Richard A. Knaak - The Legend of Huma

FROM THE CREATORS OF
THE DRAGONLANCE SAGA

L EAVES FROM THE I NN OF THE L AST H OME
C OMPILED BY T IKA AND C ARAMON M AJERE , P ROPRIETORS

T HE A RT OF THE DRAGONLANCE S AGA
E DITED BY M ARY K IRCHOFF

T HE A TLAS OF THE DRAGONLANCE S AGA
BY K AREN W YNN F ONSTAD

DRAGONLANCE T ALES:
V OLUME 1T HE M AGIC OF K RYNN
V OLUME 2K ENDER , G ULLY D WARVES, AND G NOMES
V OLUME 3L OVE AND W AR
E DITED BY
M ARGARET W EIS AND T RACY H ICKMAN

THE LEGEND OF HUMA
D RAGONLANCE Heroes: Volume One
1988 TSR, Inc.
2003 Wizards of the Coast LLC

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eISBN: 978-0-7869-6305-8
640-A1322000-001-EN

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v3.1

This book, my first, is dedicated to my family, both near and far, for putting up with me for all these years.

It is also dedicated to the Department of Chemistry at the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana, whose peristent efforts finally convinced me that I was destined for some other career.

P ROLOGUE

It is very rare that I, Astinus, Master Historian of Krynn, find myself penning a personal note for inclusion in my chronicles. I have done so only once in recent memory, that being after the mage Raistlin came within a breath of becoming an all-powerful deity, mightier even than Paladine and Takhisis. He failed, else I probably would not be writing this, but it was a failure deserving of note.

While commenting on that incident, I came to realize that a vicious error had been discovered in my older volumes. By the handwriting, I suspect that one Paulus Warius, an assistant of mine some three centuries before and notable more for his clumsiness than his ability to keep records, must have accidentally destroyed part of some three or four older volumes and then replaced the damaged pages with what he assumed were correct copies. They were not.

The error concerns the transitory period between what are now called the Age of Light and the Age of Might. Ergoth, for instance, was a much older empire than is noted in the false history. Vinas Solamnus in fact commanded Ergoths armies by 2692 P.C., not fourteen centuries later as the false history claims. The Second Dragon War, noted incorrectly as a Second and Third war by Warius because it lasted more than forty-five years, ended in 2645 P.C. It was here I first learned of the grave mistakes, for I had opened the pages concerning those last few years in order to make reference to Huma, Knight of Solamnia, a man of very mortal flesh who faced and defeated Takhisis, goddess of evil, the Dragonqueen. I had intended, after the end of the Second Dragon War, to note Humas exploits but, as it always happens, my mind was on my work.

I have spent more time with this than I had originally allotted myself. Perhaps it is because I, too, felt some relief after that struggle, for I had been ready to close the final volume of this worlds history at one point. It would have been a shame, as my collection at that time consisted of only a few hundred thousand volumes. For this alone I remember Huma.

His story, fortunately, is still intact in this volume, and I will let that speak for him.

Astinus of Palanthas
360 A.C.

C HAPTER 1

The army passed through a village on its waynorthwest to Kyre. The village, called Seridan, had been set upon by plague, starvation, and madness, each seeming to take turns and each killing many of the inhabitants. In a lifetime long ago, the village had been prosperous. Now, shacks and makeshift shelters stood where clay brick buildings had fallen to the raids of bold goblins and marauding dark dragons. For some reason, the village had never been destroyed. It just continued to waste awaymuch like the people who tried to exist there.