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| Image credit: https://www.deviantart.com/caoranach/art/Erebor-440164029 |
The Chronicles of Jhool
A Hero twice Born, Once Dishonored
Stone.
It is said that the Dwarven clan of the Cragbourn, despite their legendary works of steel, gold, and mithril, held a special regard for the majesty of stone. Cut and hewn from the hard grey granite, every young dwarf of the clan, be them future craftsman or warrior alike, worked a single piece of stone as a symbol of their transition to manhood.
Legend has it that the stone was both their mother and their child alike. That the rocks and crags bore them and they, in turn, bore the stone and metal they were recognized for. And, within that towering mound of rock and ice lost within the Pehrmaroust Mountain Range, they toiled and lived within the womb of the world.
Bhar-al'Jhool was one of the seven great cities constructed by the Dwarven people during the Age of Th'uun the Builder. It was an immense work of military might and artistic mastery built by the Cragbourne.
Its construction within the mountain's berth honoring the God-Bourne hero Jhool Grayscale-Cragbourne and his adventuring compatriots rivaled any city known then or now with its stone halls easily as grand as the Elven capitol of A'na'katal or the Human metropolis of Placid Lake. It was a marvel of engineering, dedication, and talent that housed hundreds of thousands of men and women, merchants and diplomats, dwarves, elves, and men.
But that was before the fall of the Age.
Before the treachery of man and their broken promises.
Before the arrogance of the elves and their ceaseless warring.
Before the greed of the dwarves and their hunger for riches.
And it was before darkness.
Like many tragedies in history, one only has clarity for the events to come when they already know the events that are coming. As the old gnomish precept goes: "Hindsight is clear as crystal, but foresight is but mud only to be divined by witches and charlatans." It is by that same unfortunate truth that the peoples of the land, mired in their own selfish matters, never realized the dangers that pressed in until they were drowning in pools of their own blood.
Historians often spin fanciful tales of the great darkness that quelled the Age of Th'uun. Their favorite metaphor is that of a tankard of ink poured across a great map; of liquid blankness spreading and boiling across the surface of the world, marring and engulfing all that it touched.
In reality, it was nothing so obvious.
It started with the disappearance of the little town of Gold Fields. A human farming town on the outskirts of any map, no one took heed when the twenty three men, women, and children vanished without a trace. It was explained away or ignored. Who cared for peasants? Perhaps monsters got them.
The scene repeated itself in Ogre's Bend. The village mattered to nothing and no one short of the few farmers that lived there, scraping together a simple life far from the clatter or chaos of crowded cities. Who was to care at the disappearance of another twenty some six months later?
Who would even think such events, separated by time and a hundred miles, were even related to each other?
Unfortunately, only the historians would see the pattern.
As time rolled on with crops sprouting and harvesting, snow falling and receding, and the stone of Bhar-al'Jhool ever unchanged short for the addition of new statues, halls, and homes, very few realized first hand that anything was happening. The world is, after all, a very dangerous place. Monsters are a vicious sort and lives come and go.
Only when the Golden Gates of Kana'ka'Loe, hidden within the Emerald Sanctuary, were broken in by hundreds of thousands of walking corpses, flanked by monstrosities of bone and monsters from the depths of the Forgotten Darkness, did anyone truly take notice.
And by then it was far too late.
The creatures of darkness washed over the lands in a flurry of blood, chaos, and death. Many of the great cities and even some races, now forgotten, were wiped away, sometimes overnight. Adventurers and heroes great and small stood before the flood and nearly all were washed away, many joining the very ranks they sought to defeat, with only a select few leaving a wake behind their bravery and sacrifice for the races of light to survive in. Pools of safety surrounded on all sides by unending, unyielding death.
It was late in the cataclysm that the monstrosities reached the guilded gates of Bhar-al'Jhool. Of the original six heroes that once called that place home, only Jhool Grayscale-Cragbourne, weathered by the centuries and old age, and his Elven partner Ava Quihana stood behind the shuddering, crumbling doors of stone and gold. One hundred thousand Dwarven warriors in armor of mithril and wielding weapons of silver stood with them. Unfortunately, Jhool knew better than to believe they would make a difference against the millions of slathering monsters pressing in.
Jhool had lived far too long and far too comfortably for far too many years. Though he was human in appearance, his God-Bourne lineage, also known as a demi-god to some for his father's divine standing, had blessed him with long life only rivaled by the near-immortal elves. He had been honored as a hero by the Dwarven people for centuries in the halls of Bhar-al'Jhool and it showed to even the most casual of passerby.
His lustrous hair was long since grey and thinned. His hardened physique turned to a doughy pot belly. His glittering eyes dull and drab. Everything about him that had once made him a hero had been weathered away except for his smile and his tales.
Stories turned to tales as time goes on. Tales to legends. And legends to myth. Unfortunately, when the focus of such myth lives within your city gates, very few remember or realize that many of the stories told before their transference to lore were told by the very same man that they recognizing.
Were Jhool ever questioned, he'd always deny it, but only the Elven woman at his side remembered the truth of the story spinner. She remembered the battle with the Hundred-Headed Hydra and that is was not Jhool, but her compatriot that slew the beast. She also remembered the Lion of Alza'jam and how it was not Jhool, but actually HER that tamed and conquered it. She remembered all of his falsehoods and lies that led to his remembrance and good standing.
For many years, Ava let the story spinner weave his webs of exaggeration and fancy for all that would listen. She didn't care for the glory Jhool always demanded to be surrounded by. Nor did any of her compatriots. Perhaps, she pondered, with the failing gates before her, that's why the lying demi-god had a city named after him for all the good it did.
No. With age came the failure of the handsome young man's looks. The dwindling visage and years of placation had given way to a fat old man who stood terrified in piss-soaked britches before crumbling stone and the hordes of monsters beyond. The only thing left was a smile white as a freshly polished pearl and gilded words that fell from his lips as a viper might drool its a noxious green venom.
And, it was with that same smile, still painted on his face like a playwright's mask, that Jhool turned and walked away from the failing gates, stating he would gather reinforcements to make their last stand.
A hundred thousand warriors watched him slither away like the snake he was.
Their anger was short lived though. As were the remainder of their lives in general.
While the city of Bhar-al'Jhool fell along with many others before the darkness was vanquished, those few survivors did not forget the cowardice of the Liar God-Bourne Jhool Grayscale-Cragbourne. Like a fire in a dried thicket, the tale spread of the man who abandoned his city, people, and partner to the slathering hordes. Jhool found no purchase and no home ever again, dying alone in the woods hated and despised; eaten half-alive by a large snake just looking for a meal and finding the nice fat story spinner.
So hated was Jhool Grayscale-Cragbourne that many families remember his name and the anger is palpable still today. While, in the scope of offense, a single coward in the face of overwhelming adversity is not as exceptional as many make it out to be, he stands out among the crowd. Maybe it had to do with the centuries of stories that he himself weaved into the world. Maybe it had to do with the fall of the great city that held his name. No matter the reason, many historians have realized a rather unfortunate truth for the legacy of the Liar God-Bourne:
Stories turned to tales. Tales to legends. And legends to myth.
Now the only thing that remains outside of anger for Jhool Grayscale-Cragbourne are his effigies. The stone statues, carved from the hard stone granite deep in the heart of Bhar-al'Jhool, have survived several millennia and would have survived several more were it not for the intruder into the dead city: a wicked smile on her thin lips and a massive warhammer across her shoulders.
