Expeditionary Marshal

The room was richly furnished. The polished stone walls were lined with shelves of engraved Khazthandian steel tablets and books imported from the surface with gold-worked leather bindings; three-dimensional maps wrought from solid silver in exquisite detail were casually strewn across the various tables, each one a technical and artistic masterpiece worth more than a king’s ransom; and in front of the comfortably crackling fireplace at the far end of the room was a massive onyx desk covered with scenes of battles fought long ago etched with wondrous detail and craftsmanship into the long-remembering stone.

At the desk sat a dwarf. Though his desk was in the heart of Arkinthel, the dwarf wore a full set of plate armor; it was ornately gilded with the symbols befitting his station, but the marks of countless old battle-scars – each carefully repaired – were still visible underneath the gilding to the discerning eye. The well-manicured length of his prodigious beard was interwoven with the emblems of Clan Klaxton.

There was a knock on the door.

“Enter,” commanded the dwarf.

A dragonborn carefully opened the door and just as carefully shut it behind her before turning to salute the sitting dwarf, the Khazthandian crests on her cuirass burnished until they shone like the stars she had never seen.

“General Dumac, I’ve been sent with a message from the Assembly,” she said, an uncharacteristic slight tremor of excitement detectable in the normally professional cadence of her speech.

“At ease, Captain. What news from the Assembly chambers?”

The aged dwarf had much more practice concealing unprofessional emotions – his voice contained no hint of the inferno of curiosity raging in every recess of his mind.

“The treaty has been ratified, sir.”

The dwarf sharply released a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding.

“It’s been ratified? I didn’t think there was a force under stone or sky that could get those bickering surfacer delegations to agree on anything. The famine on the surface must be as bad as the reports say.”

The dragonborn, whose rigid posture hadn’t shifted in the slightest after the dwarf’s “at ease,” nodded her head a single time.

“Yes, sir. The Assembly has instructed me to offer you command of the Reclamation, if you’ll accept the post.”

This time the dwarf’s military stoicism failed him completely. Mouth slightly ajar, he spent several seconds collecting himself.

Command of the Reclamation. Overseeing the unsealing of Arkinthel; organizing the expeditions of Khazthandian adventurers to reclaim the holds of old lost a millennia ago during the Fall from whatever creatures or machinations or plain-old bad luck had overcome them; making those holds safe and fit for dwarvenoid habitation within a year, at which time any surfacers who didn’t have a place to stay underground in the Middledark would run out of food and starve to death aboveground; leading the charge to take back the homes, the technologies, the magics, and the pride which every Khazthandian lost when Arkinthel was sealed away from the death-throes of the rest of the empire.

The Assembly was entrusting him not only with the survival of millions of surfacers, but with the past and the future of his people. Was he up to the task? Was Khazthand?

“Captain.”

The dwarf’s voice was quiet but resolute.

“Yes, General?”

“Tell the Assembly I accept the post.”

He paused a moment before continuing, picking up emotion and determination with every passing word.

“Tell them to find every adventurer, every patriot, every mercenary, every scholar, and every other fool daft enough to think this is going to work and send them all to Reclamation HQ at Hireling Hall. We’ve been waiting eight hundred and fifty-seven years for this day, and now the clock has started. It’s time to go home.”

“Right away, Gener- … Begging your pardon, sir. Right away, Expeditionary Marshal.”