The History of Halflings (House Item)

In-Game Book Text
Through my own experiences, I have gained knowledge and insight into the halflings. Each part of this history tome can only be completed in its own time.

Story 1

When the gods decided to place folk on Norrath, we halflings were the most fortunate folk, created by Fizzlethorpe Bristlebane, the King of Thieves. And what a great place he put us, in our beloved Rivervale.

We named it Rivervale as a river flowed through the soft-sloped hills that eventually rose into higher and narrower clefts that kept us safe. To one reach Rivervale, you had to pass through either the KithicorForest or the Misty Thicket, neither of which was forgiving to the unwary.

Beyond the Misty Thicket, you see, lay the home of a particularly foul band of goblins -- Runnyeye Citadel. Nasty folk and a nasty place, that's for sure. While they weren't very bright, they were certainly very annoying.

On the other side there was KithicorForest, a darker and much more sinister place. Our legends had it that in the beginnings of time, Cazic-Thule tripped over a root jutting out from the forest floor and put an awful curse on the whole place! True as I'm breathing!

The halflings of Rivervale and Misty Thicket created a really cozy place in the world. While the humans and the elves all seemed to have their troubles, our lives went on for generations, pretty much as they always had. We did some farming and gathered honey jum.

Story 2

Well, I don't know who tripped over what this time, but all of a sudden, the Runnyeye goblins decided that they wanted to stomp all over us. And they weren't alone, which wasn't a surprise since they were such idiots they couldn't conquer a sand castle much less Rivervale without help.

They were banded together with orcs now, calling themselves the Horde of Inferno. Many's the lad who called them the Horrid Infernal, let me tell you, sometimes straight to their ugly old faces! But there were hundreds of them. Hundreds. We had no choice.

Halflings don't generally give up on anything. We're tenacious, but we're not idiots. When it was obvious that the Horde wouldn't rest until they'd stepped on every single one of us, we packed our bags and left. We'd headed into Kithicor despite the legends of its curse. It must've been cursed all right, because we hadn't time to do more than catch our breath when the Horde came trotting along behind us, burning up all the trees and killing anything that moved.

HighholdPass was much closer to us, but a lot of folk decided to head toward the West Commonlands instead. They came hurrying back because no matter which way you looked, if the Horde hadn't got there first, the Rallosian Army was having a cook-out. Things looked real grim.

Fortunately, we're half the size of humans, and we can be really sneaky when we put our minds to it. The displaced halflings of Rivervale thanked good old Bristlebane many a time for that, let me tell you. They kept their wits about them and snuck all the way over to Qeynos.

Story 3

You don't see much writings among the elves and the humans about the halflings arriving just when they needed some help. Well, that's okay. They were in pretty desperate straits then and we don't withhold our help from folks that need us; that's not the halfling way. We dug in beside them, shoulder to?er, hip?and stood our ground to defend their city. If it weren't for us, there's no Green Mist in the world that could've saved Qeynos. Well, okay, maybe the Green Mist helped. Some.

With the Rallosians defeated and the Horde on the run, the Qeynos folk were in a somewhat celebratory mood. It was still pretty grim business, having to bury all the bodies and all. We stuck it out to help them because we don't like leaving things unfinished.

Finally, we started packing up to head back to Rivervale. After all, our city had been overrun by the Horde, too, so we had to go back to rebuild it. That, and we were nearly out of the jumjum we'd managed to bring along.

Unfortunately, someone tripped on something big this time. The whole world shimmied and shook like a honey jum collector with a bixie in his jerkin. And when all the shaking stopped, we couldn't find a way back. Antonica was clean tore apart and the seas were on the boil. Countless ships headed out to see if a way could be found to somewhere, anywhere, and all we ever heard back from them were bits of flotsam on the shore. It takes a lot of gumption nowadays to get a halfling onto a ship.

The folks in Qeynos are nice to us, giving us a tract of land near a little stream so we could make something homey for ourselves. It's not the same, though. Even those of us who never laid our own eyes on Rivervale or the Misty Thicket burn with a longing inside for home.