My first days after arriving on their ship were eventful. CrIsis. I could hardly believe that I, a kobold, was here standing in this rarified air with the likes of Tyvernos and Overkill. Xerx’ses I could believe.

I found him to be much more racist than even I believed him to be from my reading of his notes in the books of CrIsis. It isn’t a big thing for me, not something that I was worried about, but it did bring things into perspective as I began to adjust to my new life here. These were not the figures of legend that they’d almost become for me in my view of them from afar. They were people not unlike the people that I dealt with on a daily basis.

It makes me wonder, though, about the Defilers. Could it be that they were just people as well? It almost seems blasphemous to think so, but maybe, just possibly, they weren’t great because of who they were. Maybe they had greatness thrust upon them.

If so, then I have had such thrust upon me now.

As mentioned previously in this work, I have spent the last twenty years attempting to gather a set of holy daggers, one for each of the gods of Light. The troubles in finding these is obvious, since the rarity of holy weapons will be obvious to many, and the requirement that they be daggers…

But here, in the horde of a dragon, I found another that I named for Horus. With the acquisition of my third dagger, I truly felt that I might be able to complete my collection before my death. I now have daggers to represent Ra, Apis and Horus leaving me to find only five more: Osiris, Isis, Thoth, Bennu and Bast.

This CrIsis that I met was a different beast to the one that I’d read about. They worked well together, they operated with precision, they seemed almost to hearken back to the early days of their quest in a group completely different than the one that had begun what seemed so long ago.

For some, CrIsis is a death sentence. For me it was a life awakening. I saw it as my opportunity to show that I would not let the followers of Set form my life view. Before this I had never been outside of sight of land. I had never been more than a passenger of the ferries that I had ridden on.

I found myself at this late point in my life not only sailing on a vessel through the wilds of the open sea, but a seaman on the same vessel. The knowledge to help with the running of this vessel was miraculously placed in my mind, and I can only assume that it was put there by the gods, for which I thanked them daily during our voyage to Mishala. The only thing that I mourn of my meeting with Isis is that I was not able to cower in the presence of Ra, my deity of choice. I’m sure that it was during that meeting that I was given the knowledge of sailing and speaking the tongue of the Elves. The abilities of the gods know no bounds.

Ra was truly my light in the darkness as I used the dagger than I named after him to clear our way on more than one occasion. It’s power apparently terrified an Elven necromancer so much that she fled at the merest sign of it’s power. Well, it might be that she fled because her entire army was caused to flee before it.

And here I realized that wealth was meaningless. As someone who has gone without, who has wandered with nothing more than the clothes on his back through the northern wilderness, who has lived without home in Avramstown, I have had some desire for wealth, if only to prevent that hopelessness that I felt when I was in my thirtieth year.

I thought I was doing well for myself having acquired a fortune of more than 1000 gold through my work in Archaeology.

In a single moment that fortune was put to shame.

When the chest left behind by the necromancer was opened we beheld a true fortune: Dragon Coins. They were all intact, all had their gems, and we each were given almost 300 of the coins.

This was wealth unimaginable, and I realized in that moment that wealth means nothing. My 1000 coins that I had saved to prevent being destitute meant more to me than the entire treasure I now held in my hands.

I would go on to use a small pittance of that treasure to further outfit myself for the journey to come, but most would go to the church that I had pledged myself to. Most would be given to Ra for his beneficence in allowing one such as me a place at the table with CrIsis.

This account spans the period from the 28th day of the second month of Asher’s 99th year through the 12th day of the fourth month of the same year.

Image courtesty The Workplace Coach Blog