In Dungeons with Dragons | Prologue: Covey
Pelor’s Path
Her small back stiff from the log she had laid against, Covey Hawkhunter blinked what sleep she could from her eyes. Seeing the supine forms of other sleepers, she resigned herself to first taking as much stock of her current situation as she could without giving away to the mouth-breathers around her that she had woken, and, second, to determining how she ended up in this current situation, around this fire, with these…whoever they were.
Feigning sleepy readjustment, Covey felt along her arms, stopping at the raised welts of scratched skin. The slight sting of the scratches along her arms and legs did not bother her but, instead, invigorated, and the sensation brought with it the memories of childhood wanderings through the Tangletrees, fifty-foot pines, and briar patches of the Harken Forest and through the thorny cattails along the White River.
No stranger to sleeping outside, Covey was accustomed to careful preparation of a cozy campsite, very much unlike the haphazard manner in which this locale was chosen and assembled. Her tiny stomach grumbled, craving food to fuel her swift metabolism. Her last meal, a plate of pickled eggs at the Lucky Gnome Taphouse would have upset a weaker gut, but halfling bellies were given much practice.
“That’s right! I was at that dreadful tavern last night with those raucous riffraff and noisome ne’er-do-wells!” she exclaimed in her mind, recalling a snatch of the previous night to her sleep-addled mind and then silently chastising herself for denigrating them, for “all were Pelor’s children”.
More of the night coming into focus, she remembered deciding to go for a drink, advancing her original campaign (pilgrimage in its own right) of going out among Pelor’s children, having had a hunch that she might hear the voice of Pelor more clearly among the common folk that she would serve than in the cloistered silence of the House of the Sun. And, folk didn’t get much more common than those at the Lucky Gnome. Thinking back, perhaps she should have started at the nicer Blue Moon Alehouse with it’s delightfully heady summer ales and markedly more genteel patrons. However, she wouldn’t argue with Pelor’s design for her, and she certainly had learned more in one night about how much work she truly had before her than in all her formative years in the Barony of Harkenwold, lost in soliloquy as she meandered through the Briar Hills, trekked across the dappled floor of the Harken Forest, and traipsed along the banks of the steady White River. It was in these lone wanderings, sun peeking through the canopy and shed leaves crunching underfoot, that she found a dedication to Pelor. Covey came to Fallcrest to complete her cleric’s training at the House of the Sun. Her early religious instruction was haphazard at best – a combination of druid’s lore, rudimentary healer’s training, and some phrases from both Low Supernal and Low Abyssal (the languages of angels and demons, respectively) from Sister Sondal, the current prelate of the House of Faith, a dilapidated temple that has seen better days.
Covey takes the directives of her religion seriously: to alleviate suffering wherever she finds it, to bring Pelor’s light into places of darkness, to show kindness, mercy, and compassion, and to be watchful against evil. A cleric of Pelor’s first duty is to meet the needs of the disadvantaged and heal the hurts of the wounded, with the ultimate goal of eradicating evil. Covey’s Fallcrest training, under the direction of the Dwarven Cleric, Grundelmar, has focused more heavily on evil-smiting than missions of mercy, but smiting, in general, has become far less distasteful to Covey, now that she has a worthy vocation. Finally at the end of her training, she wonders what path Pelor has planned for her and how she will recognize it.
From the corner of her squinted eyes, she saw the dragonborn stir, snore, and exhale a tendril of smoke. He had been at the Lucky Gnome last night, speaking with the eladrin woman. Covey blinked her eyes tightly together, still sorting her thoughts, unready for conversation—something of which a life of solitude had made her wary and insecure. Covey had had playmates in her childhood, but she’d never had confidants, those that understood her.
In fact, “Covey” is not this halfling’s given name, but is rather a mocking nickname, bestowed upon her by those childhood playmates. Meant to convey that she is less like the fierce kestrels that her Clan uses for sorcery and hunting, and more like the coveys of ground-dwelling quail upon which the small hawks prey. Though she never detected malice in the appellation, she knew that her kith and kin thought of the quail as cowering and weak, and the Hawkhunter clan has a proud lineage of stealthy and deadly rogues who specialize in far-seeing reconnaissance with the aid of birds of prey. Over the course of time, Covey has taken this sobriquet that set her apart and made it her own. She likes the distinction that her name draws between a heritage of mercenary killing and her choice to pursue a higher calling. However apt the nickname, it does not indicate a lack of courage or fierceness on Covey’s part. Covey has a deep well of patience and a deceptively easy-going nature, but when seriously provoked, she can unleash a wrath that is frightening and deadly. One further contradiction remains with her “given” name. “Covey” refers to a group of quail.
The group at the tavern was growing larger as Covey sat, nursing the eye-watering mead, the long leaf tobacco in her pipe failing to mask its low hops content and under-fermentation. It took both hands to hoist the heavy mead in the heavier wooden tankard to her lips due to her diminutive size, but she still tried to shrink farther into her seat as the dragonborn’s eyes surveyed the room and rolled over her.
An elf with a haughty air entered and took a seat under a candelabra with only one lit candle supporting a small flame. After a couple of local porters joined an already obnoxious group of their associates, Covey noticed his hand slip to a hidden short sword, and upon further inspection, she noticed the fingers of his other hand curl cunningly around an even more surreptitiously-hidden blade. Covey instantly disapproved of the elf, noting too many similarities to the roguish clan she had left behind.
Just as she prepared to clamp her teeth in irritation around the stem of her pipe, it was inexplicably struck away from her face as by an invisible and forceful hand. “Pelor’s beard!” The explicative had exited her mouth before she could recall it, and that is when the second tankard was hurled…