Be the first on your block to own a dwarf

There’s love, and then there’s obsession. It seems the Northrog don’t know where one ends and the other begins. Perhaps that’s why I don’t like them.

The giant floating eye thing was no real challenge, particularly with my sexy new thunderclap ring. Ili beat into it as well, and I think Obegard singed it with his fireball, but I laid on the big licks and finished it off with the thunderclap from the ring.

We were back in the Aerie in no time, and then we used some weird magic to create a dream to let the besieging Deverenians know that we nod the answers needed to stop the bloodshed.

I have to say that after all our efforts the Aerie folk were extremely underwhelming in their gratitude—the extent of our reward was permission to buy magic items at market value. Pffft. That’s the problem with helping the military—they just assume everyone is willing to lay down their lives in the name of duty.

We spent days in the Aerie getting some items crafted, and Obegard was copying some spells too.

It probably wasn’t a good idea to rush into Deverenia anyway as it took some time for their army to withdraw, but I itched to get out of here. After all, Barren had died in the fight against the eye monster but Barricade now had the relic we were trying to take underground for safe keeping.

I wasn’t very happy to be woken in the middle of the night by a surprise visit from a bunch of humans with nets. It was that girl we’d beaten up to get Barren and the relic in the first place, and apparently she’d worked out that she needed better help.

We pretty much had to surrender and hope for an opportunity to escape. Unfortunately they didn’t want everyone; they just wanted a dwarf. They didn’t even seem to care which one they got. And Ili was more than willing to turn me over, bitch.

Then she started yapping about how I had some chance to escape and then of course they decided to take Barricade instead. So either Ili is a master strategist and that was her plan, or she’s just stupid and tipped her hand.

It’s not like it’s hard to guess which, so I’ll have to think of a suitable “reward.”

We’ve trailed them back over the mountains but we weren’t making up any ground until they stopped moving, so I have no idea what sort of fortress we’ll have to break into to get Barricade back. And Borka stole my sword so now I’m stuck with this bow. It’s almost like Malakar planned this, given how obsessed he seems to be with me using missiles.