The Elder's Tale

Well now, let’s see, where to begin? 

Shame. 

I was the leader of the Hibernal. I was meant to die defending the town, but my old friend Elgin had other plans. When the town was overrun and all hope was lost, I found him, abdomen pierced by a Grick’s beak. Bleeding out with chaos all around us. I started to drag him away from the fray, back toward a doorway when he produced a scroll from his robes and through gritted teeth told me, “There must be one who remembers…” 

I didn’t know what he was doing until he yelled in his damn Wizard’s tongue and gripped my arms with all his strength. The scroll blazed hot and I felt my grip on him fading, turning ethereal…I saw him smile as I blinked out of Old Weir. 

And then I was falling through a low canopy of tree branches, landing with a thud on mossy ground. It was dark and peaceful, but there was a smell of rot nearby.  I was next to a massive oak tree with soft orange light coming from a cabin nearby. I knew I was in Bask’s grove. The wind was knocked out of me from the fall and as I wheezed to, I saw Bask, a small child, a few black bear cubs emerge from her cabin. She recognized me and took me in. The child was frightened but the bear cubs were playful and that reassured her. 

As they fed me nettle soup (yes, Bask, I still remember!) I was frantic, explaining what had happened to Old Weir. I told her we had to go back, and then she told me to listen to myself. There was no Old Weir to return to. She was right of course. And we knew she was also in danger: the mind flayers would piece together what was in the heads of the Misfit Six and learn about this pesky, friend-of-Hibernal, druid living nearby in the Forgotten Forest. It was only a matter of time. Besides, she told me, her tree, “The Gate” was beyond saving. 

Next: Survival. 

And so we fled. The child I learned was Nell, and she learned to trust me. Sometimes we were all each other had, as Bask would flit off as a sparrow to scout the best way forward for us. We decided we wanted to remain in the Greater Greypeaks – I refuse to call it the Vostewylde – to keep an eye on Old Weir, but needed to be somewhere no one who knew us would know. In short, we needed a new home. We searched for weeks for this place, in the end it was a cougar who shared with Bask the location of its den and allowed us to share it with her. So here we have lived for twenty-five years. 

At first, I set out to look for any survivors, those who may have been out of town when the attack happened. Then I realized, as more time passed, I was not certain if they could be trusted. So I turned inward and revisited again and again the series of events that led to what happened. I thought about how you came into our lives. 

And then: Regret. 

We had a saying etched in stone in our den in Old Weir: “Beware outsiders bearing your signs, they shall be your salvation or your downfall.” It was something Old Weir himself said on his deathbed. With our downfall staring us in the face, I felt foolish. We should have listened to the voices at council who warned us against you coming to us with Sha’hale’s dagger. I was bitter, and hateful. And so I lived for many years, cursing your names, and my optimism. 

But the many years teaching Nell, helping her grow, living with Bask, learning to love them both…it all softened me. And then rumors began to spread, through the mountain animals to Bask, of a goblin-soldier with very civilized ways, who traveled with a stone giant outcast. And I remembered your names again and the people who flocked to you. How Sha’hale had trusted you with our precious artifact, and to find her precious daughter. How you claimed to have interacted on multiple occasions with the powerful Lady of the Glen, an Undying, no less. How you told us of your travels with a band of goblins who you befriended, and how you convinced a warren of stone giants to take up your cause. 

Finally: Hope. 

Maybe you were meant to be our salvation. I became more and more convinced of it, and cursed myself the dour fool. You had survived our trial of character in the Cavern, after all. Maybe there was yet hope. I sought out Kargi, and through him met Golun-dal, and Tessadil Lanodyn, the Lady of the Glen. Kargi told me stories of your actions and heroics. Golun-dal and Tessa shared their realization that something was calling to those sensitive enough to hear, speaking your names on the wind and in the stars. Yes, you were always meant to be our salvation – and yet could be! 

We pieced together your story as much we could: the Monarch and the mines, the mind flayers and the minds, and the missing piece was this goddess and you. We knew we had to rescue you, but how to clear the thralldom from your heads? I sought advice from my patron – the celestial Althaz the True. With Tessa’s help, he deigned to humor me with some guidance in the form of a tome, from the scholar Mordenkainen. Within we learned some of mind flayers and their thralls, but the undoing process was only hinted at. 

Bask learned the rest, I will let her tell her tale.