Dungeons and Dragons

Mir is world, peace and fatherland.
It stands on its own, its people tough as their land.
Some say it is too big to hold together.
There definitely are wide differences within it.
The world of bustling cities, overflowing with luxuries looked with condescension and disdain at the world of fields and forests, brimming with hard work.
And the world of nature, untamed, wild, thrumming and singing with magic more ancient than most would believe was constantly striving against both the others.
The Mirians had little thought for anything outside their borders.
They always had both friends and enemies within.

They want to go home - although what *is* home remains to be seen.
For two centuries Erekaria has been occupied by a neighbouring country with pretensions to empirehood.
Now it finally had a chance to break the chains and stand on its own again.
There were a lot of opinions on which way they should cast their lots next.

The country is too small to stand without allies.
The allies cannot be allowed to turn into usurpers ever again.
We have the opportunity to garner favour with 'cousins' right here, right now.
We no longer need to fight another's war.

They came from different walks of life, different castes, even different ethnicities.
In the beginning they had nothing in common, carried on the wave of migration, prompted by warriors fallen out of mind and time.
Flotsam and jetsam on the stream of history, carried and caught in a small cauldron of a country.
United by a moral code, that grew into (or out of?) religion.
The diverse community knit and wound ever closer by the notion that all they could rely on were each other.
Respect - grudging at first, but warmer with each generation.
Erekaria, their homeland, mothered her people.

The cleric, paladin and sorceress were leaning over a map, discussing a plan.
Suddenly the ranger burst into the room, victoriously waving a small bundle of some... dried herbs.
"I've got us the way into the tower!" she announced gleefully. "Grace, the herbalist, had it in her supplies!"
Her companions looked at her with confusion.
"Not sure which part is 'ear', so I took the whole plants."
The sorceress caught on, and almost facepalmed.
"I said we need 'the ear of A sage' - the trust of someone who has access to the wizards' order!"
The tabaxi blinked: "Oh! ... Tea, anyone?"

The situation was deteriorating fast.
Suddenly there was a crash and an arrow flew in through the window, closely followed by a dwarf, yelling something that might have been a battlecry, or an insult to whoever threw him.
In the few minutes that followed, the confused Mirians lost any and all advantage they initially had.
Soon enough they were pushed out of the room, some through the just opened window, others through more conventional means (the door).
Finally, with feline elegance, the ranger swung in on a rope and landed softly right next to the safe, lockpick kit in hand.

The adventuring party stood in front of a conundrum.
The copse of trees they were coming up to was almost definitely important and some sort of magical.
The question was, how to find out if who- or whatever reigned over it was neutral or took a side in the war.
"It might be just nature. A dryad or maybe a ring of druids?" the ranger guessed.
The paladin looked at her sideways. "When did you last check your character sheet?"
"My what?" she sputtered, flabbergasted.
"Oh..." the paladin blushed. "I meant, I seem to remember you being proficient in nature..."

They were traveling through a... plain. Even at the best of times it used to be deserted, but now they might as well have been on the moon. It was bitterly cold.
The party was keeping vanguard, making sure nothing attacks the caravan.
They were just coming up to a rock formation when...
*riiiip*
...a chasm opened up in the ground right in front of them. The cleric almost lost his balance, milling his arms in the air before the paladin caught him.

"...well, there goes that map!" the DM shook his head. "I knew this rubber is too hard!"

Takhle je to naprosto vždycky.

The huge stone axe barely missed the cleric's head.
"Train!" the living statue bellowed.
The sorceress lobbed a scorching ray towards it.
"Train!" it shrugged it off, apparently immune to magic.
The paladin, who seemed to be the only one not targeted grinned.
"It's a golem," he explained as one more of his companions barely dodged a blow. When none of the party reacted with more than nasty looks, he added: "A drill sergeant golem, meant to train new recruits."
More glares.
"Alright, stop. Training over," he finally said. "Time to go home."
"Train?" the golem asked, but then followed.

The statue was almost menacing, with a battleaxe firmly grasped in both hands.
The old arena of an unused, decrepit military facility in the middle of nowhere was not a place you would normally want to linger in.
But they had a mission. They needed something to give the caravan an edge, coming into the vicinity of the last big(ish) city on their way east.
Not that this seemed promising.
Then the paladin noticed something.
He put his hand on one of the fists and pulled it along the shaft of the axe into a correct position.
The statue moved.