Strongheart: honor among thieves (thesis excerpts)

Abstract

Dip's Bar and Inn was the center of the town of Westpond. The town was settled four hundred years ago by elves fleeing war across the sea - people who had nothing when they arrived, people who could only take the damp clay around them and mold a new community together. The foundation that became the bar was already there when they arrived. They said the bar had to have been built first, though it might not have always been one, because it was near enough to the water's edge for the rest of the town to rise up around it. As Westpond grew, the old homes nearest the pond became known as the Eastside. The houses were crammed together, the oldest right along the lip of the water, often rebuilt or patched haphazardly after crumbling from poor and hasty construction. The worst of them were rough-looking and made of clay, like mounds molded by giants' hands. The best often housed three or four families to a room, and the entire Eastside, right up to Dip's door, smelled, tasted, felt: damp- like the swampy pond.