When Black Wallace Met Shortstack

A loner by choice and a fighter by nature, Black Wallace would have been content to remain friendless, wifeless, and childless for the rest of his days. So when he’d happened upon the remnants of what had been a colorful encampment of nomadic halflings, he had no other object but to fill his pack with whatever supplies he could uncover amongst the freshly butchered bodies of the miniature humanoids.

It was clearly the work of goblins, decided the battle-seasoned old dwarf, noting the dingy red and yellow feathers on the butt ends of a dozen crude arrows jutting from the belly of one particularly adorable halfling, a tiny tambourine still clutched in white, rigid, grub-sized fingers. The others were in similarly tragic and precious death poses, strewn amongst their rainbow-hued covered wagons and the fragments of their once-vibrant little tents.

The world, it seemed, was a smidgen less enchanting now these magical little waifs were dead, which Black Wallace did not mind at all. A dead halfling was a silent halfling, as far as he was concerned, and that suited his perpetual hangover just fine.

It was then that Black Wallace heard a noise, a faint and entirely unexpected squeak, like a dormouse caught in a trap. Black Wallace followed the noise, hoping to find an actual dormouse and any vittles it might have discovered before him. What he found when he overturned the darling, bloodied body of fully-grown female, was something rather disappointing. Stooping down, he plucked it off the ground for closer inspection. It was no bigger than the meatiest part of his palm, a pale and squirming halfling spawnling. A she-ling, no less, with all its fingerlings and footlings intact and as precious as a dew drop on a butterfly’s wing-ling.

And Black Wallace made a grave mistake that would alter his life in a way that no she-dwarf ever could. He made eye contact with the thing, and its twinkling violet eyes would not release him. He felt the goddess’s pure light enter his indifferent soul and transform it. And he vowed before the goddess and all her godly kin that he would raise the wee babe-ling as his own. And he would teach her to swindle and connive and to pick the pockets of his enemies and anyone who happened to have something that he wanted, like only a halfling could. And not a flute, lute, tambourine, or anything the least bit charming or whimsical would ever be touched by her. And she would call him Pappy and delouse him regularly, and he would call her Shortstack, because it was to the point and he didn’t care enough to think of anything more sentimental.

And it was at this point that the gods stopped listening because it became immediately apparent that Black Wallace was in fact Chaotic Neutral.

And so it was that Black Wallace’s soul was not transformed, not even close, and he bore aloud a passionate, whole-hearted pledge to himself and to the dead halflings strewn about his feet that he would, to the utmost of his ability, shamelessly use the last of their bloodline as a tool for his own personal gain.