Role

Chapter 8

The Tired War
Added Thu Feb 8 02:29:07 2007 at level 1:

I found the Tired War. That's what my second father called it. Good
versus Evil for the throne of the world. Second father? Oh, he wasn't a
relation. Actually he was another drunk, but this one was a dwarf, about
as old as dwarves get. In my unfocused youth I spent a lot of time in
the taverns of the Hollow, not drinking but listening to the stories,
dancing to the bards, chasing the women. Devotion to what? In the back
of my mind I was always looking for something, but mostly I was just having
fun. Then I met old Ironfoot.

He was a priest, what most people call a shaman. Old Ironfoot wore a
tattoo, carried a holy blade, and passed out at least once by noon most
days. He said he was tired of fighting the Tired War but after the
first few times we talked I knew it was something else. He needed
somebody to carry on after he died. The war would never end, he would
tell me. It's important to keep fighting, even if the very idea of victory
was crazier than...an obscene concept my guildmaster made me promise to
never repeat again. Anyway I understood perfectly. He was talking about
devotion.

The War we fight, he told me the last time I saw him (he went home to
die), is about making ourselves Good. It is about forging souls in conflict
so we don't need to think about protecting the weak. We've been the weak. We
never have to philosophize about the meaning of integrity, we've seen it in
our comrades. We don't have to listen to sermons about courage and eternal
honor to get ready for battle. Because we are the battle. When we get tired and
when we die the life we lived was our victory. You can see why I called him
father. I learned a lot.