Gardening is the passion of these folk, and so it should surprise no one that on a sunny spring morning, Ekhar Lorrent was up to his gnomish elbows in mud and muck. The rains of the last few days threatened to drown his beloved snapdragon tomatoes-a stock he’d gotten as art import from Maztica and crossbred himself-ruining his dreams of lazy summer evenings contentedly chewing on the fruit, pickled in vinegar and sugar. As the planting bed drained, he gently held the fragile roots, speaking softly to them.
“Not to worry, my sweets, you will make it through. Summer wouldn’t be summer if it were not for you. Your spicy juice helps cool a long humid night. And your flowers keep filling me with the delight of the thought of pies cooked in a tomato crust. No, you must all survive. Yes, you all simply… must…“
Ekhar’s voice trailed off as though he could no longer remember the thought he had begun. For a full minute he sat there, hands buried in the ground cradling the tomato roots, with an odd look on his face. Some folk have this look when they try to remember long ago times and places, others when they are listening for a sound that only dogs and elves can hear. Ekhar had the look for another reason, a far too familiar one. So he was not at all surprised when his great gnomish ears began to wiggle, then flap as though blown by a terrible gale. He was not at all worried, as he stood up and wiped the dirt from his hands, that the sound of his lobes slapping against the side of his head could be heard clearly ten yards away. It bothered him not a bit, as he went inside to wash up and change, that his ears were now a brighter red than a salamander’s scales. And he didn’t even notice his fallen snapdragon tomatoes wilting in the mud as he put on his cloak, grabbed his sturdiest walking stick, and left his house and Home.
Ekhar’s neighbors rolled their wide haifling eyes, chuckled to one another, then went back to tending their own gardens. This was hardly the first time the daft old gnome had mysteriously dropped everything and walked off into the world, oblivious of everything and everyone around him. They knew he would return in a day, or a week, with tales of intrigue and violent death. For, though gardening was Ekhar Lorrent’s passion, murder was the gnome’s one true love.
“What I want to know is what you’re going to do about the damage that… that… thing did to my inn!”
The dull ache Jag Dubbispeir felt at the base of his skull grew suddenly to a constant pounding above his left eye. The danger was past, the town was safe, but if one of his men didn’t escort Kethril Fentloque, owner of the recently demolished Dancing Roc Inn, back behind the barricade, there would be one more name added to the list of today’s casualties.
Luckily, the problem was averted as a throng of villagers rushed up to the barman, slapping him on the back, perhaps a bit too enthusiastically. They lifted Kethril over their heads and carried his kicking, screaming, spindly frame to the center of town. Along the way, cries of “that’s some boy you have there!” and “you sure must be proud!” nearly drowned out the undertone of “better your inn than mine” and “somehow, this is just too fitting!” Jag was left alone with his deputies to contemplate what their next step should be.
“Dang thing sure is big!”
“Not much point in calling it a giant otherwise.” Jag, who was widely considered to be the most patient man in Minroe, had no time for the naпvetй of his men. They all came from this small town or its outlying farming communities, and signed on as deputies only to save themselves from ending up working behind a plow from sunup to sundown every day of their tiresome lives. Besides, the local maids were crazy for anyone dressed in a tight-fitting, dull-gray deputy’s uniform. On most days, the unprofessional attitudes of his men were nothing more than a minor annoyance. Today, however, they factored heavily into Jag’s headache, which now throbbed above both eyes.
Unlike his deputies, Jag lived in Minroe by choice. You might not guess it to look at him, with his unkempt hair, scruffy beard, and stained and wrinkled uniform, but Jag Dubbispeir was perhaps the finest officer ever to grace the Waymoot garrison of the Purple Dragons. He worked his way up through the ranks, earning every promotion he got with blood, sweat, and more blood. By the time he was made a commander, Jag could no longer count the number of close friends he saw killed in the line of duty, nor how many times he came within an arrow’s breadth (or dragon’s breath, or sword ann’s length) from joining them, but every single one of those memories haunted him. When he finally realized that he had to retreat from this life if he wanted to have any life left at all, Jag chose to come here because, according to every map he knew, nowhere was farther off the beaten track than the tiny village of Minroe.
When he first arrived, Jag was surprised at how big the town looked. The buildings, while weather-worn and of an architectural style that went out of fashion three generations ago, were tall and strong and well kept up. In the last century, Minroe was a bustling mining town, the caverns in the surrounding hills yielding rubies, emeralds, and other gems by the bucketful. When the lodes ran dry, though, the town nearly did as well. The people who stayed were hardy folk who made their livings farming the rocky, uncooperative soil, or collecting pixie cap mushrooms and selling them to Suzailan merchants. They took a great pride in their little town and did everything in their power to maintain it. Of a summer afternoon, it was not unusual to see several neighbors working together to repair the shingles, fix the garden wall, and add a new coat of paint to a building that no one had lived in for twenty years. That’s just how the people of Minroe were, and it suited Jag just fine.
From time to time, friends who yet served with the Purple Dragons visited Jag, though they often seemed most interested in inspecting his deputies for someone worth recruiting. So far, he’d lost a half-dozen fine officers-not to mention the only true friends he had in town-to the Dragons. After all, who would remain in a dying town like Minroe when the Purple Dragons offered to show you the world? Who indeed, except for Jag. Before they’d leave, though, old comrade and departing deputy alike invariably would comment that Minroe was no place for Jag to be. “You’re like an eagle roosting in a henhouse,” they’d say. “A man like you should go out and meet the world head on.”
In his years with the Purple Dragons, Jag met, fought, and killed practically every creature native to the Heart-lands, and a few from other regions, continents, and even planes. Truthfully, he’d had quite enough of it. He figured that moving to a backwater town like Minroe meant that the most dangerous creature he was likely to face was a drunken dwarf or love-sick half-ogre. That illusion was shattered within weeks of his arrival. Minroe’s trouble with medusas is well-chronicled, and talk of it is partly what has kept the town from regaining any of its lost status or population, all this despite the fact that Jag, who suddenly found himself saddled with the position of Chief Constable, successfully brought the medusas under control in less than a month and with only three deputies (all of whom the Purple Dragons soon recruited). Being this far off the beaten track, he came to realize, meant only that he was the sole mechanism keeping the chaos of the wilderness at bay. Today, that chaos expressed itself in the form of a twenty-two foot tall cyclops rampaging through the heart of Minroe.
Jag spat on the ground.
It was no surprise that giants lived in the hills surrounding his sleepy little town. It was an unusual week that passed without one farmer or another running into his office, blue in the face over the fact that he’d seen a hill or mountain giant casting a hungry eye at his livestock… or his daughter. Nothing ever came of these incidents. The giants wanted no troub1e. They lived their tremendous lives in the hills and, occasionally, the smaller ones even visited Minroe to buy large quantities of supplies. They were generally good, if unruly, neighbors.