Location: On the Road to Orkney
Timeline: Sixth Age, 52 Year, Late Summer to Early Winter
To the Amorosi of Arbola Forest, “home” was a living, breathing entity—a symphony of sap and song that stretched back to the roots of the world. But for the Drokka, home was perhaps always a ghost. Given the troubling history of their clans, the crack of the slavemaster’s whip or the cold echo of a hammer in a mountain was ever ingrained in their psyches.
After being rebuffed by Arbola’s Council, Barkla and Brega left the forest and made their way north. The ‘stingy’ elves were at least gracious enough to have equipped the Drokka with detailed maps about the regions they’d be traveling to. Using these charts, the brothers soon crossed the invisible threshold where the towering weir-trees of Arbola gave way to the stunted pines and jagged granite of the Pennal foothills. They had left behind the silk and the emerald light, trading them for the biting dust of the Great North Road.
It is a curious thing, the way a long road can erode a mortal’s soul. The brothers did not realize it, but as they moved further from the trees and closer to the ice, the wrath they each carried began to change. It was no longer a fire to be directed at their enemies; it was becoming a poison they would eventually turn on each other.
The Weight of the Staff
Weeks later, with the sun a brass coin in a bleached sky, and the dust of the road had turned Barkla’s black beard into a mask of grey grit. Every step of his pony felt like a hammer blow against the base of his skull.
Behind him, Brega rode in a slumped, weary silence, his blood-red surcoat now stained the color of dried mud. Between them, Garf, the great silver wolfhound, padded along with his tongue lolling, his paws clicking rhythmically against the sun-baked stones. Even the dog seemed to have lost his spirit after leaving Arbola, his usual alertness replaced by the soul-crushing lethargy of an unusual heatwave in central Pennal.
“We should have reached the next crossings by noon,” Barkla grunted as he looked at his brother holding as the Meisterstaf across his knees. He remembered the day his father had placed it in Brega’s hands. The Kon-Herr’s fading voice had been a low whisper in the Great Hall: “Take the branch of Ajax, Prince. Let it be your compass when the stars are hidden, and your strength when the stone grows cold.”
“You’re looking at it again,” Barkla muttered from pony. “You’ll rub the silver right off the wood if you keep at it, brother.”
Brega didn’t look up. As his mount shuffled along, the older Drokka was tracing the central engraving—a depiction of Ajax The Freemaker standing atop a mountain, his staff raised to the sun. “It’s not just silver and wood, Bakla. It’s the promise. Ajax found us a home at Oz when our people were nothing but shadows in Gor. If we bring this staff to the gates of Akka, the mountain will know we aren’t scavengers. It will know the Kon-Herrs have returned.”
[I sense your curiosity about these Meisterstafs. Here is the legend as told in the Drokka Kroniklz: In the First Age, when the Drokka were enslaved in the pits of Gor by their the Derkka Goblins, Ajax the Freemaker did not lead them out with a sword, but with a branch of a Blackwood Tree he found growing in a patch of sunlight at the mouth of a cave he escaped to initially. Their mythology says that as Ajax returned to Gor, overcame the power of the Marduk Bashumel, and eventually led the Drokka people across the trackless wastes of Gor – and all the while the magical branch never withered. Ajax’s staff became the first Meisterstaf. When Ajax finally struck the base of the mountain that would become their first kingdom at Oz, the staff answered with a low, resonant hum—the “Mountain’s Consent.” Once king himself, Ajax declared that so long as a Son of the Stone carried a Meisterstaf upon a righteous quest, the earth itself would recognize them as its masters, not its slaves. None of this is remotely true of course, but then what religious myths really are?]
Brega’s staff, although impressive, was but replica of Ajax’s original branch. It wasn’t made of Blackwood (that resource was destroyed during The War of the Ghast), but instead from cedar. It’s plating was silver. It had been consecrated by the Drokka Wyze One to bless his journey with success. To lose it would have been to lose the favor of the God Rhokki and the protection of Ajax’s spirit. As a result, he’d kept it hidden during his entire time in Arbola – for the risk was too great. And yet, now, for whatever reason, he couldn’t resist having it near him – for he felt that their quest was coming to fruition and he wanted to feel its power – even if it was only in his mind.
“Had the Valdermakken discovered it, do you think they’d have offered to protect it for us in their ‘secure’ vaults?” Brega said, a dry chuckle catching in his throat.
“Secure?” Barkla spat. “They might as well ask us to leave our hearts in a jar. They don’t understand that a Drokka without his quest-staff is just a wanderer lost in the weeds. If we had told them it was a blessing from Ajax, they’d have laughed. They think our history is just campfire stories.”
The red-clad prince soon wrapped the staff back in its protective furs. He felt a strange, cold shiver. The Meisterstaf was a symbol of success, but it was also a target for the shadows. He didn’t tell Barkla, but lately, when he held the staff, the silver didn’t feel warm. It felt like ice.
“The ponies are flagging, Barkla,” Brega interrupted his own thoughts. “The heat is thick enough to choke a dragon. We need to find shade and wait for the evening breeze.”
“Wait?” Barkla turned in his saddle, his jewel-like eyes flashing with a sudden, jagged heat. “We waited two moons in Arbola for the ‘cycles of the leaf.’ Our father is dying in the Rhokkis, Brega! Every candlemark we sit under a bush is an hour the scavengers in Fubar spend melting down our ancestors’ gold! You bear the Meisterstaf, don’t you want to complete your quest?”
“And if the ponies collapse, we’ll be walking to Fubar with our packs on our backs,” Brega snapped, finally meeting his brother’s gaze. “Anger doesn’t put miles behind us, brother. It just makes the road feel longer.”
They found a meager stand of scrub-oaks near a dried-up creek bed. Barkla didn’t sit. He spent the “rest” period pacing the perimeter of the camp, his hand never leaving the hilt of his axe as he remember how he felt under the eyes of the Amorosi Council, their pitying smiles haunting his thoughts. A tomb, guarded by ghosts, Dallegheri had called Akka.
Barkla kicked a loose stone, sending it skittering into the dust. “They think we’re dead already,” he whispered to Garf. The wolfhound looked up, let out a low, mournful whine, and put his head back on his paws.
“We aren’t ghosts yet,” Barkla growled, looking toward the north where the horizon was beginning to haze with the first purple bruised clouds of a changing season. “But by the time I’m through with Fubar, the humans will wish they were.”
The summer slog continued for another moon, the brothers moving through a landscape that grew increasingly hostile. The lush greens of the south were a memory now, replaced by the iron-grey ridges of northern Pennal. And with every mile, the silence between the brothers grew heavier, a wall of unsaid accusations building as high as the mountains they sought.
Meanwhile, throughout the long miles across Pennal, Garf had become a restless shadow. The great silver wolfhound, usually a sentinel at the ponies’ heels, began to wander. At first, it was for a candlemark in the brush; then, it was for an entire night. By the time the slate roofs of Rasburg appeared through the sleet, they hadn’t seen him in over a week.
Despite the growing silence between them, the brothers found a rare, common ground in their worry for the dog. When they weren’t angry at each other, they traded bawdy jokes to keep the dread at bay, laughing about Garf’s “noble” pursuit of the local female wolves. They had seen plenty of the grey hunters in the highlands—yellow eyes watching from the ridgeline—but the packs never bothered the Drokka or their ponies.
“The lad’s got a taste for the wild side,” Brega would chuckle, though he kept a hand near his dagger whenever the howling grew close at night.
“Better a wolf’s tail than this mud,” Barkla would grunt.
Evens still, they kept their fires high and their watches tight, confident that the hound was simply answering a call of the blood that they, in their own iron-bound quest, could almost understand.
The Breaking Point
They reached Rasburg mid-fall. It was a town built of iron-grey slate and stubbornness, hunkered down against the ever uncertain winds of northern Pennal. By the time the brothers reached the gates, the autumn air had turned into a whetted blade. The sky was the color of a bruised plum, heavy with the promise of a premature winter that threatened to seal the mountain passes before they could even glimpse the peaks.
They sought refuge at the Grey Eagle Inn, a sprawling, timber-framed tavern and boarding house that catered to travelers and locals alike. Inside, the hearth was a roaring cavern of heat, but it did little to thaw the icy silence that had crystallized between Barkla and Brega over the long miles. As for Garf, thankfully he rejoined them in the days prior to reaching the town, but the hound refused to enter the village and the brothers knew he’d be better off in the wilds so they didn’t try to stop him from wandering.
Unfortunately their stay in Rasburg wasn’t enjoyable. To begin with the rain began on their second night—a relentless, freezing deluge that turned the village roads into soup and the sky into a leaden shroud. For six days, they were trapped.
Barkla was like a caged predator. While Brega was out wandering the city and gathering information, Barkla spent the hours pacing the common room of the inn, sulking.
The Grey Eagle was less of an inn and more of a fortress against the boredom and brutality of the brutal Pennal winters. Although it was only autumn, the air inside was a thick, hazy soup of peat smoke, the yeasty tang of “Eagle’s Brew,” and the smell of wet hound. The walls were constructed of massive, rough-hewn pine logs, their sap long since hardened into amber beads that caught the orange flickering of the hearth. The patrons were a rugged lot—iron-miners from the nearby ridges, trappers in moth-eaten furs, and farmers who worked land that offered little in return. They were used to the wind, but they weren’t used to the Drokka.
Barkla spent the hours pacing a relentless, rhythmic circuit from the heavy oak door to the soot-stained hearth of the tavern. His heavy, iron-shod boots didn’t just thud; they made the floorboards groan in a language of wood and metal.
The humans, usually a boisterous and rowdy crowd, found themselves speaking in hushed tones whenever the dwarf neared. A group of card-players at a corner table—tough men with scarred knuckles—quietly gathered their copper coins and moved their stools as Barkla approached, clearing a wide, respectful path as if a landslide were moving through the room.
“Is he lookin’ for someone, or just lookin’ for a fight?” one trapper whispered to his companion, eyeing Barkla’s brawny frame.
“Doesn’t matter,” the other replied, wiping foam from a thick mustache. “A dwarf in a cage is like a storm in a bottle. Best to stay out of the splash zone.”
On the seventh afternoon of their stay, while the brothers ate lunch in the inn, Barkla could take it no longer. “The ice will soon set in, Brega, If we don’t move now, we’ll be wintering in this mud-hole while the scavengers pick Akka clean.”
Brega’s mug of bitter ale untouched before him. He looked tired—older than his years. “And if we move now, we die in a ditch. The ponies can’t find the road in this, Barkla. Ajax himself wouldn’t lead his people into these rains.”
“Ajax didn’t wait for permission from the clouds!” Barkla roared, turning on his brother. The common room went silent as all looked at the dwarves. “You’ve spent too much time listening to the Valdermakken. Have you traded your iron for silk? Do you want to sit here by a fire and talk about ‘patience’ while our father’s kingdom rots? The quest can’t wait!”
“I am trying to keep us alive!” Brega stood, his chair scraping back with a sharp rasp. “Dead Drokka can’t retake a mountain. You aren’t being a warrior, Barkla—you’re being a fool.”
The word fool was the spark in the powder keg. Barkla didn’t draw his axe; this wasn’t a matter for steel. He lunged, his shoulder catching Brega in the chest and sending them both crashing into a heavy trestle table as the rest of the patrons cleared a path – and soon encouraged the fighting – for it was a rare sight indeed!
The ‘battle of the brothers’ was brutal and entirely unglamorous. It was the sound of Drokka muscle against floorboards—the thud of a fist against a jaw, the ragged grunt of air being forced from lungs. Barkla and Brega rolled through the sawdust, oblivious to the shouts of the tavern-keep or the clatter of breaking pottery.
Barkla swung with the wild, desperate fury of a mortal who felt the world slipping through his fingers. He landed a heavy blow to Brega’s ribs, but Brega—tempered by the very patience Barkla despised—waited for his opening. As Barkla wound up for a final, haymaker punch, Brega ducked, drove his head into Barkla’s gut, and used his superior leverage to take his older brother down.
Brega pinned Barkla’s arms to the floor, his weight pressing down until Barkla stopped thrashing. Brega’s lip was split, and one eye was already beginning to swell, but his gaze was steady.
“Enough,” Brega wheezed, his breath coming in jagged hitches. “Enough, brother.”
The outcome was a surprise to the other patrons and to Barkla himself – for he’d always bested his older but smaller brother in their countless prior fights growing up. But this time was different and Barkla couldn’t quite understand what was holding him back from really trying. It was as if his heart was tired. Outwardly, Barkla’s face was contorted with a mix of rage and a sudden, terrifying vulnerability. Yet the fire left his limbs, replaced by a cold, heavy defeat.
Brega let his brother up, but the victory tasted like ash. There was no apology, no clasping of hands. Barkla stood, wiped a smear of blood from his beard, and walked straight to the stairs without a word.
For the next week, the silence between the brothers was total. They shared the same room, but lived in different worlds. Barkla spent his days staring at the rain, his heart hardening into the very ice he feared, while Brega worked silently in the inn’s stable, his hand constantly checking the hilt of his own dagger, as if expecting the next blow to come from the dark.
The long road had led them to a house of wood, but it had turned their brotherhood to stone.
The Apocrypha of Azazel 