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No dwarf quite understands how the ancient Gnommish portal network really works, but it makes for quick and efficient exile. No need to cart criminals away into the wilderness as the big folk do. No chance for a last minute appeal to the gaoler's guilt or greed. You walk through the small cyclopean gate, a ring of rune-covered stone whose portal surface reflects back all light, and you exit out the other side of another portal, somewhere in the overworld. No way to know which one it will be before you pass. No way to know where you'll end up. Might be a big folk town built around the gate. Or might be an ancient abandoned mountainhome, deep beneath the overworld, deeper than the dwarves now dare to dig. Or, in your case, might just be a random portal in the wilderness, overrun by creeping vines and blue moss. A waypoint from the distant past when your Gnommish ancestors ruled the earth.
Could be worse. They say there are portals at the bottom of sea, at least you didn't end up coming out of one of those. Nevertheless, separated from the mountainhome with nought but the clothes on your back, a hatchet, and a single waterskin full of plumberry wine, your survival prospects are no less grim. You were given the choice between execution and exile and now it seems a painless execution by blackleaf smoke might have been a wiser choice. They didn't even let you take your pipe, the monsters! Well, they offer every guilty dwarf the same choice and no one ever chooses execution. All of them cling to the feeble hope that one day they might find their way back to a mountainhome, even though no one has, in a thousand years.
It will give you plenty of time to think about your crimes, at any rate.
>Theft: You were a minor clerk working for the dwarfking, helping to manage the royal treasury when you got caught with your hand in the till
>Murder: You were a veteran captain of the dwarfking's legions, drinking away your pension when you accidentally killed a dwarfking in a bar brawl
>Treason: You were the dwarfking's only son, trying to usurp the mountainhome and save it from his madness, when he caught on to your plans
>Write-in
Could be worse. They say there are portals at the bottom of sea, at least you didn't end up coming out of one of those. Nevertheless, separated from the mountainhome with nought but the clothes on your back, a hatchet, and a single waterskin full of plumberry wine, your survival prospects are no less grim. You were given the choice between execution and exile and now it seems a painless execution by blackleaf smoke might have been a wiser choice. They didn't even let you take your pipe, the monsters! Well, they offer every guilty dwarf the same choice and no one ever chooses execution. All of them cling to the feeble hope that one day they might find their way back to a mountainhome, even though no one has, in a thousand years.
It will give you plenty of time to think about your crimes, at any rate.
>Theft: You were a minor clerk working for the dwarfking, helping to manage the royal treasury when you got caught with your hand in the till
>Murder: You were a veteran captain of the dwarfking's legions, drinking away your pension when you accidentally killed a dwarfking in a bar brawl
>Treason: You were the dwarfking's only son, trying to usurp the mountainhome and save it from his madness, when he caught on to your plans
>Write-in
