Chapter 1: Enter the Bar Keep
The leaves on the lower tree branches rustled as the cloaked figure walked hurriedly to the edge of the woods. Light slowly began to peer through the thicket of branches and leaves above, and voices could be heard nearby.
The hooded one walked out from the shadowy woods and stopped. They paused to observe the village they had just walked into. It was a decent sized village, stone buildings rose up directly across from the tree line, shop signs hung above doors, humans and halflings bustled about shopping and working, and dwarves led oxen through muddy streets.
“Can I help you with anything?” The figure looked down to see a midling looking up to them. He came up to about their knees, and was a merchant judging by his apron.
“I’m looking for a tavern and an inn,” They replied.
“Well miss, our tavern and inn are one in the same, it’s called Ghogs Swallow, about two streets over. It’s pretty hard to miss,” he smiled and his cheeks became warm and rosy.
“Thank you,” she replied and handed him a silver coin as she took off down the trodden down streets.
The sun was beginning to set and she knew she’d need to find him before the day ended. As she walked, a sign came into view with a drunken boar hanging above a door to a large stone building. She knew this was it.
The hooded woman stepped inside the tavern and went straight to the bar to sit down. It wasn’t a large tavern and the wooden floor had been smoothed over from countless boots treading on it. The faint sounds of a guitar being strummed could be heard over the soft murmur of workers sitting down for a drink after a long day.
The man tending the bar was a dragonborn, and a large one at that. He was taller than everyone else in the room, and was built as if he could take them all down in a fight as well. His scales were a dark shade of blue, and she immediately became weary of him as he glanced her way.
“Can I get you anything? Food, drinks, a room?” He asked. His voice was deep and harsh, as if his throat was made of sand, but sincere and put her at ease.
She pulled her hood off, letting her auburn hair flow over her shoulders and down her back, coming to a rest over the staff she carried on her back.
“Are there any rooms I could stay in? And I’m looking for someone who might be able to help me,” she asked. Her voice was smooth like silk, and just as comforting.
“A room will run you about ten gold a night, and as for this ‘someone’, that depends on what you need.” His hands never left the tankard he was cleaning as he spoke.
“I’m looking for Melerin, the paladin, know where I can find him?”
“That depends on who’s asking and on the job their offering.”
“Athaea, and I need help with a slight necromancer problem.”
The bar keep froze, his gaze turned from warm and welcoming to hard and cold. He sat down the cup he had been cleaning and stepped out from behind the bar.
“Arthur, cover the bar for a bit,” he said without taking his gaze from Athaea.
“Aye hoss,” said a portly dwarf as he toddled over to the counter and stepped onto a stool to stand above it.
“Follow me, I’ll take you to Melerin.” He waved his hand for her to follow him, and he opened a door to a wooden hallway.
They were silent as they walked down the hall, his heavy footsteps were followed lightly by her own and were the only sounds they made.
The hallway came to an end and opened into a large common room with doors on every side. The doors each had small, brass numbers nailed into them, and at the center of the room was a stone fire pit. Five sturdy oak chairs surrounded the fire pit on all sides.
The draconic barkeeper led her to a corner room on the far right. As he pulled out a key from his apron, he turned to her and spoke.
“He’s in there. When we get in, I’ll do the talking. Don’t say anything unless he asks you, just sit and be quiet.” The barkeep stared at her stoically.
Athaea nodded her head nervously. All kinds of thoughts about what kind of a monstrous man could this Melerin be went rushing through her head. Was he huge? Did he kill people just for looking at him wrong? Was he just rude and so the barkeep just wanted to keep her from being offended?
The dragonborn opened the door and walked in, bidding Athaea to follow him. The two horns sticking out of his head barely missed the ceiling as he walked.
She looked around to get a better look at the room. It was dark, but in the corner she could see a large set of armor and a shield. But she couldn’t see anyone else inside the room.
The blue barkeep took out a flask and splashed whatever was in it on his face.
“Mel, you got a visitor!” He shouted as he wiped off his face. He turned to Athaea, but there was something different about his face. Two long, linear scars ran down the right side of his face, from his brow all the way to the edge of his jaw. “It certainly seems I do.”
“Wait, you’re Melerin?” Athaea was more confused than shocked or scared now.
“Well, yeah, did you expect something else?” Now the dragonborn was confused, why wasn’t she in awe, shock or anything?
“I just didn’t expect you to be a bartender,” she laughed, “or a dragonborn.”
“I guess that’s fair, and I certainly ain’t no elf.”
“No, you’re not, I’m part elf, I’d know if the person I was looking for was an elf. We’re not exactly huge in number.” Athaea calmed down enough to collect her thoughts, “what was that stuff you used to make your face change?”
“Ah, an elf, I knew I picked up some magic. And it’s just whiskey, I painted over the scars and the alcohol takes it right off.” Melerin chuckled a little bit and held up the flask, “I really just use it as a parlor trick with my patrons. Want a bit?”
“It’s a drink, fairly hard hitting. Almost like fire.” He smiled and placed the flask in her hand.
“Aren’t paladins supposed to be pious warriors of the gods? I’m pretty sure alcohol is against that whole pious thing,” she sniffed the rim of the flask, “and why would you drink something that’s ‘like fire’.”
“My throat can take a lot, and as for the pious thing, that’s not me. You want a paladin who’s sworn their oath to a god, you’ll wanna look somewhere else, maybe a temple would be a better place to look. My oath isn’t to them, and so I can do what I want. Go ahead, try some, you might like it.”
Athaea lifted the flask to her mouth and took a swig from it. She spat it out the instant it hit her throat, it burned and kicked and forced its way out of her mouth. She coughed and spat trying to get the last of it out. Melerin grabbed the flask back from her and took a huge gulp from it.
“That’s not ‘like fire’, that is liquid fire!” Athaea coughed as he laughed at her, “How can you drink something so foul?”
“I guess it’s not for everyone, you just kind of go numb to the feeling after a while. But that’s nothing new to me.” His stare looked a thousand yards away for a moment, but then he smiled and led her over to a table and some chairs, “now, have a seat and we’ll discuss this problem of yours.”
Athaea sat down in the wooden chair as he lit some candles, and she kept trying to get the taste from her mouth. As the light filled the room, she noticed the armor was polished steel with dark blue accents, solid plate metal, and heavy plate at that. The shield followed the same color pattern, except that in the center was a golden symbol of a skull being crushed by a hammer.
Melerin sat down across from her and stared at her a moment.
“Before we talk business, I must ask you a few questions.” His gaze was stone cold.
“Ask away,” she worried it would just be some other way of messing with her.
“You’re a magic user, I can tell by the way you look and the feeling of the air around you. But the nature of your magic is… Odd. It’s not necessarily evil or good. Just… alien to me.”
“How did you learn your magic?” He threaded his large fingers together and stared right into her soul.
“A familiar taught me,” her blood ran cold and she could feel electricity coursing through the air around her and Melerin.
“So you’re a warlock? But the nature of your familiar is strange. It’s not a spirit or a demon. It is old, powerful, and… for lack of a better word, weird.”
“How’d you figure all this out?” Athaea tensed up as he read her up and down.
“Please, it’s my job to figure all this out just by glancing at someone. A paladin must be able to sense magic, identify its source, its intent, and snuff it out if need be.”
“That must make you pretty good at hunting necromancers.” She was just trying to deflect the question, but she couldn’t help and think that maybe he was just what she needed.
“If I wasn’t good, we wouldn’t be here talking about it.”
Athaea just stared at him, how was she supposed to respond to something like that?
“That was a joke, you can laugh, because I’m funny.”
“How can you joke about something like that? How can you make a joke about your own possible death while talking about a job like this?” She was completely shocked.
“I’ve been hunting necromancers and undead on my own for ten year, death is a common theme. Besides, better I make jokes about my own death than someone else’s.”
“I suppose, and only ten years? That’s it? I expected longer.” Athaea crossed her arms over her chest.
“Fifteen years if you count my years in the army. And ten years is a decent amount of time for us non-elf types. I might be part dragon, but I don’t have the longevity of my flying cousins.” Melerin snapped his fingers, “we’re getting off topic, what’s the job?”
“I’m only part elf, and I’m trying to find a necromancer,” she sat back down.
“Everyone from here to the Calsus Waist is trying to find a necromancer.”
“He hurt me, I want to hurt him.”
“Then you’re looking in the wrong place. I don’t hurt necromancers, so you might want to find someone else to hire if you want to hurt him.” Melerin relaxed his huge shoulders and leaned back in his chair as if to dismiss her.
“You hunt necromancers, don’t you? Why not help me?” She stood up and raised her voice almost to a shout. Melerin leaned forward and rested his head on his fists.
“I don’t hurt necromancers,” he stood up and he seemed almost eight feet tall, “I destroy them. I show them their crimes against nature and make them wish they’d never committed them. I do not show them mercy, they don’t deserve it.”
Athaea could feel the bloodlust in his words, and the sincerity with which he said them. It caught her a little off guard. She sat silently as she stared at this blue mountain for a few minutes, and then she spoke.
“Then you’re exactly what I need,” she stared into his eyes and tried to match his intensity.
They glared at each other for what felt like hours, when Melerin let out a thunderous laugh.
“You got it chief, the only good necromancer is a dead one. We’ll leave in the morning, until then, the room next door is vacant, and you can stay there for the night, free of charge.”
“Why can’t we leave now?” The sudden warmth of his reptilian smile shocked her after that intense standoff. His fangs didn’t exactly put her at ease either.
“Rule two of hunting necromancers is to never search for them at night. A lot of those corpse-herding freaks draw on the power of the moon god, Bulan. Best we move when we have the sun goddess’s blessing.”
“Rule one is always burn bodies. No body means no reanimation, don’t even leave a skeleton remaining, every part must turn to ash.”
“Oh,” Athaea hadn’t really thought about that, “I’ll just trust your judgement on that. But will the tavern owner really not mind if I stay without paying?”
“No, hon, I don’t mind,” He smiled as he placed a hand on her head.
“You own this place? Really? How could you afford a place like this?”
“Hunting necromancers is a very lucrative profession right now, and this gives me a place to come home to when I finish a job. It’s nice to sit back and drink while talking with the locals.” He was clearly very proud of the nice little business he ran.
“What about your clan? Couldn’t you go home to them?”
His eyes sank and his warms smile turned sour and hard.
“No, but that’s not something to talk about. Now go on, we’re going to have an early day tomorrow.” He reached into his apron and handed her a brass key, “Room 3, just right next to this one.”
As she walked to her room, she tried not to think about the last thing he said to her. It was rare to see a dragonborn outside of their clan, and even rarer to find one who couldn’t or didn’t want to go back. But then she realized she didn’t really have much knowledge of the world outside her forest, so maybe it’s more common than the elders had said.
