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From: khamael@netaxs.com (David Dubrow)
Newsgroups: alt.pub.dragons-inn
Subject: New Character: Prelude
Date: 10 May 1995 20:16:26 GMT
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        He awoke with his death-scream still on his lips, the mound of 
earth overhead vibrating with the fury of it.  -I'm blind,-  he thought.  
-The filthy worm blinded me.-  Then he heard the rocks shifting just a 
little overhead and smelled old, damp earth all around him.  He exhaled, 
relieved.  -Not blind.  Just naught to see.-  He shifted his body, 
feeling sharp edges of stone abrade his flesh.  He took a deep breath, 
then another.  From the scents, he determined that he was in a small 
chamber approximately ten feet underground.  Not tall enough  to stand 
in, but with enough room to crouch.  He ran his hands along his body.  
His clothes were mostly intact, it seemed.  That was well.  He tried to 
turn, onto his side.  His hip moved something and he heard a metallic, 
scraping sound.  He felt around until his fingers encountered cold 
steel.  A sword.  -Mine-, he thought.  -Good.-  His air would run out 
soon, he realized.  It was time to be quit of this place.   
        When the first rays of sunlight hit his upturned face, he 
flinched.  His eyes burned with a fiery pain that made the aches he 
currently felt elsewhere on his body become insignificant.  He narrowed 
them to slits until he was able to see.  A paved, slightly-rutted road 
about a mile away.  Scrub grass by the sides, with some sparse trees.  A 
stream nearby.  He inhaled deeply, taking in the mingled scents, and 
stepped out of the hole, taking his sword with him.  He looked down at 
it.  It was a long, wide-bladed affair, perhaps four feet from point to 
pommel, forged from a single piece of metal.  No markings, no ornament.  
The scabbard it rested in was of a strange, reptilian leather, supple and 
dully gleaming.  He slung it over his back, as he remembered was the 
proper way, and made for the stream.  
        He unslung the sword and removed the belt of copper links he wore 
to hold up his white breechclout.  Off came the white tunic, stained with 
dirt as the breechclout was.  They were made of a finely-woven fabric, 
the name of which he could not recall.  It disturbed him that his memory 
was faulty in this regard.  Mentally shrugging, he slipped into the 
stream and began to wash.  
        After a time, he caught a glimpse of his face in the stream's 
rippling water.  It was a strange mixture of the coarse and refined.  
Thick, coal-black hair that reached his broad shoulders.  The skin a 
dark, ruddy color, almost crimson.  Heavy brows overhanging widely-spaced 
brown eyes.  The nose was long and hooked, and the jaw was heavy, almost 
prognathus.  A  thick, short beard and mustache connected to mutton chop 
sideburns.  The ears were long-lobed and tapered flat along the skull, 
almost coming to points.  As he took this in, a memory came to mind.   
-Naugrath Kroldor is my name-, he thought.  He dimly recalled that it had 
a meaning.  A title, perhaps.  But it escaped him.  As he stepped out of 
the water, he saw that his limbs and torso were covered in thick, curling 
hair.  He smiled, a little, thinking, -Qoldryth always said I was rather 
more hirsute than her father.  And he was almost ape-like.-  He blinked, 
then, his smile fading.  Who was Qoldryth?  He shrugged.  He would either 
remember, in time, or he would not.  He scrubbed his clothes in the 
water, feeling some satisfaction that the cloth did not hold stains 
well.  In moments, his tunic and breechclout were clean.  He nodded, 
donned his damp clothes, reslung his sword, and walked toward the road.  
His nostrils told him that there were others here.  He would meet them 
and see where he was and where he fit in the order of things.