The Book Hating Dwarf
Orbtouched. A dwarven hillocks in the Dead Hills, just north of the mountains of the Erased Tower. Ruled by the Gray Iron of the Prime Angelic Urn, it is a small place with some dozens living there. A rather unremarkable place when you get to it, really.
...Well, there is that one worm man, Writhe Eatdirt, who now is the local sheriff, and perhaps without him there would be no story concerning a certain dwarf named Urist Trottedsacks that would be worth telling.
Yes, it is with Urist that our story begins. A simple -- and I mean
simple -- miner from Orbtouched, tough and strong, who simply does not get what is so great about art. Why would anyone like something so boring when there are more interesting things, like, let's say fighting?
But fighting or becoming a legendary warrior is not the motivation here, no. It is the fact that Urist sees the attainment of knowledge as unimportant. Particulary books are something he does not understand. In fact, he
hates them. And this, mind you, certainly has nothing to do with his inability to read or his supposedly low intellect. No. Books are just stupid. Only people with nothing proper to do read books.
So when Urist heard from the worm man sheriff Writhe of a place called Endedtreasure, and how they seek to destroy art and books, you can imagine how excited he got.
And that is where we jump in, as Urist is preparing to leave his home, head out into the large world (well, actually it isn't that large) and destroy
all the books.
Urist Trottedsacks finished donning on his copper and bronze armor, slinging his pick and pack on his back. He looked at the dwarves and goblin gathered in the hillock and bode them farewell. It was time he headed out to seek artifact and book so that they might be destroyed in the place called Endedtreasure.
Urist decided to head first west, for he knew there was the monastery of Orbdaub there and plenty of others after it. And monasteries were places where lived monks, and said monks too often spent their time writing books. The very thought of the smelly parchments or musty papers disgusted him.
Urist went through all the buildings of the monastery finding absolutely nothing. He climbed up to the upper levels of the temple and looked down from the walkway. Orbdaub was a dreadful place: instead of grass wormy tendrils sprung up from the ground writhing and lashing out at your feet and disgusting staring eyeballs grew everywhere.
The monastery was also a waste of time. It made Urist angry.
In his anger and frustration Urist kicked a rubicelle statue depicting Asėn, the god of metals and minerals -- the chosen deity of the would-be book destroyer.
Oh my. In his rage he forgot that gods don't tend to like it when their places of worship are desecrated.
Now Urist was cursed and he felt a strange thirst grow in him.
As the cursed dwarf prepared to continue his journey to the west, he saw several humans lying on the ground at the outskirts of the monastery. But as soon as he began to approach them, from seemingly out of nowhere a large charcoal-feathered humanoid with stubby horns shambled with great speed towards him!
The monster appeared to be terribly wounded, but none of the gaping wounds seemed to hinder it!
Urist grabbed his pick firmly in his hand and put his buckler in front of him. He was ready to do battle.
It was a surprisingly quick battle: Urist easily dodged the blows of the creature, hit it several times in its legs and finally dealt a decisive blow with his bronze pick to the head, cleaving it asunder.
He then went to the humans on the ground and realized that they were dead -- probably victims of the beast he put down.
Urist visited village after village in the west, but they were all empty except for walking dead. At first they frightened him and he was certain he'd have to fight, but for some reason they were not interested in him at all. Little did Urist know that his curse was the cause of it and that he himself was now an undead monstrosity.
His travels took him eventually all the way to the monastery of Beautyfair.
Finally, luck was with Urist: there were quite a few books to be found in the temple! Urist picked the disgusting tomes in his shaking hands and crammed them into his backpack. He did not pay mind to the human pilgrim who looked curiously at what he was doing.
A few more books and a piece of art or two was all that he still needed before he would head to Endedtreasure. Certainly on the way there he would run into some, so he made no proper plans for a route.
But many had mentioned a place called Urnshoot and how there was this and that artifact, so that was a place he would have to take a peek in.
On his way to the east Urist visited the tomb of Frecklestops. It was not much of a place really: one large building with winding passages, corpses and bags littered everywhere, and a smaller building also full of corpses.
Oh, and there were many traps. But Urist avoided them.
Still, it was not a waste of time to visit the place. He found a scroll and a book in the smaller tomb.
The journey east towards Endedtreasure continued. Urist passed several hamlets and monasteries, but there was not much of interest there. One thing he noticed during his travel was that no matter how fast he walked or even ran, he did not seem to tire. Nightfall meant nothing for him: he could easily walk through the night and still be refreshed in the morning. And food and drink. That was something he did not feel like having, though, to be fair, a mug of good dwarven wine would've done good.
Eventually he came to the ruins of the fortress Earthenglazed.
There he saw a curious fellow at the trade depot. A dwarf missing his right eye and a hollow, empty stare in his left one. An intelligent undead.
But what grabbed Urist's attention was the almond wood iwo -- a stringed instrument -- that the fellow carried.
Urist demanded the item. The dwarf didn't react.
Urist demanded again. No reaction. Another demand. And another. No use.
So Urist swung his pick at him.
Oops. That wasn't a smart move, now was it Urist?
Urist fell on the ground after the damned undead cast a spell on him! But he managed to dodge and block the blows of his enemy and landed a mighty strike with his pick that tore off the right lower leg of him.
The undead banged Urist on his shield with the instrument and as Urist began panicking, he swung wildly at the cursed slayer's head.
The head flew in an arc. Done. The undead was dead and now Urist had a piece of art.
Travel over the mountains was dreadfully boring. So Urist ran. He ran all the way.
Killing many a mountain goat and wolverine on the way.
On the other side of the mountains was Urnshoot, another dwarven fortress. Urist would have gone past it, but he remembered that quite a few people had mentioned that the place was loaded with artifacts. So he went to check.
But he found none. Only horrifying demons and suspicious folk.
Then he saw a holy man, a Holy Oblivion. Carrying a book. So he demanded the book. The Holy Oblivion refused. So he hit him in the belly with his pick.
The Holy Oblivion finally dropped the book and now it was Urist's to take.
On his way out Urist saw a gelded dwarf in one of the hallways.
He did not know that this was the same dwarf that a certain chinchilla man had seen when he visited the place.
Night fell as Urist arrived at the hillocks of Glovedgrooved. He went to check the mounds in search of a mug of wine, but when he came to one mound and he saw dwarves sleeping, a new kind of thirst woke in him. He did not crave for plump helmet wine, but the wine pumping in the veins of the dwarves!
He was careless as he began sucking the blood from one dwarf. All in the room did not sleep and someone saw what he was doing.
But Urist did not mind. He continued drinking until he was full.
Not long after his first experiences in bloodsucking, Urist lay dead in the middle of nowhere, a towering darkling beetle demon next to his mangled corpse.
Urist had become quite too confident of his new strength, so he had went to investigate some movement in the north, just south of a goblin pits. It was his final mistake.
An ambush with a demon he could not outrun.
It caught him and kicked the vampiric dwarf miner into smithereens.
And so ends the tale of Urist Trottedsacks, a tale not really worthy telling.
=====
Decided to go for a dwarf since I almost never play them in adventure mode. It was funny that the first name the game suggested was Urist Trottedsacks, so of course I went with it.
My plan wasn't actually to make Urist a vampire. For some reason I forgot what happens if you topple a statue in the temple of your worshipped deity. But hey, at least it made it super easy to visit all those undead infested hellholes in the west.
Then I got cocky and Urist paid for my sins.
Here's the save:
https://dffd.bay12games.com/file.php?id=16760
Author
Topic: Endedtreasure: The Anti-Museum - come destroy artifacts! (Read 13957 times)