Campfire Tales I

Erky Timbers shares the following story over the campfire...

"We gnomes are a diaspora. We used to have homes in the earth and forest dens, but many of those were split by the Sundering. Now we are often itinerant, tinkerers, toymakers, jewelers. My father was a priest of the shady variety, selling watered-down potions and “elven” charms carved from orc firewood. I was raised believing religion was a long con, which makes it funny that here I am devoted to the Light.

I learned simple magics from my father, and from his contacts I learned how to network. So when I was afflicted by a basilisk’s petrifying gaze, I felt confident someone could cure me. But they all sold snake-oil, when ya boil it down, and I was shivering in a camp one night on the way to the Elven healers of Arden when some clerics of Light came upon us.

My father was still trying to shill ‘em when one wandered the camp and simply talked and investigated, and that’s how he came upon me. After some kind words he called his brother in and they alleviated by cursed blood. (He raises his sleeve to reveal his left arm is a hard, petrified wood-like state. He knocks on it with a hollow thud.) Not soon enough to save me entirely in body, but certainly in soul.

Ever since, I’ve been thinking, we’re all people wandering in the dark. I left my father that day and joined the Temple of the Light to help those like me: the homeless, the lost, the dying. Yeah, I’ll join the heaviest coin purse or those with a cause, like you had, going to the Library of Gevurah. But I’m simply trying to survive now to make sure others get the chance, too."