Dadaef - Prologue

42 Years Earlier

The two city-states had been allies with each other since they first founded. They had fought in the same wars together, had the strongest trade routes this side of the Aldrassi mountain range, and due to this, hated each other down to the bone. Some claimed it was because of their cultural and religious differences. Others claimed it was just petty rivalry. And a surprisingly large number of them claimed it was "Because of what Aunty Bernice said at our Frederick's wedding."

This doesn't explain why a substantial number of both of their citizens had banded together to form a mob which was currently marching towards the overly extravagant palace of the city of Dedæf, currently occupied by the tyrant. He hadn't meant to be a tyrant, but the citizens of Dedæf were very strong minded. There were a few trolls among the mob, standing out from the crowd simply by looming unnaturally.

Prince Alvas was watching them worriedly. He had been against the mountain trolls migrating to the city, but the fact of the matter was that it's quite hard to stop a three metre tall humanoid made of rock getting into your city, especially seeing as a few equal rights groups were protesting against his supposed speciesism. Their protests had devastated Dedæf, especially as many of them were Dwarves. The dwarven females... they had been alright, Alvas considered, seeing as they did what many of the women in the city did. Cooking, cleaning, and sewing, but as they were dwarves, they had replaced sewing with blacksmithing. The armour sold for a bit, too. But the males... they drank, they sung, and they got drunker. Then they brawled. Then they sung more.

Then they went outside, and brawled in the street. It was catching, and within a few minutes, there were forty or so people - Human people, Alvas corrected himself - brawling with the rest of them.

There were a lot of dwarves in the mob, too. Someone had gotten their hands on some troll beer. No-one knew why or how they made it. Unfortunately, it was strong enough to get trolls drunk, and that easily got anyone else drunk too. It barely took any troll beer to get someone drunk. Unless, of course, that someone was a troll. And trolls have big thirsts. And they're not good at estimating, for example, how much beer they'd need.

To cut a long story short, they had about a hundred and fifty barrels of beer. They'd started with two hundred, but they'd all gotten drunk enough to be angry, but not drunk enough to miss with a well hurled beer barrel.

Trolls are also very strong.

A beer barrel flew through the closed window, narrowly missing Alvas and concussing his secretary. This was quite impressive, seeing as his secretary was behind another wall, in the antechamber to the meeting room Alvas was currently in.

His advisors stood with an expression of disdain on their faces, looking at the beer leaking onto the floor.

"Gentlemen?" said Alvas, straightening up and turning, "We have another small rebellion on our hands."

The oldest of the advisors, which Alvas knew as Albërcht von Schnubërtzen, and distrusted immensely due to him being from another country, spoke in his dusty way. "We are aware of that, sir, but -"

"Why? What have I done that's wrong?" said Alvas, "I mean, I've only been in a position of power three days and already there are people hurling beer barrels through the windo-"

Another beer barrel came through, this time through the wall overlooking the street.

"People dislike your policing attempts. The City Watch has long been regarded as a useless appendix to the brutally efficient guild police. The Merchant's guild is regarded as the most efficient, due to its employment of... special citizens," said von Schnubërtzen.

"Special citizens? Is that what they call werewolves and those undead abominations now?"

"It's what the Campaign for Equal Rights calls them. I believe Special Citizens also includes Zombies, Ghouls, Banshees... the list goes on," said von Schnubërtzen.

"So... all undead?"

"No, others too. Undead are grouped into the subcategory of Post-senior citizens."

"So what about-"

"Gentlemen, while this conversation is most entertaining, we should really try to apply ourselves to the matter at hand. I do believe that the trolls have obtained a Ballista," said Argus Jengison, Alvas' military commander.

"They have no idea how to use them, though," said Alvas, mostly out of self reassurance.

"They know how to use normal crossbows. They've adjusted this."

Alvas' reassurance, the little he had left, faded completely. "Adjusted how?"

"It works like a normal crossbow now."

"But ballistae are massive! It would take twenty men to lift it up!"

"Yes. But these are trolls."

The door leading to the antechamber disintegrated. A troll could be seen behind it, cocking the ballista as well as he could.

"Wake up an' smell the... thing. Brown. People drink it..." said the troll, floundering a bit.

"Coffee?" suggested Alvas.

"Yeah... thassit," the troll hiccuped slightly at this point, "Wake up an' smell the coffee, Alvas."

As the massive ballista bolt flew towards Alvas, he didn't have much time to think. Due to this, his last words were just one.

"Why?"

The ballista bolt missed him. It was fast, though, and flew into the wall.

Then fell out. Alvas was hit over the head with the massive bolt. He became concussed.

He lived for another forty years or so, but he was in a coma for thirty-six of those, and his speech muscles were so badly out of practice that he couldn't speak. He became one of the only people in history to have said his last words forty years before they died.