Dwarven aid for the Barricades

Save Britannia. Save Britannia. Bah. What has Britannia done for us dwarves? "Help save Britain from an army!" Britain's full of noisy hawkers selling the latest trinket they found, and I bet not a single one of them was crafted. Let them be invaded, I say. Let me start at the beginning.

I went to go stoke the fires in the forge this morning and found a note on my anvil from a guildmate. Haha, yes, a dwarf that can read. I've got a bigger vocabulary than you, genteel reader, so watch your mouth before I correct it. Oh, sorry, "ur" mouth.

Can I donate ore, my guildmate asks. Can I donate wood, he says. Am I running a charity here? Flattery will get him nowhere. Just because he carries a shovel with him while he plays with his tattered paper and digs up his jewelry boxes, he thinks he knows how much work it is to mine ore? I'd like to see him once -- just once -- dig into the side of a mountain. His grandfather did, but no, little grandson would probably sprain his lockpicking finger. Can't have that, now, can we?

And wood? Has he been hit with a permanent Feeblemind spell? There is nothing in this world more boring than chopping wood. Mining is a dozen times more fun than that, and it ain't no party. Even while fishing you get to enjoy the sun, which of course is blocked out by the trees' canopies when lumberjacking. If I'm chopping wood, it's for me and me alone!

Let me get on with it. Did I mention I hate chopping wood? So much so that I went to Luna, the City of Vendors (oh, and apparently a Paladin or two) to seek out a nice stash of boards. While I know the PTC carries them, I won't pay the prices their lich-addled brains have set.

Now, I'm normally a gruff person. Strange for a dwarf, I know, and hard for you to believe. And I'm well aware that sometimes it can be off-putting, and usually I just don't care. But I hate chopping wood. No kidding. So when I bumped into another shopper, I put on my best behavior and asked her if she knew of any board vendors. She said she did not, suggested the PTC (I bit my tongue), and a moment later she asked me to follow her. Having nothing to lose, I followed to the Luna bank, where she gave me two commodity deeds totalling 20000 boards. For nothing. Now, people have asked me before why dwarves wear such large facial hair, and I'll admit it is for the rare occasion when something gets in our eye and causes it to leak. Harrumph.

So why am I bragging to you about getting 20000 boards? Because they are what made me change my mind about this whole Save Britannia nonsense. This kind human, Grandmistress Heather of the Fel Underground, showed me, a dwarf, such an act of kindness that I realized not all humans are a waste of space, so I decided to help after all. Don't get me started on elves, though.

Now, before you make a fool of yourself, no, I'm not donating a single board to "the cause". They need raw logs for their fortifications, anyway, so you can forget it. The boards are mine. Well, they were, until I used them all up. Thank you again, Heather! And no, I'm not going to chop wood and donate it. Let the rangers with their tights and feathered caps go and chop the wood with their bulging muscles that the bar wenches like so much, even though they're no bigger than mine, except mine are a touch hairier, and just because I don't bathe in fruity purfumes... ahem.

No, I've decided to help with ore. It almost kills me to do this, but while frequenting Luna, I keep hearing about this Karma stuff, and figure what comes around should go around. A human lass saves me hours of dreadfully dull wood-chopping, so I suppose I can help her people with some mining. After all, who can mine better than a dwarf?

I have this pile of 500 ore that I was saving to make 250 hammers, but I suppose it's for a good cause. Of course, I now have the tactical problem of moving 6000 stoneweight of ore from one world to another. Since there are no humans around to do my gruntwork, I suppose I'll have to use my packhorses.

First I go and check out these supposed depots. I don't want to be conned into giving up valuable ore if it's all a farce.

There's no way they need all this wood!

Well, can't blame me for trying.

To the stables for the packhorses, and back to the house to load them up. I pause for a few minutes, and I'm not sure if it's because I'm having second thoughts or just waiting for my mana to return.

And it's done. I don't know what this feeling is in my chest, this swelling, but I don't like it. Makes me feel weird. I suppose that I should go to the other two passes and mine some ore there -- you know, since I'm in Britannia anyway. Someone's got to show these humans and elves how it's done.

But I'll be stoking the fires in the daemon temple on Avatar Isle before I donate a single damned log!

Ceric Runehammer of Pacific/Malas