I have a special spot for dwarves in fantasy RPGs these days, largely because I wrongly ignored them through most of my teen years. AD&D had a million supplements on elves, and I loved the idea of playing nigh-immortal magical beings. Dwarves, gnomes, and halflings got largely overlooked in those days (the Player’s Handbook Reference Series, which had a book for every race and class in the game, even shortchanged the latter two by shoving them together in The Complete Book of Gnomes and Halfligns rather than giving them a chance to really shine).

In my later years, I’ve come to appreciate foul-tempered, beer-loving, hairy people–and not just because I have become one. In the Fell’s Five comics, Khal became one of my favorite characters thanks to the juxtaposition of his stoic warrior nature and the gentle poet within. So if the comic had to get canceled before its time, I’m glad it went out on a note that highlighted these qualities.

Without further ado, let’s check in on Khal’s love life with the final storyline of this series, “Down.”

Checking the Mail

Our story begins with our heroes defending a caravan from giant insectoid creatures called kruthiks.

The adventurers dispatch the monsters, and we learn that they were attacking a mail caravan. Which makes sense, because beneath the veneer of fantastic heroism, the worlds of Dungeons & Dragons are really just monster-infested hellscapes where even a simply job like transporting letters eventually ends in being hunted by some sort of dog/insect hybrid.

Tisha notes that kruthiks normally hunt in the Underdark. Since tieflings created these monsters, Bree is quick to loose some snide comments about how Tisha and all tieflings are evil…the type of fantasy racism that we’ve all come to expect in our D&D games.

Khal finds the letter from his beloved that he was looking for and notes something distinctly wrong with her prose…

The apparent code in the love letter is enough for Khal to go stomping off to the dwarven stronghold he once called his home. The rest of the group follows, with only Bree offering an objection. Tisha convinces Bree to join the quest because despite there being no profit in this one, it’s always convenient for a thief to have a friendly dwarven paladin around when she need a quick alibi.

Off to the Hold

Adric’s internal monologue hints at more future story developments that we won’t get to see. He mentions that Khal is one of only two genuinely good people he know. “I can’t stand the other one,” he says. “I’ll explain later.”

Except he won’t, because this comic ends after this storyline. Not to harp on this too much, but there was a lot of lost potential with this comic’s premature cancellation. While I don’t have sales numbers, my suspicion is that the comic wasn’t canceled due to lack of an audience but was simply a victim of timing. This storyline came out in 2013, at which point Wizards of the Coast had determined that D&D 4th edition was a failure. A playtest for the next edition of D&D was already underway when “Down” hit shelves, and even in its early stages it was clear that 5th edition would largely ignore its predecessor.

Had this title been along the lines of the older AD&D comics, it might have survived the edition change. But 4th edition had a very specific look and branding, and many things that the edition established got retconned away as D&D looked back to its more popular past. As a result, there really wasn’t a place for this very good comic to survive once Wizards of the Coast decided to leave 4th edition in the scrap heap.

The group makes their way to Khal’s hold, and Bree notices that it’s not all underground.

Cattle also get attacked by hungry kruthiks. The group rushes to defend the herd and finds that this kruthik can shoot deadly spikes. Varis blames Tisha for not warning him of this, but the tiefling does not accept the blame.

With the kruthiks dealt with, the adventurers head into the hold. Varis suspects that they won’t get anything more than a nod from the dour dwarves, but it turns out that Khal is quite the celebrity.

To get through the crowd, Khal is forced to give them what they want: some slam poetry accompanied by the ringing of his warhammer on a nearby anvil.

The woman who breaks up the assembly is Khal’s prospective mother-in-law. She’s unhappy that Khal has “broken the agreement,” which was that he would leave the hold and not return until his deeds as a paladin had proven him “worthy” of entering the family. She orders the group’s death, but the sentence gets delayed by an attack from kruthiks coming up from the mines. The chaos does give a little breather before we get some important exposition.

So Khal’s lover, Danni, is apparently dead, and her mother is covering it up to protect her family name. Because nobody ever does anything stupid in the name of honor…

Going Down

The transition between issues of this storyline is kind of funny. The first issue ends with a bunch of dwarves firing crossbows right at our heroes. Per what we see at the start of the second issue, two bolts hit Adric’s shield and the rest just…miss?

Now, there are at least three crossbowmen there. They aren’t at close range, but they have a straight line of fire against five people who are not behind any sort of cover. So many the best move is not to worry about these guys at all, since they have all the aiming skills of your average storm trooper.

Of course, the bigger problem is the swarming kruthiks that have overrun the mine. And on top of that, the stronghold’s mine cap is automatically coming down to keep anything below from coming up. So our heroes are trapped with giant swarming dog-bug-things. Time to run.

I find it a shame that this comic is largely forgotten and that Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves didn’t sell to Hasbro’s expectations. I really feel like having Fell’s Five meet Edgin’s band of merry fools would yield some hilarious results.

The group has to go faster to outrun the kruthiks. Varis does something that he thinks will help, but he actually makes things worse.

The group runs out of kruthiks after plowing through a few of them, but they also run out of track. They wind up plunged into an underground lake and, when they finally get to shore, left in the dark.

It’s worth noting here that, unlike in every other edition of D&D, darkness is a problem for dwarves. The designers of 4th edition decided to give them low-light vision rather than darkvision to make darkness a problem that more groups had to overcome. Luckily, Khal’s love Danni came up with a workaround so we don’t have to spend the rest of the issue looking at panels of blackness.

Danni invented the sympathetic sunstones after Khal told her about his experience in Al’bihel. Adric takes this time to say he’s sorry that Danni’s dead, but Khal tells him not to worry–she’s alive. That seems like blind faith on Khal’s part, but Adric points out that there is logic behind it. If Danni had died, her mother could have presented Khal with a body. The fact that she forged letters to keep him away indicates that she didn’t die–she disappeared.

Adric’s logic bears out when the tunnel the group follows leads to a crack that connects to something older than a dwarven stronghold. Whoever built that tunnel didn’t make it out of stone but rather polished bones.

The path leads the group to a mass of dead kruthiks. Bree posits that maybe the bug-things weren’t invading but rather were fleeing. Varis confirms that something is wrong, in the grossest way possible.

Adric tells Varis to “sing a happy elf song” to keep his grumbling away. Varis points out that all the happy elf songs are about killing invading humans. Adris asks Khal to sing a “happy dwarf song,” and Khal points out that his people also sing about killing invading humans. So it’s nice that the dwarves and elves of this world have so much common ground.

Things get worse as the path leads to a giant evil-looking temple guarded by undead monstrosities known as foulspawn.

Bree decides to ditch the adventure and run for it, but the safest place seems to be inside the temple…which means that, much to her chagrin, the rest of the group follows her.

The path leads through a wall of kruthik corpses that have been stacked to create a choke point. And on the other side of that choke point…

The crossbow bolts come from the missing Danni.

So Khal’s beloved is still alive…he’s got that going for him.

Way Down Underground

Don’t worry, Khal’s just fine. As he mentions, his armor is dwarven work.

The group needs no introductions with Danni, because Khal’s letters were very detailed about each of them…save Bree, whom Khal apparently called “the addled halfling.”

The kruthik bodies are piled so high because they shy away from their own dead. The foulspawn–or their master–apparently killed them in a quest to get something deeper down in the Underdark. Danni gives everyone a tour of the site where the dwarves have been holding out, and we get an ominous bit of foreshadowing once her back is turned.

Danni brings the group toward a gigantic door with demon faces on it, sealed by a very complex lock. Everyone is in agreement that they should not open the definitely evil door…except for Bree, who picks the lock while the group is talking.

This is 100% a D&D thing. I can imagine everyone else at the table telling the thief not to roll to open the lock, only for the DM to say, “No…she said that’s what she was doing, so let her do it.”

The clockwork revealed by Bree’s tinkering is essentially a doomsday clock, tracking the energies of stars and planes in a countdown to unleash some extraplanar being in a summoning circle.

Personally, I would try to wreck the clock or destroy the summoning circle. Adric chooses another reasonable plan: run away.

Unfortunately, their only exit is through an MC Escher painting.

The party splits, which is always a bad idea. On the bright side, it gives us some quiet time for the group to chat about their backstories a bit. Varis mentions to Tisha that he’s been exiled from elven lands but, not to sound like a broken record, we’ll never find out why.

Bree, Danni, and Khal find a way out, but they have to cross hundreds of swarming kruthiks to get there. Adric, Tisha, and Varis find something…worse.

The group comes together while Danni starts formulating a plan to build a bridge over the kruthiks. But Tisha points out that, with the rations the dwarves brought, only one person would be able to survive for as long as they have…not ten.

The good news for Khal is that Danni’s body wasn’t among the dead dwarves. The bad news is that her mind doesn’t seem willing to accept that she’s been all alone for all this time.

Oblivious to the fact that her “dwarves” are growing weapons out of their hands, Danni orders a retreat.

The group again splits, with some of them chasing Danni and some battling the foulspawn and false dwarves. Adric, unfortunately, gets the misfortune of meeting the boss of the foulspawn.

It really is funny that a beholder, which was conceived basically because someone at TSR liked the idea of making the Greek proverb that “beauty is in the eye of the beholder” into a pun involving a ten-eyed monster, has turned into one of the game’s most iconic and deadly creatures.

Back to Running

The arrival of the beholder leads to chaos. Adric and Bree and to get running, and Tisha falls into a hole created by the battle.

This particular beholder is an eye of flame, a 4th edition variant that eschews some of the more powerful beholder eye rays in exchange for the ability to blast lots of fire.

While Adric and Bree run and fight for their lives, Tisha wakes up at the bottom of a very deep hole.

She wanders directly into a kruthik nest, but the creatures don’t kill her for some reason. As it turns out, her tiefling heritage has something to do with that…which I’m sure gives Bree even more arrows in her “tieflings are evil” quiver.

Elsewhere, Khal and Varis battle the false dwarves until Varis decides to shoot Danni.

Danni is being manipulated by “sympathy magic.” Her desire to save the dead dwarves animated the sentient mud around her to take their shape and serve as her protectors.

Or…something like that. It’s all a bit vague.

In true romantic fashion, Khal solves the problem with a kiss.

Creeped out by the duplicate kissing dwarves, Varis suggests looking for their friends. Speaking of which…how are they doing?

Still Running

Adric asks Bree if she has a plan for getting past the beholder. She does, but Adric doesn’t like it. Time to improvise instead.

Meanwhile, the kruthik queen gives Tisha her egg. The tieflings made the kruthiks and ensured that there would always be a limited number of queens. The queen lays and egg and imprints its memories and experience on the new queen, passing those things on before she dies. All the queen asks is that Tisha keep the egg safe.

Back upstairs, the portal opens and a nameless horror passes through it. The beholder had this planned and promises the creature’s release only if it provides the secret of ultimate sorcery.

Oh, hey…remember when I said that I would smash up the summoning portal if I was a player in this adventure?

As the group reunites, they revert back to the original plan: run.

All that remains is to return to the dwarven stronghold. And that’s where Tisha comes in.

Bree suddenly has no complaints about Tisha being an “evil” warlock, as anything that saves her life is alright in her book.

The beholder temporarily escapes the nameless horror and seeks revenge, but Tisha has one more ace up her sleeve.

The portal that unleashed unspeakable evil upon the world will close on its own, Adric thinks. But we’ll never know for sure, because this story is just about over.

And that ends both our current story and this series. There are so many things left unfinished here. Our heroes left a portal to ultimate evil open, with only vague hopes that it would actually close itself. They are traveling back to a dwarven stronghold ruled by a matron who wanted them all dead mere hours ago. Each has a tantalizing piece of backstory that remains unexplored.

But sadly, we don’t always get to choose our ending points. And, in a way, it’s a very D&D thing to have a story fraught with loose ends that never get picked up because the group dissolved and the game ended before its time.

_{Images: IDW}