Chapter 1

Vinyl

I could feel the bumps in the road as our old, yet sturdy, caravan slowly made its way down along it. We had seen almost no other caravans than ours, which is most likely due to the increasing amounts of ambushes this area has had, on normal travelling merchants. Or, at least that was the intel given to us by our contractor, Bo Radu, one of the heads within the noble Radu family. Well, of course Bo wasn't his real name. I smile a bit to myself, as I remember the day where we realized that Bo was not his real name. "You can't tell folks, your real name, when you are doing what I am" was what he had told us, before he looked at us with an astonished expression, as he realised that we had actually thought it was his real name.
I looked over to Max, our experienced bounty hunter. He was a honored member of the Radu family. It was his fault that we were going out onto this mission. Him, and his connections within the family, were going to make us rich, he had told us. Illegal was the only thing that came to mind as I heard about this quest, which he had been given by the Radu family. Aye, those Radus might be of noble blood, but they are certainly not folks to care for the law very much. Although, even I, have to admit that their way of solving problems is rather.. Effective.

As we hit a large bumb, I suddenly snap out of the flashback, and look around at my fairly large group of comrades in arms. We were all worn down from the journey. We had travelling these roads for weeks now, and everyone, well at least me and my fellow priest, Gluteus, could at least use a nice bed and a luxurious dinner. My thoughts wandered back to my church, which had once been a place of evil and unholy rituals. I had died there, whilst trying to cleanse it from the undead, but apparently that wasn't exactly what my god had in mind for me. My job wasn't finished yet. I had a church to take care of, undead to hunt and evil to purify. My god, the god of healing, was a merciful, yet serious god with no room for laziness or slack. In comparison to Gluteus' god, mine was a damned slave-driver! Gluteus was indeed a priest of Dionysos; The god of alcohol and parties.

I couldn't understand how he had been raised to the rank of a general, but still was so damned undisciplined. I had heard that the priests coming from the hot and merciless Masters Land, which is where he originates from, were infamous for their cruelness and their strict codex. He was the exact opposite. He was a man with a good bit of his life dedicated to alcohol, and the rest dedicated to healing the wounded. That might be what sepperates the two of us the most; I am a priest of war, and he is a cleric, with his life dedicated to healing the injured.
"Sometimes, it's perhaps not your homeland which sculpts you, but your companions, maybe." I mumbled to myself. Well, maybe the fact that he was the son of a very rich general had had a positive impact on him, which reminded me of my own childhood. Those had been the merriest days of my life. And even then, it was doing nothing but hard work and spending time with a poor, but loving family. Then the day came where i gave my body and soul to the Church of Dian Cecht. I had spent 9 years of my life, living in that temple. The other priests were my teachers for so long. But i did miss working with animals, feeling the crops i had sown. And talking with my father. We would normally discuss how we would handle the next years harshness and also my brothers future. I loved my father more than anyone in the world. He had always been there for me and had always understood me. I felt kind of sad for the elves, Arya and Juniper. They had both lost their fathers at an early age. Both were killed by the drow elves, or to some known as dark elves. Now the two elven girls had no one but their mothers left, so the two families had to take care of each other, since they had been friends for a couple of hundreds years, if I had understood their stories correct. I couldn't imagine how it would be living your childhood without a father. But maybe elves didn't really make a difference between fathers and mothers. It was an alien thought, one which made me uneasy. A shiver ran up my spine and i looked up at the sky. There was something about elves which which I did not like at all.

The only sound during the ride was the sound of horse hoofs and the snoring of Grakmir, our dwarven cleric. He did nothing but stare at runes all day, eat, drink beer and then the occasional prayer which caused some divine effect. An outburst of excitement was heard from the gnomish illusionist Barfstick "Oh my, look! A sign!". My face contorted into a grunt as I heard who it was. I didn't really like him. He was an expert of illusions and trickeries, and I can't even count how many times his small tricks have nearly cost the lives of our adventuring party. He informed us in a slightly lower voice, saying that we were near our destination. Brimstone, a small town in the empire of Thyatis. There was a small sign underneath the bigger one. It looked like it said "No halflings beyond this point" but it had been painted over so it was hard to tell. Arya jumped out and drew her knife all the while. I could see a slight express of anger when she began to scratch the paint off. "Let me take a look at this" she said and began scraping off the paint. I grinned at her, getting nothing but a stare in return, probably meaning that she didn't want to hear from me again. I turned serious and informed her "You know, that might be a bad idea"

A small sound came from inside some bushes and I saw Aryas panther rushing out and growling to her. I looked to her my face looking like a big question mark. "About twenty-five men, just a couple of hundred meters up the road. All on horses and all armoured. Probably what we are looking for" she said loudly so we all could hear it. You see, the elf Arya was a druid, and usually had a couple of animals scout ahead for us. Hjurnel drew his might two-handed axe and mumbled something slowly. Probably something about at last getting to smash some skulls in, like always. Dwarves, always complaining. They either got no beer left, they miss styling their beard or their axe is a little rusty. They just keep talking all the damned time. You couldn't concentrate at all with dwarves about. I did not know how Grakmir became a rune-priest, with these clearly missing competences. Gluteus had a warm heart, at least.

I saw Gluteus waking up from the nap he had taken as Sarah, the groups oddball, tried to wake him up. She licked his face, and small strand of saliva ran down his cheek, which gave quite the waking effect. Well, it wasn't for no reason, that she was a shaman, they are generally rumoured to be bat-shit insane. A small bit of craziness doesn't hurt either. I glanced down at my own trusty blade but quickly decided that it wouldn't be wise in this situation. It could be an ally or just some fellow adventurers. We sat in silence as Juniper, our Ranger, drove the caravan further up the road. With some luck, they would just think we were indeed a caravan with special goods, since we had a hippogriph and we all looked like experienced warriors. That was the plan we had relied on. Special wares need special protection.

We met up with the large group of strangers after two minutes or so, and a quick glimpse could tell us that they were one of those groups we had been looking for. These so-called death patrols were formed to exterminate any halflings they were able to scrounge up, who had been encroaching into the territory of 'their' lands. Or so was what we had been told. The halflings had been given this land many centuries ago, but the other residents still didn't want to share their lands with the halflings. No one in Thyatis would really enjoy that. People from there had a great hatred towards almost all foreign races. And this had once been a part of Thyatis and therefore they wanted it back. Bo's theory was that Thyatis had sent trained veterans to kill all halflings they were to find and at the same time 'protect' the city against them. So to brush up our mission we had been given in rough strokes, our quest was to kill the death patrols, and slowly give the halflings their land back.

This group of armoured people clearly did look like one of these groups we were told of. Arya ignored them as she continued scraping off the paint. I cringed as I saw it, and had to admit to myself, that they probably wouldn't look kindly on people travelling with elves. My sword slowly slid into my hand, already close to be fully drawn. One of the men from the approaching group broke away from the patrol and began riding towards us. He looked at Arya quickly and must have thought she was the leader. "Miss, could you tell me, what you are doing to our sign". She gave him a disgruntled look, and stared at him and, before saying with a thick accent "Aye, I saw that sign of yours had been painted over. I just thought i should scrape it off. We don't want none of those filthy halfling bastards here, will we", she quickly lied, to gain the soldiers trust. The man talking to Arya, clearly the one in charge, answered with a grin "Ah, you're right." He says as he frowns his brows at the sign, which had been target for vandalism. "Thanks for that then. But i have to ask what your task here is. It looks like a caravan but you guys look like a tough bunch, eh? So what are you exactly doing in these parts of the land". Juniper answered slowly "Yes sir, we are indeed a caravan, but we've been friends for a time and were bringing some quite valuable items with us. And a few weapons too. Don't want anyone to get their hands on them, right?" I sighed. She had, as always, answered poorly and the caravan now had to be inspected. If she just had avoided the word weapons. The only word which could make us lose control of this situation. And the worst part was, that Grakmir was in there. Thyatis don't like the dwarves. I silently loosened my sword, once again, ready to draw it. "I, unfortunately, have to check what you got in back there. Can't have you bringing weapons to the halflings now would we." Juniper slowly called "Oh, you boys can be at ease, it's just one spear and a single dagger. Not much. The real stuff is something else. Rare wines and art. And it's not even dangerous.ยดยด She joked. I looked on her, trying to get my eyes to tell her to shut up. She glimpsed at him quickly and tried to end the conversation quickly "Look, we got to go. Need some money to buy food for the trip home". The Armoured man seemed to agree and took a quick look into our wagon. Weirdly enough, he didn't seem to see the dwarves. "Okay men. It's time to leave for the mountains again. Let's go" The commander barked at the rest of the men. They slowly began riding towards the mountain clearly worried about Sarah, as he had stared at them not having said a single word yet. I heard one of them call him a freak, as they rode away. A smile crept unto my face. If they knew what our mission really were, they wouldn't have been so calm. But this is not the place to be fighting.