Dalton

Dalton is a barbarian in the adventure "Dirge of the Mournful Queen." Cousin to Rikus, Dalton was employed as a cup-bearing slave in the high keep during the Liberation of Highport.

## Character Introduction

Twist and pull. Twist and pull. At this point it had become mechanical. One seamless motion. Young Dalton let out a sigh of satisfaction as he felt a familiar warmth bathe his calloused fingers. The head still twitching gently in his lap, he allowed it to wash over him, steaming in the air of a cold mountain morning, just as it had the morning before, and the morning before that. In the village, this was women’s work, and the other whelplings teased him mercilessly. “The Boy With The Blood On His Hands.”

His cousin Rikus had been the one to come up with it, before she left the village to seek her fame in the pits. Glory is won only in battle, Rikus told him, and their family was blessed to have battle in their blood. But fighting never made sense to Dalton. Older boys would trade dozens of dirty insults to raucous applause, before a brief and bloodless tumble behind the barn. Once he tried, but he stammered only a few soft words and was laughed off the yard before a single punch was thrown.

Dalton knew that he didn’t have the panache, and likely also the brutality, to be a proud fighter. But there were other reasons Dalton preferred farm chores to glory and sport. In this scat-strewn patch of dirt, at the moment when life meets death, he was the God of the Harvest, and here no chicken could stand before him.

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Even though he’d never been placed in fetters before, the dangling chains had a familiar weight to them, like a part of his body he didn’t know he’d been missing. First seeing his manacles being pulled from the slave wagon, Dalton thought, “Those are mine. They were made for me.” That was two weeks ago.

The other boys, so full of bravado, were put to the sword. As were all who had so much as a spiteful word for the gnolls. Dalton envied their spirit -- where was his anger? Instead, he felt only shame, and the comfort of resignation. From now on, he didn’t need to worry about fitting into village life. It was his lot to carry and march.

Outside a city called Highport, an especially large gnoll tossed a hammer at Dalton’s feet and pointed at a dented shield. When Dalton couldn’t lift it, the gnoll snorted in disgust and casually broke his arm.

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In a series of identical arcs, the hammer fell against the glowing metal, showering Dalton’s body with sparks. He might once have felt the impacts thunder though his arm. But, after years in the gnoll forges, pain didn’t hurt him. His body had become grotesquely bent to the labor of shaping iron and burned smooth by the great furnaces of Highport. This was life in the shadow of Hyrn Arm-Breaker.

But as Hyrn adopted the trappings of men, Dalton’s bonds of servitude loosened. Hyrn and his lieutenants took to calling Dalton out of the forges to serve as their cup-bearer. Was this an honor to reward his good work, or a cruel jape? He didn’t care. It was enough that he was allowed to pour for Penelope Apexus, the only woman willing to talk to this misshapen outlander. Amazingly, she knew his people’s stories, and asked Dalton about their meaning. Once, when he was refilling a chalice of honey wine, her hand touched the charred skin of his fist.

Then came the day when Dalton was called upon to pour at the royal wedding. He was typically floundering with the guests, and his asymmetrical form made a mockery of the fine vestments he’d been given for the occasion. Dalton recognized the tone of the Greywind ambassadors’ laughter from the village wrestling yard. So when a crew of thieves burst into the hall in a hail of fire, Dalton didn’t do more than his job. Everyone who died that day did so with a full cup.

But oh, Penelope! It all happened so fast -- how could he have not seen her in the room? Thinking of her cruel fate, his eyes drift to a dusty longhammer in a neglected corner of the smithy, and he hears the words his steel-jawed grandmother spoke as he squalled in the crib: "Be nice. Until it's time to not be nice." Yesterday Dalton heard a wine-addled Hyrn say that Orson Apexus himself caved in dear Penelope’s perfect head under the light of the burning tower. But he doesn’t remember that. Mostly, he remembers the smell of boiling blood.

It smelled like a farm.

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*Some time later, in the lower wards of Highport...*

As the night grows later, Dalton drifted from his comrades and made his way to Slaver's Row. Under the darkness of the moon, Slaver's Row was a different place. The auction block was empty of its bidders, and ordinary townsfolk no longer roamed the street. In their place, clumps of women of all species, an even some children, gathered around alley corners or leaned against derelict hovels.

Johns mingled and took stock of the goods on display. Their hands and eyes probed the bodies of the alley girls, each hoping to dine on finest veal.

Over the catcalls of women, a new sound caught Dalton's attention. Through the window of a storehouse, he could hear a slave trader ruthlessly beating his chattel.

*"You wretched lot! If you don't sell on the 'morrow, you'll all have hell to pay,"* the cruel master screeched. The cries of his property cut through the night air.

The sounds of lashes and pain were etched in Dalton's brain like ruts in an ancient road. Yet that night it was as though that ground had worn through, and the earth had opened up underneath. Still bruised and bloody from his trials at the coliseum, Dalton quaked with an anger that he knew may doom him, yet he was powerless to control. He stormed into the storehouse, knocking the slaver to the floor. As he lifted his mordenkrad, the idea struck him to start at the bottom. Under heaving breath, he uttered a dark prayer -- *this night I will possess your corpse* -- and bent his misshapen shoulder to the his bloody task.

Screeches filled the storeroom, and before long also the alley. The screams of a man dying such a terrible death are hard to fathom, but Dalton's blood lust drank them up like honey wine, intoxicating him further.

Pausing to view his handiwork, he could see that little remained of the doomed slaver but a ripe mound of flesh and shattered bone. The slaver's chattel were huddled in a corner, terrified and shaking. Never in all their days in bondage had they witnessed such brutality. One cringes in silent shock as the viscera-caked mordenkrad breaks their shackles in a single blow. Freed from their chains and astonished by what they have just seen, they all raced from the storehouse and disappeared into the deep of the night.

In the light of the moon, a length of jawbone moved across the floor, and a terrible rasp escaped what was once a throat.