# Written by Goran
#
#author:{name:dunlending_female}
#title:The Shortlings
#types:dunland
#reward
#
Long ago, when I was a young lass, short bearded Men came in great numbers to our lands. They were strangers from the East, but they brought us trinkets of gold, silver, and bronze, and forged steel weapons for our men, so we let the strangers settle here.

Such strange Men had never before been seen in our lands.

Our very oldest tales tell of friendly iron-spirits who lived deep within the Mountains, and sometimes gifted our forefathers with weapons and treasures, before the Goblins came down from the North. Could the Shortlings have been those fabled mountain-spirits of old? They too came to us with gifts, and they said they had lived within the mountains long ago - just as the spirits of the legends.

They treated us with kindness, leaving our villages alone, settling in the hills and the mountainsides. Over the years, our people developed a friendship with the Shortlings. Though they were strange and foreign, and only small to our eyes, we saw something of ourselves in them. They had lived in the Mountains once, but they were driven out by the Goblins - just as we once lived in the fields of the East, before the Strawheads stole our lands and drove us away.

We were very saddened when the Shortlings left us and journeyed on to the West - where we would not go.

But still, when we are lucky indeed, we may meet one of their travellers journeying through our lands. And it is a great honour to welcome a wandering Shortling into your home for the night. They remember our old friendship, and we remember it too.