Sept 29th, outside Cidan
COOKIE
He sipped a bit from the ladle. Hmmmmm... a bit more basil, perhaps? He looked over the small packets of spices that had been his contribution to the list of things Corbel needed to provide to them, selected two, and carefully tapped in just... the... right... amount. Tasted again. Perfect. A simple but tasty soup, just the thing to accompany the heavy main course he was preparing.
The scent of the geld meat told him that was near finished. He had little experience with the odd, woolly creatures that inhabited Pranan, but some simple experimentation had revealed it to be heavy, slightly fatty meat, with a strong but not unpleasant taste. He had decided on a spit, turned for several hours over the campfire, to eliminate some of the fat and grease, then encrusting it with pepper, bread crumbs, and herbs, wrapped in leaves and baked in the coals of the fire. He was confident it was the right procedure. Since it took several hours, the rest of the group was ready to eat shoe leather and like it.
Dom and the Sid were in a corner talking. The Don was looking a little stiff. Not surprising, given that the man was sleeping with a rock as a pillow. Cookie sighed. These humans. Sometimes, he thought that the fact that (prepared correctly) they made tasty little morsels was their only redeeming quality. Certainly, you could not give them high marks for intelligence. Or appreciation for the finer things in life.
"Dinner be ready yet?" asked Glorm, hopefully.
Cookie glowered at him. "Fine meal take time. You want fast, I find some dung beetles for you to eat."
"Just asking, just asking" said Glorm quickly, retreating quickly to where the Sid and the Don sat conversing.
Cookie turned back to his meal, seemingly absorbed. In fact, it just needed a little more time over the fire, giving him the opportunity to listen to Glorm talk to the other two. They clearly did not have a clue on the acuteness of a Troll's hearing, like so many other things.
"Well, be your sleep pleasant?" asked Glorm. Glorm had quickly realized what the two Saltans were up too with the Moonstone.
The Don frowned. "Not entirely, but I'm not really convinced it means anything. Certainly, nothing of the precognitive or omnipresent qualities that have been reputed for the Bradford's device... and yet..." Glorm and the Sid looked at the Don intently. "And yet, there is something. A dream, perhaps, instead of a vision." Dom's eyes focused on the distance while he frowned and tried to pull the vague images out of his subconscious, where they stubbornly retreated each morning as was the case with most dreams. "A bowl. A bowl the size of a mountain, but turned upside down... a crater. A small lake in the center, with a few rock outcroppings here and there. And the sound... chanting, a deep, ritualistic moaning, deeper than a human voice, almost like the rumble of an earthquake. Then quiet, and a different sound... something you felt in your head, in your bones, but not with your ears. Mist sprung up from the lake, small tendrils like vapor on a cold morning, then thicker, until it was more like billowing fog. And out of the fog, on the rocks in the center of the lake, shapes, huge humanoid shapes with eyes that cut through the mist like a heatbeam through darkness." The Don stopped, turned and stared, as did El Sid and Glorm.
The rumble that made them look turned into the deep throated laughter of Cookie. El Sid, eye raised, glanced at the other two, who shrugged their shoulders. El Sid walked over. "Cookie, by chance, were you listening in on our little conversation?"
Cookie, wiping tears from his eyes, nodded. "And what," continued the Sid, "is so funny, might I ask?"
"You humans. Cookie no need magic visions to tell you what Don sees. Any troll would know."
"Would you care to enlighten us, oh master chef?" asked the Sid, somewhat sarcastically.
"Glassond Hraggle. Calling of the ancients. We wiped puny humans off map of Kom with our gods. That is why you lost war. Glassond Hraggle has only happened a few times in a thousand years, but Trolls will always know the ceremony. Don describes Glassond Hraggle cermony"
El Sid nodded slowly. "Interesting. Not human, elvish, or Urakai. Trollish."
Cookie shook his head. There was still the deeply rumbling of laughter from the troll. "No. Trolls have no magic. Clerical item, maybe, but then I think humans unlikely to be able to use it."
El Sid noted the Troll's obvious comprehension of what the Moonstone was and what they were trying to do with it. This was not the first conversation Cookie had overheard. El Sid sighed and turned to the Don. There wasn't much he could do about it. "Anything else?"
"Yes. At the end, music, unbelievably beautiful. Something like a lyre, but the sound... it reached into your soul." The Don shook his head. "I can't even begin to describe it..."
El Sid noticed that Cookie's muffled rumbling laughter had stopped rather abruptly, and became peripherally aware that the troll was moving forward. The troll walked slowly and purposefully until he stood over the man, and Don looked up into haunted eyes. "Lyre... this is something like the human harp?" The sound of Cookie's voice was a tortured gasp, as if he had to force the words out.
The Don nodded, nonplused. "Yes. Do the trolls use such instruments?"
Cookie looked down at his hands, and shook his head no dazedly. "No, not now. Fingers too big and clumsy to match the old music, and to hear poor imitation is too hard to bear. Trolls have not played such instruments for five hundred years. Ever since the great ones left us after the first war with the humans."
Cookie wandered off, looking dazed. Delrin went to follow, but El Sid shook his head. "Great ones?" asked Delrin quietly.
"A race of super trolls... they are mentioned as being around before the fall, but haven't been seen since. Give Cookie some time, then we'll try to get a little more out of him."
Around the campfire
"Tell me about the Greattrolls, Cookie" asked Fuji. They were sitting around the campfire, finishing up the last of dinner. Cookie had been unusually quiet for the meal.
The large, ungainly troll sighed and scratched his chin. "Long ago, before the time humans call the fall, Trolls held Kom and Grrughull, what you call Tawhiem. Humans had Pranan, Kanday, and Kethem. Trolls had three casts, Greattroll, Troll, and Trollkin."
"Trollkin?" asked Fuji.
"Small trolls, about the size of a human. Not very strong, or intelligent. Kind of slave labor for the trolls." answered the Sid absentmindedly, concentrating on Cookie.
Cookie continued "Some say Trolls and Trollkin descended from Lugrund and Ballistrut, two Greattrolls who angered the gods by desecrating graves of ancestors and were cursed to bear nothing but monsters for children. Great trolls, they were not gods, but close. Humans and all trolls traded, but not much; more through Elves than from one to the other. Great Trolls, however, were clever, and they designed great ships to carry cargo back and forth".
Cookie paused for a moment. "One Greattroll, Vugnew, was a master at the Lyre, but even better at making them. He spent many weeks, months, years, to create Ulurguug, a magic Lyre of great beauty, but even greater music. It was said that when Ulurguug played, time stopped, and trolls would find weeks had passed while they listened. Vugnew came one day to realize the Ulurguug would never be surpassed, and although he loved his creation, he hungered for a new challenge. He thought perhaps the humans have an instrument of music as great as Ulurguug, but different. And so he journeyed on the trade ships to Pranan. There he invited many humans to listen to Ulurguug and offered a great reward to any that could produce more beautiful music."
Cookie paused again, and Glorm said "And what be happening next?"
"A man came, claiming he had a reed instrument that could surpass Ulurguug in beauty and power. In fact, he brought poison darts, fired from the flute, and he stole Ulurguug and disappeared into the night. Vugnew, dying, spoke a great curse as some of the Greattrolls could do on their deathbed, and that night, all the children in the town of Tendut died. The next day, every Greattroll trade ship burned to the waterline."
"And that was the start of the Troll-Human war?"
"No" said Cookie as he shook his head. "But it start the ball rolling, as you like to say. It might have been avoided, but the humans, they did something... something bad. The Greattrolls, they new, but they would not tell us, but sometimes, a band of Greattrolls would come apon one Greattroll, and they would kill him, and grind the body into paste. This caused great unhappiness, for to not bury the bones of one's ancestors..., well, I have told you the story of from Lugrund and Ballistrut. Then, one day, all the Great Trolls, they became very angry. Very angry. And then they gathered the Troll and Trollkin together, and said they must leave. They bid us to hold Kom and Grrughull until their return. And then they were gone. This was just before the start of the fall. After the destruction of Lantol, leaving the ring islands and destroying the human high council, the humans attacked Grrughull. We did not expect it, because the humans had blamed the Elves for what happened on Lantol, and we where pushed back past the Maw of Kom, the mountains between Grrughull and Kom. The humans did not enjoy their victory for long, however, for seventy years later, the Chen Kunda arrived and destroyed what little they had built over that time."
A little later than same evening...
Glorm and Delrin huddled around a rock a few yards from the camp site. They repeated the ritual they had performed every few days for the last month or so. First Delrin mumbled a few sacred words, and scratched a compass in the dirt, and then Glorm would close his eyes while holding Dark Heart at arms length, slowly rotating a full 360 degrees. After a minute he returned to northerly facing and slowly zeroed in on the next piece of the sword. Finally he scratched a line across Delrin's compass. "Nearly northwest. wouldn't you say Delrin?" Delrin meerly nodded, not entirely comprehending what the Dwarf was doing. Delrin headed back to the fire, where Cookie was making dinner, while Glorm unrolled a map and put yet another mark on it. After a few minutes he called Sid over.
"Well Sid, I have some good news and some bad news."
Sid glowered at the dwarf, and said "Spit it out short stuff, I have no time for idle chatter."
"Well the bad news is that the next gem is not in Pranan proper, but further to the north. Of course this is not unexpected, since Pranan is moderately civilized and picked over. The good news is, the gem is not to far from civilized territory. I had feared it would have been well north of Nyquet in the Urakai territory, particularly since a Urakai had the last gem. However, it turns out it is in the black forest to the east of Nyquet. Not a real friendly place I'm afraid, but much more accessible than the Urakai territory. With luck, the party will be tough enough to make a go at the gem next summer. For the moment, however, I vote we keep to our present endeavors."
Sid nodded, and replied. "I think you are correct in your estimation, although, if the rumors of the black forest and its pigs are true, perhaps even next summer may be too soon." On that cryptic remark he walked away.