"Hindsight is Elven, but Foresight is Dwarven"
Today, this saying is bandied about by the Dwarven race as a moniker of pride. They understand it to mean that only Dwaves look to the future, and build things which would last the thousand ages. Unfortunately for my less learned collegues, they don't understand the full etymology of the phrase.
First of all, the phrase was not started by Dwarves, as is currently held, but by Man. Second, it was not a touchstone of the Age of Myths, but rather dates back all the way to the Age of Heros and the 2nd century P.C. Thirdly, it was not a matter of pride, but of ridicule. In the first age, Dwarves had a tendency toward near-sightedness. While this did make them capable of extremely intricate work, it carried over many times into their personalities. They would embark on mad, foolish ventures, just to say that they did. In a way, the ancient Dwarves were more foolhardy than todays Men.
Which would probably explain why so many of the Ancient Dwarves got themselves killed.
The Dwarvish tendency to barrel headlong into uncharted realms and new enterprises has served us well in the long run, but only after years of natural selection weeded out all but the very most quick witted and intelligent. For example; there exists almost no written record of the earliest Mountainhomes, which today would seem daft. The Mountainhomes dotted many mountains and even some plains and tundras. Surely there would be record? No. The dwarves of that age were mostly illiterate, and those who did write, wrote in either iconographs or highly pidgin runes which sprang up based on individual preference. It was not until I recovered the record of Sebshoskeshan that an accurate cross-section of life in the Mountainhomes could be explored, almost eightteen centuries after its founding.
For the purposes of clarity, all footnotes by the author (Urist McHaistal, myself) will appear italicised for ease of reading.
For purposes of metafiction, all footnotes by the author (JacobGreyson), will appear underlined in some vain attempt to ward off confusion.
(11/13) --(For simplicities sake, I have translated the archaic month names into their modern calendar equivalents)
I found this ledger today, prised from the hands of a Man we found dead in the swamp. I cannot read its contents, ruined by poor penmanship and at least months of wet, but this ledger isn't about the Man's past. It is about our own.
We have been betrayed. If nothing else survives but this account, know that. The Goblin, our once prized rivals and trading partners, have lost themselves to madness. In days of my youth, the greenskins were greeted with wide arms and expensive goods of trade, for they alone of all other races shared our affinity for creation after the Cataclysm -- I was surprised and elated to find a reference to the Cataclysm from one so temporally close to it. -- but now? They have surrendered their erudite ways and become barbarous. The demons are to blame. I wish I knew where they came from, so I could send them back to hell, but that is idle wishing.
Once, my own Mountainhome hosted thousands, which was a mighty deed so soon after the Cataclysm. Now, though, only thirteen survive for sure. Myself and eleven of my dwarfish kind. One human. One goblin, who denounced his savage kind.
There is irony in that. We recieved more succor from a goblin, who now are our sworn enemies, than we did from our own Dwarfish kin.
Lagamasnadar, the erudite goblin, now lies wounded, possibly dying. This forest, nay, mire, is as treacherous as the dwarves who claimed they would come to our aid and then abandoned us. He fell from a small defile and dashed himself on the stones. At the moment, the Man, a woman for her breast and beardlessness, is creating a litter for him. Oh, what cruel fate she must find in order to have been trapped so far from her own kind when the onslaught began! She grumbles in her human tongue, but I know she sees her best survival with us for the time being. The others look to me, now. Absurd. I am just a miner. I was born to swing pick, not lead my betters. Still, we need safety. If they look to me to create it, then I must.
(11/25)
Our numbers dwindle. Lagamasnadar succumbed to his injuries two nights ago. While we wanted to give the last sane goblin in the world a proper burial, we dared not tary long. He now rots in a tiny tomb I dug for him in the soil. It is a pauper's grave, but still, a grave. Others were not so lucky.
Men came through the woods yesterday. At first, we were ecstatic, a reprieve from this hellish wandering. But these were Men of foul intent. They struck down my long time companion Egen, and carried away our own human woman in chains, her weeping pitiously as they went. I do not envy her fate. We are ten, now. Ten, out of thousands. I would write more, but this ledger has already been wet enough for its lifetime.
(12/12)
Finally, some good has come of this dreadful mire. We found a wagon stuck in the bog. Bones of dead Men lay about it. A dire sign, but we needed to rest our weary legs, so we set about as we do best: We fixed the wagon. Its wheels, useless in this swampy terrain, were struck off and runners were put in their stead. It will be a hard pull, but finally we can defend ourselves without loosing all we carry with us to the bog. Since we have no draft animals, our strongest will take turns drawing the cart as we move, ever east. Ever deeper into this terrible place.
(12/20)
Fate must hate our kind. A distemper has afflicted us. Some died quickly, others linger still, but now there are only four ablebodied Dwarves. Those that still stand are myself and three other of the naked-cheeked 'abominations'. Those that died were left to sink into the swamp, to my shame. Nobody would dare touch them even enough for burial. Two more, breath rattling in their throat, now share the wagon with our supplies. Foolish to fear touching their corpse, but not let the yet dying rest next to our precious food, but I haven't the heart to leave the sick behind.
--Now a reference to 'smooth-cheeks'. While now in the nineteenth century it is common and fashionable for a dwarf to be shaven (I only grow my own beard by negligence, not racial pride), in these early days after the Cataclysm, it was considered distinctly unDwarfish to bear a naked face. I wonder if Founder Effect came into effect to make these less hirsuite Dwarves the standard?
(12/28)
My worry was for nothing. She has died and been rolled into the swamp. With that, our numbers are five in total. We count one miner (myself), one forger, one cook from the noble kitchens (when such a thing mattered), a mechanist, and a carpenter who has recovered from this plague. There is good news of a sort, though. We have entered a realm suffused in a thick fog. I can scarcely see this ledger at the end of my arm, so any attempt at pursuit by the demon-maddened goblins is doubtless doomed to failure. I only hope that my pathlaying will not become obvious here. If others survived the slaughter, they will need to follow my path, and laying here so that one marker can be seen from the last might prove impossible. It would also help if I knew where I was going to stop. As it stands, I doubt we can make it much farther before we need to stop. Our stock of alcohol is getting low, and I do not trust the water that pools at our feet.
(01/01)
We can go no further. Our wagon has broken such that none know how to fix. Worse, it did so beside frighteningly unnatural water. The pond at my side boils even now, as though --(the text abruptly changes mid sentence) We are not alone in this Vulgar Forest as I thought. A mason, exiled from the Mountainhomes a year ago has been ekeing an existence with the aid of a local from another clan, who tends farms. The mason was exiled for failing to produce Stirling Silver puzzle boxes, which is so absurd that it reminds me strongly of the life we have all lost. He also had supplies we lacked, namely picks and a rusting but still workable axe. The farmer tells us that he suspects a deposit of magma under the pond, but digging would be impossible with their numbers. This is the end of the line. The others will find us in time, at Sebshoskeshan, the Mire Flames.
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Topic: Sebshoskeshan "Hindsight is Elven, but Foresight is Dwarven" (Read 13631 times)