3. The Guardian's Minion

The Guardian's Minion

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    Arnath has many odd visitors. Drow, orcs, and stranger creatures still walk its streets calmly, absorbed in the milieu. On rare occasions, there comes a sufficently odd visitor who manages to stir what must be the most jaded heads in the realm. The Guardian, the great half-orc shaman of Malar, is one of these rare few; a man of boisterous mirth whose rumbling laugh precedes him like a calvary charge, bouncing off the walls of the great caverns and splashing into the streets of Arnath. In he comes, decked in a paladin's fine livery– the lavender knight, some now call him mockingly-- wearing a beastlike mask that looks quite handsome the moment he removes it to expose a snarling visage: hair like frost, face of coal, and fangs like the Beast Lord's own tigers.

    He is usually accompanied by an odd retinue. Sometimes a drow whom he addresses as Queen, stooping to kiss her foot while she grimaces, is at his side, in a black skull mask. A hooded man with a powerful bow-arm sometimes slips out of his shadow. A small hin with a black skull mask identical to the drow's likes to appear pressing a blade to the back of anyone who stops to chat.

    Lately, another odd figure has joined the retinue. A lithe man, perhaps a young human or an elf, dressed in black with a fine dragon helm follows them quietly. The Guardian addresses him as minion, in a good mood, else as slave or thrall. The minion bows deeply to him, and obeys promptly-- an odd sight indeed, if he is an elf.

    Some have heard him say that the Guardian once spared his life, and he has served him willingly ever since.

    Lately, the minion is seen more around Arnath by himself. He is taking an interest in the business of this city. For long hours he will stand silently observing the guards practice or the merchants trade, barely stirring, almost fading into the walls: an elfin gargoyle. He speaks in whispers which seem to come out of the air in front of him, perhaps a trick of his cavernous helm, or some other parlor trick.

    Here and there he signs his name as Nimblefoot Quickspell, or Nim for short.

    Seeing the Board of Bounty, he studies it intently for a while, then produces a parchment and begins to write.