Dear Tomlin,
How are you? I am fine, for now.
We just got back from the Underdark. There were parts of it that were pretty, but I don’t think you would like it. We wore these red glass things on our eyes in a city down there, and it makes the crystals and fung glowing things down there all stand out with extraordinary colors. If you put them over your eyes on a bright, cloudless day, you should see everything sparkling, and maybe even see the streaks of a different wavelength of light (Madam Lydia said the library there might have a book on the properties of light, so you might understand that part). And if you put the glasses on and look at a campfire, it makes the inner self of the fire stand out much more, with different colors than you can usually see because of the glare. But Lydia says don’t do it too much or you might hurt your eyes.
I saw Wolfgang. He seems about as well as he can be. Father sent Andari to stay with me, who I think is related to Uncle Wilber, but we’re still working it out.
Everyone here says hello. Hope you are well.
****
Dear Mother and Father,
How are you? I am not dead so far.
We have had a rough couple months. It all started when His Grace asked us to go help Sterich because some kind of huge black bubble had swallowed most of Istivin. I suppose it was actually a snarl of webbing of some kind, but at the time we were assigned to go fight the giants in the mountains who were taking advantage of the situation to harry the settlements south of the river. Turns out they were also being egged on, but reducing the number of evil giants in the world is always worthwhile.
The ones stirring them up were evil elves with black skin and white hair, called drow, and they live deep underground in a place called the Underdark, which is basically what it sounds like. There are sometimes crystals or fungus that glow, but pretty much everything down there likes the dark.
The drow have a city down there, but most of it is not worth even mentioning. We did rescue some slaves and lost people down there, but I think if one tried to go there just for that, it would wear down one’s soul. Actually, the drow worship a demoness called the Queen of Spiders – or maybe I should say “worshipped” because that was part of the problem – but anyway the reason we were down there ended up being that this Spider Queen was trying to take control of parts of the surface (Istivin being one of them, I think) so we had to go to the source to stop her.
That’s not all, though, because some of the drow felt slightened by her, so they were trying to worship something called the Elder Elemental God, which sounds like it makes the demons look like tidy little good boys. They were searching for a ritual to unseal him (since the Earth Mother locked him up a long time ago, I guess), and things looked tense for a while, but we used a ritual invoking the Earth Mother to seal him forever, and I think we used the soul of the Spider Queen or something weird like that. Ezekiel found an amulet that forced her to obey one command, at least theoretically, and although it just looked like a regular female drow, she could have been just using that form to walk around in. I would be more skeptical that we actually accomplished all that, except that as we were beating a retreat, the entire city, it seems, started this shrieking and carrying on, like the city’s collective soul was suddenly cut off…which might be an appropriate response to losing one’s goddess.
That was a couple days ago, at least; we had to travel a ways through the caves to reach a spot where Madam Lydia could teleport out of, but now we’re back, and it’s good to be home.
Although, things are a bit upside-down, here, too. Thank you for sending Andari – he got here safe, and he seems very earnest. We’re teaching him to fish while I write. A big brown bear has moved into the grove while I was away, but they tell me he behaves himself.
We’ll see about the others…Ezekiel attracts the most ridiculous things… The moment we got home, the gate captain and the head monk asked us to come see to something right away. So Ezekiel mounted up and rode across the field in front of the mountain (I will try to send a sketch some time; the light’s not very good today) to the pass that lets into the valley, and found a huge sphere of thunderclouds – like a thick fog in the mountains, except dark like rainclouds, which don’t usually come down to our level – and towering up into an approximate sphere shape that filled almost all of the pass. It rumbled and thumped and misted in a most unnatural way.
Master Sirion (I think I told you about him? He is an elf that does everything, basically, and helps protect the valley while we’re away) and the druids came over, and said it wasn’t to do with them, but it’s been sitting there for three days. (I guess Wolfgang and the others arrived just before it did, and everyone was much disturbed.) I of course started worrying what sort of vengeance a demon or its allies could summon up.
Then as Ez came up to the sphere, an orc came out of the fog with a white flag, and begged to speak with the cleric of the God of gods. So Ezekiel moved forward (with Aliana right by him, of course) and out came the biggest orc I have ever seen (as big as most ogres, probably), weathered with scars and wearing a red glove and an eyepatch. (Raven says he recognized someone in the retinue – a blacksmith who was working for the Slave Lords, but that’s another story.)
The leader said his name was Redhand, and he came to serve the cleric of the God of gods, and he brought three baskets of humanoid heads as an offering. I agree a dead goblin is the best goblin, but that isn’t our style, and Aliana quickly told him no more “offerings,” ever.
But Ezekiel said if the orcs can understand the rule of law, they can serve him and his God, so he’s giving them a place in the mountain to dig out tunnels for themselves. Raven says it turned out to be good that we didn’t kill the young orcs in the sewers in the Pomarjch, because some of them have come here with Chief Redhand.
The chief passed some kind of message into the cloud of darkness, and the thundering sound stopped. Before too long, the fog dissipated, revealing a huge army of orcs and an enormous drum in the center, pulled on a wagon, with the drummers slumped against it, panting, and barely still holding their drumsticks. As Ezekiel rode off toward the mountain to assign them a place, some kind of devil appeared and took the drum away with him.
I’m just glad they’re on the other side of the lake from me… I know a “God of all gods” would be a God of all gods (Chief Redhand says he’s a cleric of Grumpsh), but I still think this is pushing the limits. You can’t just reform orcs. They’re not like people, who make choices to be either good or evil.
It’s as though the world was opening itself up to reveal a vast, awful balancing act…like if you’d lived all your life not knowing there were two moons, and then one night looking up into the sky.
It’s a feeling; I’m sure it will pass. Ehlonna does not change her face, just because the world contains plains and deserts as well as forests. Ragni said something very similar, about the laws of the earth staying the same, except making the whole thing sound more ridiculous (he’s one of the dwarves staying here, and perhaps I don’t understand dwarf culture enough). Either way, I suppose it’s not worth worrying about yet. If it comes down to it, I think Master Sirion will see things my way.
Well, we’ve been marching for three or four days straight, but I will try to write more when I get the chance. Ragni and Agni (they are both dwarves, but I’m not sure they’re brothers) are telling Andari a story, and I will try not to let it get out of hand. They are funny, but they are also very dwarvish, and that takes some learning. (Is Wolfgang all right? He looks like Archie when we used to show up late to dinner, with dirty hands…but he’s been sitting next to an entire army of orcs hidden by a demon devil cloud, and I think even Archie would react to that a bit more. The two are not comprable, after all.)
Give my love to all, and I will do my best to show Andari what trouble is and how to avoid it, and how to smack it down if it refuses to be ignored.
-Elwyn
P.S. Dear Mama if you meet any clerics of Ehlonna who feel a call to live on the edge of civilization, feel free to invite them here. It would be nice to have something familiar and homey, after all the wild insanity we’ve been through. Although I can’t promise I’ll be here if he or she came…something always seems to come up. Sirion says he’s staying here “for a bit,” though…and that could well mean a couple hundred years. Maybe he likes my stories.
Anyway, I’m plotting some kind of sacred line to keep orcs out of the woods. I could ask Ezekiel, I suppose, (he practically makes holy water by the vat these days) but I’m not sure I could get him to understand. His heart is just too big and his calling too grand.
A King of the gods exists, it seems, but He put the others in the world for a reason, and that seems enough to someone of my station. I’m just a kid who climbs trees and shoots arrows, after all, deep down.
Write you later. I’ll try to send you a sketch of this bear while he’s sleeping…it’s just so like a little kid. We’re naming him Glottis.