Inkwell Mining Company owned the town and the suburb next to the ore and opal mine roughly  4 days travel outside of Kimberglade on the Diamondlands. The mine had recently found the opal vein and it had done the mine’s owner, a gnome merchant, Alfius Inkwell a good turn in the market. The town as a result of the new wealth had agreed to hold a festival, paid for by Alfius to celebrate and reward the Miners. 

The town attached to Inkwell did not have the best reputation, it was a haven for those looking to lie low or get out of the jurisdiction of the capital city in the Diamondlands. The mine employed a large number of the dwarves and gnomes, and they lived in the suburb. While in the town proper was a mix of travelers, shopkeepers and permanent workers for the den-like inns and taverns. These workers and travelers alike were the several races that called the planet, The Deck, their home. The races were many and varied from humans to Avain birdfolk to tall standing short limbed lizard folk, and too many others to figure. The main races of Diamondland were Gnomes, Humans, and dwarfs. The ladder was the most respected if only middling in population and many of the dwarven families were rich and granted titles and lands as lords and nobles.

Humans were numerous in population and middling rank and status. While the most numerous were the gnomes. This was due to the fact that gnomes worked to build families of massive proportion seeking to grow a family based on the 26 letters in the alphabet they had inherited from a stranger from another world who was a hero to the gnomes of the Diamondland lore. Children born were given alphabetical names attempting to reach the end of the letters in the pattern. It was also not rare for gnomes to have large births of twins, triplets and even a known circumstance of decuplet.

The rest of the races in the Diamondlands were far and varied and often there were only dozens of that family or species. Several of these were moving through Inkwell mining town and they were all invited to the celebration in Inkwell, as long as they were there they could come.

On the night of the celebration, the parents and older members of the town and community drank and sang and played. The day had been filled with games and competitions for the children and teens to get worked up and worn out, giving the parents a night off to party and enjoy as their kids slept.

One of these revelers was not a parent, he was a gnome and a monster hunter. He was also drunk, really he was the drunk, the town’s drunk. He sat in his usual haunt, an ale house in the center of the town called Tiny’s Whey. Known for the strongest beer and the best cheese, and the monster hunter loved both. He had a spot at the bar where he always sat, chatting occasionally with the barmaids, the bartender, and the bar-patrons, usually in a mashed up and inaudibly slurred manner. If you could understand him, it was usually a threat in the form of a joke that was then repeated more audibly as a compliment to whomever tried to utter “huh” or ‘what” to the bedraggled and scrappy gnome. Then he would drink, his name was Koren Tidestamer.

For a gnome, Koren was less child-like and more a tiny grizzled old bastard.  He had no facial hair to hide his scars and had much brighter eyes than the dwarfs who he was often mistaken for with his more stout frame. Those eyes were blue and the only hair he did have was curly and wild and light brown springing from the sides around his head like a bush of curlroot. His clothing was usually simple, an off-white shirt that was too big for him hanging over dark tights and boots. The belt across the shirt had his pouches and components from his trade as a hunter. They were in veils and cases affixed to the belt. His face could be called handsome for his kind, but drinking and life both aged him in the 52 years he had been a drunk, a hunter and a Player. 

The scars of a life as a Player and then monster hunter weren't anything small, but the rewards could fund a good life of drinking cheap beer and great cheese. That is really all Koren wanted with his life, but on this night there was something in store that destroyed that idea for a lifetime. This was the night that Koren and Inkwell would be destroyed.

The attack came swiftly like a wave over a storming beach. The tidal enemies encircled and attacked the town of drunk patrons and townsfolk. The attackers were a nomadic tribe of goblins and feral races numbering around 950. It was a coordinated force that blitzed the gate, no force had been set out, no attack was ever suspected for the meaningless and populated mining town. There was little wealth in the town prior to this and it is rare for a criminal to rob their own home.

The forces that moved in and began to cut down and plunder the town and the suburb that night were not interested in leaving anything to tell of their attack however. In the aftermath of the attack very few survivors were ever found or questioned, but they all remarked of the brutality and horrors of the night. There were a few that saw the fighters of the town that were able to get enough sense or sober up enough to fight back. In Koren’s case, he was in the best state to defend and retaliate for his particular style of fighting.

Once the screams and clanging sounds began outside Most people in Tiny’s Whey ran from the bar or began to find a place to hide from the goblins. Koren was one of the ones that went out, but it was not for the same reasons as other patrons of the bar. He stood with purpose, wobbling and swaying toward the door.

“Get back here and down, you’re going to get killed out there!”  the bartender, a slender gnome beauty named Sayeen, called. Koren had always seen her as the daughter he never had. She gave him drinks and laughed easily. 

“Mmmfph I gotta yer killed in may shash,” hurp, he ended the drunken sentence with a gross hiccup and burp. 

He drew his knives and pushed open the doors, Koren instantly threw the smaller of the two 10 feet up the street into the eye of the closest passing goblin. At a thought the knife was back in his left hand. It was a prize from his time as a player, he called it Flicker. The knife had a leaf shaped blade of steel attached to a short light handle and was ideal for quick swipes and even quicker throws. It could return to his hand at a mental command. Along with speed and power boosts he had placed on the blade using the scores he had accumulated.

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Another goblin rushed him. Koren ducked low and stabbed into the stomach of the charging foe with his second knife Spark. The wound caught fire as the knife was withdrawn and he expertally stabbed it in again and again lighting fires with each exit. Spark was a single edge hunting knife, almost a short sword to the child sized gnome. On the opposite side of the blade was a striker flint that created the flame naming for the blade. The sparking attack could be triggered with mental or spoken command.the boosts for this weapon had come in the form of special attack specific to the blade. The two daggers could not be more different, one distinctly a tool and the other a doubtless weapon, but in Koren’s hand they were an extension of his fighting style. In many ways they were truly him.

He threw the body to the side and sighted a group, his player HUD marking the targets and filling with the readouts he had earned in the years of training and completing levels to gain his attributes, skills, special moves and abilities. 

His dance began… 

The goblins were in clumps of 5 or more outside the alehouse plundering and doing unspeakable horrors to the dead or dying. Koren flew high and gracefully, the Indominace attribute he had was a tire-ed up version of Swift called Soaring Fool. The notification when he had received it recalled his notable movements and ‘goofy’ postures during a Horde level fight with waves of some hopping frog monsters. He sort of emulated them here landing either in or around the groups of goblins. He then completed his special attacks and techniques from his chosen form of combat, a style called the tavern brawler or drunken boxing. 

It focused on a fighter’s momentum and manipulating an enemy's movement. He swayed to avoid and seemed to absorb a hit or strike before working with the attack to off balance or over extending the attacker. It was risky and he subsequently suffered minor hits and scratches in return for dealing a more devisting and often killing stab with either Spark or Flicker when he had the knife in hand. One of the Special Attacks he had gotten early on gave him a quick and more accurate throwing arm, it was called Range Master. He could throw the knife 15 times into a target in under a minute during training with as much as he had leveled up the move.  

Koren moved from group to group cutting down goblins and savage nomads like a violent rampaging river battering stones and obstacles. He came in contact with a larger Hobgoblin, rolling under its legs and stabbed it in the thigh from behind with Flicker. Then the foe falling to its knees would be at his smaller height and he would cut its throat before willing Flicker to his hand and throwing it again at another incoming enemy. Then another.

Koren had completed several horde levels with swarming enemies and knew how to fight groups like this attack. He had no spells as he had focused his attention on the first magical item he had received, Spark before gaining Flicker in his 3rd level, a boss room against some large draconic dog beast. 

Koren knew how to contain his energy and he stayed relatively in the same area, he could not worry too much about his family. The town was scattered to the winds in the chaos and finding them would be like a needle in a haystack or a coin in a cap collection. Besides the other members of his clan were far more capable than even he was, most of them even still did levels and gained exp outside of them with Monster Hunting. Koren had not been on a hunt since he was last paid, he wanted to drink though that stack first. 

After several moments of fighting the street had been cleared and the groups of running enemies and fleeing townspeople subsided. His arms were ready and his feet were planted as Koren Searched for more enemies to fight, then he saw one. 

His drunken hazy sight was defined and enhanced thanks to the player HUD that he gained from his Intelligence attribute named Defiant Delinquent. It gave him several skills that were attributed to perception and insight stats despite the constant state of inebriation he maintained. They were the least on his set of stats, but with his high rank that is still better than the non-player. 

As Koren began to move down the street to more foes a new threat entered the area of his perception.The enemy was tall and wiry more of a scarecrow than a person. He even had the same straw hat and a long coat open and flapping in a breeze that seemed present to only him. He wore tight pants and a shirt of mail that hugged his frame under the flowing coat. It was all black, but the skin showing under the brim of the hat was pale on his too angular human face. As he approached 15 feet from Koren, he looked up revealing almond shaped blue eyes and black hair like torched straw. He turned to the side, his gloved hand resting a long curved hilt that sat at his belt under his coat. 

He smiled like a skull, “You seemed to have handled them well.” His words were quick and clipped like an order given with no thought that it would be denied, “I wonder how much strength you have left? Is it enough to put up a good fight?”

Koren slumped forward while wailing a response in slurred and mashed words, “Fick oofff! Aye yer bitkin, hurp daster fffffleet carp. Ale sht yer up for burning my town!”

The scarecrow was confused and it was clear on his face. Eyebrows drawn down trying to piece together the words then the situation. “Are… are you drunk?”

Then Koren pounced and danced once again, he was on the offensive hoping to throw off the stranger and take him out quickly. This was an enemy above the others however. He did not draw his blade but darted and dove to avoid the swipes and jabs of the two knives. He moves like a viper strikes with precision and danger. His eyes squinted watching to gain a strategy or pattern he could exploit to end the brawl, but in drunken boxing one very rarely moves with any understandable pattern. 

The stranger’s opponent was not tired or exhausted, letting him know that they might be of a similar rank. This means the fight would not be simple, but it could be quick. The attacking drunken gnome was like a tornado in bluster and devastation. If one were to see the fight between them it would have seemed like a choreographed scene rather than a rapid impulsive burst as it truly was. 

Koren knew there was trouble as the foe began to draw his blade and he finally switched from the defensive movements. It did not matter as the blade came singing from the sheath with the sound of death and a single exacting movement. Korens body flew with the movement, he had one chance to work with and try to lessen the sweeping blade. It gave him some distance, but he had to accept a long and deep cut across the chest.

He flew through the air turning and throwing Flicker as he felt the cut sting through his dullened sense and steal away his life. The knife flew true and planted in the eye of the scarecrow, Koren smiled before his body impacted the building behind him and he slumped to the ground upside down and drooling blood.   

Koren was coherent enough to call back the blade, sad to see it did not have the eyeball on it and aware enough to try and throw it again. This time the man’s blade swiped it from the air and he screamed as he darted forward and stabbed directly into Koren’s stomach, spine and the wall behind him. 

As Koren died his body was accepted into the ash of death, like all players who have survived to die in the real world rather than in the levels created to help them grow by the gods of the Deck. Koren was given a second chance however, but knew in a way that he could gain advantage alone. It was a chance to pass on his mastery using the tool and weapon he had most trained with during his life. His soul became bound to the knives of Flicker and Spark, so that whoever wields them in the future could call on and learn from him once they connected to the weapons and him. His equipment disappeared to be recycled into the great game of the Deck as prizes for other players to receive, possibly diminished but all was recycled. 

As for the Town of Inkwell it fell that night as well despite a valiant battle put on by the several skilled players who called the town home or were just passing through. Their abilities were great, but the number of enemies bent on killing and slaughter was greater. The Scarecrow was only one of the generals that night who orchestrated the attack and he still wears the scar of the attack he had won. The town and mine were reclaimed by the king months later but by then the looters and generals had moved on and there was barely anything left of Inkwell and Koren’s existence at all.