For Fraser

I heard earlier this week about the untimely death of a friend and long term fellow D&D player. He always bought a laugh to our table, and I wanted to share a story from our gaming table. This particular tale comes waaaay back from our D&D campaign at the Bun Shop club.

I hope you enjoy the post and excuse the cliches (I'm not a fiction writer!)

-X-

Welcome to my hearth side old friend. Draw yourself an ale, sit yourself down, make yourself comfortable. We should talk of older times; days of our youth, and of fantastic things we have done and seen. After all, now we have spent all the gold and age has spent the strength from our sword arms, these memories are all we have of that summer.

There are so many tales we could share; of the flame-obsessed halfling thief, or the warrior who fell asleep up a tree and fell to his death. Perhaps the story of the fighter who drowned from a potion or the ranger so ashamed of his behaviour in a tavern he renounced the world and took monastic orders.

These are all good stories (and all true, I swear!) but this evening I want to share my recollections of the Dwarf who was and was not Cursed.

In our adventuring company there were many Odd Fellows. And perhaps oddest among the odd was the unlikely friendship struck between a Wild Elf and a Dwarf. I forget their names (damn the passing years), but I remember the deep bonds between the two warriors, and how they fought together like blood brothers.

The Dwarf would always begin a battle by firing a shot from his favoured heavy crossbow towards the foe. Always. Even if allies had already engaged the enemy is melee.  And more often than not that iron tipped bolt would savage a companion rather than it's intended target.

The Wild Elf named that crossbow "Friend Killer", although the attentions of a friendly cleric would usually deal with the worst of the harm caused by our enthusiastic marksman. And that ironically dark moniker stuck!

The company fought many more battles, and with terrible frequency it would be an adventurer rather than orc who would be hit by those quarrels! When one poor victim exclaimed "why are you shooting into combat?" his friend replied "That's Friend Killer! He has to shoot it!". And that is how the adventurers came to the conclusion that the Dwarf was Cursed and he carried on as he always had.

The truth was of course something different. The Dwarf never understood why his enthusiastic companions kept running into his line of sight instead of waiting until he had fired at the enemy. But they were Not Dwarves and Not Polite (unlike Dwarves of course); they were very rude to keep doing so! And of course if they had bothered to ask him not to shoot, or they had planned their tactics more effectively he would have been more than happy to hold his fire, or charge with axe and shield from the first.

And so the Dwarf was not in fact cursed!

I look back and chuckle on this tale now; I think perhaps it was the Dwarf's compatriots who were cursed! Cursed with assumptions and a lack of manners!

-X-