“Sir, we are ready for the blessings”
Veit turns from where he was sitting on the floor in a meditative pose to greet the newest acolyte.
“I will be right there. Ensure everyone has their hammers laid before them pointing North. I have communed with Reorx and he has instructed me that we must look to the North in hopes of finding better stone.”
“Yes sir, right away!”
The acolyte leaves as Veit stands to grab his own holy symbol, a large warhammer engraved with his people, the hill dwarves of Shar, forging new items to sell to travelers passing through their small community. Veit lifts the warhammer over his head to stretch out his tired muscles as Veit was fast asleep when the acolyte disturbed him. Veit had actually become quite good at posing to be in mid prayer with their lord, Reorx. It allowed him the opportunity to rest and live a quiet life as he promised his mother he would after the accident.
The year before Veit was to start working in the mines and entering the tradition of being a skilled stone mason and miner, the mines in Shar collapsed. Veit had been with the other stone apprentices at a nearby hill on an expedition mission. They were to go with their training master to learn how to determine where good stone lies beneath the earth. They had been spending their entire weekend studying the soil beneath their feet, the stones protruding from that soil, and river beds. All of these combined, could lead one to determine that strong rocks existed in that area. Rocks that are seeked out for their reliability in tool making.
As the team headed back to Shar, they noticed some things that felt off on their way back. First, all the perimeter scouts were missing. Usually approaching the village, they would pass through checkpoints with fully manned watch towers to alert of intruders or to hunt game that strayed too close to their encampment. As they got closer to the village, they noticed that their usual trail into the village seemed to have had lots of trees come down across their normal paths. The trees did not appear to be felled, but rather had fallen bringing up their entire root systems with it. As they continued up the hill to Shar, they noticed that the river running down their tiny hill had changed colors from a deep blue to an almost brownish copper color. The team started moving quickly back to Shar to see what was going on.
When they arrived at Shar, the earth where the mine was located seemed to have moved about twenty feet downward. Everyone in the community that was not a miner was either lifting dirt and rocks out of the crater that now existed in their village or pulling limp lifeless bodies out of the rubble. Children were crying, maimed miners were crawling out of their premature graves, and the clerics of the village performed death rituals on those that could not be saved. Veit immediately joined the effort to help the recovery effort.
Veit found a familiar female hill dwarf on her hands and knees pulling at the earth, trying to get into what was once their community’s mine.
“Hello mother, have you seen Delg or Flint?”, Veit’s older brothers. They were both miners that worked tirelessly and some of the best miners that Shar had. They could pull up thousands of pounds of precious stone and metals from under the earth in a matter of a couple of hours without issue. They were what inspired Veit to become a miner in the first place.
“No I haven’t” she said as she continued to pull at the earth and rocks. Veit’s mother, Vistra, had been a village cook. She generally made all the miners their favorite meals of steamed carrots, hearty breads, and elk smoked to perfection.
Veit and Vistra removed the earth from where the mine was into the night when Vistra suddenly stopped and collapsed on the spot. Veit rushed over to check on her. They had been out here for hours but she should not be this exhausted from moving earth out of the way. As Veit approached, he rolled his mother onto her back when he discovered what had caused her to collapse. A severed arm with Flint’s ring on the hand. Veit immediately started digging on the spot trying to recover his brother. He may be maimed, but potentially still alive. Veit kept pulling the earth away when he started to see the familiar fire red hair of his brother. He reached into the soft earth and pulled away at where his brother’s face should be. He kept pulling and exposed his brother’s nose and mouth. To much of Veit’s horror, his brother Flint seemed to have earth pouring out of his mouth and all the way down his throat.
Veit carried Vistra up the side of the crater and back to her hut. Veit spent the next several weeks slowly nursing Vistra back to health and acceptance, staying by her bedside for weeks, helping her accept the grief that overtook her from discovering her eldest son’s corpse beneath the earth. Veit spoke to her softly, hand fed her, sat her upright during the day and read to her. As time passed on, it was clear that the body of Delg would not be found. One morning while Veit was taking care of Vistra, she looked at him and spoke for the first time since the accident
“Promise me you will never enter the mines”
Veit was heartbroken as this is all he has ever wanted to do. He idolized Delg and Flint and to him a freak accident was a freak accident. It didn’t really matter to Veit that the mine collapsed, he was confident that no other accident like this would ever happen again. Veit looked Vistra in the eyes ready to deny her this request, but when his eyes met hers, he saw the grief in her blue eyes and recognized that Vistra did not want to take away this from Veit. She needed this to keep on living. “I promise”, Veit agreed. Vistra collapsed back into the bed with relief washing over her. She started to cry as she realized what she was taking away from her son.
Since Veit had promised Vistra to avoid a miners life, he had to find some other way to make a name for himself. Almost every other job in the camp seemed to be boring and a servant to someone else. The cooks would cook food for the miners, the scouts would hunt food for the cooks, and the smiths would sharpen the miners tools. Veit felt hopeless as he wanted to own his life, not serve someone else. As Veit made his way around the village trying to determine what life path he wanted to pursue, he saw the old cleric, Rurik, relaxing alone in his hut.
Veit noticed that Ruriks hut was really nicely adorned, even nicer than miners huts. How could this be? Aren’t clerics devoted to a life of squalor and poised to be destitute their entire lives? Veit decided that he would just sit and watch Rurik for a while to see what he did. Rurik just seemed to relax in the hut reading or going on nature walks and every so often someone would approach Rurik to ask for a blessing and Rurik would take tribute for that. A good meal, some nice pelts, a flask of wine. Veit felt that if he could not have the stone miner life that he so desired, he would at least take this life of being gifted everything he could possibly want.
“Do you need a successor Rurik? You seem to be getting quite up there in age and I would hate to have no one to carry on the spirit of Reorx for Shar”, Veit asked as he approached Rurik in his hut.
“I fear that the generations of today are forgetting the power of Reorx running through our village. Every child wishes to work the mines. It’s quite refreshing to see someone wishing to help others hold the hammer of Reorx”, Rurik calmly replied.
Rurik seemed to genuinely believe that Veit was an ever faithful follower of Reorx and quickly brought Veit up to a fully clergy member of Reorx. Veit felt like he could get used to this life. Veit never had to go hungry, he would always have a roof over his head, and the community would come to trade their own goods for Veit waving his hands around and saying some gibberish. Veit never really believed in Reorx or any of the gods for a matter of fact. Everyone deep down knew that the gods were gone, it was clear on their faces when they would ask for blessings, but old habits and traditions die hard. Reorx was obviously made up, as good fortunes never really seemed to rain down upon the village. It was always a hard life with finding game, cooking the food, and digging out the stone from the mine. Veit really had it good in the village as he could just fake communing with a god and being given gifts by the village. Shortly after Veit became a full clergy member, Rurik had passed away in his sleep. Veit did the death ritual, waved his hands around, and everyone went back to work.
A couple of months ago some miners had started approaching Veit asking for a blessing before entering the mine under an assumption that praying, even to a non-existent god, would grant them some extra luck when mining. Veit agreed, and didn’t even ask for a tribute before the daily morning blessings. He would just come out and make some shit up and go on with his day. Veit felt like that would give him more legitimacy for more villagers to approach him with larger tributes for smaller things. Veit figured this would be an easy way to build a reputation of being a legitimate cleric for a community of non believers. Although this ritual happened every morning, minor accidents never really ceased. Miners would lose fingers, get bad bumps, etc.. but oddly enough, maybe it was just a self empowerment thing, the miners that got the morning ritual never really got into accidents. Just an off coincidence.
On this morning, Veit emerged from his hut, the daily gathering of miners grew slightly, all hammers facing North. Veit started into his prayer, “Reorx, lead these miners to the powerful stones deep within our hills so we can better equip the world to serve you!”. On the word “you”, Veit raised his hands to the sky and a loud sound of pickaxe on stone, almost like a clinking sound, reverberated around the entire village. Everyone in the village stopped and looked towards Veit with his hands extended into the sky. “Well that coincidence certainly made me look legitimate”, Veit thought to himself, as he then proceeded to sell the performance a little more bringing his hands in a big arc over his head.
Veit slowly made his way back into his hut to resume his commune pose to continue selling the act of being a real cleric to the village when a line slowly started to form outside. The Shar community lined up to ask Veit to help with guidance on some tasks that they needed that day. The cooks wanted to know about the best ways to smoke this giant Elk that was brought in that morning and the scouts wanted to know if there was any way to find more lucrative game that day. Veit spent a minute thinking and then made a statement and waved his hands around before gently touching each villager on the tip of their nose to send them off on their way. That afternoon, the villagers had brought their tribute, the most delicious smoked elk they had ever created and somehow, it seemed that the rations of smoked elk greatly outnumbered the amount of elk that they were smoking. After enjoying some of the smoke elk, Veit entered the entrance to his hut when he noticed that the scouts were bringing in more game than he has ever recalled seeing. Several giant elks were being brought in along with what appeared to be a bison, which was uncommon for this area. Veit was thoroughly impressed with the luck that seemed to be attaching itself to him today.
As Veit stood there in the entryway to his hut, feeling proud of his deceit and false worship, the earth started to shake violently underneath him. Trees started falling around the village and then the hill off in the distance, where the mine was located, started to crater. Veit knew that his luck on deceiving people today had to run out eventually, he just didn’t expect it to be this violent or catastrophic. As the earth finished cratering, Veit and everyone in the village rushed over to help with the recovery efforts. Veit stood on the side as the digging started and Veit stood ready to do death rituals on those that have passed in front of him. The first few bodies were being brought before him. These were higher up in the earth and rubble, so Veit felt like he could just do some sort of healing word on these unconscious bodies in front of him. Veit recited some healing words aloud and much to everyone’s surprise, the miners woke up and stood up to start aiding in the recovery effort. Veit doubted his assessment of the miners that he just performed that ritual on, oh well. More bodies started piling up in front of him. Veit just kept performing rituals. Not everyone seemed to be rising right away to help, it seems that some just needed to hear the clerics voice and others may just pass on to the afterlife after all. At the end of the day, there were 200 miners accounted for from the 200 that had entered the mine that morning. Veit had tried every made up ritual that Rurik had taught him over the piles of bodies in front of him and decided to turn in for the night.
The next morning, Veit was ready to face the village’s aftermath and arose to find a crowd outside his hut. He was ready to be driven out of town as a fraud. It took just one more accident like he had seen in his youth to prove him as a fraud cleric. As Veit slowly approached the door, getting ready to be outcast, slowly all the villagers bowed to him. Veit wasn’t sure what was happening, why was he being idolized right now. Didn’t he just prove that he is a fraud? Shocked, Veit walked back into his hut to get away from these weirdos gathering outside his hut. Was he dreaming? He slapped his own face. No, it hurt, he was definitely awake. The apprentice acolyte walked into the tent, “Every miner is alive and well”, the acolyte stated. Veit couldn’t believe it, he was having the best luck streak of his life. “Uh, thanks. I need some time to commune with Reorx. Please dismiss the crowd outside the hut”, Veit stated to the acolyte. The acolyte bowed and exited the hut, dismissing the crowd.
Veit sat down in his prayer corner, ready to relax and get on with his fake commune with Reorx, his fake god. Veit got in his commune pose and gently closed his eyes as Rurik had taught him years ago. Veit slowly felt himself drifting off to sleep, which was weird since he just woke up, he started to have a vivid dream. A hammer was coming down and hitting some metal shaping it, and working it. A clink, clink, clink, as the hammer came down on this metal and the anvil. Clink, clink, clink. It was weird, it started to sound like whispers were coming between the clinks as Veit sat there in this vivid dream. Clink, clink, clink. The metal was getting flatter on the anvil. Clink, clink, clink. The flattened metal seemed to be getting some detail on its surface. What could this detail mean? Veit squinted and watched for a little while as a map started to appear on its surface. Clink, clink, clink. A name appeared on the map and the whispers started to become barely discernible. Clink, clink, clink. The hammer hitting the metal stopped. A very quiet whisper emerged. Go to Vogner