Travellers

The Dance

Banomar looked out from underneath the wooden awning of his blacksmith shop at the pouring rain. The dwarf was well over forty years, but it had been only the past year that he had been living out from under the mountain where he was born. As a result, he didn't have much experience with weather.

"Bah," he muttered to himself. "No customers today."

He grumbled for a bit more, cursed the rain, then the lack of customers, then the temperature, and finally the entirety of the aboveground world.

"I could have been a miner like my three brothers, parents, sixteen cousins, and second uncle twice removed, but no! I had to go out and teach the whole of Norath about dwarven steel." He turned from the rain and called into the depths of his shop, "Raven!"

"Yes Ban?" his apprentice from inside called back.

Banomar walked back inside saying, "Raven, next time I get a great idea, hit me with something. I swear I'll forgive you later."

The human assistant, twenty-some years younger, kept hammering at a breastplate. "Yes Ban," he said without looking.

Banomar looked around the room; it was very spacious, which despite thoughts to the contrary, was very common in the halls and homes of dwarves in the mountains. Another misconception was that because it was underground, it was cold. All of Banomar's customers learned that this was not so just by visiting his shop. In the center of the room was a furnace that burned with a temperature that was felt by those merely passing by.

The walls were covered with a wide assortment of armor and weapons, all crafted with a love and care only a dwarf could give metal and precious stones.

Despite the weather, he smiled happily to himself. It had been a good year. It was easy enough to procure three empty shops adjacent to each other, knock down the walls and set up his furnace. Being from under the mountains, he had plenty of gold to pay for everything. Raven came to him weeks after. A fat boy who's father said it would do him good to learn a decent trade. Months later, the fat was burned off and a decent amount of muscle was put on.

Banomar frowned again. The sound of the rain on the roof was overtaking all other noises, even making the hammer strikes sound more like a wood on stone.

He looked at the breastplate Raven was working on. It had come in this morning, broken in two pieces. Now it was nearly whole. It had been endowed with special magic that made it more resistant to fire, but that was nothing a few hours sitting in the center of his furnace couldn't cure. Raven had begun working on it since it came out. The metal exploded with sparks with each hammer fall. Resistant to fire or not, Banomar's heat could stay long in metal.

He looked to the far end of the room where a few piles of different types of scrap metal lay. He had an idea for a new piece of armor that he could sell for a good amount of platinum chips. A little bit taken from the breastplate Raven had, some other pieces from other various armor and weapon items, all imbued with magical qualities. Melt them down, stir them together, then pour the mold, and he would have one fine set of armor with many different magical effects.

Runic approached the gates of Freeport. The strong winds and rain had even the guards huttled under the awning of a shop advertising strength increasing items. It was run by an ogre tradesman who was known to not be the least fair with his customers, taking advantage of the newcomers.

Though activity had lessened in some areas of Freeport due to the weather, here at the Western Gates was a flurry of activity. Carts carrying goods to and from various shops passed through the gates seemingly every minute. Criers shouting out their messages, some religious, some political, and nearly all at odds with another crier were some of what the locals called 'their greatest non-violent amusement' which sometimes did turn violent. And there was always somebody trying to sell something.

Off to the left, a man was holding a parchment with various names on it, shouting employment for the city's rat exterminators.

The wandering adventurer was never a strange sight; most had limbs missing or had gone mad and had found their home in a corner somewhere re-telling their adventures to the dogs and rats who would listen. Therefor nobody paid attention to Runic as he strode shirtless with a smattering of blood on his pants.