Day 3

Morning

It occurred to me this morning. The village where I had earned my coin to pay the rent for the room in N'Ras' inn - as far as I can tell it is in the middle of nowhere. Why would anyone build a settlement so far from other civilisation? A strange sensation came over me as I pondered the question. How could I wonder about living away from civilisation when the Teeluw have lived without contact from outside the forest for as long as our history records? Still, we had the benefit of being hidden in the trees with enough resources to survive comfortably on. The villagers to the east have to go into the wilderness to their north to hunt for food and, as I found out yesterday, there isn't much food to be found there. I shall have to ask N'Ras this morning why the village is so distant from anything and why his inn is so distant from the village. Not one other person has been to the inn in the time I have been here. Surely this inn can't be the most fruitful way of making a living.


Afternoon

I spoke with N'Ras over lunch. He told me that hundreds of years ago Dwarves used to mine the nearby mountains for precious gems. Humen who regularly traded with the Dwarves built the settlement so that they could sell the gems to other Humen at a higher price than they bought them for. For years it went on until the Dwarves learned that they were being taken advantage of by the villagers. There was a battle and many of the villagers were killed. Those who remained still traded the gems, but they made no profit. The Dwarves took everything of value from the Humen.
Eventually the mountain became dry and the Dwarves had nothing left to mine. Some of them moved out of the mountain and lived in the village with the Humen. The rest died off in the echoing halls of their dark and lonely kingdom.
N'Ras told me that there were no true Dwarves left - they had bred with the Humen until all their distinguishing traits had been diluted. Nonetheless, nearly every family in the village, as well as N'Ras' family, had Dwarven ancestry.


Eve

With all the coin I had from catching the birds yesterday I did not need to go into the village to find work. Instead I helped N'Ras with his trees before he tried to teach me how to bake an apple and pear pie. But my mind was not on the lesson. Something had been nagging at me all afternoon. Why had the Dwarves that stayed in the mountain died out? They had managed well enough before. What had changed? Was it because too many had left for the village? I couldn't see why that would have such an extraordinary effect.
I began to plan a little exploration.

The battle between the Dwarves and the cheating Humen.