Give Her a Hand, Folks

This is the story of Thikut Omudib, "Crushedsyrups," who served briefly as a Recruit in the Bentknife militia before becoming the latest victim of the Curse of Bentknife.

Thikut came to Bentknife in 266, 60 years old and in her prime.  At the Mountainhome, her role had been assisting the doctors in the hospital with feeding and cleaning the patients.  She had rarely been sick a day in her life, so work as a nurse was ideal for her, although she lacked the patience for any serious study of medicine.  Although she worked diligently, her work was undemanding; dwarves are hardy, self-reliant creatures by nature, and only the most seriously sick or injured needs or wants any more than superficial care.  As a result, she arrived in Bentknife lacking any real skills to set her aside from the peasantry.  As basic care of the injured is a required activity for all dwarves in Bentknife, and the lack of skilled doctors means anyone seriously injured doesn't live long anyway, Thikut was, against her will, drafted into the militia.

Upon reporting for duty, Thikut was told that there were no weapons available, but she should begin training as a wrestler in anticipation of the day a superior might fall and she would be allowed to inherit a weapon of her own.  She reported to basic training as ordered, but before she could even don a set of training armor, the alarm sounded throughout Bentknife -- goblins were at the gates!

Thikut was the first to rush out the door and meet the incoming hordes.  Her commanding officer shouted to her that she had no combat experience, and that she should stand down and allow the armed and armored soldiery to handle the invaders, but Thikut paid them no heed.  She charged the first goblin she saw, an ugly little green creature wielding a knife nearly as tall as it was.  Thikut went into a combat stance that a soldier had once demonstrated for her in the hospital and swung her fist forward with all her might.

The goblin laughed, and in one easy swipe of its knife took her left hand off at the wrist.  Thikut screamed in collapsed on the ground, struggling to remain conscious and pinching the artery shut with her remaining hand.  The other goblins advanced into Thikut's comrades and the skirmish commenced around them.  Despite the crash of the goblin's copper weapons against the dwarves' iron armor, and the screams and gouts of blood as the dwarven weapons pierced green flesh and shattered goblin bone, Thikut could hear nothing but the beat of her own heart, ticking her life away.  The goblin standing over her sneered at her feeble attempts to stem the flow and rammed its dagger into her right arm near the elbow, severing a tendon and causing it to go completely limp.  As she watched her blood pumping uselessly onto the ground, the laughing goblin took a crossbow bolt in the throat and spun over backwards in a heap.  At that point, though, Thikut was too far gone to even take satisfaction in its death.

She awoke a week later in Bentknife's ramshackle hospital, having been dragged there by some kindly dwarf after the fight.  She said a prayer of thanks to Ral, the Goddess of Earth, and Doren, the God of Minerals, for lending her the endurance of stone.  A hospital worker noticed she was awake and wandered over, explaining that a doctor in training had somehow managed to sew her back up, but that nobody had really expected her to survive.  News of Thikut's recovery spread through the fortress in an instant, and everyone agreed that it was truly miraculous that their new arrival had been spared by the greenskin menace.

All was not well with Thikut, however.  She was extremely troubled by the loss of her left hand, and tried her best not to let it show to the stream of well-wishers who visited her bedside to introduce themselves and perhaps share in the blessing of the gods.  Most of the visitors attempted to cheer her by reminding her that anything a dwarf really needs to do can be done with one hand anyway.  She smiled and laughed, attempting to play along, but a new realization was beginning to dawn:  she had completely lost the use of her right hand.  Even her elbow was stiff, but the hand just hung limply.  None of the visitors seemed to notice, and Thikut remained in bed for another few weeks, hopeful that it would heal on its own.

After a time, the hospital workers began to give her funny looks, since she remained there despite having demonstrated the ability to walk and feed herself.  Before leaving, she asked the chief medical dwarf to take a look at her arm.  A brief examination confirmed her fear:  the goblin's knife had severed a motor nerve in her arm, and she would forever be without the use of her only remaining hand.

Dejected and filled with despair, Thikut wandered the halls of Bentknife.  The chief medical dwarf had promised to keep his knowledge a secret, and Thikut told no other dwarves about her condition.  Seeing her listless and jobless, they simply assumed she was still shaken up by the loss of her hand.  Thikut was still able to feed herself, but she had to eat her meals off of the floor, and drinking wine from a barrel was even more of an embarrassing ordeal.  For all her fellow dwarves pitied her, they'd had no experience with cripples; every similar injury had ended shortly in death.  When Thikut was able to remove her bandage and consider her smooth stump, she was amazed at how little she felt.

For the next five years, Thikut wandered around Bentknife without purpose or personality.  New migrants at times mistake her for a ghost, though she eventually became known to every citizen of Bentknife as a sort of sad joke, a lesson to children about the value of hard work and what can happen to someone who doesn't work hard enough.  Thikut's old squadmates couldn't understand why she refused to pick up a weapon and spar with them; every time they passed, they would cajole her into joining them in the practice room.  She would slowly wander in and stare at the weapon rack soundlessly.  She would reach her stump out to the weapons and imagine that she was holding them, standing there for hours living out imaginary glories.  Eventually, though, the squad became too disturbed by her behavior, and she was asked to stay out of the barracks.

Thikut sought to end her misery several times, but each of the ways out of Bentknife and into the snowy wilderness was closed with a door that she could not, without a working hand, open.  The goblin arena that had been constructed in the caves under Bentknife was closed to her as well, though she tried to have the Arena Overseer let her in to make her last stand.  Friendless and alone, Thikut realized at last that there would be no easy release from her misery, and merely took to standing in Bentknife's front hallway, awaiting nothing.

Over the years, the constant military campaigning took its toll, and Thikut's old squadmates died and were replaced by fresh, able recruits from the Mountainhome.  The new migrants to the fort did not know of Thikut's divine recovery; in fact, a new training regimen was in place at Bentknife, and the idea of an untrained recruit charging into battle was as ridiculous to them as an elf butcher.  The consensus among the new blood was that, whatever her suffering had been, Thikut's injuries had been her own fault.  They were tired of her disturbing presence in the hallway.  The new mayor of Bentknife, Roderducim "Baldnesswork," heard their words and understood that, if he wanted to win the next election, he would have to do something about the Living Ghost of Bentknife.  Too many dwarves had lost loved ones to the goblin hordes to spare any sympathy for a wretch with only one hand.

One day, as Thikut stumbled into the food storage hall and knelt down next to a barrel of prickle berry wine, eight hardy dwarves slipped into the hall behind her.  She struggled with the barrel's spigot as usual, trying to tilt the barrel enough for her to catch some wine without spilling too much on the floor of the hall.  She paid no heed to the eight dwarves carrying large stone blocks in their arms.  She finally managed to get the wine flowing at just the right rate, closed her eyes and tilted her head back to enjoy its flavor, one of the last true pleasures in her life.  Suddenly, she heard the sound of eight stone blocks slamming into place.  Her eyes snapped open, but she found herself in total darkness.  She quickly adjusted to the lower light and saw that she had been closed in on all sides by stone walls.  Ever ignorant of the reactions other dwarves had to her presence, she assumed that there had been a freak cave-in, and that rescue would be coming shortly.  At any rate, she had ample prickle berry wine to last her until the miners were able to dig through.  She thought about banging her arm against the walls, but realized that it would be painful and pointless, considering the poor design of a stump for any sort of hammering.  She settled in to wait.

Weeks passed, but no sign of rescue came.  She had long since given up crying out for aid; she couldn't hear any traffic through the thick stone walls anyway, so it was likely, if dwarves were on the other side, that they could not hear her.  Starvation began to sap at her will, as even the best-brewed prickle berry wine lacks the nutritional content of a good biscuit.  She began to move less and less.  Eventually she accepted that no rescue was coming, at first believing that the other dwarves must have assumed her killed in the collapse.  Her voice completely gone from shouting for help, she could do nothing but listen...and then she realized she could hear the sounds of activity all around her.  She started to cry, then, when she knew they had sealed her in purposely.  She looked back on her time at Bentknife and saw that she had been nothing but a fool and a burden.  Her last thoughts, as starvation took her, were of her days of toil and labor at the Mountainhome, cleaning linens and changing bandages; the last time in her life she felt useful.

One week later, a full two weeks longer than the chief medical dwarf had said Thikut would be able to survive without food, the builders took down their walls.  They found Thikut, emaciated and pale, lying on the floor next to the empty wine barrel.  She had lines of mold growing on her face where it had been streaked by tears, and her stump had swollen with bodily fluids to grotesque proportions.  But when they flipped her over, they found her right hand clenched into a fist, and knew that she had been unyielding to the end.

Introduction: A History

This is the story of the Dwarven settlement of Matzasit, known as "Bentknife" in the common tongue.  Bentknife was a place of woe and horror, of great achievement and greater disappointment.  Bentknife was a place where dwarves went to die, but in their time there some were capable of legendary feats.  Bentknife was a star that burned all too brightly.

The saga of Bentknife is a sordid one.  In the year 260, the Dwarven Kingdom of Kumil Dolok, "The Armory of Obstacles," a kingdom as old as time itself, was dealing with a morale problem like none in its history.  Since it had signed peace accords in the year 200 with the elven civilization Elide Ficeri, "The Mother of Sacricing," Kumil Dolok had enjoyed a time of relative tranquility.  Like all kingdoms, it was beset upon every few years by a great and terrible monsters, but in 260 relations with other races were sound, and even the greenskin hordes of Smospengokang, "The Certain Curses," had relented in their attacks.  Although Kumil Dolok had recently lost a settlement, Zedoteral, "Lobstervessels," to goblins from Osmongestrur, "The Craterous Midnight," Lobstervessels had been a mere prototype for the plans of Kumil Dolok's leadership. 

King Lokum Mafolodom, unfortunately named "Chamberbasin," had gained the monarchy a scarce two decades earlier, and lacked any significant military victory to stabilize his reign.  Mere days after his coronation he was attacked by the lumbering beast Zesmstum Zakospegngun Aspid Uktang, "The Cavern of Crypts," and had barely escaped with his life.  At the same time, several humans had recently become great heroes in the eyes of the dwarves of Kumil Dolok, and good King Chamberbasin needed to demonstrate that he could be as great a dwarven warleader as any of the past Kings and Queens of The Armory of Obstacles.  King Chamberbasin hatched a plan that would ensure his legacy for all time, even if it cost Kumil Dolok its very existence.

And so, in the early spring of 260, the King went into the royal dungeons of the Mountainhome and opened the cages of seven of the meanest, most ill-regarded dwarves in the kingdom.  They had been prisoners for so many years that they had forgotten all but a few of the skills every dwarf learns over the course of his long life.  Priestbolt, a miner, had been imprisoned for preaching against the worship of Inod, the dwarven goddess of fortresses, the favored deity of King Chamberbasin.  Earthenrewards, a gem cutter, had been caught embezzling from his jeweller's shop.  Wirephrased, a mechanic, had designed the faulty mechanism that controlled the bridge to the Mountainhome; when it failed, the King nearly lost his life to the Cavern of Crypts.  Willchambers, a farmer, had grown poisoned plump helmets to give to a neighbor he despised.  Earthentribe, a fisherdwarf, had pushed her coworker into a carp-filled stream after fighting over a decorated ring.  Bodicechances, a carpenter, had a terrible temper, and had killed a baby in a murderous rage after stubbing her toe on a nail.  For the expedition leader, King Chamberbasin picked Wiltedclasped, a hardened murderer whose only skill was convincing people that he hadn't meant to kill all those people.

As the King oversaw the loading of the expedition's cart, onlookers gossiped about the meaning behind the choices.  The King had revealed only one thing to the public:  this settlement would be in the north.  As Kumil Dolok was the northernmost kingdom in the world, this shocked the people.  The north, as everyone knew, contained nothing but tundra and death.  Those who watched the newly freed settlers carry their few belongings onto the wagon believed themselves to be watching dwarves who had agreed to journey to their dooms.

As he watched the wagon shrink into the northern horizon through a crystal window, King Chamberbasin sat in his study and reviewed the trade agreements he'd signed with the local human and elf representatives.  Yes, they were required to send a caravan every year to each of his official settlements, no matter how remote.  He looked back at the map he'd used to show the expedition where to go, and smiled to himself at the distant, frozen mountain he'd chosen for Bentknife.

Wiltedclasped, riding a donkey in front of the rickety wagon, pulled his cloak tight against the oncoming snow and urged the animal on.  He crested a hill and...there it was, rising from the tundra, the mountain where Bentknife was destined to grow.  His eyes took in the unsullied whiteness of the mountainside, and his heart warmed to imagine the colors he would paint on that rich canvas.  Unconsciously, he patted his belt pouch, in which the King's secret orders were stored in a small hematite box.  When Wiltedclasped had read the directive -- to mercilessly slaughter any non-dwarf who came to Bentknife -- he had almost wept with joy.  Everyone deserved to die, of course, but Wiltedclasped saw no problem with limiting his targets for a time, as long as he was getting official sanction to do it.  It was a brilliant plan, too; he'd heard of several settlements in colder climes that had failed miserably for want of arable land, or liquid water to irrigate underground farms.  But Bentknife would be different; its military would take, by force, all the food and drink its dwarves could want.  The humans and elves would assume their caravans had been lost to the elements or some ambushing goblins; they would send replacements year after year, until their patience would wear thin, and then the King would have his war.

But it would come on his terms, Wiltedclasped knew.  This was a far more effective plan than simply declaring war outright; this way, Kumil Dolok would be strengthened, and the elves and humans weakened, with every unwitting merchant who met his cold, metal death on the slopes of Bentknife.  King Chamberbasin would begin any potential war with a decided advantage.

Despite his joy at the prospect of years of slaughter, Wiltedclasped shuddered in the cold.  It would be a difficult trek yet, and even after his arrival, there was work to be done.  Every pair of hands would be needed, he knew, and so his hobby would have to be put on hold, except perhaps for the occasional kitten.  Dwarves were not creatures of the winter; Wiltedclasped's own mother had frozen to death crossing a stream when he was just a baby, and only the quick action of a nearby miner had saved Wiltedclasped from the same fate.  Still, he was determined to make Bentknife a success, if not a lasting one.  As he often did, Wiltedclasped muttered his personal motto to himself:  "Nobody lives forever..."