"The Promised Place," Verden Leafglow told them. "I have brought you here, as I promised. I have kept my word."
"Promised Place?" The Highbulp squinted around. "Where?"
"Down there," Verden pointed downward with a deadly, eloquent talon. "The Pitt." Not gently, she set Glitch down and said, "This is it. Now cough up my stone."
Tagg crept to the edge and looked down. It was a slope of sheer rock, a vertiginous incline that dropped away into shadows far below. "Wow," he said.
The Highbulp only glanced into the depths, then turned away, an arrogant, scheming grin on his face. "Prob'ly not it," he decided. "Nope, prob'ly not Promised Place. Better try again." With a casual wave of his hand, he added, "Dragon dis — dismiss for now. Highbulp send for you when need you."
It was just too much for Verden Leaf glow. She had taken more than she could stand. "Dismissed? You imbecilic little twit, you dismiss we? Rats!"
Gully dwarves backpedaled all around her, tumbling over one another. Some went over the edge, sliding and rolling away toward the shadowed depths. Others turned to watch them go. "They really movin'," someone said. "That steep." "Smooth, though," another noted. "Good slide."
"Rats!" Verden roared again, exasperated beyond reason and reverting to the vernacular of her charges. "RATS!" Annoyed beyond control, she aimed a swat at Glitch. The Highbulp dodged aside, ducked
… and belched. Something shot from his mouth, to bounce to a stop at Verden's foot. She scooped it up. It was her selfstone. She had it back, intact.
"Rats," Gandy said, realizing that the good times were over.
"That right," the Highbulp remembered, snapping his fingers. "Rats, too. Dragon promise us rats."
"You… want… rats?" The huge, dragon face lowered itself, nose to nose with the little Highbulp. "You want rats? Very well. You shall have rats."
Closing her eyes, she murmured a spell, and her dragon-senses heard the scurrying of tiny things in the distance — sounds below sound that grew in volume as they came closer.
The gully dwarves heard it then, too, and stared about in wonder. The sounds grew, seeming to come from everywhere. Then there were little, dark shadows arrowing toward them, emerging from crevices, coming over rises and up gullies — dozens, then hundreds, then thousands of small, scurrying things, homing in on them. Rats. A leaping, bounding, flowing tide of rats.
"Wow," Tagg murmured.
"Lotta rats," Minna concurred. "Gonna make lotta stew, for sure."
Clout, never one to be concerned with details, brandished his bashing tool and prepared to deal with dinner.
Gandy, though, took a different view of the matter, "Too much rats," he started. "Way too much rats for…"
The tidal wave of rats swept around them, under them, over them — and carried them with it. A second later, Verden Leafglow stood alone on the ledge, looking down at a slope awash with rats and gully dwarves, all gathering momentum on their way to Xak Tsaroth, buried city within the Pitt.
As they disappeared into shadows, her dragon eyes picked out details: Tagg and Minna hand in hand, their hair blowing around them; old Gandy flailing his mop handle as he tried to maintain his balance at great speed; Clout busily swatting rats and gathering up their corpses; and the Highbulp — Glitch I was rolling, tumbling downward, a flailing tangle of arms, legs and whipping beard, and his panicked voice rose above the others.
"Make way!" he shouted. "Get outta way! Highbulp on a roll!"
Somehow, even disappearing into the depths and the shadows — and the unsuspected horrors — of the ancient, lost city that was his destination and his destiny, Glitch I, Highbulp by Persuasion and Lord Protector of Lots of Places — including, now, the Promised Place — still managed to sound arrogant.
Clockwork Hero
This is a Gnome Story. Such stories turn up now and again, around hearths and over cups of mulled wine. The talespinner of a proper Gnome Story should always state at the outset that his is a story of the gnomish type, so that the listeners are not surprised by that which follows. The Lower Planes hold no fury compared to that of an intent and dutiful audience that suddenly discovers they are trapped in a Gnome Story, with no escape other than the bodily expulsion of the talespinner. Heads have been broken, families split asunder, empires uprooted, and all because of an unannounced Gnome Story.
This is a Gnome Story then, and that in itself is considered fair and proper warning. And it is a Gnome Story because it deals with, to a great degree, gnomes.
Gnomes, you see, have the boundless curiosity of men, but lack the limitation of sense, the directness of thought, or the wisdom to control this curiosity. This disposition makes gnomes a vital part of talespinning, as much as the country fool who proves to be the wisest person of the party, or the holy man who arrives at the last minute to resolve all the characters' problems. In a similar fashion, gnomes — with their insatiable curiosity, their gleeful cleverness, and their perseverance through frequent (and dramatic) failure — serve as a guiding light, a beacon for other races. In holding up their failings, their ramshackle inventions and plots, we see more than a little of ourselves, and consider ourselves cautioned against their excesses. So gnomes have an important place in the universe (at least fictionally), such that if gnomes did not exist, they would demand to be invented, and nothing short of another gnome could invent such a concept.
Fortunately for all, they do exist.
This, then, is a Gnome Story, with all of its vantages, AD and DIS. It is an odd tale, in that it tells the story of a gnome who succeeds, a gnome who creates a most wondrous thing. But that is getting ahead of the tale.
Gnome Stories usually begin with the talespinner speaking of some outsider stumbling onto the hidden land of the gnomes. The idea of a hidden land of the gnomes is usually an artistic "cheat," a stretching of the imagination, since there are very few places more noisy, smoky, smelly, and downright noticeable than a gnome community. Incontinent volcanos or a week-long reunion of gully dwarves would run a close second or third, and, like a cluster of volcanoes or gaggle of gully dwarves, a gnome community is generally well-noted by its neighbors and left alone. It is, therefore, remote from the rest of civilization, but at civilization's behest.
This particular gnome community — this talespinner must assure you — was an extremely noisy place, resounding with the clang of hammers, the hiss of escaping steam, and the occasional explosion. The louder the gnomes, the more remote their home, and this was a most remote location indeed. So remote that the events of the outside world — the return of dragons, the coming of the Highlords and heroes, the war and all manner of destruction — passed this place by. In short, it was the perfect place to be an outsider, since there was much more outside than inside.
The outsider in question was not the standard singular found in most Gnome Stories, but rather two, a doubleton of strangers, a windfall in terms of Gnome Stories. These strangers had two things in common: they were from outside this village of gnomes — yes, that's true — but more important, they were first found sprawled in awkward but comfortable-looking positions on the ground, next to a large, formerly leather-winged form. Said form had earlier been a dragon, but was now little more than an open buffet for the local scavengers.
The outsiders were both alive, however. One was a warrior wrapped head to toe in dark armor, while the other was softer, plumper, unarmored, dressed in tattered finery and bound firmly at the wrists and ankles. The warrior was a woman, though this was not immediately apparent from her armor; the one in ragged finery was a man. For gnomes, gender is as unimportant as eye color or taste in music, but since these are HUMAN outsiders, it will become important. More on that later, because the gnome had finally arrived on the scene to survey the damage. And this is a Gnome Story.