Twilight Crest

"Twilight Crest 3 miles," Nod read the sign aloud before continuing along the dusty but well traveled road. Three days ago, Nod stumbled across a folded piece of parchment informing it's readers of the majestic city of Twilight Crest. A city ruled by adventurers, for adventurers. The pamphlet also had quite a lot to say about various campaigns against neighboring cities.
The city itself was surrounded on three sides by a dense forest wrought with traps and maintained by a reclusive druid.
Twilight Crest was best known for it's beer, the largest and finest brewery ever built by man or deity stood like a guiding star to wayward adventurers in the exact center of the city. It dwarfed every building for miles around, including the castle which sat beside it and the marble wizard's tower that rose out of the the poor district.
Finally Nod saw it. The top of the brewery rose over the tree line. According to the pamphlet, the brewery was managed by a single dwarf known only as "Da Dwarf."
Hunger came upon Nod as he approached the beginning of the forest. He ducked into the forest and began searching for food. This was Nod's first time hunting anything that was neither a fish nor in a stable. Nod assumed that it couldn't be that hard, after all, fat oafs from the village by Frandz's tower could do it and all they had was a curved stick with a string tied to either end.
Within fifty-seven seconds of entering the forest, Nod was hanging by one foot and swinging gently. The blinding speed of the trap combined with it's near invisibility took him completely by surprise.
Extending his claws and doing a vertical sit-up Nod freed himself before thinking of how high he was off the ground. His stomach instinctively twisted with cat-like grace allowing him to land lightly on his feet.
Nod produced a small quartz crystal from his pocket and uttered a trap-finding enchantment. The forest lit up in Nod's eyes with the now luminescent traps. The forest contained more types of traps than Nod had ever read about in all his studies. Some of them were mundane, some were magical, but mostly they were druidic. Vines that grow around their victim's legs, mushrooms that explode with paralytic poisons. Each trap was magically adjusted not to affect animals.
Nod reached out and gently touched a somewhat more tame trap with his bare hand. It didn't trigger.
Nod removed his shoes and threw them into the shrubbery. The sound of each shoe hitting the bush was immediately followed by the sound of a shoe being cut in half and heaved into the midday sky.
Nod walked slowly and quietly through the forest making sure to keep his clothing away from the traps.
After twenty minutes of walking, Nod heard the sounds of muffled effort. He moved from tree to tree towards the noise. Two men in brown and green cloaks were trying halfheartedly to untangle a third man wearing green slacks and green leather armor from the vines that held him to a tree.
Nod moved on before their task was complete. Another hour of slow travel brought Nod to the city. Homes and shops were mixed freely as far as he could see.
As he walked down a random street, Nod noticed that very few shops sold strictly groceries or shoes or clothing. Armorers sold shoes, archery supplies were peddled alongside roast chickens. A man selling leather armor from a cart also sold fine evening gowns that ,according to the salesman, could deflect a crossbow quarrel.
The last thing that Nod noticed was that almost everyone carried a weapon. The hilt of many a small knife neatly secured in the belts and vests of men and women alike caught Nod's attention. Small children had short sticks secured to their belts some had longer sticks slung across their backs like swords.
Not wanting to linger any more in the crowd Nod fixed his eyes on the brewery and began making his way towards the center of the city. Despite the winding roads and absent street signs, the citizens all seemed to know exactly where to turn.
There was a crash followed by the tinkle of broken glass. Nod turned around to see two men in brown leathers with awed looks on their faces. One held a bloodied broken bottle by the neck and the other held a long knife. The knife man lunged forward with an underhand strike towards Nod's stomach. Nod froze while scanning his memory for an appropriate spell. The knife sank deeply into Nod's abdomen. Nod's dark blood poured over the blade and the knife wielder's hand. The knife wielder screamed in agony as the blood touched his hand. Suddenly a huge red headed man in shining plate mail armor came from around a corner. His stance was that of nobility, in his right hand he held what could only be described as a breaded sausage on a stick.
The man with the bottle turned and ran... straight into the red haired knight. The knight stood his ground like a brick wall as the bottle-man bounced off his chest. Nod grasped the knife wielder's forearm and twisted it sharply. The resulting sound of tearing flesh and breaking bone was lost in the elevated scream of Nod's attacker.
Nod's blood loss got the best of him as the world darkened and he fell backward.

If you'd like to know what happens next read"Simon and Da Dwarf" 



Stop reading now.

The following is part of my philosophy paper, it's a bit funny but not worth it overall. I forgot my disk and this is my cheap way of accessing it from somewhere else. if youy still opt to continue, don't base your ratings on this. Thank you

Dualism: The philosophy of laziness
The following is an entirely fictitious conversation between two theoretical individuals incidentally named Scott and Zack.
Scott: Ok, so what’s goin’ on?
Zack: We need to talk about the philosophy of mind.
Scott: Why?
Zack: Because I’m going to write it all down and try to pass it off as a philosophy paper.
Scott: that sounds pretty cheap.
Zack: It’s the best I can do.
Scott: Carry on.
Zack: Dualism is the belief that everything in existence is made up of two different types of stuff, physical and spiritual. Physical stuff consists of everything that can be measured or observed, either directly, through our physical senses, or indirectly through tools such as electron microscopes. Spirit stuff, however, is completely immeasurable, it has no physical properties what-so-ever. The physical body is made up of spirit stuff while the soul is made up of spirit stuff. How the soul interacts with the body, if at all, is unknowable because the spirit stuff and it’s effects cannot be gauged in any way.
Scott: Are you reading that off a script or something?
Zack: Yea, that was the opening paragraph to my first draft.
Scott: So basically, this isn’t so much a conversation as it is you reading your lame paper while I chime in with comic relief.
Zack: yea, basically.
Scott: Back to dualism. It sounds like a pretty half-assed set of beliefs to me. Why would you want to be a dualist?
Zack: Well, think about it, if it is the case that the soul isn’t non-physical, then it must be measurable in some way and have a precise location in the body. I’m sure you’d be more than slightly skeptical if a device were developed that could not only give empirical proof of the existence of the soul, but also measure the size and strength of that soul.
Scott: Yea, be a bit hard to swallow.
Zack: If you believe in the existence of the soul, it would more than likely seem absurd to think of it as having physical properties such as weight or size.
Scott: Ok, so the soul isn’t made out of the same stuff tables and chairs are made of, what else is dualism about?
Zack: The belief in dualism necessitates a belief in an afterlife.
Scott: Why’s that?
Zack: Well, if the soul is indestructible and independent of the body, it must be able to carry on after the physical body dies. To most people, the thought of descending into oblivion when the icy hand of death is upon them, is unsettling, to say the least.
Scott: What are you Stephen King now? cut it out.
Zack: Dualists need not fear the reaper because they’re confident that their souls will continue to thrive in the spirit world.
Scott: Ok so dualists believe in an afterlife. I still don’t see what so great about it.
Zack: Well, another benefit of a dualist philosophy is that an explanation of the nature of the soul is relatively simple. When someone asks a dualist what the soul is made of, he just has to say, “It’s made out of non-physical spirit stuff.” A dualist doesn’t have to waste precious time and energy expressing the sensitive nature of the question or the seemingly endless debate over it.
Scott: Now that’s just lazy.
Zack: Hence the title of the paper.
Scott: Wait, what about all the other stuff we can’t really explain with science? Like telepathy and such?
Zack: Non-physical.
Scott: That’s really lazy. It’s like they’re trying to be mocked by the philosophical community.
Zack: Just read the script!
Scott: Ok, Well, dualism sounds so great, are there any problems with it that we just haven’t gone over yet?
Zack: I’m glad you asked that. Firstly, dualists say that the spirit stuff can’t interact with the physical stuff in any way shape or form.
Scott: Get on with it, we already went over that.
Zack: I know, I’m reiterating. Anyway, the point I was about to bring up before I was so rudely interrupted, is that, If the spiritual stuff can’t interact with the physical stuff, how do our souls affect anything we do?
Scott: I don’t know, but I’m sure you’re going to tell me.
Zack: Well it can’t, that’s what I’m getting at. If your soul can’t interact with your body, what’s the point of having a soul?
Scott: That’s another rhetorical question isn’t it?
Zack: Yes, there isn’t much point to having your soul continue on if it never had anything to do with how you acted in the first place.
Scott: So the whole afterlife thing just bites them in the ass.
Zack: Yea.
Scott: What if the soul does affect the body, just indirectly?
Zack: Then the affect of the soul’s influence can be measured which means that the soul is physical.
Scott: Wait, that doesn’t make sense, I said indirectly.
Zack: Well, the soul has to affect something spiritual which, in turn, would affect your body, thus the spiritual middle-man would have to be physical because it is directly affecting something physical. Also, because the middle-man is physical, the soul must be physical too because it directly affected the middle-man which I just showed to be physical.
Scott: So, couldn’t the middle-man just be part spiritual and part physical?
Zack: Not according to dualism, everything is either physical or spiritual, nothing in between.
Scott: Why not?
Zack: because, that would mean that the soul could be indirectly measured, which isn’t what the dualists want.
Scott: What do they want?
Zack: They want the spirit stuff to be completely immeasurable, directly or indirectly.
Scott: What would happen if someone found a way to measure spirit stuff?
Zack: According to dualists, if it can be measured, then it isn’t spirit stuff.
Scott: so it’s completely unfalsifiable.
Zack: Yea.
Scott: Wait, so what do dualists say when someone presents them with these arguments?
Zack: Yet another good question, but one I can only guess at since I’ve never met a dualist.
Scott: Wait, wait, wait, you’ve never even met a dualist?
Zack: No.
Scott: Then what place do you have even writing about the philosophical beliefs of dualists when you haven’t even met one?
Zack: Just read the script!
Scott: Is there a well known justification for dualism, possibly written by a 17th century french philosopher?
Zack: As a matter of fact there is. René Descartes has a pretty good defense for dualism. He believed that all of the interactions between body and soul take place indirectly, through God.
Scott: How is it ok if God is the middle-man?
Zack: Because God, in Descartes’ belief, is everything, both physical and spiritual, lacking nothing. The rules for separation of physical and non-physical don’t apply to supreme beings.
Scott: So God just spends his time acting as a celestial operator of cause and effect?
Zack: Basically, among other things.
Scott: Like what?
Zack: Washing the celestial dishes, sweeping the Heavenly floor, you know, God stuff.
Scott: What else does Descartes say about dualism?
Zack: Well, his idea for separation of mind and body is a bit different. In his sixth meditation, he talks about people who lose limbs and still feel their lost appendages.
Scott: What the hell does that have to do with anything?
Zack: Well, something has to cause the nerves between the brain and the lost limb to trigger.
Scott: And that is caused by the spirit, indirectly through God?
Zack: As far as I can tell, yes
Scott: But I thought God was perfect and didn’t make mistakes. Phantom pain sounds like a pretty big mistake to me.
Zack: As far as I can tell, it happens because of people’s imperfections.