The Lord's Falcon sat around the cooking fire, teasing Aria about being so serious all the time.
"Look," she finally said with an edge of anger to her voice, "you want to know why I'm so serious? You have no idea the burden I'm under. I'm the sixteenth -- sixteen, that's ten plus six -- in a long line of accomplished wizards, conjurers, abjurers, sorcerers, pan-dimensional researchers and adventurers. That's an enormous burden." She paused to take a breath and exhaled slowly. "Marly," she said simply and tapped two fingers to her mouth. He nodded and reached for his pack. "Let me tell you a story," she continued.
"Have you heard of the Governance of Gatewawr? It's currently jointly ruled by the hill dwarves and humans. Until about a hundred years ago, it was a dragonrealm ruled by an huge black dragon named Angerhock. This dragon ruled with a callous fist. As long as he got his twice annual tax payments of gold, precious items and food, he didn't care what happened inside his realm. This meant that the local humans and dwarves were enslaved by tribes of orcs and gnolls. There were various other trapped humanoids, but the neighbors didn't care much about them. The neighboring kingdoms wanted to be rid of this dragon, but they didn't know how. An ancestor of mine -- Kestrel Tanstaafaal the Dragonslayer -- led a band of adventurers against it. Kestrel studied the dragon and learned that about once a month, it left its lair to patrol the borders and eat pretty much anything it wanted. Kestrel led the adventurers into Angerhock's lair through the various traps and deadfalls. They wanted to set a trap for the dragon and slay it when it returned. HOwever, they discovered that Angerhock was not a male dragon, but a female dragon, and that she had a clutch of eggs. A last minute change of plans required that Kestrel use his magics to collapse the cave on the eggs destroying them. Somehow, Angerhock sensed this and returned immediately. Like all good mothers, she was furious. She tore through the adventurers, and was only finally slain when Kestrel prepared some final magics, and tricked the dragon into biting him. Through his magics, Kestrel prevented his immediate death and while trapped in the dragon's mouth he unleashed a fireball with his last breath. The fireball destroyed the dragon's head and her corpse crashed into a lake. To this day, the lake is known as Dragon Corpse Lake and there are no fish in it."
"Wow," murmured Brawler.
"I agree," said Denali, "that is quite a burden to live up to."
Marly handed Aria one of the two cigarettes he had just rolled and lit it for her.
"Yeah, sounds like quite an accomplishment, right?" snorted Aria as she took a long pull on the cigarette. "But you still don't get it," she waved the thick cloud of smoke away with annoyance, "even with all that, Kestrel 'Dragonslayer' Tanstaafaal is considered the disappointment of my family."