A story in pictures:
First, a different sort of dwarf, pious and pure, meets a hurler of javelins, master of thrust. Together they dig up a metaphysical rogue who drags them to the bar called the Pewter Cup and thus begins a party. A friendship is struck between Uzi the Metaphysical Rogue and Beery Buck the Practical Rogue. Uzi buys rounds for the house and is offered the attic of the tavern as a personal apartment.
The pike man Barouck beats all comers at games of javelin tossing.
Torund the small dwarven man of the stone makes the acquaintance of a sad Jory Cobblestone brings the curious fellows to a waterwheel, and a strange mystery of feathers and gemstones.
It is open season on blackbirds.
The spring thaw causes the Falls of Eamon to thunder ever more loudly and brings throngs of folk to Delvers Dale . Erskin the Hoster extracts many tithes from these people.
Following a troop of desperate castle halberdiers, the companions explore behind the very falls themselves, to a cavern, and a stange old statue slowly melting through the eons.
Creeping down a wide stairwell lined with alien obelisks, balanced precariously upon their purchase…
Within the ancient crypt the Royal Guard is entrenched against an avian enemy. Erskin the Hoster is suspicious at first glance but then welcomes the brave warriors. Feathers fly and quarrels sink into flesh as polearms are brought to bear on the underground aviary of the Kenkus.
After a hard fought battle, the heroes descend, weary but desperate to catch the criminal Bargle who has engineered his ingenious escape from the dungeons of the Black Eagle Castle. Only Bargle, who has delved into more forbidden lore and lives of demonologists than any in the realm could possibly have known of this serpentine crypt hidden for endless millenia, the remnants of a race older than the Dwarves, older perhaps than the Gods Themselves. Who knows what fell magics the wizard might unleash?
With cunning and valor the party battles a dread spirit of this ancient place.
Bargle is at last run to ground, the heroes discovered that it is they who are trapped instead. Bargle has them trapped in a tiered pit where his automatons await to crush the competition!
Bargle laughs at his would-be captors. “It took better men than you to flush me out of Old Skull Keep, and it was pure luck that I was taken at the Battle of the Scarp, but lo it was foolish mercy that brought me to these Dungeons of Daha, whose, ancient walls I have long wanted to study. For a cell is no barrier to me, more a veritable library of study. And so I made my plan through this cold winter and now I go to gather my forces and woe betide the Eamonvale!
Bargle casts his magic down upon the rogues in his house, but soon retreats in the face of grim determination. Still, his mirth is unchecked, “Now I go, but, do you dare to follow?”
Indeed they do, for their pride is pricked and how could they do aught? Drifting through the cosmos, high above the mountain of the world, Koshtra Belorn, which calls to them “Can you hear…?”
But lo, a dirty wizard’s trick, they are landed from frozen air to a ledge before a frozen cave and there to face their most deadly foe yet! The White Wyrmling Galdriviiln is struck down in the dawn of life at the dawn of the day upon the high slopes of Koshtra Belorn.
Epilogue: Won from the infamous wizard is the Astral Diamond (returned to the Dwarves by Erskin the Hoster) and a tome of ponderous knowledge titled Mamuthek’s Aperture, and embossed with the recent seal of ownership of the the High Priestess of Demeter, Mother Patria.
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