My name is Dartagnon Pipwhistle Tubthumper, son of Drogo and Frieda Tubthumper, notable spice merchants from the shire. I don't have the clearest memories of the majority of my life since childhood, having apparently been shipwrecked and marooned for some 30 odd years. And for the last 30 odd years, my life has not been my own. Luckily, in the last few days I've managed to come to some degree of sanity and respectability, but my continued efforts to obtain comfortable and safe travel homeward have been continuously thwarted by a gang of ruffians apparently colloquially known as "Thia's Troublefinders".
Apparently I've been traveling with them for a while, but I can hardly imagine why? As civilized hobbit standards go, they appear to be no more than common mercenaries...thugs and grave robbers at best. The only one amongst them with even the slightest regard for proper civilization is the summoner, a Mr Roderick Falstaff of the Dummockton Falstaffs. Quite an agreeable gentleman, he and I saw quite eye to eye on the majority of issues, but he was oft overturned in his sentiments by his incomprehensible attraction to the brutish warrior woman Thia.
I originally agreed to accompany this party down the coast in order to secure passage back to the shire. Gods only know how I managed to get myself so far from home. On top of this, they flat out lied to me as to our course... instead of taking a far safer alternate route, these idiots INTENTIONALLY sought out a valley inhabited by robbers and thieves. Worse yet, these aforementioned thieves were in the company of an unwashed, unkempt, ill bred brute of a hill giant. Rather than simply paying the modest passage fee as would be sensible, the party concocted a harebrained scheme to "trick" the bandits with a bag of rocks, allowing them to close and fight. Well, THAT plan went about as well as you thought it might, and off the idiots went, charging into battle with a Hill Giant easily 12 times my size. And all this with me hanging desperately on to a saddle behind some trollop of a cleric who didn't even have the clear sense to control her horse. At least she managed to keep it from flying into the pits that the robbers had dug, unlike my poor mage friend.
Luckily, my good friend Roderick managed to incapacitate the beast, although in a most unseemly way. He apparently cast some sort of stench spell which caused all our assailants to regurgitate mightily. I'm not really sure about the details, as I spent the entire encounter sensibly huddled behind the cleric. I figure, better her filled with arrows than me!
Luckily, upon reaching the southern desert, a bit of luck caught up with us. I managed to secure several significant investment opportunities with a Mr Omar and his compatriots, organizing some trade dealings in which spices and silveryfruit would be transported to the shire and paid for in full with an equivalent quantity of good leaf tobacco. With the associated markups on both the spices and leaf, even despite the capital costs of the return journey, Omar and I both stand to nest a tidy profit of the exchange. I've purchased a quantity of wools, spices and camels for the journey to the coast. As my father always said,
"a copper invested is worth more than a silver spent"
The trip through the desert has been horrendous. The cleric obviously has some sort of protective magics that could ease our discomfort, but she insists instead on squandering it on the beasts of burden. Luckily my good friend Roderick is once more to the rescue, as he created a shelter of pure magic to protect us. I must think more on the potential benefit a mage would be to an economic venture.
The journal stops there abruptly, with no explanation.
The only additional writings found with this log seem to be poetry of some sort. A love letter perhaps, but of such abysmal quality as to offend even the least discerning orcish bard. Fortunately, a large portion of the writing is obscured by bloodstains and remnants of what appears to be a severed arm from a humanoid insect race? The poetry and other papers seem to have been used as wrapping for the arm, sealing it up much as a butcher would preserve a fine steak...but who would eat an arm?
