Love in a Hopeless Place - 12/12/2023 - Mendal Recounts

That Cousin Who Is Too Calm Too Quiet and Devoid of Mirth - That’s The Shadowfell


“You’re kidding?! The Creation spell pulls wisps of shadow material from the Shadowfell to create stuff?”

“Yes. Here, I’ll demonstrate. Look,” Archie affirmed to his dwarven friend as he began to cast the Creation spell for Mendal.

The wizard used his telekinesis to pick up a tiny speck of adamantine laying on the floor of the workshop, and after a minute of casting, a dwarven-sized set of full plate adamantine armour appeared on a stand between the adventuring friends. To the inspecting eye during the casting, wisps of shadow had indeed appeared as the individual plate pieces came into existence.

“I saw it! I saw the shadows,” Mendal confirmed. “Also, not bad plate, old boy. Though you could have put some fluting on the chest plate. You know; given it some aesthetic qualities. It’s so plain.” Mendal began to list the many ways he would have improved on the armour, if he had created it. He cut short his critique when after a minute the plate armour and stand vanished. Archie pointed out to Mendal that adamantine created via the Creation spell has a very short lifespan, as opposed to, say, a stone statue which could last for half a day before vanishing. Or say a large bundle of cloaks made from linen, which could last for the duration of an entire day.

“Oh right. Kind of makes sense,” Mendal replied, before adding a final critique to the now absent armour, “but anyway, the adamantine plate you made; good, and yet somehow you managed to make adamantine boring. Was that a limitation because it was made of Shadowfell stuff? Cause the Shadowfell itself similarly lacked aesthetics as if polish and style were unheard of there. Our Eladrin friends were horrified by the lack of elegance, flair, and the way even colour seems muted there. They got downright depressed. I didn’t mind the place though, it’s not like the place or people were horrible - just bland. Like Kavel actually! Ha!” Mendal laughed thinking of the similarity he’d only just noticed between the shadar-kai he saw in the Shadowfell and his goliath friend. “Yeah, they are all eerily serene, so bloody calm and expressionless like Kavel is, but they were infinitely more bland than even he.”

“I haven’t been to the Shadowfell myself, and I don’t believe I’ve met the shadow elves either,” Archie stated. “Concerning the armour that was, the caster is a little limited by their own talent for crafting. Although not to the same capacity as one is with the Fabricate spell, where there is direct and causal correlation between craftsmanship and product; the better you are at non-magical crafting, the better your magical fabrication will be.”

Mendal nodded his response, and his approval as well, that the Fabricate spell rewarded the true crafters, so to speak.

“I’ve never seen you use the Creation spell. Moradin didn’t bless you with the Creation spell? I find that odd,” Archie enquired.

“Don’t rush him!” Mendal rebuked. “I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before he rewards his favourite forge cleric. Anyway, let me finish telling you about the adventure.”



Poetry Is Not For Mendal

“So, Yinmaris, Mittens and Thurghor were there. You’ve met them. Then there was the new lad Chartreuse, Eladrin fella like Yinmaris from the same Fey Court too.”

Archie nodded at hearing the names before asking, “And Mittens…?”

“Behaved himself for the most part, I thought!” Mendal said, “cuffed him round the ear for being cheeky to our employer at one point, but he wasn’t the only one. A pun on our employer’s name, Antimony Apropos, earned Yin a cuff too, and can’t remember what Chartreuse was saying between challenging the Sorrowsworn to an honourable five on two duel, but something earned him a cuff round the ear - which he managed to nimbly avoid. I’m sure Thurghor deserved a cuff for something, but he’s too bloody tall to cuff round the head!”

“Interesting. I find myself without need to cuff my allies when out on adventure,” Archie said, criticising Mendal’s behaviour. But, Mendal paid his friend’s comment little thought, responding, “you’re doing adventuring wrong. Anyway, we all had a nice drink together when we got back to Fort Ettin, and one lucky little kitten got the gem of the loot, so I don’t want to hear any crap about lightly cuffing kids. There’s a direct correlation between clipping his ear and him earning the best loot.” Archie chose not to question Mendal’s logic. He had been here before. Instead he queried something else, “what were you hired to do, did you say?”

“Ah yes!” Mendal remembered. “Antimony’s lover, Harven went AWOL. They were newly in love, and Harven was coping with his emotions by making shit poetry in his boring home on the beach. He went absent for a few days, and we followed his tracks into a cave and had to face a couple of spiked limbed horrors called Sorrowsworn. Get this! Harven’s shit poetry about how lonely it is to be separated from his Antimony is what summoned the Sorrowsworn into the caves! Now that’s some twisted shadow magic! Careful with the Creation spell Archie! No casting that after writing something depressing. Haha! And no shit poetry. In fact, just no poetry, it’s all nonsense isn’t it?” Mendal’s last sentence was really more of a statement than a question, and as before, Archie chose not to be baited into an argument with Mendal, and so decided to leave poetry - something he was fond of - undefended, mostly, “I’m sure even you could find a poet you liked, Mendal,” Archie did say in response.

“Well, it wouldn’t be Harven! Yin and Chartry read Harven’s stuff and they both looked like they’d been stabbed in the head. You know what? I have to give old Kavel some credit here. You didn’t see him writing shit poetry when he was separated from Nathalie. Good lad! Anyway, we killed the Sorrowsworn, honourably, I might add, and rescued Harven, from himself. Job done.”