Lauren Christ
Stories from the Axe and Thistle is a bi-monthly serialization that details the exploits of a D&D 5e campaign as they troll their way through an open-world wilderness. Often outlandish and good for a laugh, these vignettes are told by the Dungeon Master of said campaign, because sometimes humor is the only way to cope with tragedy!
Click here to see the previous installment.
You haven’t been back the the Axe and Thistle for a few nights. You’ve done some exploring of your own and found the forests of Nevarnost to be as beautiful and as terrifying as Luddy described. Roving bands of murderers, packs of bloodthirsty wolves, ghosts, shades, and ghouls all prowl the lawless expanse beyond the safety of Varna and the bubble. You had made it back with only a few minor scrapes, as the people you were traveling with were competent protectors, and it had occurred to you that Luddy might be interested in a story of your very own. Besides, adventuring is thirsty work, and you can think of no better way of unwinding than by spending the night in the Axe and Thistle.
When you stride through the door, you see all the usuals are here. You recognize Galen the blacksmith, the one who had been turned into a bear. You also see Shauna, the sorcerer who had trapped herself in a bubble. She is seated at a table with another woman you recognize as Amelia, the town’s apothecary. You know from visiting her shop and chatting with her that she had once been kidnapped by a manticore. Sometime, you think, you will ask Luddy for that story.
Luddy is at the bar, as usual, but instead of polishing her barglasses – which she does with almost religious compulsion – she is applying her rag to a rather enormous animal scale. It is dark green and the size of Luddy’s entire torso. She has it propped on top of the bar next to a little dish of polishing paste. When she sees you, she drapes the rag over the scale and turns away to quickly wash her hands. You scoot up onto a barstool next to the scale and study it curiously. “What’s this?” you ask her.
“You won’t believe me if I tell you,” Luddy says. She has returned from cleaning herself up and fills a glass for you.
You take the drink with gratitude. “Try me.”
“Hang on, hang on, have you been out adventuring?” Luddy asks. She peers closely at you, likely inspecting the scratches on your face and the dirt on your leather vest, no longer new and stiff but broken in with real use.
“As it happens, I have.” You cannot help the pride that comes into your voice as you tell her this.
“What did you get up to, then?”
You smile shyly. “Tell me what this is first.” You gesture to the scale.
Luddy winks at you. “Very well, but you’re not going to believe me. This is a piece of the natural armour of a Stegosaurus.”
You gape. “It is not.”
“See, I said you wouldn’t believe me,” Luddy teases.
“That’s a dinosaur scale?”
Luddy picks up her rag again, dips it in the polish, and continues rubbing it into the scale. “Yes, a group brought it in years ago, and I’ve had it just lying in the back. I figure it would be nice to display it, maybe mount it somewhere or prop it up on the mantle.”
“Where was it found?”
Luddy grins. “On a dinosaur, of course. Where else are you going to get a dinosaur scale?”
You feel yourself gaping again, and you snap your jaw shut so hard your teeth click together. “Dinosaurs live in Nevarnost?”
“I was surprised, too, to tell the truth. But Nevarnost is, in many ways, a land out of time. Things are living her that haven’t been sighted in the East for thousands of years. Millions, in some cases. There are dinosaurs, certainly, but there are also unicorns and dragons and much, much worse.” Luddy shivers. “To the southwest of here, in the swamps where the Yuan-Ti live, there’s a skeleton larger than this entire building, something like a hundred feet long and fifty feet high. They’re the bones of a monster called a Tarrasque, which no one has ever heard about except in bard’s songs.”
Tarrasque. You have heard of such a creature, indeed in a bard’s song. It was when you were young, but it left an impression on you. Enormous, with talons the length of a horse, the Tarrasque was a monster of legend that destroyed whole towns in a moment and ate people by the dozens. It had hundreds of teeth and spikes along its ridged back, and the sound of its cry was terrifying enough to stop a man’s heart. “They’re not really Tarrasque bones, though, right?”
Luddy shrugs. “I’ve seen them. I think so. Even the skeleton of the thing was enough to scare the hell out of me. I stood in its skull and it was like standing in this room. I can’t imagine something like that moving around with flesh and muscle, but the Yuan-Ti worship it like a god. They say it lived here millions of years ago and that, back then, Nevarnost was a sulfurous miasma.
Their kind, lizardfolk, were the first inhabitants of the continent, but they weren’t like any lizardfolk you’d meet today. The Yuan-Ti living in the swamp are descendants of those first people.” Luddy drums her fingers against the stegosaurus plate. “I can’t imagine living so close to those bones, myself, even if they used to be my god’s.”
It’s quiet except for the crackle of the fire in the nearby hearth and the murmur of the patrons’ muted conversations. Luddy places her hand against the smooth, shield-like plate, looking at it pensively, and then she chuckles. “They think it’ll rise from the dead someday. Can you believe that?”
To be continued…
Stay tuned as we upload a new chapter of the campaign every other week right here on DorkDaily.com!
