The Story of Famime Cuddleprophets of Disembowelling:
Famime started her adventures in the central area of the world, the Bejewelled Prairie, far both from the frozen north and the burning south. She strolled into the village with a lot of confidence, trusting that the villagers would like hearing some songs about trees in bloom and fluffy wamblers. They didn't. They just complained about their hard lives and how there was a dearth of brave adventurers. It was quite unclear why they said they needed strong warriors, since at the same time they also claimed they had no need of Famime, even after she had trained throwing rocks and sneaking, improving her dubious starting attributes slightly in the process. Famime decided that what she lacked was a proper warrior's equipment. She had her trusty sword and shield, but she felt what she wanted to have while facing dangerous enemies would be a trusty bow, or at least crossbow. At a nearby human fortress she found such equipment, and the arsenalman graciously allowed her to take it. She also spotted a bronze pick and, curious of the workings of the tool, took it along, too. All this gear weighed her down quite a bit, and even wrestling with groundhogs until she felt she was an expert in dodging and using shields just barely got her up to a bit under average. She had spent a lot of time sneaking, so when she spotted a bandit camp and sneaked near only to find it occupied by over a dozen goblins, this didn't give her pause: sneaking close - but not too close! - to the vile defilers of nature, she shot them with her crossbow and then finished up the wounded with the pick. The most notable of these bandits had a fairly impressive name: Smunstu Monstrouslurked, the Doomed Magics of Raking. Famime didn't notice anything about magic, but the 'doomed' part was certainly true.
Travelling north to see more of the world and maybe find more tasks to fulfil, she confronted and killed a vampire in the settlement of Cometscraped and a little later learnt about a family of 'horned creature' monsters living in a nearby hovel. Bravely and foolishly, she decided she was heroic enough to face such opponents by now. Unfortunately, her slow speed proved fatal in this confrontation - she could not outpace the two horned creatures that followed her out of the lair (four or five stayed inside), and they kept charging at her and knocking her to the ground, in which position her mediocre offensive and defensive skills suffered even more, so she could not hit them to force them to the ground, and she was struck down. The legends of the world were quick in forgetting her deeds, and her demise was never recorded (i dunno - she's registered as 'd. 127', but her detailed legends entry doesn't mention her death). But the lessons she learned were an inspiration to another elf that was to follow her, Itha Woodplane.
The Life and Legends of Itha Woodplane the Respectful Bends
Itha, just as her predecessor, was completely insignificant in elf society. She couldn't dance, couldn't impress her peers, could sing a little. Most of her attributes were pretty decent for an elf, although most other folks would call her below average in most, like Strength, or Agility, or... in fact, the only attributes she had which were at least average or better were Patience, Memory and Musical Ability. Her Skills were also not those of a fighter: she was an adequate observer and a novice swordelf, her most notable, but for an elven adventurer completely useless skill was competent reading. Knowing of the fate of Famime, Itha worked even harder on her abilities before facing potential enemies. After a week, during which she just talked with some villagers, visited a town and a fortress and finally got some directions to work befitting a fledgling heroine, she had masterful skills at defending herself, had acquired the basics of swimming, was a professional ambusher and legendary crossbowelf and... a proficient crutch-walker. She had not suffered a wound to a leg, she just found that practicing with a crutch helped her spatial awareness.
Looking at the world map, Itha spotted a 'camp' site, and remembering stories, decided to give it a go and maybe rough up some bandits. As it turned out, the bandits there weren't just 'some', they were twenty armed goblins. Sniping them with a crossbow worked wonders and eventually Itha sneaked away from a camp containing twenty dead goblins. She had also taken the path of the pick and hers was an iron one, which saw some use in the bandit camp and would eventually become her main weapon. As a close-combat weapon, it was however not possible to train its use without an opponent to swing at, making skill gain much slower than what was possible with the crossbow.
Intrigued by the mountain range stretching seemingly into eternity, Itha then set out for an extended trek through the wilderness, subsisting on the intestines of animals she slew (which, enchanted by elven glamour, would not flee from her in the rare case she didn't kill them while in sneak mode). She even made it to a mountaintop, the Relieved Thorn, but found the remains of someone's packed lunch up there. Not only had she failed to be the first, she even was accosted by unresponsible littering! Disgusted, she went even further north and west, away from the 'civilised' lands, secretly hoping for another summit to claim. Despite weeks of arduous climbing, she never found another summit, even in other mountain ranges, and was struck with poor luck in the shape of an extremely dense fog that wouldn't lift for two days in the northern end of the Lacy Spines and on the Willfull Blizzards, which may or may not have been a glacier - impossible to say because Itha just couldn't see a thing. At least it wasn't a frozen ocean. Following the foothills of mountains, she made her way south, finding two night troll lairs on the way and destroying their terrible inhabitants.
Eventually she found the fabled Bejewelled Prairie and decided she needed something special to memorialise her deeds. Searching through her pockets, she retrieved the strange smoothed stones she had found in the stomachs of some animals and decided that she would collect more of those. Those stones were found in many birds, but mostly, they were too small and not polished enough to really be recognisable, only those found in the gizzards of ostriches and alligators she deemed worthy of her attention. Asking the villagers for nearby locations of such animals, she struck upon a desert region, the Earthen Desert, and a swamp, the Murk of Scribes, and scoured those. The Desert was bountiful - she collected the gizzard stones of thirty-six ostriches there, but in the Murk, she only located and 'harvested' three alligators, and one of them she located by falling on top of it - she had gotten too close to a small cascade, which - harmlessly - dropped her down about six yards, and as indicated, right on the back of an alligator. Fortunately, there were more deserts close to the swamp - the Desert of Claws, the Dune of Creating and the Desert of Legend. Those provided her with the remaining ostriches for her goal of a hundred gizzard stones, and then she went off due southeast, for the fabled Home of Heroes, the dwarven hall Releasedsouls.
She had no knowledge of the surroundings of this place, or she would have taken a different bent, because there were no settlements on the way, only a single lair of a long-dead giant tiger. She mostly travelled during the night and slept in the day to avoid being surprised by bogeymen. She only encountered a single group on the whole way, though. On the twelfth of Hematite in the dwarven calendar, she was near her destination and gave the last polish to two skills she wanted to be remembered excelling in - butchery and swimming. She had already reached legendary status at the mining skill, which not only made her a terrible foe in battle, but should also be a valuable skill to the dwarfs of the settlement. She took a look at the local wildlife, placed the fruits of her travels on a few tables in the great hall and decided to give a sedentary lifestyle a try for a change. If that would prove necessary, her pick and crossbow might be useful against the herds of elephants and unicorns...
Title: the Respectful Bends
Legendary Skills: Mining, Butchery, Swimming *
New location: Cryptnight the Murky Bones, night troll lair (would have loved the summit, but it was already taken)
Item: one hundred gizzard stones. And an oaken sword with one kill: an elephant.
Oops: legends say that ten wild creatures gained names from murdering dwarfs while i was finding my way through Releasedsouls. We might have an angry elephant problem on our hands in the near future.
Notable inventory item: iron arrow (stuck in lower body) - one of the several kobold ambush couples got the drop on me and shot me before i even woke up. Of course they totally wasted the break the game gave them and shot me --- in the pancreas. I didn't even notice the bolt still being stuck in my elf because there were so many pages of crud in my inventory i never scrolled all the way to the bottom. And when i noticed, i decided i'd just keep it. Other equipment are the iron pick of choppiness, an iron crossbow, a quiver containing about a dozen bolts and six water, a crutch, the starting wooden shield, Xelven starting clothesX and a few items scavenged from a few lairs where dwarfs or elves had found their doom - a pair of steel gauntlets, iron greaves and an alder breastplate. I put on a copper helmet for some armour skill training, but removed and dropped it when i was done.
* yes, ambusher (legendary +33), crutchwalker (legendary +32), fighter, archer, crossbowman (man? that was an elf!) were also legendary, but that's just too common. Swimming was notable with this character because in most areas i visited, bodies of water were frozen a good part of the day, so training swimming was tricky.