Tuesday, January 21, 2020

Lost Dispatches of Feraso #60 - Regarding a Delivery of Barley

The 22nd Day of QuaDec in the Year 1045

To Murag Mountainhammer, Principal Residence Mountainhammer Cottage, Feldkurton.

Duplicate receipt furnished to The Headquarters of the Duchal Expeditionary Force

Received from Merek Terrowin, procurer of agricultural and botanical products, with Druidic acceptance and procedural boon, the quantity of four hundred bushels of Blue Ferasean Barley, harvest wholegrown from the Vrianios Valley within the appropriate restraints of the winter planting schedule, approved by the Imperial Auditor,Titos Hosmer, under independent review of Freigraffs related to the region.

Said delivery guarantee by written contract filed with the Viscount of Verbobonc originally certified the 19th Day of HexDec in the Imperial Year of 1039.  Executed by bonded teamsters, payment recieved up front, recognized as Hawise and Rufus, both originally from Willip, and residing with the Duchy of Ostverk.  Two hundred bushels were secured in your outbuildings, and the remainder of two hundred bushels delivered and receipt and the divine providence of Akana provided by the granary of Millsbottom.  All records are on file and all parties related in the transaction shall be granted accountability to the same.

Following the advice of one Mountainhammer, future deliveries will be executed by snow sledge, when and if possible.  Blue Ferasean varieties of barley will be considered adequate fulfillment of the contract unless Red or Paisley barley, only made available in the Summer months when dragons dance with your mother's lover and the merchant drinks love potions out your nose.

If none of those provisions are to honored it should be noted in detail below by the barristers of Verbobonc....


Murag, do not despair, for I, E.Millbottom, am alive and well.  After our first foray into the temple, I've never had a desire to go back, and with the absolutely incompetent group of peasant militia provided to me for the first wave of the assault, I felt best to use my prior training of years gone by, and the fine calligraphy sets and the Duchal wax and seal of Ostverk and provide my own heroic escape from that situation, and my life in general.  

While I do not wish any sorrow bestowed upon my wife Felicia and my children, my time as Baron has been conducted with the barest of requirements, and my obligations to my family even less so.  I do not consider myself a broken man, nor do I suffer some unquenchable wanderlust after all these years.  However, given my dereliction of duty and and untimely demise ahead of my earthly schedule, the idea of being the only person to attempt to search for the trio of Carathmus, Sloemin, and Sabu Tablesmasher II and possibly obtain justice for the innocents slain due to their insolence, is of high ideal.  

Do not inform my family of my intentions.  According to the official report given to Viscount Eger, I was disintegrated by a fire elemental.   Mourn my loss at my funeral, and if you are a far better friend to me than I was to you, I beg you to stay around Feldkurton, giving advice to my son Matthias as he attempts to rule the Barony.  You are but a dwarf in the prime of his life, and another ten years watching over the Millbottom family in some capacity still means you have two more human lifetimes to experience after my simple request.  

Thank you, friend, for being a stalwart companion all these years, in spite of your true wisdom screaming at you to run away.  We may meet again, but I surely doubt it.  - E.

<THREE MORE PAGES OF BUSINESS, AGRICULTURAL, AND GENERAL LEGAL DISCUSSION> 

Received and Acknowleged
E.Millbottom, Miller and Granary (Recently Retired)

DM Notes: Elsderth Greyhawk is dead!!! Long live (again) Elsderth Millbottom!!! Unlike a number of characters, the former scribe is not one to do foolish things... unless the alternative is even more foolish. Pressed with assaulting a Temple of Elemental Evil, he chose a path of lesser resistance, and with a satchel full of baronial gems, and a collection of minor magic items, he's setting off to initially search for those individuals who caused this mess in Hommlet in the first place. From there, who knows.
This episode contains the last ever reference to the Barony of Greyhawk, Elsderth's family, and even Murag (or Morag) Mountainhammer.  Heck, once we clean up this short (yet geo-politically important) storyline from the short campaign I ran in '97, the next time anything significant in Ras-Prythax is mentioned is on 31 TriDec 1071, almost 26 games years later, and that was a disastrous side-trek.  

Sixty weeks of episodes (with a few breaks in between) and I've done a fair job at documenting the region that I've largely ignored since high school, Ras-Prythax was always my attempt at creating a Holy Roman Empire in my campaign world, with the corruption from the inside eating away at the effectiveness of the political machinations.  If only, even for a little while, a strong individual could unite the Ras-Prythax, the Weissmach, and the other satellite nations that once made up the Ferasean Empire.  Perhaps that could be a whole future campaign....

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