Franz Lohner's Chronicle - Hearth and Home

An absent-minded man of mysteries, Franz Lohner relies on his bulging journal to keep track of occurrences, intrigues and arguments around Taal's Horn Keep. Sometimes his notes are even useful, believe it or not. The Franz Lohner Chronicles are extracts from that journal.

You know what? I’ve always admired Valaya, the Ancestor Goddess of Hearth and Home. This world of ours is lousy with deities, and pretty much every last one of them knows their way around a goodly bit of blunt force trauma. Valaya’s the same, but she’s also different. 

When Valaya goes to war, it’s as a protector. A defender. A champion of hearth and home, and everything that’s truly valuable in life. It’s not a big or showy vocation, but it’s one to be admired nonetheless. If you ever find yourself on the receiving end of Valaya’s axe, you’ll only ever have yourself to blame, because you crossed a line no one ever should. And you’ll get precisely what you deserve, twice over.

But more than that, Valaya stands for welcome and hospitality, speaking to an older time when dwarfs could afford to be more trusting of outsiders. Before things went sour with the Ulthuani, and us humans proved a mite more devious than the dwarfs were prepared to tolerate for prolonged periods. Those older, happier times echo around Valaya’s temples. So long as you’re not a wrong ‘un, you can rely on a welcome within those walls … even if you’re regarded askance elsewhere in the hold.

I suppose that’s why I like dwarfs, stubborn little buggers though they be. While you get plenty of rotters within the race – let’s face it, we’ve all got ‘em – dwarfs are by and large an honourable people. They’ll always finish a fight, but they don’t often start one without cause. And they stick by their friends until the very end. Anyone who doesn’t find that reassuring needs their head examining.

Case in point, I’ve made plenty of enemies over the years. Some, I’ve put in the ground. Others are a work in progress. When I die, it’ll be one of those scoundrels who does the deed, you can count on it. 

And you know what? I feel a bit sorry for them. Because they’ll have to answer to Bardin for what they’ve done. Because “dawri” is more than a term of affection. It’s a promise, like the one Valaya gave to her folk long millennia ago: that “home” is family more than it’s a place, family is more than blood … and that those who mess with either don’t get chance to run from their deeds. They crawl away and expire in a pool of their own blood.

Don’t you think it’s just me. I won’t have that. Every time Bardin calls one of us dawri – yes, even the elf – he’s renewing a promise that he’ll die before he lets us down. Should we head into the beyond before him, the last thing our killer will ever see is a flash of gromril and a very, very angry dwarf.

Call me perverse, but I can’t help but take comfort in that.