The Death Dancers (story) (Patreon)

I've got another story from the perspective of my D&D character Ingot to share. This time, the gnoll is here to tell the story of a volcano his people are familiar with and why no one lives next to it anymore. The name of the volcano the DM came up with, but the story behind it I wrote to use as background material in the game.

In the mountains lies a volcano that towers over the nearby peaks we gnolls call Nur-Ba'Nkekur, which translates to the Mountain of the Hidden Fire. My people know that the fire inside slumbers even though the volcano is quiet and shows no signs of life, and we tell this story so we do not forget that fact. Nur-Ba'Nkekur may be dormant now, but it has woken up before.

There used to be a village of men who lived at the bottom of Nur-Ba'Nkekur next to a lake of pure water. The volcano’s rich soil provided for the people, and the lake’s fish were bountiful. The people of this village used to worship the mountain, but as time went on, they forgot about the mountain’s fire. It had not erupted in so long, many thought it dead, but the elves who lived on the other side of the mountain were not so fooled. 

Elves live longer than men, and their collective memory is even long. Over the years, they noticed the subtle changes in the mountain, and kept notes. When the first wisps of smoke were seen escaping from the rocks near the summit far above the tree line, they consulted their histories and made plans. They grew saplings from the trees living on the mountain’s slopes and the forest that surrounded it, then carried them away. They took their books and transported them over the ridges to a distant sacred grove. Finally, they decided to warn the people of the village of men about the danger from the mountain.

The villagers did not care though or believe the elves. They said the elves were scared of the past. The mountain was dead, they claimed, so the villagers would not leave. The elves did not argue. They did not know when Nur-Ba'Nkekur would wake again, but they are a people who dwell on this earth far longer than the rest of us. They do not take chances with their lives. As a final concession to fate, the elves suggested the villagers talk to the dwarves, for they are born to hew stone. Dwarves can read a mountain better than anyone, and the elves will never dispute this. After that, the elves left their treetop homes in the lush forest at the foot of the mountain, and they did not come back.

Yet the people in the village did not seek advice from the dwarves. Instead, they went about their lives normally. The mountain lay quiet, and the villagers told themselves the elves were foolish. Instead of leaving, they celebrated their good fortune of no longer having to share hunting grounds with the elves or worry about their concerns for the forest. The people in the village danced long into the night to celebrate becoming masters of all the land around Nur-Ba'Nkekur. Then, seizing on the opportunity, they began to expand their village, turning it into a true town by welcoming outsiders and inviting them to settle.

Thrucot, a gnoll, was one of those people who moved into this growing town. He hailed from the foothills of the mountains, and he was a trader. The people in the town had many interesting things to sell him, some made by the people in the village while others were taken from the abandoned elven homes. He wasn’t well liked by the townsfolk at first—humans are often nervous when a gnoll moves into their town—but Thrucot had coin to buy with and goods to sell. With time, they saw him less as a mountain of fur and fang, but as a keen-eared trader with a nose for a deal. The gnoll built a home for himself and his son on the edge of town. He was already getting long in the pelt when he moved to the village, but his son, Razux, was still young and not yet an adult.

Razux did not have the appreciation for trade and coin like his father did, but he did have an appreciation for the woods around the mountain for they were rich with game, and the beauty of the land compelled him to explore. The young gnoll took to spending his time hunting and communing with nature, and through many hours of study, and advice from one of the elders in the village who knew the elves before they left, he learned to harness the power of the land. He listened to the voices of the trees, and through careful study of the animals that inhabited the woods, he learned how to take on their forms. Razux would sometimes spend weeks out in the woods before he’d return to town, and as part of his explorations, he climbed all over Nur-Ba'Nkekur to learn its secrets.

Eventually he found the steam at the top of the mountain and the bare spots it left in the snow. This baffled the gnoll at first, but as his magical abilities increased, he started to probe the stone, trying to understand what was happening. Razux was no dwarf, but reaching out with his senses, he could feel the heat of the fire inside of the mountain, and each time he tried to understand it, the hotter it seemed to be. Confused, he stopped trying to read the stone, and he asked the people in the town about the mountain and its past. The elves had been gone for a few years at this point, but the villagers were happy to tell him that the eleves had been afraid of the dead mountain. Concerned that Nur-Ba'Nkekur was starting to wake up, Razux left the village to find a dwarf who could come and see the mountain.

Thrucot saw his son off, wishing him a swift journey and advising him not to dawdle. He suggested he go north, for the dwarves had a hold there and Thrucot had met traders from it before. Alone, but with a sense of purpose, Razux searched for where the traders his father had met came from. Yet finding a dwarf, any dwarf, proved difficult for him. It took him weeks before he could find the dwarves’ secret underground hold cut into the mountains. More frustrating was the response he got from the dwarves when he did find them. They called his mission a fool’s errand and said there no way to calm the fire inside Nur-Ba'Nkekur. It would do what it wished, and if the fire was so close to the surface that he could feel it with his magic, the volcano was close to erupting. Dwarves have an innate way with stone and if they don’t think it can be salvaged, they do not waste their time trying to work it. The mountain of the hidden fire burned from the inside, and soon it would spill forth that fire from its peak.

Alarmed, the gnoll put his abilities into use and took the form of a wolf, running back to the village as quick as he could. Paws that were his, but not his, connected with the ground in a rhythm far different than how he walked. Before he’d held the forms of the animals only briefly, but Razux could not delay. He needed to return immediately and bring the warning the dwarves had given him. The gnoll-wolf ran for three days straight through valleys between the mountains, only to collapse on top of a ridge overlooking his home, too exhausted to keep the form any longer.

Razux had only been gone for one turning of the moon, but when he finally caught his breath and could find the energy to stand up to look upon his home, he was taken aback by what he saw. The mountain had changed in the time he was gone. A strange bulge had appeared near the summit that hadn’t been there before, and a wispy cloud clung to the top of the mountain that seemed to be coming from the mountain itself, like steam rising from a kettle about to boil. Even though he was exhausted, Razux pushed on to town to make sure everyone was gone and help anyone left leave, but what he saw when he reached the settlement shocked him.

The people in the town were still there! But they were not making any effort to leave. Instead they were celebrating, preparing to hold a festival that very night with feasting and dancing. Confused, he sought out those whom he knew. They said the gods had gifted them a spring of hot water near the town, and the elders had ordered a special holiday in honor of the find. It was hoped that this special spring might be a gift to bring the town even greater prosperity. Razux was dumbfounded. Had they not noticed the strange clouds or seen the way the mountain was changing? He asked them, but while these things had been noticed, no one seemed to care. Nur-Ba'Nkekur was a dead, volcano they told him, and it was not ever going to wake again. When he tried to let the townsfolk know what the dwarves had said, they walked away from him. Today was a day of celebration, they told Razux, and they didn’t have time for foolish rumors.

Confused and frustrated by their lack of concern, the gnoll walked back to his father’s house. There he found Thrucot waiting for him, a few things packed up and rations for the journey already ready to go. Razux didn’t even need to tell his father what the dwarves had told him, for Thrucot could see himself that it was time to leave. He had waited for his son only because he hoped the news Razux would bring would convince the people of the town to leave with them. Saddened to hear how they disregarded the advice of the dwarves and continued to ignore clear signs of danger, Thrucot said that there was nothing they could do for the townspeople. They could only save themselves.

The two gnolls left that afternoon, taking only what they could carry, leaving behind many valuable trade goods. That night, when the people of the town were celebrating the gift they said their gods had given them, as they danced under the stars, Nur-Ba'Nkekur erupted, spilling hot ash and lava down its side.  Some may have kept dancing until they were engulfed in the inferno, too foolish to even run. Even then it wouldn’t have mattered since the mountain’s fury came at them with a speed that no beast alive could meet. None of the townsfolk survived.

Today, no one lives in the immediate shadow of Nur-Ba'Nkekur. The town was destroyed completely, buried under suffocating ash and lava. Even the lake next to the town was wiped off the map. The gnolls who have told this story before me have not bothered to record the name of the town for it no longer exists. The elves still know the name, but no one has bothered to ask them. We do though have a name for the people who once inhabited that place. We call them the death dancers.