Dwarvenheld

Dwarvenheld
Followed	cordir

Current Description:

Once upon a time there were some dwarves with bad teeth. Too much battlebread and not enough fresh fruit, maybe, or perhaps they'd gotten so enamored of their gold that they'd been gnawing on it. Now ordinarily any self-respecting dwarf would have replacement teeth made out of gold - what else? But these dwarves were cheap little twits and didn't want to go to the expense. One of them had heard of wooden dentures, but they reasoned that ordinary wooden dentures would be made out of ordinary-sized trees, and that might work for Big People but can you imagine trying to shove an ordinary sized tree into a dwarven mouth? Of course you can't. At least, if you can, you certainly don't want to be the dwarf. They decided they needed _little_ trees. But how to find them? Trees don't grow on trees in Dwarvenhold Cavern, and the ones in Whitefrost are all full-grown. At that moment, some unlucky perp got caught by the roaming Patrolguards, and they yelled the usual 'Protect the innocent! BANZAI!' nonsense. The assembled bad-toothed dwarves gasped as one and promised themselves never again to badmouth the patrol as useless. "Bonsai trees, of course, of course..." they said to each other.

So they set out to the Icy Plains to search for bonsai trees. Don't ask why they thought bonsai trees grew in the Icy Plains. These are the same dwarves who didn't realize that an ordinary sized tree could be cut into dwarf-sized dentures, after all. They battled through storms and polar bears and other nastiness, but found no bonsai trees. At last, discouraged, they turned back towards home. But on the path behind them, they found a gnome baby lying in the snow. It was small and ugly, but then so were they, so they felt an affinity for it and picked it up by one leg to look at it more closely.

At that moment a huge polar bear attacked. The dwarf holding the baby, having nothing better to do and being surprised out of his limited dwarven senses in any case, hollered and swung the baby at the bear. The baby, woken up by all this unpleasantness, opened its little baby gnome mouth and shrieked a giant-sized cry. This shocked the bear enough that the other dwarves then had time to grab their trusty axes and lop off the bear's noggin. The dwarves, impressed, decided on the spot that the ugly gnome baby was an excellent good luck charm and battle totem, and took turns carrying it with them wherever they went.

Not being the creative sort, they couldn't think of a name for the baby, but they had to call it something, especially as it got older and started talking ("Hey look out, it's a - why are you swinging me at - aaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!"). Since the kid's legs were way too short to keep up with them, they had to continute carrying him with them, held by one dwarf or another. So they settled on Dwarvenheld, and never came up with anything better. It made them think of home, anyway.

What with this and that, they never did get back home. They just kept stumbling into one adventure after another, but as long as they had the gnome with them, their luck in battle held good. Over the years they began to worship him, and the dwarves whose job it was to hold him up became very proud of their station.

But all happy times must come to an end. One evening while they were camping in the Deepwood, there was an accident involving two pieces of battlebread, someone's denture travel-case, and a goat. When the carnage was over, Dwarvenheld and his two carriers were the only ones left. Fleeing the scene in their panicked grief, they came to Seaside just as the ship was about to leave. They decided they needed to completely relocate to have a chance of recovering from their traumatic loss, and convinced the captain to let them on for one-and-a-half price, since they wouldn't take up much room. Dwarvenheld and his dwarves settled in Gla-Shorn for a bit of peaceful diamond mining; the dwarves may have had ideas about extra-hard dentures, since the wooden ones kept wearing out with the least bit of gold-gnawing. Dwarvenheld began to manifest some of the godly powers the dwarves had long ascribed to him, and went to the clerics for teaching. This helped, but when his usual adventure-magnetism began to show up again, he realized that without the support of all the dwarves, his luck and few skills couldn't be enough to pull him through. Being swung by a dwarf is one thing, but actually trying to fight while being held up by two of them is quite another. The three of them went to the warriors, who at first nearly fell over laughing but then became intrigued by the challenge of teaching two dwarves and their gnome cargo how to fight well.

Dwarvenheld wishes to worship a god because he doesn't understand his own powers and feels he needs a higher power to guide him. He doesn't know where he came from or how he got there; the dwarves told him the story of how they found him, but that doesn't exactly explain a whole lot. He thinks Fate must have had a hand in it, since no other explanation works.

Personal Timeline:

[ 10] Dwarvenheld: Level 8 warrior
Mon Aug 7 16:15:49 2000
To followers of: Cordir
1hp, whee, 5 pracs, no train, some more moves for my short gnome legs