In truth, that determined war cry from Bruenor Battlehammer was

among the sweetest things I had ever heard.

What was it, I wondered, that had brought the grieving dwarf from hisdespair? And it wasn't just Bruenor; all about me I saw an excitement, inthe dwarves, in Catti-brie, even in Regis, the halfling known more forpreparing for lunch and nap than for war. I felt it, too. That tingling anticipation, that camaraderie that had me and all the others patting each otheron the back, offering praises for the simplest of additions to the common defense, and raising our voices together in cheer whenever good news was announced.

What was it? It was more than shared fear, more than giving thanks for what we had while realizing that it might soon be stolen away. I didn't understand it then, in that time of frenzy, in that euphoria of frantic preparations. Now, looking back, it is an easy thing to recognize.

It was hope.

To any intelligent being, there is no emotion more important thanhope. Individually or collectively, we must hope that the future will be better than the past, that our offspring, and theirs after them, will be a bitcloser to an ideal society, whatever our perception of that might be. Certainly a warrior barbarian's hope for the future might differ from the ideal fostered in the imagination of a peaceful farmer. And a dwarf would not strive to live in a world that resembled an elf's ideal! But the hope itself is not so different. It is at those times when we feel we are contributing to that ultimate end, as it was in Mithril Hall when we believed the battle with Menzoberranzan would soon come — that we would defeat the dark elves and end, once and for all, the threat from the Underdark city — we feel trueelation.

Hope is the key. The future will be better than the past, or the present.Without this belief, there is only the self-indulgent, ultimately empty striving of the present, as in drow society, or simple despair, the time of lifewasted in waiting for death.