[center][h2]The Tale of Nîrn, son of Khîrn[/h2][/center]


Listen, good folk of Dukha! Come listen to the sorry tale of Nîrn the wanderer, who drags himself from mountain to mountain until his creaking legs will at last give way. Listen and I will tell you why I have come to you from far north, why I roam so wide though my back is more stooped than an old highland tree. Don’t be awed by my grey and heavy beard or by my wizened eyes: little more than forty winters have passed since I was born! Aye, just so, though you wouldn’t give me less than a hundred. Listen, then, how this came to pass.


It was some three years ago that we set out from Vonde for the last time, me, still young and hardy then, Ibar my brother, not much older, and Andró the [abbr=‘kin of stone’, a golem]stenzhik[/abbr], who had carried the packs of Khîrn my father before me. For the last time, I say, because of us three who left, only I ever came back. Aye, this mourning-bead you see on my beard is for my brother, earth be light for him. What about the other one, you ask? Listen, and I will tell you about it.


We set out, then, to do as we had always done - to find rare and precious things to trade. We would go down into the valleys and up the steepest mountain-paths, Ibar and I, to find the glittering vein-stone, the caves where the drowsy ore hides like a coiled snake and the snowflake-flower that chases away fever. Sometimes we would find the cold carcass of a foolish [abbr=‘earth-serpent’, a Tecipactli]orzmiy[/abbr], and then it was a day of celebration for us, because you know how many want a piece of those! I see you shake your heads and snicker. ‘To go far and wide, ready to give up your skin for a gain?’ you say, ‘This must be the last of the [abbr=‘the Fourfold’; refers to the legend of Four-Peaks]Chtviertne[/abbr]!’ Well, that was how we lived, and how our father had lived before us. Some have their caves and tunnels, others have the winds and the valleys like sun-lakes. That’s how it is.


Before, we had oft gone west, where the orzmiy breach the most and where their scales sometimes lie on the earth like snow. But that time we went north, for we would hunt the crescent-horned mountain goats that were said to live there, and bring back their rare pelts and skulls. We crossed many a gulch and mountain, and for many a day we searched every slope, but though we were in the roaming-grounds there was not a single goat to be seen. Just when we had lost hope and were about to turn back, though, we did find something else.


As we hunted and tracked the goats, we had pushed further north than we or any of our kin had ever roamed before. On the last day we were to chance the land, we rounded the foot of the Five-Finger Mountain, and then, as true as I'm standing here, we saw two suns in the sky! Aye, so it was. No, we didn’t have cave-brew in our waterskins, and we weren’t just dazzled after coming out of the shade. There was the sun up in the sky, and beyond the mountain, over the next crest of ridges, there was a little light shining. Little, I say, but for us to see it from so far away, it must have been brighter than a wildfire. Yet most wondrous was that, when night came down, it did not fade as the sun did, but stayed burning with its own white flame like a star fallen from above.


What would you have done, had you been with us then? We broke camp, and the next day we began to climb the further ridges, to see what it was behind them that shone so. Ibar thought that it would be a vein of strange ore, open to the sky, richer and more potent than anything anyone had ever seen before. Me, you may laugh, but I was certain it was a gemstone. Why I thought it would’ve been bare open, I couldn’t tell you, but had you seen its light you, too, would’ve doubted than anything less clear than adamant could cast it.


The ridges were tall and steep, but our feet were light with impatience, and so in a few days we had crossed them. But what we saw then! By [abbr=Earthheart]Orjarz[/abbr], may the earth swallow me if I lie, because you won’t believe me otherwise!


We saw a mountain, taller than any around, indeed taller perhaps than any I’ve ever seen before or since. We would have spotted it from much further away had it not been for the light, which sat right on its summit. It could have been a glacier, you say, but nay, no glacier shines on its own at night.


There was something in that mountain that almost made us abandon our curiosity and turn away, had we been wise enough. It did not stand, as mountains do, shoulder to shoulder with its sisters, but alone in their circle, as if it had grown from seed rather than stone. And it was all black, glinting and glossy like the smoked rock that the orzmiy sometimes bring from under the earth. There was not a single tree on its slopes, not a spot of snow. Not even birds approached it, though we gave it no mind then. It chilled our hearts a little when we looked at it, but the light called to us, and it had to be thousands of the clearest gems, waiting at the top of that strange mountain! It could only be a gift from the gods to the bold, and we would turn to stone before we proved unworthy of it!


In three more days, we were at the foot of the black mountain. As true as I stand, half of it must have been smoked stone! It grew out of the live rock in a way I had never seen. Had there been more of it, we could not have tried the ascent, smooth and slippery as it was. But among it there was also much basalt and dark granite, lying in coarse slopes and ledges that struck out like wood-fungi from a tree, and strange though it was to see them close like that, we were glad to have a footing in them. So on the fourth day we gathered all the moss and herbs we could find, we filled our waterskins, for we were not certain we would find open streams, and set to climbing.


It was a strange thing, I will tell you, to climb that mountain. From below it looked tall and forbidding, so much that your legs would start to ache as they just imagined the pains of scrambling up its side. But once you started, it went so easily! From ledge to ledge, you could go climbing seven, eight hundred spans in a day, whistling all the while, as if you were walking downhill. Then, when the sun began to set, all the weariness would hit you in one punch, and you’d be left there, panting, your legs buckling under you. Every day that moment came a little earlier, and only later I found out why that was. And why? Listen, and I will tell you.


We had been climbing another three days, and were already quite a bit above two thousand spans, when I became annoyed with my beard. Now you see that it is long and flowing, white and grey like the winter, but then it was thick and brown, and I kept it cut to my chest, so it would not hamper me in our travels. But it was always very fine and smooth, as that of all goodly folk should be, and so it surprised me that it should be tugging and itching so. I looked down, and it was terribly tangled, as if I’d been wandering the woods for a week. I called to Ibar, who walked ahead, and asked him, ‘Hoi, what’s the trouble with my beard?’


He looked back, and since he was straight against the sun I could not see him well at first. He looked a bit, and I thought it was strange he took that long, because we weren’t very far apart, and then he said, full of surprise, ‘By all the gods, your beard is grey!’


I did not believe him, and came closer so he could see better; but when I did, I saw him too, and what a sight! His face and hands were wrinkly like dried goatskin, his beard was wild, almost to his legs, and streaked grey and white, and his eyes were squinting and watery. He saw the look on my face, and I saw the one on his, which told me that I must have looked little better. Then we both turned back to look at Andró, who trudged behind. He had been walking slower and slower as we climbed, and now that we looked at him attentively, his shell was all worn and full of tiny cracks.


We looked at each other then, and you must’ve already understood what we both thought. It was the mountain, that terrible Lone Mountain! Now we understood all too well why we had seen no living thing on its slopes. It was cursed, or maybe something dwelt on it that stole our strength in the night as we slept; we did not care to know.


We hurried down as fast as our legs would take us, but where the ascent had been light and easy, the way back was a maze of danger. We had lost threescore years in a few days, and rested and eaten little, hoping as we did to reach the beguiling light faster. Slopes that had been a joke to us before now threatened to break our necks if we did not watch our aching feet, and that damnable slippery smoke-stone was everywhere.


Worse still, while we had barely noticed as we grew feebler on the way up, we now felt our forces leave us with every step. We had to bind our beards, because they grew so long that they got tangled in our legs.


There was less than a day left to the ground, and I, who was still stronger and sprier, had gone ahead, when from behind me I head, ‘Nîrn, help me!’


I looked, and there was Ibar, clinging to the edge of a treacherous crack, where he had slipped and perhaps broken a leg. I hurried to him, but I was worn and weak, and before I was even close my brother lost his grip on the smooth rock and fell into the fissure.


Some of you will know what it is to lose a brother. You can imagine how it was then, when I ached all over, when the life had been stolen out of me. I sat there, and I don’t know if I would’ve moved before I was too weak not to starve and be ground down by the wind to a pile of bones.


But I felt stony hands lift me then, and carry me down the slope. Andró was pitiful to look at, all chipped and falling apart, and he had lost both legs below the knee, but I was all skin and bone by then, and even as he was he carried me easily, until the very foot. Then he stumbled on his half-legs, and broke into four pieces as he fell, but from there I was soon on even ground. You see the second mourning-bead, near the one for Ibar? This I wear for him. One does not usually wear a mourning-bead for a stenzhik, but Andró acted like a true brother then, and as a brother I will honour him.


So shun it, good folk, shun that lone black mountain! Don’t go looking for its tempting light! What does it matter what treasures are up there? You will be dead long before you see them. It has swallowed my brothers, and chewed me up and spat me out like this, as you see me now. I see some of you look to each other and whisper, as I have seen others do in every town. They were unlucky, you say, but if we try, maybe we will find a shortcut, a safe way up, and see what is at the top. Don’t gamble your heads on it! That place is unholy, and I, Nîrn, son of Khîrn, have come to warn you.


When you see two suns in the sky, when you see a light among the peaks at night, turn away, and do not look back!




[hider=Summary]


Nîrn, a wizened wandering dwarf, is staying in the town of Dukha in the Bones. He tells the story of how he, with his brother Ibar and their pack-golem Andró, once found a strange mountain of dark stone and obsidian with an alluring light shining from its summit day and night. Believing it to be some great treasure, the three try to climb to the top, only to belatedly find that they grow dramatically older and feebler the further they go, and even faster as they hurry down. Ibar and Andró die as they try to escape the mountain, while Nîrn survives, but is aged far beyond his time. He has taken it upon himself to go from town to town and warn all of dwarvenkind about the Lone Mountain's dangers, but it's hinted that, as cautionary tales do, his words tend to inspire the most reckless of his listeners to try and brave it themselves.


[/hider][hider=Vigor]


Iqelis starts with 5 vigor.


-1 gained from God Week participation.

-2 spent on the Lone Mountain, which lures the adventurous with its mysterious light and steals the lifetime of those who try and climb it.


He ends with 4 vigor.



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