I am a curious dwarf by nature. This is rather fortuitous as my country is replete with tales of legend and ancient history. Investigating archaeological dig sites is the favorite pastime of my people. Typically, when I wasn’t eating or sleeping, I was exploring these sites. One day last fall, while surveying the halls of an occult temple, an earthquake struck. After the dust settled, I noticed a crack behind a bas-relief mural. It had been revealed by the aftershock. There was a hidden lever behind it and as I pulled it, a slab door opened that opened to a cave system.
I explored the caverns for two days when before I heard what sounded like water. At the bottom of a chasm, I could make out a river working its way through the bottomlands. I followed the ledge for several hours, until I noticed a bright light. I had come to an underground river. It fed a large, rectangular pool. A monolithic statue of a menacing demon stood beside it.
Directly behind the statue, a light source emanated from beneath the water. I quickly dove in the pool to investigate the source of the light. Beneath the surface was a glowing mace made of gold. I noticed it had the letter ‘A’ from the Common language engraved upon it. As I grabbed the mace, a trap exploded, thereby causing pieces of the statue to break off. A large granite arm of the demon hit me in the head and I lost consciousness.
As a woke, I realized must have been carried off in a current because my next memory was from the bottom of a lake that was fed from a waterfall in the cliffs. As soon as I came to, a leviathan, which mistook me for a food source, decided to swallow me whole. Sadly, for the behemoth, (but not for me), it couldn’t easily digest a dwarf. I began to try and formulate a plan of escape. My flint and steel were still dry within my animal hide pouch (but the mace was nowhere to be found) and I made a small fire from some pieces of cloth from my shirt inside of the beast. Irritated by my conflagration, it quickly spit me out near the shoreline of a coastal village.
Several months later my curiosity drove me to the library of a great city. After much research (and some hints from the staff) I found a book on the Domains of the clerics. It was then that I first saw a drawing of Asmodeus. It was his statue in the cave! And the golden mace was his former weapon. The knowledge profoundly changed my life. From then on, I strove to devote my life to the Domains of Fire and Trickery.
I set out to reclaim the lost golden mace of Asmodeus. If I find it, perhaps he’ll have mercy upon me.
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