(G88 09/07/10 BG - AP, ON(GM), GF)
Corrum Korrus Godder-Saunders-Lavius of Kryptgarden
This is the journal of Corrum Korrus Godder-Saunders-Lavius of Kryptgarden. Literacy in the City
Watch of Waterdeep is encouraged and as well as our day reports we also may keep personal logs
if we desire. This will be mine.
To first, describe a little of my background.
I am the third of four brothers, born to Sir Humber Hillary Godder-Saunders-Lavius who is the lord
of a rotting pile of stones and a few hundred acres up north of the city.
My mother is dead.
My oldest brother, Nissa, is now a sea captain of 'The Shaggy Beast' a ship in the city navy and could
be said to be doing the best out of all of us although we won't expect to see him for a while as he
is on a far western station.
My next brother, Elric is a priest of Tyr and has not been heard of for two years since he went north.
My youngest brother is Rollo, who not so long ago went south in search of adventure. The last letter
the family had from him, he had not long arrived in the city of Sasserine.
In my youth I hunted, I drank, I made merry with the castle wenches and the young rakes from the village.
But then, when the family fortune ran out, since none of us had had any employment we had to make
our own ways.
My father had tried to educate us, but the only one it really stuck on was Rollo, the most bookish
of us.
So, my lack of learning meant that I am no better, in terms of employability than a common labourer.
My father pulled some strings with some old friends in the guard and got me a position as a constable,
something I was less than delighted about.
'Don't worry lad', the old man said, 'You'll be sergeant in six months and a captain in a year. Good men
prosper in the watch. I know I did.'
But here I am a year later and I'm no higher up the chain of command than when I started. I'm not sure why
although it might have something to do with my misspent youth.
I share a room in the Dog Ward with another watchman. I go to my work four days every ten day and supplement
my income by working at a smithy not far from here. I have a bit of money set aside for the future, but the
future doesn't look that bright for me now.
I like to think I have a pragmatic and sensible view of the world, but I must say every night I think about
how I miss the old days of when my father would take us all out hunting in the estate forests. How we would
laugh and mock young Rollo when he tried to save the animals rather than kill them. I remember too when mother
was alive. When she died it was like the lights all went out in the castle. Father was never the same again.
I was twelve when she died, and I think this tragic event really shaped the man that I am now. All of us agreed
that I was always the closest to her and the most like her. The others bounced back after a while, but I
spent more and more time hunting in the Kryptgarden forests alone or climbing around in the Sword Mountains.
It made me tough, I suppose, but also lonely and some have said, almost haunted.
After her death, too, that was when father really began to drink heavily. The parties that he threw were famous
in the region, or infamous I should say. They were good times, We converted the main hall into an archery range,
where Nissa got an arrow through the leg in one drunken contest, and we used to race goblins around the lake
until the sheriff complained that it was startling the livestock. We used to, in fact, do anything that took
our fancy.
But then the money ran out, and people stopped coming, and when we all sobered up we realised that the ten year
party had taken a great toll on the estate and the castle.
Nissa joined the navy, Elric the clergy, myself the watch and Rollo.. well, no one ever expected much from him
anyway, but he is a druid of all things, after falling in with the elves.
I still have a certain reputation with people that used to frequent the castle. To most people that know my
father I am 'the boy that once got so drunk he fell in the moat' or 'the boy that let the monkeys escape into
the maids quarters' or even 'the boy that climbed onto the roof of the keep and piddled onto the head Lord Shenan'
Well, I'm not that boy any more. I am a man, I have no money and I dreadfully miss the life I once had. I have
a bad reputation that follows me everywhere and not much in the way of real friends although I have many
drinking companions.
Every so often I see the son of Lord So-and-so or Sir This-and-that, someone that I once trounced at fencing or
beat at 'Hide the Faggot' and they look right through me, just seeing a grim man in a lowly uniform. Sometimes
though, I'll speak to someone of father's generation and they will ask after him. They mean well, but I always
get to thinking that these old men were on hand to help drink the cellars dry but in our time of need they have
gone.
There is a stigma attached to my family I fear.
I hope my life turns around soon, as although I like life in the city watch well enough, someone has to raise
money to look after my old sot of a father and one day repair the half ruined castle. It's what mother would
have wanted.
