I Read What?!

So after two chapters (or more precisely a prelude and one chapter) of various villainies, we finally get introduced to one of the heroes.

This chapter introduces Regis, the halfling, and the biggest reminder of exactly how much early D&D ripped off of Tolkien, Drizzt Do'Urden, who you've heard of if you know ANYTHING about Forgotten Realms, and Bruenor Battlehammer, who is by far my favorite in this sorry lot.



So we start with a description of Regis: "Regis was short, even by the standards of his diminutive race, with the fluff of his curly brown locks barely cresting the three-foot mark, but his belly was amply thickened by his love of a good meal, or several, as the opportunities presented themselves." They haven't mentioned hair on his feet, but I'm assuming that's coming.

Anyway, Regis is fishing. Or rather, he's lazing about pretending to fish. Not that I can blame him. Apparently this is likely to be his last trip to the lake this year, since he's not one for winter fishing like the "fanatically greedy humans of Ten-Towns.

...what's greedy about ice fishing? Don't people need to eat?

I feel like either Regis or Mr. Salvatore doesn't really know where ivory comes from, because we're told that he had plenty of ivory "stocked up from other people's catches to keep him busy for all seven months of snow."

That's not where ivory comes from? Unless you're telling me that people are fishing for whale or walrus in this lake?

We're told that Regis is "truly a credit to his less-than-ambitious race" for managing a bit of civilization up here, and I feel offended on behalf of halflings. Apparently other halflings don't come this far north, and Regis himself would have preferred to be south, but he had a "little problem" with a guildmaster of a thieves' guild.

And Regis again comments on "the greed of humans" as he sees fishing boats out to try to find their special spots. I'm getting a little annoyed with him. People fish to eat. How is that greedy? But then we learn that Regis has a thing about human greed because he blames human greed for cutting short his career as a thief in Calimport. His guildmaster had a wonderful collection of rubies and Regis couldn't help but take one. Regis can't understand why the guildmaster is mad at him, when he had eleven other rubies. They've been hunting him ever since.

Fair enough, I rescind my annoyance: Regis is just an idiot.

Apparently Regis has an idea to become a scrimshander, using the "ivorylike bone of a knucklehead trout", which does clarify things. But, um, Mr. Salvatore. "Ivory" and "Ivory-like" have different meanings. They're not interchangeable.

-

We change scenes to the dude who will someday be one of, if not THE most famous character in the Forgotten Realms: Drizzt Do'Urden.

It's kind of interesting to read the Icewind Dale trilogy because, apparently, Drizzt hadn't been meant to be the lead character. (That was the barbarian, Wulfgar, apparently.) But honestly, that seems short sighted. There's a reason that everyone and their brother wanted to play "good drow" after the Drizzt series became popular. It's a great hook and concept. Far more interesting than "token young vaguely-Norse barbarian #36."

One of the fun things about reading the series in publication order is that I get to see ideas as they develop, and retcons as they happen. And here's one: Drizzt tells us he feels "as vulnerable in the sunlight as a human would in the dark of night" as his five years on the surface isn't that much compared to two hundred years below ground.

This is the first big retcon, of course. The Drizzt of Icewind Dale is meant as a mentor figure, so he's aged up appropriately. When we get Drizzt's own series after this, his age will be considerably lowered. Now it has been about two decades since I read the series, but IIRC, Drizzt will instead be somewhere around forty or fifty. Which is pretty young for a drow and makes him more of a contemporary, maturity wise, to characters like Wulfgar and Catti-brie as the series continues. (Probably for the best, considering the romance that eventually develops in later books..., but I digress.)

So anyway, Drizzt is traveling to meet with the dwarf Bruenor. He's observed some strange signs: for example, reindeer are migrating but there isn't any sign of the barbarians who hunt them, and he's heard battle drums in the distance.

We get a little bit of digression about Drizzt and his race: namely, Drizzt isn't really accepted anywhere because of his race. But he's moderately tolerated here, and has a few friends who can look beyond his heritage and see his character.

Essentially Drizzt's life on the surface is a metaphor for racism that doesn't quite work. Drizzt does face a lot of bigotry from surface folk, but that's because drow are, even as the book says "malicious, passionless killers" and pretty much love murdering everyone on the surface down to helpless children. Drizzt is the only exception to this (at least at the time the Crystal Shard was written. There are a few more good drow in continuity by now.) The fear of the humans, elves and other surface dwellers is warranted, for the most part.

It makes for a good character conflict, as does Drizzt's weakness in daylight, but it's not comparable to modern day racism.

Anyway, Drizzt gets distracted and then ambushed by some tundra yetis.

-

We scene-shift back to Regis here, who is watching a fight erupt between two fishing boats. We get some history of the towns: namely that they owe their existence to the knucklehead trout, which only swim in the three lakes of the region.

I'm still not sure I quite understand what makes the knuncklehead trout so valuable. The fishbones have the consistency of ivory, okay. But is that really enough to justify the creation of ten entire towns in the icy hellhole of the world? I'm not an economics person, so maybe that would make sense to someone else.

Anyway, Regis is happy at Ten-Towns: he's a good scrimshander and has even been elected as the council spokesman of Lonelywood, the smallest of the towns. His skill gives him the opportunity to go back and forth between Lonelywood and the principle settlement: Bryn Shander, and he gets to take a commission for bringing catches to market. It's a swanky deal.

--

Back to Drizzt, who's fighting yeti. Drizzt uses scimitars by the way, dual-wielded, which always seemed a little ridiculous to me. But Drizzt is a ridiculous guy and he's been wielding scimitars in books since I was five years old, so I'm probably too late to mock that.

Anyway, Drizzt manages to kill one yeti, but is trapped by another. Fortunately he's rescued by Bruenor Battlehammer, his dwarven friend, and his utterly incomprehensible pseudo-scottish accent. Bruenor wastes no time in cheerfully insulting Drizzt:

"'Bah,' Bruenor spouted again. 'It's sure to be a sorry day when a drow - and a ranger, what's more-gets taken off 'is guard on an open plain by two scab tundra yetis!' Bruenor licked his stained axe blade, then spat in disgust.

'Foul beasts!' he grumbled. 'Can't even eat the damn things!' He pounded the axe into the ground to clean the blade and stomped off toward Kelvin's Cairn.'

Basically, in less than a page, he cheerfully insults Drizzt, belittles his magical cat (which Drizzt has, of course), licks his axe, and bitches that he can't eat a yeti.

I kind of love him.