Outsider Perspective 02 - Campaign 1

Everyone talks about the dragon.

They talk about it because it was the harbinger of all the troubles that came to Phandalin. The great white beast, the destroyer, the monster.  They talk about how it smashed through the manor like it was a bundle of dry twigs, how it razed the town with one buffet of its wings, about the speed of its flight that brought with it the winter storms in the early autumn.

They talk about it in anger, for that destruction.  Not just because of the town itself, because that could be rebuilt, but for the people that had been lost, and the hardships that would come of its passing. 

She had gone back to Phandalin after it was over, to try and salvage what remained of their crops.  Over half of them were gone or destroyed, either by the orcs or the early frost brought on by the dragon.  That was fitting too, in a way that had caused her to break down when she hadn't before.  The two of them had planted those crops together, and now only she remained.  She'd worked with the others that were left, to take in what food they could, because while the dragon was gone, dead, the weather that it had brought had certainly left its mark.

They talk about the dragon's death, stories of its downfall by the Heroes of Phandalin.  Stories of triumph, of heroism, of beating the odds.  They talk about it because it was easier than talking about all the things they didn't want to think about; warm stories to reassure themselves, but even through the thick walls in Axeholm, she could make out the screams of terror in the night sometimes, when the horrors of those weeks came back in people's dreams.  Her own were not devoid of them.  She had never seen anyone cut down like they had been by those orcs, or seeing someone slowly dying from being crushed by rubble, like her Tad.

But she was alive, and those that told those tales were alive too, and that had to count for something.

She remembered when those heroes first came to the town with tales of their own.  Few had believed them about the dragon back then, except when the words of the smith, Gheldryn, had changed that.  They hadn't seemed like heroes in the tales, not in the way that the other group had been, 'The Eyes of Neverwinter'.  "Proper heroes," those had been dubbed, but none of them had survived the dragon, and the Heroes of Phandalin didn't get that name for nothing, even if they had come in with few provisions and terrible armour, coming back more battered each time.

But they had returned, and sometimes with people saved, other times with news.  The timber camp had been destroyed, the orcs were everywhere, and Neverwinter had been sealed off because of a plague.  She'd always thought those two dwarven brothers had been nothing but gold-digging tomb-thieves, but they had found Axeholm, and the Heroes of Phandalin had cleared it out, with help.

Standing now in the room filled with a large stone plinth with a carving on it, and three altars, there was little way for people to conveniently forget just who had helped them, who had laid thousands of undead to rest, and given them a safe haven to stay in afterwards.  

The Dead Three.  

Everyone talked about the dragon, but no one talked about the fact that three Gods of Death were apparently not dead any more.  No one talked about it, but she was not the only one that visited that shrine to leave small offerings and prayers.  Sometimes out of gratitude, sometimes out of hopefulness for those gone, and sometimes in the hope that their ire would not turn their way.  

Word had it that the Heroes of Phandalin had gone to Leilon at the order of Lord Neverember, who only turned up after the dragon had been killed.  

Now that the dragon was gone, she could have gone back to Phandalin with the others, but her little home there was crushed and filled with memories, good and bad, and sometimes it was better to leave things behind, especially with how stark it felt, how unsafe, when word was that there was more trouble brewing.  With the plague dealt with, she could have gone back to her childhood home of Neverwinter, but her father had survived the plague, and there was little she wanted to do than to be once more under his dark gaze.  And she could, she supposed, go to Leilon, where the heroes were going to be protecting the town, but she knew better.  Not that they would fail, but that if they were sent there, it was because trouble was likely expected.  A man like Neverember wouldn't send them somewhere peaceful, after all.  She'd been brought up in the city before she'd moved with her husband to Phandalin looking for a fresh start, and she knew how things went in places like that.  Unlike her Tad, who had just wanted to grow things.

So she'd chosen Axeholm, where she grew mushrooms instead of wheat and potatoes, and while she missed the open sky, she wouldn't trade it for the safety of those walls.  Safety that even a dragon had not been able to breach.  

Setting down her offerings on each of the altars, she offered her thoughts to the Gods who were meant to have been dead, but who had instead helped grant them this safe harbour after all the strife.  They had moved on, likely were focused where their cleric had gone, that tabaxi with the white fur.  More luck to them.  In time, she hoped the dreams would fade, and she had no intent on adding to them by following that group into whatever battles they faced.  She'd heard tales of the Mere of Dead Men, next to Leilon.  It wasn't somewhere she had any interest in visiting.

With a nod to those who were also in the small room, she made her way past and back into the main areas of Axeholm.  It could be home, of a different sort, this place.  She could make a home here.