural charm, he decided that the Thief of Riverton might want to get out and see the world before the city guard found him. Brandon Ironwood was nothing but a drunken slayer, fighting for coin and drink until he was saved by Mathias from a hoard of goblins, since then he believes he owes his life to him and travels with him to this day, even though his debt was paid long ago. Eridas Bloodmoon, leader of the Bloodmoon Company. A strange and dark fellow he is, there is always an unnatural and unsettling air about him, devoted to the goddess of death, some feel that staring into his dull, black, piercing eyes they are staring not into the eyes of a dark servant of the goddess but into the eyes of the goddess herself. Most recently joined to the company was Redrick, son of Theored, dwarf from under the dragon's spine mountain keep, his sense of justice and thirst for honor, glory, and, most of all, gold, lead him on the path of the adventurer in his young years and was drawn to the air of power that surrounded Eridas Bloodmoon, and he pledged his axe and his service to the dark paladin.
The Bloodmoon Company, traveling through the countryside as heroes of justice… or at least swords for hire to any who could pay their price, which wasn't much compared to what some adventurers make, but was certainly more than most villages, let alone most villagers, could pay. Traveling across the countryside they intercepted a trade caravan heading east, away from the lonely mountain and the village of Mudhollowe, and there it was that they heard the first whispers of a dragon at King's Beacon. Turning their eyes west, they headed toward the mountain to investigate, and possibly make quite a profit for a "good deed".
Indeed as they traveled through the grassy plains and farmland they did indeed learn that at least one part of the rumor was true, the closer one got to the mountain, the cooler it became, for in the normally sweltering summer air the company was quite cool. This alone was enough to spark their interest in this case.
A day's ride on horseback from the village of Mudhollowe, the company could see the mountain, shrouded by clouds and peaked in snow, most unusual for the summertime.
"Looks as though there may be something worthy of our interests, eh, Master Bloodmoon?" remarked Redrick from the back of his bay pony at the back of the party.
Atop his black stallion, Eridas Bloodmoon did not answer the dwarf, only did he keep his black gaze fixed on the mountaintop, trying to see that which could not be seen, as if trying to see what raw magic was being forged inside the walls of the mountain fort.
By nightfall the company reached the village and saw that it truly was a ghost town compared to its former glory in the days of war, everywhere buildings stood in disuse and only at the center of the village were there any signs of life.
The Night Watch was a comfortable and quiet inn near the heart of the village, and such as times were, there were plenty of vacancies, as the entire village appeared dead and empty. It was a rather large building, built two hundred years ago in the time of the war to accommodate the soldiers who were stationed in the village or those destined for King's Beacon. A building of mud brick and a tile roof it stood two stories off the ground and one story below it, it was designed to be comfortable, yet defensible if there was any need. The current proprietor of the Night Watch was a short and stout man, not much taller than a dwarf, by the name of Timothy Nook.
"Welcome, travelers," He greeted them with a hearty laugh and a smile that spread across his face in an almost unpleasant way, though in no way hostile. "Welcome to the Night Watch, a fine historic location in this fine town. Will you be staying long, young Masters?"
Dressed in a way that would remind one of a conjurer of a darker sort, Eridas stepped forward, hooded and cloaked in a way that one could not see his armor or weaponry beneath the dark colors upon his form, Eridas was most definitely an intimidating man.
"Five rooms, if you have them, and a meal, we have ridden long and far and we wish to rest the night in peace and comfort." His voice was cold, but gentle, demanding, yet good-natured. He removed his hood revealing a face that could have been carved from a marble block, ruggedly handsome with a blank expression, dark eyes and a piercing gaze, long straight black hair, and a scruffy beard were the features that adorned his pale skin, he could very easily have been made of stone, yet he was just rough enough to be very definitely, very frighteningly real.
"Ah… yes, of course Master…?" The fat, nervous man said with a nod of his balding head and a slight chuckle, almost afraid of what the dark man would say.
"Forgive me, master Nook; I am Eridas Bloodmoon of the temple at Raven's spire, Blackguard of the Raven Queen. These are my companions, Mathias Craven, mage of the Gray Alliance; Brandon Ironwood, fearsome monster slayer and defender of the people; Red, my most trusted spy, you need not know him; and Redrick, son of Theored, young dwarf lord under the Dragon's Spine Mountains. We come from afar traveling to experience the wonders of the world and to assist the peoples along our way. We have come to your village in hopes that we were wrong, but it appears we were not, that your people were in trouble, from afar we have heard traders' whispers of goblins stealing children and crop in the night, and of an unnatural cold emanating from the mountain, and of all we feared most for your people, whispers of a dragon who intended to destroy you and take this land as her domain."
A spark of hope and a flicker of doubt and fear flashed across the innkeeper's face before he shook his head.
"I fear, mater Bloodmoon, that you have come for exactly those reasons. The goblins of the mountain have indeed been acting boldly over the years, in the past ten years there have been many crops stolen of just destroyed by goblin hands and three children have gone missing since the cold began. I do not pretend to know anything about dragons, my lord, but I know my home. I have lived in this village all my life. I inherited this inn from my father, and he from his father, and he from his, who won it in a game of cards. In all my years, thirty five years this year, never before the last ten have the summers been this cool or the winters as bitter; this cold is unnatural, that much I know at least."
The innkeeper shook and bowed his head, but brought it up with a smile.
"Forgive me, young masters, the hour is late and your day has been long. Please, to the south of my inn is a stable for your horses, tell Old Brandybuck, he's the owner of them stables, that Nook says 'only the best for these' and he'll not charge you one red copper! By the time you return my Eleanor will have a fine supper ready for you, my lords, please, I wish you to rest your bodies and minds at me inn, allow me to care for you, and at a reasonable price I assure you!"
The five departed from the inn and took their horses, and Redrick's pony, to the cleverly named "Brandybuck's Stables" where they were greeted by an ordinary man, presumably Old Brandybuck, who took their horses after they delivered the massage from Nook, and he nodded and smiled, saying "Only the best".
Returning to the inn, Redrick's mouth began to water, as they could immediately smell a better meal than any of them had had in more than a week, as they had been surviving on field rations, which kept one healthy but were lacking in taste. Even Red, who made an effort not to draw any attention to himself, was openly joyous at the sight and smell of vegetable stew, brashly baked bread, peppered venison steak and beer and fresh milk.
After their meal, Nook's wife Eleanor and her three daughters and son cleaned up and listened to Redrick proudly telling Nook a story of how he met Eridas and the company. After the cleaning was finished Eleanor ushered the four children to their room and then retired to her own.
"Is there anything else you'd like my lords, before I retire for the night?" Nook asked, in good spirits from the drink and Redrick's exciting tale.
Eridas smiled a warm, happy smile, a smile that in no way seemed to match his grim face, and shook his head. "No, master Nook, you have done more than enough for us already. Please, retire, we only wish to be alone for a few minutes before we, ourselves retire. You run a fine Inn, master Nook, good night."
The innkeeper departed the company to join his wife in bed. Once sure the innkeeper was out of earshot, the smile dropped off of his features like a porcelain mask, then, in a hushed voice, he spoke to his companions in a similar tone to that which a general uses to speak to the soldiers under his command.
"Alright, what do we know?"
Redrick spoke first, "The rumors, it would seem, are true."
"I know fear, and the fear of goblins in these people is quite real." Brandon added.
Eridas turned his piercing gaze to Mathias, who was sitting patiently with his eyes closed.
"Magic" Mathias began then paused as if to gather his thoughts, and when he was about to continue when he was interrupted by an irritated and drunk rogue.
"What about magic? Speak plainly mage! Don't shroud all your words in riddles!" Red snapped.
Mathias opened his eyes and glared, "I would if you would give me a moment to think, thief!" this remark silenced the drunken rogue, "There is magic in the air, raw arcane energy. Elemental magic. The cold you feel is indeed the work of a spellcaster of some sort, what I cannot tell for absolute certainty is whether or not it is dragon magic. I am able to say that it is much more likely that there is a dragon at King's Beacon in my opinion than before. My best guess, is that, from the nagging feeling I'm getting and based upon my observations and the rumors we've all heard… my best guess is a white dragon, probably a young one, flew to King's Beacon about ten years ago, and took command of the goblin tribe under the lonely mountain, and has since gotten them to do his or her bidding. The missing children, I would guess, are sacrifices for a ritual that transforms the environment, the cold and the show on and around the magic would be the evidence of such a ritual, at least during the summer."
Eridas thought for a moment on what he had heard and was silently weighing the possibilities while Mathias and Red argued.
At last he spoke, quieting the bickering, "If there is indeed a dragon at King's Beacon, the people of Mudhollowe will be in desperate need of our assistance before long. It doesn't look like the people of this village could pay our usual price, but if there is a dragon, and it has been there for ten years already, then the dragon will be paying us to kill it. We kill the dragon or destroy whatever the source of the elemental energy is. We leave the day after tomorrow, we need our bodies and minds well rested and prepared for the worst. This is our plan. Agreed?"
This last remark was mostly a courtesy, since Eridas united the other four under his command they had always agreed to follow his plans.
The next two days passed without much excitement, during the time the company rested and ate well. Mathias studied an old grimoire in the quiet of his room at the inn. Redrick took up a job as a storyteller during these two days, and he sat by the village well and told tales of his many encounters and adventures to anyone who would stop by and listen from sunrise to dinnertime, by the second day he had quite a number of villagers surrounding him while he told the story of how he took out a den of kobolds and slew their chieftain all by himself. Brandon spent his two days and quite a few gold coins having his armor mended and a new dagger forged for himself, which he named The Fang of Mudhollowe. Red was nowhere to be seen anywhere in the village except at the dinner table at the inn, the rest simply chocked this up to the thief's skill at avoiding attention when he wished. Eridas spent his days alone and prayed to his goddess.
The night of the second day after the first night in Mudhollowe, the Bloodmoon Company met in the room Eridas had been using.
"I hope you all had a good lunch, because I feel I have been inspired and not exactly a good way. A thought occurred to me: what if there is an informant?" He let this thought sink in for a moment. "We leave soon. As soft and quiet as a cat's shadow our footsteps must be. I will pay for our rooms and the stables. Discreetly. We will be gone from this village before dinnertime."
And they departed, quick as a jungle cat and as quiet as its shadow. Confused, Timothy Nook found the five rooms that been occupied empty and clean, and in the room of their dark leader's room he found on the neatly made bed a pouch of gold coins, easily three times as much as they owed him for the rooms and the meals. Underneath the pouch he found an envelope, sealed with black wax, inside was a note, which read, "May your days be long and my Queen greet you at her eyrie." And with the note was a Raven's feather, which, he later learned from the village priest, had been blessed to ward off evil.
The lonely mountain was like a spike protruding from the earth's soft skin. It was only a day's ride from the village of Mudhollowe. The company proceeded stealthily from the village across the land between the farms outside the village to the roots of the mountain. They rode all night long from the village and by sunrise they were at a boulder field at the foot of the mountain, at which point Eridas told them all to dismount.
"But, why, Eridas?" Asked Brandon, genuinely pzzled by this decision, "We could reach the fort before midday, walking it would take all day!"
"Because, Brandon," Red answered before Eridas even opened his mouth, "we want the element of surprise, we don't know the number or power of our enemy, or if there is just a deranged spellcaster or really a white dragon controlling these goblins. Four Men and a Dwarf on horseback would be a target for every man, goblin and beast for miles. And that would be bad. You understand now?"
From his bulging saddlebags the rogue pulled five white hooded cloaks, handing one to each of them.
"These, my friends, will provide us with some camouflage." He said with a smug grin, which irritated all, except Eridas, because if it did annoy him, he didn't show it.
The five of them proceeded with stealth past the boulder field toward the mountain, Red leading the way by twenty paces, scouting the area for any goblins, or really anything. They proceeded with caution to the foot of the mountain where the sun was blotted out by the arcane snow clouds above, and the gently falling snow masked some of the sound their footsteps made.
They came to another boulder field, near the mountain's root, a field cloaked with a thick layer of snow. Red asked the rest of the party to let him scout ahead, and that if he did not return in three hours, they should assume he was dead and that they should decide whether or not to abandon this plan or charge ahead and slaughter his killers or captors.
Two bitter cold hours passed and the party was growing impatient, worried, but still impatient, when out of nowhere, without a sound, Red appeared just outside the group's circle in the boulder field.
"there is a road." Red said, returning to their hiding place, "A mountain road; A heavily patrolled mountain road. I saw at least a half a dozen torch-holding, horn carrying goblins marching back and forth along the mountain road, which leads from the foot of the mountain to the fort near its peak. To go up the road wouldn't exactly be suicide, it would just kill any attempt at surprising the enemy before it was even made."
He paused and let them absorb the information as he took a swig from a silver flask at his hip, "there is another path though, not a road, and the goblins don't use it, and it seems they don't know it, a winding path up the side of the mountain. We could climb it easily in an hour without raising an alarm." He smiled, "I know, I did it. I stood not ten feet away from the end of the mountain road unnoticed."
Eridas nodded. "If there is a dragon at the heart of this, we will want to get to the fort without notifying it of our presence before we even enter its lair. We take the hidden pass."
They climbed as quietly and quickly as possible up the hidden pass, reaching the entrance to the fort while the patrol was a ways down the mountain. Hidden well in the darkness under their white, snow covered cloaks, they entered the portcullis and Red sniped the one guard on duty with a poison barbed bolt from his crossbow. The guard was dead before its body hit the snow.
They went deeper in and were greeted by an unnatural growling, a vibrating, echoing sound not made by any animal, yet reminiscent of the growl of a wolf. Then came another growl. And they spotted two pairs of eyes like glowing embers set deep in cast iron skulls, they were canine in shape, like wolves made out of solid iron, with hinged limbs like armor. They roared a metallic bark and launched themselves at the five of them, only Eridas had time to react, quick as a flash he whispered an angry prayer and lashed out with his sword, cleaving the iron hound's metal skull from its body, the red-orange light in its skull fading as it fell. The other was bounding toward Redrick which bit down on his arm, not really doing much damage, as its steel teeth were stopped by his chainmail sleeve, it crunched down and pierced the dwarf's skin, who with his other hand, reaching for his axe and trying hard not to make a noise, he brought his axe down in the middle of its back, nearly cleaving the metal beast in two. Brandon drew his sword and hacked at the beast in the near the spot where Redrick's weapon struck, the two of them hacked at the beast again and again and again. Finally it loosed its vice-grip jaws from Redrick's metal sleeve, and limped backwards, before it started toward an easier looking target, the mage, who, as if to say "don't even think about it" drew his wand and fired a bolt of pure, powerful force, a bolt of magic energy right into the iron hound's left eye, extinguishing that eye, and then as it limped forward and collapsed in front of them, the other eye extinguished.
"Okay." Said Mathias, "The fort is defended by homunculi." He looked at the others, and all but Eridas looked at him as if he had just started speaking a foreign language, "I can see you're totally confused. Well, we never stormed the lair of a spellcaster before, so it's logical that you don't have a clue what a homunculus is. A Homunculus is an artificial life form. What we just killed are what is known as Iron Defenders, pretty much dog-shaped metal beings imbued with magical life force."
"So is there any easier way to kill an Iron Defender than what we just did?" Asked Redrick, irritated.
"Not really. They are just like a normal dog, just a little sturdier. Blast it with magic, beat it to death, hack it to pieces… they all work just fine."
"Goblins, Iron Defenders, and an unknown spellcaster, which might be a dragon, that about sum it up?" Asked Red.
"Yep."
"Alright! Let's get killing!" A vicious smile spread across Brandon's face
Alright, what did you think? This is my first D&D based fic, advice, criticism, or just comments, all welcome.