Where earth meets fire bright
Far below the green and light
Land of always night
The town of Zuul was founded by dwarves of the Fireblood clan 200 years ago near a vein of mithril. Most have moved on, searching for the next mother lode, but others have settled here next to the Stoneheart River and Zuul is a favorite rest stop for those coming from or going to the surface.
The oldest structure still standing is Black Hound Inn, a place known for its dwarven stout and the ravenous appetite of the clan of deep halflings that live in the beer cellar. Named after the halfling god of the dead in honor of those deep halflings who fought and died next to their dwarven brothers-in-arms in the troglodyte wars long ago. The folk of Deer Fingers clan pride themselves on their history of scouting for their dwarven allies and being able to fit into the smallest kobold infested rat warren has its advantages.
There are other halflings in town, there are the rat-humping hicks over at the Stained Axe Tavern, a place known for its cheese and foul tasting, watery ale. And theres the twins, a pair of stuck up glimmerskin paladins who stay in the temple of Clanggedin Silverbeard.
Small one from the dark
Beavers milk and willow bark
Silent shadows hark
Father should have known, a winters moon celebration with myconids and gallows fey isn't the sort of party where you take your family. No one knows who invited the dark creepers or when the redcaps showed up, but when someone released the basidirond spores things went bad, very bad. As the maelstrom of chaos and confusion spread, father gathered up the family and hid in an empty beer barrel. The last thing Deer Fingers saw was the tentacles ripping through the ground before the barrel got knocked into the Stoneheart River, of course it could of just been the hallucination spores...
Chews-softly was upriver looking for willow trees and saw the barrel smash on the rocks at the bottom of the waterfall, and being the gentle soul that she is, brought the half-drowned Deer Fingers to the lodge. Three-paws said it was bad luck to bring in an outsider pup but Morning-song had lost one of hers and nursed him alongside her other pups despite his protests.
After nine years Deer Fingers thinks of himself as one of the People of the Lodge and the time before was just a bad dream. Even though Morning-song didn't want him to go she still made him a set of bark armor and watched him chase butterflies as he disappeared into the woods.
Deer Fingers wandered aimlessly for a few weeks, talking with birds and rabbits, eating nothing but berries and bugs. So when he stumbled across a goliath food cache he gorged himself and fell asleep. The goliaths found him snoring, holding his swollen stomach, after a moment they started laughing. Deer Fingers woke up, smiled at them, healed one of the injured hunters then followed them back to their camp.
Deer Fingers
Chaotic Good Deep Halfling
Cleric/Warlock Level 1/1
Str 15
Dex 19
Con 15
Int 13
Wis 18
Cha 17
Fort 5 / Ref 2 / Will 9
Flaws: Poor Reflexes (-3 to reflex saves), Shaky (-2 to range attacks)
Feats: Fey Heritage, Fey Power, Fey Skin (DR 3/cold iron)
Skills:
Concentration 7 (5 ranks), Knowledge (Planes) 5 (4 ranks), Knowledge (Religion) 6 (5 ranks), Profession (Engineer) 5 (1 rank)
Languages: Dwarf, Halfling and Sylvan
Least Invocation: Call of the Beast (ummm, you can talk to animals and get wild empathy)
Domains: Hunger and Oracle
Equipment
masterwork Bark Armor made out of darkwood (cost 225 gold, weighs 3.5 pounds)
umm, random notes so I don't forget
Haikus are 5,7,5 and stupid.
Stainers (halflings from the Stained Axe Tavern) are a clan of tallfellow weremice, long ago exiled from the surface for their unorthodox worship of Brandobaris and cowardly ways.
Glimmerskin Halflings are in Dragon Magic.
Myconids are in the MM II
Dark Creepers are in the Fiend Folio
Redcaps are in the MM III
Deer Fingers made it to 4th level in Scott's Mountains of Madness campaign before being gored to death by 6 dire boars. Actually all but one PC died in that encounter, I played Crafty Weaver next, he died, then Boar Father.