A Second Chance at Martyrdom

451 NR Year of the Grinning Halfling

1 Hammer

The start of the new year has started off pleasantly enough. Tulgor has technically been off work for the season for the last few tenday now, since the harbour is now blocked by ice flows from the north.

It's been quite fun with him at home playing and teaching the three of us, or trudging through the snowy streets up to the North Ward helping clear recent snowfall for us. The lessons themselves are likely more interesting to Pelsot and Jespa than to me, since it's mostly tales about him being on the seas fishing in open waters.

Today in particular though was Wintershield, a more generally recognized day off for the majority of citizens. My family has one of the larger houses among the various kids that are in our play group, not that it was actually large but it's relative, meaning that we played host to a dozen of them coming over in the afternoon.

Tulgor brought out a few rough maps of the Sword Coast for us to look over and discuss. Apparently a feature of the holiday included discussions about politics and geography. That and soup. Virla spent much of the day boiling a pot full of bones and herbs that was intermittently served up for our gathering. I don't think I've ever had a better soup broth in either life, though I might have enjoyed some sort of noodles in it if they had been available.

Tulgor spent time teaching the other kids about the other major settlements along the coastline, he had actually been employed on a merchantile vessel before settling down with Virla and so was fairly knowledgeable about the various port cities along the Sword Coast.

After dark but before everyone headed home, all the kids broke up into pairs and competed in a sort of competitive quiz going over various things we had talked about, as well as various details about Waterdeep.

I got paired with Yeena, who had a tendency to simply give joke answers to cover for her not actually knowing them. It's a good thing she got paired up with me, since I actually knew all the answers thanks to all my studying.

16 Hammer

This month was thankfully uneventful up until today. The days had blended together in a mix of spending time at home playing with my siblings and Tulgor, going out on slightly warmer days to play in the snow with the local groups of kids, occasionally going or inviting others to play in each other's houses, or making the trek across the city to go to the library.

Today was an opportunity though, thanks to Pelsot having a cold. Tulgor elected to stay at home taking care of him, as did Jespa.

It was also thankfully one of the warmer days of winter, small mercies. If I can make time this summer I'll be sowing in some silk layers into my winter clothes to stay warm.

It took me half an hour in the morning to scour the Docks Ward to find what I was looking for. I hadn't had much of a chance to do the legwork earlier given how busy and close Pelsot kept me.

The group of Lizardfolk I knew would come and go trading for food. I'd figured it out by the somewhat scheduled frequency we would see them around the area, every tenday or so since winter started. Finding them was actually the most annoying part of the whole endeavour. I waited for them to finish their business near the Butcher's Guildhall before actually approaching.

They all stood a bit above 6 feet tall, though it was hard to really tell given my diminutive size. Covered in swampy green scales mixed with some patterns of a rusty red colour. I could feel the weapons they had concealed in their jackets with a few bugs, uncommon in the city. Their jackets and boots though were in poor condition, worn with holes and many sized a bit small for their large imposing frames.

They seemed initially confused, which makes sense since I was a random bundled up 5 year old walking up to a dozen scary lizardfolk. They were used to people leaving them alone or staring with disdain, so this was a novel event for them. I was able to convince them to follow me into a warmer alley on their way out of the city, burdened mostly with slabs of meat they purchased.

Turns out they had a lot of fear and respect for magi. I showed off a little bit of my insect control, and suddenly they were all for listening to whatever I had to say. It was a gamble because they were the first people I had actually decided to show my abilities to in this life.

I wanted an alliance with them.

I've grown a bit stir crazy truthfully, because for as much as my family keeps me active during the days, the cold winter greatly limits my options with my insects. I couldn't build up any sort of decent number of spiders for weaving. Scouting around outside was near impossible with how the cold quickly killed any exposed insects. Who would have thought the true weakness of my powers was seasonal cold?

So I negotiated with them, tentatively. They weren't actually in a position of authority in their tribe, and I didn't exactly have much to offer for the moment, so we stuck mostly to the theoretical.

I asked them to act as proxies for me, since it was difficult to make people respect me at my current age. Initially, this was to try and get them to pay for a building close enough to my home to be in range for most of my day. In exchange, I could use the space to help weave them warmer clothes for next winter.

The other option discussed was a deal for food for them. I revealed I could control things larger than spiders, so they asked me to go to the Rat Hills at some point to help them harvest some of the creatures there. In exchange, they might help me more efficiently harvest goods from the area to be sold. They were known to be scavengers and so would elicit less suspicion than I had for my various pawning off of goods.

I wouldn't go to the hills today though. Tulgor thought I was just going out to a library to study for a couple hours. That, and the winter solstice was in mid Nightal, so the days were quite short now. A round trip to the hills took ages with all the snow on the ground, even if the lizardfolk seemed to have a sled they would pull to transport goods.

18 Hammer

I managed to catch a cold, and I blame staying outside in that alley with the lizardfolk for so long a few days ago. On the bright side, I got to have some more of that very tasty soup from back during Wintershield.

Pelsot and Jespa went to check out some books for me at the library to keep me busy when I was actually awake. I had been meaning to return and get new ones sometime this week. What they thought my tastes were though left something to be desired, but it was the thought that counted.

25 Hammer

Orsik has been a godsend today in helping with the research of niche topics. I think a lot of the reason he spends time with me is because of how much he actually enjoys how I ask questions that he doesn't actually know the immediate answer to.

He'll go scurrying off to search through the book indexes of the library to find a half dozen volumes for us to pour over in a reading corner of the library. He's a much faster reader than me though, but it's still good practice for me. I still need him to help explain and translate unfamiliar words though.

Today's weird topic I asked about was the use of silks in the realm, and that was a far greater rabbit hole than I had initially expected.

The greatest amount of lore available was of the Drow. A sort of cursed branch of elf that lived underground. Apparently the world also had a massive cave network basically everywhere called the Underdark, inhabited by all sorts of strange creatures affected by the strange magics suffusing the place.

Waterdeep itself had a few entrances connected down to it, though the surface races generally avoided them.

The Drow worshipped a demonic queen of spiders as a goddess, named Lolth. Spiders were considered sacred in their culture, and there were many of them that would use spidersilk as textiles. Makes sense given the lack of sunlight for typical crops like cotton, or for the raising of livestock like sheep.

There were a handful of other faraway places that also used it, though the only one vaguely relevant and known about was in the jungles of Chult. A faraway jungle peninsula far to the south. Apparently dinosaurs existed there.

Dinosaurs existed.

It's probably strange that somehow I have more difficulty believing in dinosaurs than demons and gods existing.