The Chapters and Cast of the Ballad
Of Dessarin Valley let us now be told,
In an age long past the Time of Troubles,
Of villains dire and heroes bold,
When black evil foams and bubbles.
Of weather strange and most foul,
The land had faced many a day,
Heat would scorch and wind howl,
Rivers rose and earth would sway.
The trees were filled with bandit crews,
Arrows and blades to strip bones clean,
And beasts wild and numbering many zoos,
Stalked with claw and fang across the green.
Five did set out into this realm,
Each tasked to their own plight,
Unaware yet that they would helm,
The grim resistance to this blight.
Elivia Moonsilver, of Heaven's blessed blood,
Faithful of Mystra and seeker of magic,
Traveled despite the odd flood,
To seek a lost scion before tale turned tragic.
Fennle Pthalein, a cackling monk,
Seeking to call forth her sun's fires,
Once acted as guide to a keep sunk,
About which now the Gauntlet inquires.
Lohn Slaf of Guild Two-Seventy-One,
A Network man through and through,
Lost his shop to fires now begun,
Quests to knock a mage's skull askew.
Marle, of blood dark and mysterious,
A traveler from lands quite far and unknown
With Dwarvish map of old lands imperious,
Seeks friends of the Harp with advice to intone.
Talindra Brightwood, defender of nature's joy,
Fresh from a brush with Kelemvor's court,
Of raided homes and hippogriffs in employ,
Follows word of the Enclave this evil to thwart.
Into Red Larch, these five do come,
After Kheldell Path talks of trees and spells,
A tiefling does hide her wings from some,
And monks and paladins plumb conversation wells.
Rumors swirl about the Swinging Sword,
And drop from Kaylessa's mouth like rain,
Indeed many a villager has a word,
In hopes of adventurer aid to gain.
Into the Inn rooms three do go,
The monk and cleric wax ecstatic,
For in their rooms running water does flow
Yet to the tiefling, save sleep, all is static.
Along to the boarding house,
A paladin and rogue flock,
With speech of rumors drawing a louse,
Who decries these tales as crows' squawk.
To their allies, the five do address,
Two tailors and a purveyor of goods,
A battle-worn cleric and green-friendly seamstress,
And finally a baker friend of curious hoods.
More rumors they hear of plague and lightning,
Skulls nailed to trees, and ghostly sights,
Bandits on the road eager for some fighting,
And of the haunted keeps and other such sites.
And then they look into tales of watchers in masks,
But find no such apparition upon their hunt,
With only a loss of a night tapping the casks,
Though a new suspicion of the stone-mason's stunt.
Upon the morning to Lance Rock they trek,
Not far from Red Larch along the path,
They find a great spear once dropped on a neck,
By Old Gnawbones in her great wrath.
Not far from the green dragon's lance,
A sign is raised in warning of plague,
By a Lord of Lance Rock at a glance,
Though symptoms are left most vague.
Tracing a line through a ravine,
The mouth of a cave is revealed unclean,
The dead within come to seek their spleen,
And make set their tale to careen.
Three of the dead do fall to blades,
A monk's dragon spear,
And a tiefling's nimble cascades,
Yet a paladin's heart the dead do hear.
Now a rock, bloody and grim,
Sets before heroes not yet grand,
With two passages leading on so slim,
Wishing for choices much less manned.
The Chapters and Cast of the Ballad
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