It Started in Saltmarsh

-Greyhawk Stories- It Started in Saltmarsh Kirt Wackford Edited by Thomas Kelly Greyhawkstories.com A Dungeons & Dragons campaign adaptation of U1 The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh Dave J. Browne with Don Turnbull © 1981 TSR Chapter One Dirty Dwarf, Disgraced Paladin, Half‐orc Fugitive At three years old the child was developing like any dwarven infant—he could crawl and babble but not yet walk or talk. He had come into the world in gilded halls deep beneath the Cyrstalmist Mountains, born to a wealthy, prosperous clan of mountain dwarves. But the happy parents did not have long to dote over the Dumathoin’s gift. They were among those chosen to pioneer a new colony, for their clan looked to expand its holdings by starting daughter colonies and exploring new mines. They set out overland with the child still in his mother’s arms. What should have been a short journey to an already‐secured fortification instead turned into a nightmare and tragic end to all their aspirations. A raiding party of ogres, bugbears, and goblins boldly ambushed the caravan. A long, bloody, and desperate battle ensued. The child’s mother was the last dwarf to die, which she did bravely, but not until she had hidden her son beneath some bundles in a mule cart. The goblins began leading the live mules away while the ogres feasted on the dead ones. The child would certainly have been discovered had not, by chance, a huge bear came upon the scene. It must have been a cave bear, for it towered over even the ogres. As it scooped up goblins and crushed them under its mighty paws, the terrified raiders fled. Then, the bear was gone. An elderly man probed at the cart with his staff, seeking the source of a baby’s cry which he had somehow heard through the din of the battle. The man took the dwarven babe and retreated to his cave before the goblinkind could regroup. These things happened late in the fall of the year. All through that winter the old man cared for the babe. He gave the child the name Larrenthal—not a proper dwarfish name at all. By the spring, “Little Larry” was walking and talking—but his first spoken words were in Flan, not the tongue of the dwarves. The old man knew little of dwarves. His was the world of sky and streams, sun and meadows, herbcraft and druidlore. He thought to return the babe to the first group of dwarves he found in the spring. Little did he know that the caravan massacre had prompted the dwarves of the area into a series of local wars and genocidal campaigns against the humanoids that lasted for years. Dwarves aboveground had been rare before the war, but now they were simply not to be found except in military hosts, none of which passed near the alpine valley that was the druid’s home. The first dwarven explorers to arrive after the war came seeking pastureland for their goats. An old man, hobbling along on a staff and with a dwarven child in tow hailed them from a distance. The child was not more than ten winters; he spoke not one word of their language. Of course they knew the story of the massacre; of course they knew to which clan Larrenthal belonged; of course they offered to return the child to his people. But when Little Larry came back to the cold stone halls of his father’s clan, he found all of his near kinsmen had been killed in the wars. True, he had distant cousins who did their duty and took him into their care. But what were they to make of the boy who cried at the dark, who begged in Flan to see the sun and feel the wind, and who could speak not even one word of Dwarven? The boy preferred mud to woolens and trees to forges. After two weeks, “Dirty Larry” pleaded to be returned to the old man—and his kinsmen required little persuasion; they did not even consider Larrenthal a “real dwarf,” but a strange and wild “bear boy.” The old bear‐man took the child back. In the ensuing decades, he tutored Larrenthal in the ways of the Old Faith, the Great Circle of the Flan, the names of all the gods and spirits of the woods and hills and mountains. Larrenthal grew and learned. When whiskers first began to darken his chin, his foster father initiated him into the First Mystery and told him that, to learn more, he would have to apprentice to another druid. No, he could not apprentice under the old man—they were too close and the code of the druids prohibited apprenticeships within family. “Besides,” the old druid explained, “I am far too old to school you further. You must go to the Great Druidess, the head of my order, and see if she accepts you. She holds moot in the Dreadwood, far to the south. It is a longer journey than I care to make, and the way passes through lands far too civilized for me. But I know of a remote temple to the Old Faith in the country of Sterich. I can take you that far. We need not cross many farms or fields—just a few valleys away from us.” The short journey took them weeks, scaling the mountainsides up, down, and across. The old man approached the temple warily, for in truth he seldom spoke to men, but the head priest knew the Old Ways well and welcomed them in the temple garden. He agreed to take Larrenthal in, and find a guide to take him to the Great Druidess. Larrenthal wept for the first time in many years, and he would have had the old man stay if he could have moved his heart. The old man said, “Let your sadness be your final lesson from me. Is not sorrow and loss also a part of the cycle of life?” Larrenthal had not been at the temple a se’nnight when the head priest introduced him to a young man called Tyrius, a bright young paladin of Pelor, of sixteen years, not more, shining like a newly‐ minted coin. The pair were a perfect contrast—the tall, handsome, worldly, noble‐born youth and the short, stout, grubby dwarf who went everywhere barefoot, had atrocious table manners, and could barely speak the Common Tongue. The dwarf introduced himself, “Larrenthal, but some call me Dirty Larry.” Tyrius realized at once that Pelor was putting his faith to the test. The head priest explained the mission, “The dwarf is to be escorted to the moot of the Great Druidess, deep in the Dreadwood. You will provide the escort and protect him from harm. This will be your first official duty as a crusader of the Shining One.” The shrine brothers gave Tyrius and Larry just enough food for their journey overland to the headwaters of the Davish River and just enough coin to book passage for them both in a merchant ship bound for Gradsul. In that great city the brothers of the great Temple of Pelor would provide aid for the last leg of the journey. Tyrius escorted “Dirty Larry” down the valley into the lands of men in Sterich proper. Every hamlet they passed seemed a city to Larry, but the hamlets grew into thorps, the thorps to villages. In a bustling river‐village, Tyrius looked for passage on a boat headed downriver. They found a riverboat carrying refined ores from the mountain mines. The dense cargo left plenty of deck space for passengers, and Tyrius booked passage. The captain was a foul and grasping sort whom Tyrius took to be another great test of his faith. The bargemen navigated by day and pulled up at night, for the swift mountain river had many rapids that could only be safely run in the light. They had been on the water just a few days when came a misty morning. The captain advanced the boat slowly, but then ordered his men to make camp when they spied the first set of rapids. He said he would pilot her later in the day, only after the sun had burned off the mists. As bad luck would have it, that very bank of the river was a favored place of ambush for a band of hobgoblins who preyed upon the river traffic. The raiders fell upon the camp in the mist and a half‐dozen guards were slain in the space of a few minutes. The remaining guards, crewmen and passengers too, with Tyrius among them, rallied and carried the day. The surviving hobgoblins fell back to lick their wounds. As the crew attended to the dead and wounded, the mists cleared, revealing a curious sight—a towering, misshapen man stood among the slain. He seemed just as surprised to see the rivermen as they him, and he produced a huge axe and began some type of incantation or chant. The bargemen surrounded him and prepared for another fight. Something about the misshapen man stirred Tyrius’ sympathies. Through the grace of Pelor, he looked upon the half‐orc and understood that he was not one of the attackers. His mind returned to the lessons he had learned about Saint Jalnir the Gentle, a half‐orc Peloran priest of legend. Tyrius knew that the divine will of Pelor was in this meeting. He stepped forward. He saw fear in the man’s eyes, and his heart was moved.

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