The Gully Dwarves

Introduction

It has been said of the Aghar that no such race could exist in a practical world. It has been said that the gods of creation must have been terribly distracted when the Aghar were created … either distracted or crazy. The scholars insist such a race of creatures as the Aghar-commonly referred to as gully dwarves-could not possibly survive for generations among the harsh realities of life. The pathetic little things have nothing on their side.

In a world of strong races, the gully dwarves of Krynn are surprisingly weak. They are neither fierce nor menacing, neither bold nor especially lucky, neither strong of limb nor fleet of foot. Their only natural defense against enemies is a tendency to inhabit those places no one else wants, thereby going unnoticed most of the time. They lack the stubborn strength of true dwarves, the unpredictability of humans, and the inherent skills and longevity of elves. Compared to any of these races, gully dwarves are hardly more than vermin. They have no defenses, no skills beyond a certain clumsy furtiveness, and certainly no command of magic.

As for intelligence, the gully dwarves-while more or less human or dwarven in appearance-are barely smart enough to come in out of the rain.

The continued existence of gully dwarves on Krynn is a puzzle to those who consider such matters. But then, those same scholars might insist that neither bumblebees nor dragons can fly. Yet no matter how avidly the scholars pursue their logic, bumblebees and dragons go right on flying … And gully dwarves continue to survive.

The little creatures have not only existence, but also a history. Indeed, there are odd legends among various cultures about gully dwarves. Some believe that a gully dwarf clan, long ago, may have had something to do with the destruction of mighty Istar-might have figured somehow in the Cataclysm itself. Odd tales sometimes circulate across the ale boards, linking gully dwarves to unlikely enterprises including a mine that produced wine, claiming they were involved in the ogre massacre of the slavers of Doon, even hinting that gully dwarves may have been the first occupants of ancient Thorbardin, where their descendants are more or less tolerated to this day.

The most improbable of these tales, yet one of the most persistent, has to do with an unlikely alliance between a gully dwarf tribe and a dragon during the War of the Lance. Among humans, elves and even true dwarves there are those who swear that they actually witnessed the phenomenon-a group of gully dwarves traveling with a green dragon.

Such accounts suggest a truly notable history. Still, these tales cannot be proven or even verified by the gully dwarves themselves. The people called Aghar have few great skills, but one of them is the ability to promptly forget anything beyond their understanding, and that covers almost everything in the world.

Thus it is a rare gully dwarf who can clearly recall any event prior to yesterday. Such individuals are as rare as a gully dwarf who can count past two.

In the befogged history of these bumbling little people, though, there have been a few such rare gully dwarves. The first Grand Notioner of the Tribe of Bulp-an intuitive individual named Hunch who may well have done most of the group’s serious thinking during the long and eventful reign of the Highbulp Gorge III-was one of them. Hunch was burdened with an awareness that there were times further back than yesterday. He was bright enough to deduce from this fact that there might be times beyond tomorrow.

Another uncommon gully dwarf was old Gandy, Hunch’s successor and heir to the mop handle staff of office. Gandy knew that there were quite a few people in his clan, and that the number-while it varied from day to day-was almost certainly more than two. Lacking either the words or the theory to express such ideas, he usually kept them to himself.

But his intuition told him that if he perceived something so arcane there might be others capable of perceiving it, too. He suspected one of them might be a young gully dwarf-a mere child at the time of the finding of the Promised Place-whose name was Scrib and who sometimes tried to draw pictures of the world around him.