Date: Seventeenth of March, year 810 Post Seminal War (810 PSW)

Job Arseoth felt the urge to Hoard coming on again. It wasn't nearly as irresistible as the last time he had been to Mevada, but it was insistent. Job reached into his pouch, petted Nibbles on the head, and reached for his scrimshawing tools. He pulled out the tools and felt about for an ivory blank but found none. Job frowned. He remembered finding three the last time he was in Mevada, and using two to begin his hoard, so where had the third one gone? Job pulled out the bag that held his Hoard and reached inside, feeling each object. As he touched each one, memories came flooding back.

The empty perfume bottle: six winters old, his scales just beginning to show. His mother, laughing and playing with him in the mud after a rainstorm. The gruff, bearded man who had come over. Running away from the raised voices of an argument. A scream. slinking back later, hiding in the shadows. Finding only the empty bottle and a torn scrap of her dress to wrap it in.

The glazed tile: ten winters old. Sneaking into the student bathhouses the day before his first classes to try and scrub the stench of the gutter out of his skin. Succeeding only in scratching up his scales and turning his skin red before realizing that the little green bars were soap. Finally getting clean and relatively fresh-smelling before trying to sneak back to his clothes. finding them neatly cleaned, folded, and pressed with a cracked tile on top to hold a note in place.

An ivory figurine - The egg, cradled by four dragonic wings: nineteen winters old, on his first trip outside of Trebor. Walking in the dusty ruins below Varr Barak with three who would become friends. Finding a fourth friend amidst a group of exiled urd led by a silver dragon in urd form. The dragon egg that they were protecting, incubating agantst the day that it would hatch.

Job blinked, amazed at the details his mind could pick out of these stored memories with the benefit of hindsight.

An ivory figurine - The grinning elven bust with the crooked tiara. Finding out that one of his friends was in fact royalty, and that he was to be her bodyguard at the wedding of her sister. Prodding his friend to come out of her shell, to fully break the bonds of her position and live her own life. The first time Job had seen her truly happy.

An ivory figurine - the circle of broken skulls. Eating a warm bearmeat stew, watching Index turn from a golem to a warforged. The pinprick red dots of hungry eyes watching form the shadows. a growl, screams, a pounce...

Job jerked his hand back from the circle of broken skulls. He recalled waking up to find his friends dead, scrambling to get them reincarnated after the wolves had made ruins of their bodies. Job felt the skin of his throat: unscarred. He touched the circle of broken skulls again and felt the wolf's teeth at his throat, ripping and tearing. Job realized that he too had died yet had woken up the next morning unscathed and unmarked.

""

The urge to Hoard jabbed Job in the side to demand his attention and a new addition. He looked about for suitable materiel and saw the bones of the death knight Ved'Qeth. it was perhaps a rather morbid materiel, but it was close to hand. Baar'Miin's outreached hand swatted his aside as she gathered the bones up and steadily pounded them into dust.

""

""

Job answered with an inarticulate growl.

""

Job spat, hissed, and stormed off in search of something to scrimshaw.

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Morlen Daxana watched the Sorcerer head out beyond the reach of the bonfires. "Man's mad to go wandering alone."

"Perhaps so Sir, but There isn't much we could do about it. Not with the men in the condition that they are."

"Absolutely correct Sgt. Oakheart. It's just that... We came so close to losing so much of this expedition, and it's only by the grace of Princess Enra and her party that we didn't. I'd rather not lose one of them now."

"We can't confirm it Sir, but I reckon that that Death Knight would have every undead in this place in its service, and that they'd not tolerate any competition."

"Assumptions make for dead men."

"Can't argue that point Sir, not after teaching it to you. But we just don't have the available men to go after him."

Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

"You are right of course Sgt. It's his own neck, and his own fault if anything happens to him at this juncture."

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Job Arseoth followed his nose as he roamed the unlit streets of Mevada. His eyes were all but useless beyond the short reach of the Light cantrip perched atop his staff, his ears were muddled by too many echoes, but his nose led him onwards. The scent he was following was strangely familiar, and it took Job a good half-hour to place it as similar to the scent of his Hoard. Not the same smell, it lacked the familiarity of his personal scent, but close. Old bone, dust, *memories*, and the faint smell of...

Job paused, searching his brain for an answer. The smell of a Hoard? not quite, but it was close. He shook his head. How did he know what a dragon's Hoard smelled like? Job smacked his forehead in frustration at how obvious it was: he carried a Hoard around all the time, so of *course* he knew what a Hoard smelled like: the personal scent of the dragon who owned the Hoard. So, if it was almost a Hoard-smell, then it was almost a Hoard. Either it was too small to be a proper Hoard, or it was collected by one who did not Hoard properly.

Job shook his head as he kept following the smell. these instincts of his were confusing when dragged into his conscious thoughts. He didn't know *how* he could tell that it wasn't a proper Hoard, or even how he knew what a proper Hoard (like the one in his backpack) smelled, or how to collect one. Job just knew. Letting his instincts guide his feet, Job poked and prodded at the thoughts. The felt... old. Not *other*, like they were the thoughts of someone or something else. Nor were they *feral*, pure instincts coming to the surface. They were... the best term Job cold think of was 'Dragon-blood' thoughts. As if they were instinctive to any and all who were of the blood of Dragons. This felt right to Job, a puzzle piece snapping down into place. That was how Baar'Miin had known what the Hoarding instinct was when Job had first encountered it: she experienced it herself on some level. it also explained why Job reverted to speaking in draconic instead of the common 'trade' language when the Hoarding urge took him.

Job came back to his senses as his feet trod up a winding set of stairs in the house of some long-dead noble. There was not nearly as much dust as he would have expected for a house abandoned for the past eight hundred and fifty-odd years. Job slowed his pace, forcing the Hoarding instinct back just a bit. This place had been occupied recently. There may still be danger here. He spotted a tripwire and traced it back to a barrel perched precariously at the next landing. A missed step would have sent it tumbling down on his head. Job stepped over the tripwire and pushed the barrel back off the ledge. The tripwire snapped harmlessly as it was pulled from its place, and Job breathed a sigh of relief.

""

Past that landing Job found himself in a tower. Bony footprints overlapped in the dust, ascending and descending. This was where Ved'Qeth had been. Job pushed onwards and found something of a throne-room and altar in the top room of the tower. There was a large wooden chair over by the window, and a side-table had been set up with a few items. Job took another sniff, drinking deeply of the smell of the room. He promptly sneezed out a lungful of dust and blinded himself. Job stood very still for what felt like an hour while the dust settled. The chair was simply a mildly ornate wooden chair. It served well enough as a throne, particularly if its former occupant valued surface-grown wood highly. The table was clearly an altar, given the ritual implements on its surface: a bone knife, a slim ratty book, and a pewter chalice.

Job spat on the ground. If his hunch was right, then this was a sacred place dedicated to the Shadowed Heart. Irritated, Job kicked the chair to the ground in the middle of the room. A few more angry kicks reduced it to scrap wood suitable for building a fire. He tossed the ratty book and the pewter chalice on top of the kindling, then smashed the table and added that to the heap. A quick Prestidigitation cantrip set the whole mess to burning brightly, and Job watched in satisfaction as the book curled to ash and the chalice melted. He held the bone knife in his hand, ready to toss it into the fire, when his hoarding instinct started to kick in. Seeing the flames beginning to eat at the floorboards Job extinguished the fire and left the tower. He took in a lungful of cleaner air, propped his staff against a handy wall, and sat down to carve.

The blade of the knife was snapped away and the stump ground smooth. Its handle was stripped of leather and the pommel rounded over into a dome shape. into this oblong blank, Job began to carve. This time, he pulled back from his instincts just a bit in an attempt to understand what he was actually doing. As Job cared into the blank, he could feel several magical things happening. The first was akin to an instinctive declaration: MINE. It marked the item as part of the Hoard of Job Arseoth. the second was the carving itself, turning the scrap of bone into an item of value. Not in the economic sense (although the carving did do that as a side-effect) but in the historical sense: a one-of-a-kind commemorative piece. That the events portrayed on it were of chief importance only to Job was immaterial. It was Job's Hoard, therefore the only value that mattered was the value Job gave to the items in it. and lastly, Job could feel strands of something flowing out of his mind and into the bone blank. As he poked about, he realized that the strands were memories. In this case, Job's memories of his second trip to Mevada thus far; from when he entered the dome of the city to when Ved'Qeth had fallen in the flaming challenge circle.

Job almost dropped his scrimshawing tools in shock. This was the source of the holes in his memory: they were being added to his Hoard! though Job could also tell that this was not the end of the mystery. The circle of broken skull did not hold a complete memory: there were still blank places and things that Job could not remember about that fateful night or the time he spent in the place beyond. For example; he knew that he talked to Black Cloak about removing a threat to Trebor but couldn't recall the exact words. As Job pondered this conundrum, he concluded that he needed to ask someone else for help. The question was who he should ask. Head Archivist Innoch was his mentor, and therefor always an option. Job could also try asking Enra to see if she had any connections that might prove useful. There was also Baar'Miin's Eggmother, the silver dragon Silon'Dez'Monah, who probably had the best insights into dragon-related things.