On the western edge of Roana, a land of peace and prosperity situated in the western part of the continent of Hith, lies a region of great mountains, and of greater lore: fearful tales involving no man nor creature; but simply tales of the bitter, frigid air, and the deadly, alien environment inhospitable to man or beast alike. This region known to the locals simply, yet rightly so, as the “Peaks of White Death”
That is not to say they are not beautiful, because they are by many means. One could gaze upon them from a far and fall in love with their beauty, each glimmering snowflake a spark of love, and each peak rising high in mortal hearts like the beauty of the fairest of maidens. Ah, the peaks, nothing in existence could be so rugged, nothing in existence could be so beautiful. It is this cruel pairing that tempts men to scale them, only to die in vain on the slopes of their first climb.
It is not the creature “man” alone that avoids these peaks. Even the Great Elves did not dare pass into their region of land. Even the mighty Hithits, of legend, were said to have kept their distance. A few rumors of water nymphs inhabiting the range’s streams ran wild in the nearer regions, these rumors were always negated however: no being ventured into the mountains and lived.

The village of Tirna stood near the foothills of the range, comprised of inhabitants ranging from the proud and ambitious Men, to the inquisitive and industrious Gnomes, who barely reached four feet in height. Tirna was a place of beautiful homes and beautiful women; of valiant knights with no war to be beckoned to and dirty, streetwise kids with no home to be called to; of wine and of water; of ambitious Men, planning adventures and inquiring as to how they could make a name for themselves, and of peaceful Gnomish tinkers, leading the simple, reading books and living plain after a hard day’s work. The Men thought the lives of Gnomes boring, respecting the race only for their interest in craftsmanship, the Gnomes thought the Men to be pigheaded and overzealous, ridding their lives of safety and caution and pursuing the deadly, yet exciting fantasy that all children have when frolicking with companions in their nicely kept yards. Men didn’t understand how Gnomes could be happy in their simplicity; likewise Gnomes couldn’t understand these adventurous thoughts of dragons and demons to be any sort of a life, let alone any sort of fun.
Even with their cultural differences, Gnomes and Men got along with one another as Men would with Men and Gnomes with Gnomes. It was a common sight for one to see a tall, broad shouldered man and a half-sized, pudgy Gnome walk along side one another on streets, or sit to the others side at the nearest tavern. The children of the races intermingled as friends, though marriages between the two were rare, and viewed as queer, the relationships were known to have existed.
Work places were not segregated, a worker in this village provided his own tools to fit his size, this way no Gnome would be stuck with a hammer standing even to his eyes and no Man would wield a hatchet the size of his dinner-fork.
Places of learning were also integrated. But the choices in classes would often segregate the two races. A young Gnome would race to the line for the woodshop applications, while a young boy was likely to pass it by in favor of the swordsmanship sign-up booth at the other end of the school hall. In the basics of learning, Gnomes and young Men would be quite similar. But surprisingly, it was the lunch hall where one could barely tell them apart. Gnomes, although half in length, could fill their eager bellies with food often more so than the large young Men could.
Even the richest Gnomes could be found in quaint little houses, the inside of which was usually made up of a hearth, a humble dining table, and a plain chair in which one would draw from his library and read a few chapters of his favorite book before retiring to a simple, yet cozy bed in which they would quietly drift off to sleep. The only outlets for their fortunes were into workshops where Gnomes spent their free time dabbling in various forms of craftsmanship and tinkering with small mechanical bits. It was widely believed that every Gnome in existence, rich or poor, possessed one such workshop.
The homes of Men were a much different story. One would be decorated with art, luxurious chairs and other furniture, and a large, elaborate bed, if not for sleeping then surely for show. Often times, while the Gnomes quietly read and struck up stories for their children or loved ones, or locked themselves in their shops tinkering with anything they could get their hands on, the Men of Tirna would host lavish parties, full of stuck-up aristocrats who could care less about the common Gnome and their enjoyment of books.
It was said that Gnomes had two great loves, tinkering and novels. Gnomes enjoyed books indeed, particularly fantasy ones, in which they could live like Men and share in the excitement over an upcoming journey, if only for a second. The book-loving Gnomes with a taste for fantasy could be comprised of two camps. One, would flee to their local bookstore to get their copy of the new Ronsan Janson book, the more tasteful however, would snicker at this and proclaim an even greater writer who had died years earlier as the king of fantasy, and rightly so, when one compared them Janson would be outdone under any eye of intelligence and taste.
Many a lavish festival took place in Tirna. On the first official day of summer, with the sun blazing its streams of heat onto all who dared step outside was the Festival of the Porgors. The wine flowed freely and the meat was skewered and roasted on an open fire, each filling the midday summer air with their tantalizing aromas. Children frolicked with new toys, kites flew to massive heights, some were so elegant as to be shaped like marvelous dragons, streaming through the sky in all of their glory. Red ones, green ones, purple ones, yellow ones. When the older boys with much more experience took the strings the real excitement would begin to unfold. Long before the age of peace a tremendous and historically decisive battle was fought between Roana and its former neighbor, Tirth- a country shrouded in mystery and obscured by the foggy eyes of historians long gone- on the Porgors pass. It was this massive battle that kept the vast Roana a free land; and it was the Dragonlords of Tirna that were the driving force in the battle. Since that glorious victory at Porgors the festival has taken place in all of its lavish makings, one of which was a mock battle re-enacting the event using real dragons! Eventually all of the dragons disappeared from all the lands of Hith, leaving no trace of themselves, so now the mock battles were carried on by the complex kites and their talented wielders.
The only other festival that took place in Tirna that rivaled Porgors in size and activity was the somber winter festival named The Three Days of King Galnock. In this time every single being in the city fasted for Three Days in remembrance of Galnock the Brave. Galnock was a king of kings, who had mysteriously given his life to protect all of the people in Roana many years before the age of peace, disappearing with no sign he was assumed dead, on his magnificent throne he left a scroll with commands for this song of goodbye and goodwill to be performed at his somber mourning:

Dil’ka, Hefaa,Meaask
As King I came and as King I go,
Know your dear King loves you so,
As I now ascend from Hith to Heaven,
Roanans live on as peaceful brethren,
I must leave you all for grand reasons,
Of which you must not know,
All my people we will meet again,
In heaven’s beauty and clouds of snow
Ansok, Goriesis, Zeph’a

As years went on, the fast would be ended with a grand feast held in the Morrak plains outside of Tirna (hence this being a Tirna festival), in which all Roanans could come to feast and meet with old friends. At the end of the gigantic supper, the very same song was sang by all who had attended. Afterwards all would head their parting ways once more with a full belly and a joyous heart, they had now honored the king and in a slight way felt they had served him back for the many great years of rule he would selflessly bring to Roana, they felt content. During the age of peace, these festivals were attended by nearly all Roanans, some few million. It was a grand sight indeed, watching the crowd spread over the miles and miles of field, and then all sit down to feast, as one group of citizens who all cared enough to honor their king in such a grand manner. The times of festival, peace, and simple lives were a grand age indeed.

For years, the village Tirna lived peacefully on the foothills of the range, with a rare and fleeting raise of arms about once a generation, each one learning from the previous generations mistakes making the wars less costly as the ages went on. The two co-mayors of the city, one always being a man and the other being a Gnome, provided order to the city. The city flourished with the two races getting along quite well, quarrels between the two were unheard of. In the eye of history though, these times were fleeting and brief, as if they were here and gone in a blink. For an eye that has seen all of time, these ages meant nothing; they could be shrugged off as quickly as an itch and cast aside into the world of former times, the kind of which is told in stories past on with little scrutiny through the generations and eventually spreading: the time of peace in Tirna could become a story, and spread into folklore, then spiraling into legend, and eventually cascading down the walls of time into a myth which finds its believers in a much different age. And so it would be...

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My Characters: Rathal, Narcolm, Freedon Naad