Great Wall of Cetelt Vol. I-II

The Great Wall of Cetelt
As told by Dremond the skulker;
And Rollies, a lady in waiting
Penned by Grenated.

[A note to the reader: I have endeavored to bring this tale to you exactly as it was told to me. Some parts are vague on the circumstances of the speakers that I was quoting. Other parts were omitted as they bear little on the history at hand.]

"See, I lived 'round these parts then. I was something of a local hero. Or maybe, celebrity is a better way o' putting it. All right, I was a well-known drunk. But that don't change a thing of what I saw in them days; I never got so stiff that I blacked out, it was always just enough to put the edge off a bit, understand?"

"Anyhow, Cetelt was one o' them big time adventurer types; always slaying orcs and gnolls and lootin' em. Always tellin' his own tales bigger than they really was. Now don't get the wrong whiff here; he was a good fighter. He could skin a kobold with one hand and parry the attacks o' three orcs with the other, all the while talkin' about how well he was doin' it. But truth be told, he wasn't one of the greats; not enough ambition. He never wanted to be a prince or king or called 'highness or majestic like' or any o' those noble style things. He just wanted to adventure. At least that's how it was until his sixtieth year."

[At this point Dremond seemed to grow a bit melancholy and began to mumble about Cetelt's early exploits and low the later years had caught up to him. I could not hear these words well and ask the pardon of the reader in the matter of this part of the record being unclear. I bought Dremond another flagon and probed him with this question: What happened in his sixtieth year?]

"Whose? Oh, Cetelt. Well, it was in that year that his father died, only a few months after his aunt that had raised him. He didn't seem right after that. He started calling for seers and sooths and whatnot to come to him. This was when he took up shop in The Misty Thicket, see? I dunno why he decide to live with these halfies, I never cared for 'em too much, but hey, who am I to call a thief a thief?"

"Anyways, you gotta 'member that Cetelt had built up a pretty good following of other adventurers by this time. Now, Cetty (that's wot we called him behind his back), Cetty didn't have no aspirations of kinghood or nothin', but his followers thought of him as such and they would do anything he asked. They kept beggin' him to take over this land and conquer that. Well, finally he snapped."

"He said, and I remember this well; he said, if you fools want to build something, build me a castle on Cair Leima.' See, that'sthe little hill just outside Riverdale."

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"Of course, Cetelt knew it was too steep for any kind of foundation, but his boys and girls they were fanatic like and tried anyway. Three times they tried to build there only to see the whole thing crumble."

"Cetty said that the only thing a castle would get him would be some young punk looking for a seige. That reminds me of a joke: There was this young girl who's father tried to protect her chastity." [I have omitted this rather vague anecdote to speed up this narrative.]

Sooooo, after about a year Cetelt snaps, like I said, and calls all o' his people around him and sez, 'You all wanna do something? Then build a wall. A wall betwixt these fine people, (meanin' the halfies) and the foul breath of doom that constantly threatens them.' [I think he meant the goblins of Runny Eye.]

"So his punks, feverish with love for the old boy, went a working. None too fast now. You gotta 'member, these were adventurers [said with a sneer], not real workers like you and me. So, by the by it takes 'em fifteen years to finish this one little wall. Lazy bastards. Why, in my day I coulda shown any one of 'em how the world really works. Not a one of 'em knew their arse end from... [Another tedious monologue deleted. I bought more grog for Dremond]

"Well, thash it really. As shoon as the wall was done, Cetty took a big long looky-poo and marched through the gatesh. He said., 'Hold these gatesh for my return.' He shouted a few curses and was gone. Then he headed into Runny eye and hashn't bin sheen shinze ..ZZzzzzzzzzzz."

[At this point the Halfling woman that was serving us, Rollies, was kind enough to recount her version of the events]

"Oh, yes, I remember when Cetelt came here and decided to retire. He could not seem to be rid of his hangers-on. They begged to do some task for him and he obliged them by asking that they build a fort on Cair Leima. I'm quite sure that Cetelt, having taken quite a shine to us wee folk, was intent on giving this land some protection from the goblins that roamed incessantly here. But Cetelt's people were not architects, alas. They never could get the foundation for the fort right and it tumbled down, again and again."

"Finally, Cetelt ordered that a wall be built across the breath of the woods. He had it built tall and strong and cleared the tress on the bad side so that the goblins could be seen coming from quite a way."

"Strangely enough though, as soon as the wall was finished he shut himself on the bad side and with a shout of, 'I will be rid of this curse!' disappeared. It didn't take long for his people to weary of waiting for him and to trickle out of these parts; looking for adventures, I would wager."

"Now the wall stands mostly undefended and the gates are rotted off. Some still stand the vigil, but most halflings have little to do with them. There are more merry pursuits here on the edge of Riverdale."

[Rollies left me then and I left Dremonds to his cups. The wall has since come to be known by the denizens of Riverdale as the Great Wall of Serilis, for one of their gods, though there are many who remember how it came to be, and who sometimes call it by this name.]


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Source: Ingame book