It was an evening much like any other. The sun was sinking slowly over the harbor, bathing the dock district in a golden glow. The dwarven dock workers had just finished for the day, and had taken solace in the many taverns and pubs that bordered their center of work. Ah, there's nothing like a cold pint of mead after a long, hard day's work. A gnomish trading caravan was also in town this particular evening, and so the taverns were even busier than normal, serving out the bittersweet brew made from fermented honey and sundry spices.
Behind one tavern, a tall, but very human leaned casually against the wall as he idly tuned a few strings on his lute. It was nearing time for him to make his entrance and perform for this tavern. He had been offered a moderate sum for this performance, and he hoped that the dockworkers would feel generous after a few pints and grace his music with some silver as a reward. Just another day in the life of an itinerant teenage bard, nothing special, but it was still a fine day. Arathamus enjoyed his profession, and he particularly enjoyed the perks. Despite his age of seventeen, free drinks for entertainers were the standard in this port city, and indeed throughout the entire dwarven kingdom. Heck, after enough of them, even the dwarven ladies looked pretty fine to him. At least, he thought they were ladies… It was always hard to tell, what with the beards and all. Arathamus sighed heavily to himself before kicking open the kitchen door and entering the tavern from the servant entrance.
Arathamus opened up with a lively song touting the glories of sailing the high seas, and followed it up with a song about tossing drunken sailors in the brig of a ship until they sobered up. Really juvenile stuff, but the dwarves ate it right up. The dwarves didn't' mind working on the docks and loading ships, but they much preferred to leave the sailing to humans and the occasional sea-faring elves. The night wore on and dwarves and gnomes and humans flowed in and out the doors of the tavern like the wind through the trees. Arathamus filled the salt air with tales of love and danger, weaving melodies through the tavern and blending some slight magic in that seemed to make his tip jar continue clanking with the addition of coins of various worth. He sowed unto the salt air lyrics to make it even saltier, and bawdy limericks set to melody that would make a sailor's face turn red and a monk hang his head in shame. Arathamus played and sang long into the night, and took full advantage of the free drinks. By close to midnight, there was a pile of empty mugs tossed wantonly next to the stage, and Arathamus felt as though he was playing better than he had ever done before. Then suddenly, it happened, the one thing that made his blood boil and turned his vision red. Over the din of the crowd, and cutting straight a thoroughly thrashing lute solo came a lone, high pitched voice.
"YOU SUCK!!"
Arathamus kept playing, using every fiber of his being to attempt to concentrate on the melody.
"GET OFF THE STAGE!!"
He now starting plucking a contrapuntal bass line on the lute's lower strings, trying to use the added need for concentration to drown out the heckler. He hated hecklers. He hated them with a venom that would melt mithril. He vowed to himself not to get riled from some drunken gnomish heckling. He was better than that.
"GOOD THING YOUR MOTHER'S DEAD. IF SHE COULD HEAR YOU NOW, SHE'D DIE ASHAMED!" the taunting continued. Now Arathamus could stand it no longer. He stuck fully diminished chord on his loot and threw up over his back to hang by the rope he used as a strap.
"WHO SAID THAT? WHO THE FUCK SAID THAT? WHICH ONE OF YOU SLIMY LITTLE SHIT EATING OGRE-LOVING COCKSUCKERS JUST SIGNED HIS OWN DEATH WARRANT?" he roared, using what little bardic magic he knew to amplify his voice into a boom that filled the entire room. The silence that fell upon the bar was such that it made a cone of silence spell seem like a thunderclap. The dwarves and gnomes parted ways like grass behind the flight of an arrow, leading straight to one very tipsy gnome.
Arathamus rushed forward and seized the gnome by the shoulders and held him out at arms length. The futile struggles of the gnome went un-notices to the alcohol fueled raging bard. Arathamus pivoted toward the sole window of the tavern and grinned a devilish grin. His green eyes flashed fire as he seemed truly gleeful at the mere though of what he was about to do. Releasing the gnome, he brought his right foot up on a straight line and punted the gnome directly toward the window. The crowd cheered briefly as the gnome made impressive air time, but the cheers melted almost as quickly as they started. In his drunken rage, Arathamus had miscalculated the distance to the window, and instead of punting the gnome out the window with only minor cuts and bruises, the bar echoed with the hollow sounding smack of the gnomish head colliding with the window sill and the audible crack of his neck reverberated throughout the room. Silence fell upon the tavern as the magnitude of what had just transpired slowly sunk in to the beer dulled senses of the patrons.
"OH MY GOD, HE KILLED KEHVREY." One gnome shouted.
"YOU BASTARD!" barked another.
"LET'S GET HIM!" screamed another particularly drunken gnome. This being said, he leapt into what rapidly became a chaotic fray. Reports would vary later, but a consensus could probably agree that anywhere from five to eight gnomish traders would try attacking the bard in retribution, and medical records would later report that as many as fifteen gnomes suffered punting related injuries. Dwarven guards were called in from the watchmen, and it ended up taking several of them to restrain Arathamus. The damage to the bar was extremely severe, and the death toll of gnomes ended up resting at seven, including the first failed punting victim.
The appointed defense attorney tried to lessen the public reaction, mentioning that with the number of gnomes who had been punted; it was truly a small number of deaths in comparison. This however, did not help Arathamus' case very well. Prior to this incident, Arathamus had been on his way to becoming a local celebrity, and his trial turned into a media frenzy. Reports of the bard's gnome-punting spree traveled far and wide throughout the kingdom. While bar fights were not uncommon at all, Arathamus' unique method of fighting the small opponents drew a great deal of attention. In the end, the first murder charge, that of the original punted gnome, was reduced to gnome-slaughter charges on the grounds that he was very drunk at the time, and he was also provoked. The other six deaths were ruled self defense, a ruling that incited tremendous outrage among the families of the fallen.
Arathamus was offered two choices by the dwarven judge who heard his case. First, he could serve ten years in prison doing hard labor, slaving away in the iron mines deep within the mountains inland of the kingdom, or he could suffer banishment from the entire dwarven kingdom, and forced exile to the orcish continent. He would not be allowed back into the kingdom on pain of death. After deeply contemplating these choices for all of two seconds, Arathamus chose banishment and exile. Thus, only two weeks after his eighteenth birthday, he found himself sailing on a human trading ship heading for the orcish kingdom. He had few earthly possessions to his name, and he was heading toward a land that was not only fairly unfriendly to most everyone else, but one of the most chaotic and lawless lands around. A continent filled with orcs, any of which would probably be stronger than him, and that was in the civilized areas. Dark legends of ogres, giants, dragons, trolls, and other frightening creatures abounded. Arathamus thought to himself, "I don't think I've ever been more exited in my life!" Rather than fearing a continent full of dangers, he viewed it as a continent full of people to exploit.
On the third day of the voyage, he was wondering around the deck, trying to shake himself of the swirling feeling in his head. He had never been on a ship before, and found it quite nauseating. After leaning over the starboard railing to feed the fishes his lunch secondhand, he straightened up and nearly bumped into the first mate. The first mate was a giant of a man, standing around six feet six inches tall, a full five inches taller than Arathamus. One would think a man of his height and barrel chested figure would have nothing to fear, however, right now, the mate was peering through a spyglass and showed great worry on his face.
"What's got your knickers in a twist?" Arathamus queried, trying to sound less seasick than he truly was.
"I think it's a pirate ship." The first mate replied.
"Big deal, Arathamus retorted, you guys surely aren't paying that mage of yours for nothing, I'm sure. Anything happens, he'll take care of it." Arathamus tried to quip glibly. His bluff didn't work.
"Not if it's the Shadow Hawk." the first mate replied. "That ship is like alchemist's fire; it's deadly, and it can't be stopped. They kill the crew of any ship they attack, every one of them. And then they leave the passenger's alive." The first mate shuddered.
"Well, if they leave the passengers alive, I guess I don't have anything to worry about then, right? Haha!" Arathamus laughed. "You however, would probably be royally screwed."
The first mate turned to Arathamus and fixed a stare upon him that would make a lesser man faint. Arathamus was not a lesser man, he merely soiled himself. The mate's parting words echoed through his head for the remainder of the voyage. "Tell me, do you know how to sail this ship? Could you do it all by yourself, seeing as you are the only passenger here? Believe me, there are worse things in this life than being run through with a pirate's rapier."
Luckily for both Arathamus and the crew of the ship, whatever pirate ship the mate may have seen never caught up to the vessel, and they arrived without incident several days later on a small orcish port city.
Taking deep breath of the foul air, Arathamus coughed violently and then straightened up. He gathered up his few belonging and stepped boldly off of the gangplank, and promptly fell into the murky brine below. Finding a ladder used for debarking off of small rowboats, he climbed up back onto the pier and shook himself off. With murky, smelly water still dripping from his hair, he sallied forth into the small city, and almost immediately slipped and fell in a large pile of horse manure. Enduring various other sundry humiliations and painful pratfalls, Arathamus found himself that evening bedding down in a stable where he had snuck in after the stable hand had left for the night. As he curled up on a pile of only moderately soiled hay, a lone tear ran down his cheek as he closed his green eyes and passed out into the sleep of the depressed.