Letter to General Asmel KedrithGeneral Kedrith,
I wonder do you remember when I sat on your knee, listening to your stories of taming the terrifying creatures of the caverns?
It's been a long time since we last spoke, and even longer since those enrapturing tales enticed me out into world, stalking ferocious monsters. Now, with the hindsight of age and parenthood, I think I better understand your displeasure. My parents were preoccupied with their royal entertainments, and spared little enough thought for their sprawling, multitudinous bloodline. But you, Aunt Asmel - can I still call you that, after all these years? - had no children, and showed more parental concern (and discipline) than my Baron father and consort mother ever did. When I delivered the fatal judgement of our kingdom unto the troll Slatsu, half a century after it rampaged through our lost fortress of Towngloves, I hoped you would be proud. That same desire causes me to reach out to you now, after so long, on a matter of existential importance.
You'll be pleased to hear, dear Aunt, that my monster-hunting days are over. When I slew the emaciated creature which had once been the dwarf Kel Trumpetsinges, something in the wretched thing's final moments stuck in my craw. Should its spawn come to me for vengeance someday, I would face it with mace in hand but without blame in my heart.
No, these past ten years I have settled in Ramparttoned, though my beloved husband Lor stays away in Dipcopper, pursuing his philosophies and musing on truth and beauty.
I do not like him to be there, but he will not be kept from his library. In Dipcopper, our kind mixes freely with the goblins, - they even outnumber dwarves - and none can say whether Dipcopper is in their territory or the dark pits to the northeast be in ours. I trust he keeps up his spearcraft.
I suppose, until these last ten years, I was no different, refusing to hang my mace on the wall. At least our eldest, Sodel, is with him. In any case, having family in such a place, I hear things.
It began in 119, when our eighth and last child, Monom, was abducted. By then, Lor was in deep despair. The goblin scourge has claimed every one of our eight children except the eldest two, and for a while it seemed like the kidnapping of Monom finally drove Lor into paranoia. He began hearing murmurings, he wrote to me. Whispers that the goblins of The Plague of Muscles were preparing war against our dwarven brethren of The Sunken Creation, who by then were weakened by a century of war with the elves of The Violet Canyons. At the time, I though it grief-madness. For all their evil ways, no goblin nation had waged outright war in the history of Ecamo Mare.
But he was right.
The Incinerated War erupted five years later, and wiped The Sunken Creation from existence, leaving only scattered refugees. Those were grim times, Aunt Asmel, as you surely remember.
Thankfully, in the chaos, a miracle: our second-youngest daughter Ingish - presumed dead (or worse) in those five years since her abduction - returned to me. Somehow, she escaped and found me in Ramparttoned.
Barely six years old, knowing only the Goblin ways, Ingish has made great progress in the five years since we were reunited. Slowly, she is becoming the Dwarf she was always meant to be, and though she is uncertain she comes slowly to speech.
Sometimes, though, I wish to Ud she had stayed silent. The things she spoke of were not easy to hear, and her nightmares seem to worsen as she gives voice to the fears which pursue her still. Recently, something she says has troubled me beyond terror.
Ingish speaks of war.
She describes seeing and hearing things which are unmistakeably martial. Soldiers training, armies marching, forges firing in the dark pits and fortresses of The Dread of Ruling, where she was a prisoner five long years. She speaks unclearly, halting and confused, and I did not know if it were the only fever-dream of a traumatised child.
Now, however, my husband's letters have grown ominous once more. Lor writes of war-rumours circulating among the scholars of the library and the patrons of the taverns. Five years ago, those rumours were dismissed as nothing more, and then The Plague of Muscles boiled forth from their pits, sparking The Incinerated War which destroyed a dwarven civilisation.
You know I am loathe to involve myself in the affairs of state, but I have written to great-grandfather many times with no response. Now, then, I reach out to you, General Asmel.
We are a peaceful civilisation, and it is true that the goblins who kidnapped my daughter - The Dread of Ruling - have never waged outright war. But we dwarves thought the Plague of Muscles were a motley gang of skulking thieves, and yet their army destroyed The Sunken Creation utterly. We should be disabused of all illusions: war with goblin-kind is inevitable, and perhaps imminent.
I beg you: speak with great-grandfather. Do not relent; make him see. Seek intelligence of scouts and rangers first, if you will. But drill your warriors hard.
As for me, I will remain here, in Ramparttoned. We have had no abductions here since Ingish was taken ten long years ago, but you must know the kidnappings are a pandemic, a scourge across the land, and by now their thralls surely number in the thousands. 'Twas ever thus, but I cannot accept that our nation's children will continue to bolster the armies of the goblins. I will range for monsters no more, but face them within our own walls; this year, I have again taken down my mace from the wall, in service as the Sherriff of Ramparttoned. Ingish and I will stay here, strengthening our defences and doing our part to prepare for the coming war.
Please, dear Aunt, respond to my letter. I await your reply, fervently hoping my great-grandfather the King will do something.
Love and fealty always,
Mosus "Planksculpture" Shemaran
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Topic: Ecamo Mare, The Universe of Souls (Read 903 times)