Yet even a snow storm in this age is a terrible wrath of nature. Tonight snow falls in blinding sheets across the glacier covered mountain tops. To the east the frozen sea and the lands of the Seal Tribe are hidden from view by the blankets of snow. The nighttime weather is nothing new to the Bear, and their lodges are filled with roaring fires and laughing men and woman telling tales to one another.
Seated in the Lodge of Broken Stone, one of the tribes great hunters, sits Flink Striker, a son of Kylorin the Arch Mage, and a young but promising warrior. Broken Stone's lodge is large, his family has grown with each passing year and his talents have brought him much success among his people. He is also a gifted storyteller, which helps when telling tales of his own greatness. Tonight the Hoarwine, a distilled alcohol made by the Seal Tribe from unknown plants and traded to the Bear runs freely among the warriors. A dozen or more are packed into the lodge, listening to the end of Broken Stone's tale. They sit around in a circle, the fire blazing, while the women work at another fire pit cooking and chating. Broken Stone's children are hiding among the rafters, or sit in the corners listening and watching, hoping to join the circle of warriors.
Standing tall, with wide shoulders even before drapping himself in the skin of the tribe's namesake animal, Broken Stone is an impressively sized man. He lacks many teeth, scars of battle, and a deep purple line traces across his neck, a former wound that would have killed a lesser man. He is finishing his tale and claps to grab the attention of everyone in the lodge. "...that's when the Ogre leap at me for the last time." He crouches down and puts his hands out before him, on his left hand only four and a half fingers greet the audiance. "I grabed it, and turned!" He pivots, "The beast lunged past me, and I pushed it up and into the air. The cliff behind me fell hundreds of feet to the ice below. It screamed like a child in the cold all the way over the cliff until it struck the ice, and its fall broke the glacier." He hides his one hand in his heavy bear skin robe. "There held in my hand was the beasts Pride, ripped from its body as I threw it." He then prouduces his missing hand, and in it is a tiny sack with two pebbles in it, small enough to be the manhood of a newborn snow goblin. "So much for the strength of Ogres!"
The room errupts into a deep laughter at the joke ending. The drunk men slapping their legs and rumbling like thunder in their humor.
