Around a half eaten carcass and surrounded by old bones, a circle of newcomers listen to Chief tell the stories of the tribe’s recent expansion. Most of the tales center around a figure depicted in the mural on the Southern wall. It shows a dragon-man tossing a boulder off of himself (the very stone block that lays in the middle of this room) and roaring. His words, in barely legible Draconic, are “The sky cannot kill me!”
“Thems bigguns been comin’ here for two hands a days1, bringin’ nice meats and tasty beers n help us’n’s celebrate grown’ big n strong. Thems killie tha’ ogre monster tha kept us small! We boss of them stairs up now, and this whole place!
“We have more rooms fer livin’ in, an’ our very own Dragon named Smithy an’ his best friend th’ Glad orc! Our Dragon is so clever tha’ he made hisself almost look like a man an’ he goes inta town an’ takes th’ human’s shirts!”
Here the Chief points proudly to a pile of human shirts.
“Smithy has biggun minions too. A scary demonlady thing an’ a real dwarf! An’ th’ Glad orc. Th’ Glad orc made us tha’ nicy-nice2 song on th’ wall o’er there.”
The Eastern wall bears a song written in Common. “It’s raining, it’s pouring/The old man is drunk/He fell down and broke his head/And now I have a new bowl!”
“We be brave when they go down th’ scary stairs into th’ deep dark. We tells them about th’ ghost wind. It creeps up on you and you die! Buts they go anyways, so some of us go too. We all get so many shinies! Some die. It is sad. But many more wanta go fer th’ shinies! Such beautiful metals!
“Our Dragon Smithy chase away th’ ghost wind! An’ fights skelingtons, wiv our help. We gets short bows and arrows, an’ a sword an’ gold. An’ scrap metal, a’course. Down in th’ even deeper dark are dead-alive humans! We not be down there much.
“Much better to be up here! Wiv th’ beer and th’ meat! An’ now there are so many more of us, fer havin’ a better party an’ servin’ our Dragon Lord Smithy!
“Vinra, you already made a good start on servin’ Smithy wiv maken tha’ human long legbone club. Tha’ll be so funny to beat a human in th’ face wiv! Even a dead-alive human tha’ won’ get th’ joke.”
1. “Hands of days” is a term from the Deltan in the Bobaverse, written by Dennis E. Taylor
2. “Nicey-nice” is a term from the trolls in The 10th Kingdom, a TV Miniseries that aired in the US on NBC in February of 2000.
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