Fealty to One’s Lord

I flew back down to New Ardlord and the temple at Kord.

I found Starg cleaning out the stables.

"Hi Starg. How are you?"

"Hi Mord. It is good to be in the fresh air again. Those dwarf caves. How do they stand it?"

"So, um, you are okay with all this?"

"Yes, Mord. I am content to be back on these grounds. I listen to the stories of Kord and his people and it feels me with a spirited joy of life that I have not had in a long time. Thank you for freeing me from Gruumsh and from the dwarves."

"That's fantastic. Look, I am going to go and check in with a few people. But how about dinner?"

He agreed and I went on my merry way. What a great day, it seemed.

I greeted some people I knew and then met Fiola. She at first smiled and then a thought crossed her mind and she whipped an orb of lightning at me. That hurt.

"Mord, how could you? How could you bring Starg here? After all that he has done?"

"Fiola, ow. Stop hurting me. You know it just encourages me." I smiled. "Starg is my friend again. These are happy times. He has come back to the fold of Kord."

"I do not trust him. He seems to always be eying me."

"Hmmph. You are just slow to forgive. Come, have dinner tonight with Starg and I. You will see."

"No. You go ahead. I have things to attend to in town. Tomorrow, the temple elders have promised me that I can be involved in the final destruction of that orc tribe."

That night, Starg and I feasted well in the halls of Kord's temple. And then we even got some wrestling practice in.

In the morning, I was summoned to the temple. I arrived to find Starg and Fiola already present.

"Ah, good. All three of you have much blood and history between you. We are sick of it. This is a place of raucous behavior, not sulking. In the way that has tested many before, all three of you must undertake a quest, a quest that has bound all of you for longer than you know. Each of you come from the union of the orcs with the humans on the eastern continent. We had hoped that the orcs from there that fled would be able to assimilate with us. But events have proven otherwise.

Starg, you know them well and have much to atone for. You will be the guide. Fiola, you have a burden to unload. You will bring the fury. Mord, well, you want all three of you to be good friends. You are there to guard and protect them both.

All of you are charged with the quest of bringing down the final remnants of the orc tribe. They have gone to ground in the northern plains, but I think Starg can find them. Do you all accept this quest for the glory of Kord?"

"For Kord! Yes!" we cried in unison.

The priest then came to Starg. "My son, you have lived too long in the dark. It is time that changes. Mord, please do the honors."

I grinned, now able to do something I had longed for for years. I came up to Starg, "Kord, please heal this old wound that Starg might better see the true path in front of him." And laying my hands over his vacant eye, the power of Kord surged and entered Starg, regenerating the eye whole.

Starg, blinked, tears forming in both of his eyes. "Blessed be to Kord!"

And so we three are to hunt orcs, closing a chapter on all of our histories.

Mords of Wisdom: Don't mix anger with warmages.