Gears's Guide To Narfell

[HalflingRogue]

A manuscript of many pages, bound loosely with twine. Across the cover is written Gears's Guide To Narfell. Various grease stains, sometimes accompanied by what looks to be chicken breading crumbs and spots that look as if some liquid was spilled on them, then dried, litter the pages. Nonetheless, they fail to obscure the meaning of the spidery scrawl within:

Introduction
Welcome, dear reader, to Gears's Guide To Narfell! Herein I, your humble narrator, Gears, shall give you an in-depth and informative look at this freezing rathole of a nation nation is crossed out territory territory is then scribbled out (place??), telling you all you need to know to keep your innards in when talking to a narsman, dodge the larger predators, stay warm, and where to get the best mug of ale or warm meal around.

Entry 1 The Whys And Wherefores, And A Little Bit About Me
So, I'm a hin, or halfling to some, average height, very dashing and handsome you know, with a nice full head of near white blondness, dazzling green eyes and a body and face dwarves, elves, and men alike would kill for. Clever, daring, quick, nimble, skilled, handy with a blade or bow…I'd go on but by now you may have set the book down in irritable disgust. If you haven't, good for you! I'll reward your patience by getting on with it.

Lately, I've been thinking. I always seem to have some free time between my adventures (entirely too much if you ask me) and I need something to fill it. So I says to myself, hey, I been wandering around this woe begotten piece of land long enough that I'm beginning to learn its ins and outs...why don't I do everyone the service of sharing my knowledge with them? And if I make a little gold on the side from eventually selling this compendium, who's to complain? Right then, but that's probably not a proper way to start a book. Why don't you flip back a page, read the introduction again, then just skip this page entirely? Make it seem much more official, I'm sure.

Entry 2 Narfell
So, let's start with an overview of our jolly beloved snow covered wasteland. Narfell. Northern frontier place, inhabited only by the hardiest or most stubborn folk and critters. Lately, things have gotten a good deal more interesting, though search me if I know why. Perhaps Narfell's got some deep dark secret I've yet to discover that draws all this excitement to it. That, or maybe evil just isn't all that bright and thought this was as good a spot as any to start mucking things up. But, back to the point, Narfell's a rather rough place. As is usual on any uncivilized place, there are more than a fair share of filthy, savage creatures willing to gut you, take your gold, eat you, or all three in various orders. And you don't even have to set foot out of some towns to find those sorts. Also, as per usual, there are quite a few who have risen to fight back these threats, defending their small plots of land to the death (sometimes several; friend of mine, Mirkali Vragnorich, had died about forty times at last count I believe), and driving back the threats when they, well, threaten the things they care about, the people they care about or just because they're rather psychotic and enjoy killing things. The final category is people like me, who just find that it's more interesting to involve yourself in conflict than to sit on your ass remarking to the backwater dullard next to you how dull it is.

The major settlements are Peltarch, actually a decent-sized city, Norwick, a barbarian settlement, Jiyyd, quaint little farming community that it is, and the Silver Valley, an exclusively hin and gnome populated offshoot of Jiyyd. This isn't to say that there aren't other places where large groups of people live, they just aren't as prominent. In between there are, as I've said before, frozen plains. Then there's also the Rawlinswood, decent sized forest, home to elves, goblins, bugbears and other nasties. There's some good patches of trees scattered around too but none quite so big. Then there are numerous caves. So many bloody caves. Both singular ones and ones that link up to hundreds, perhaps thousands of others. Whole 'nother life going on beneath your feet, mate.

As for the history...well, that'd require me to do some research and I generally find books to be a big fat boring waste of time. Not this one though, keep reading. Unless you already bought it in which case do whatever you damn well please with it. But, so far as I know, some idiot frontiersman thought this looked like a good place to set up shop, and did so. Eventually it branched out into whatever you want to label what it is now, as the aforementioned morons refused to give up the snow to the cold, the orcs, and the dragon. Yeah, that's right. Got one of those scaly buggers up here even, though maybe she only showed up after the people came. I'll have to read more to find out about that too...you better buy this book, it's already wearing me out.

As such, I believe this is as good a place to stop for now as any. See you around for now, dear reader.

Gears

((more to come soon))