I have been tasked by a wandering Dark Elf to retrieve a ‘magical whistle’ from a series of caves hidden in the foothills to the southwest of Orsinium. The whistle belongs to a reclusive Nord animal trainer who uses it to train her packs of durzogs, although the locals complain of her reptilian beasts running wild across the foothills.

These caves are also home to an Orismer Wise-Woman Ushuta. The blind old Orc is oblivious to the durzogs that roam the caves, let alone the giant spiders and trolls. She spends her time fishing at her secluded camp at the bottom of a waterfall, whilst spouting meaningless philosophical musings that one might expect to hear from a Baandari fairground ‘soothsayer’.

Nikolvara herself has renamed these caves as her kennels, and is about as welcoming towards visitors as the dogs she seems to share such a unnatural affinity with. It quickly becomes clear that she is in no mood to negotiate the trade of her ‘magical whistle’, even though she admits herself that it is really just a sentimental trifle.

People are too eager to attach magical or mystical properties to things they don’t understand, just as we are to eager to find profound meanings in the words of any self proclaimed Wise-Woman. The truth is when one plus one equals three it is not a miracle, it is just a miscalculation, an illusion, or a lie. Mostly a whistle is just a whistle, and a batty old hag is just that.

S.K