The unusual experiences are those that create the memories, and a tenday of memories is more life than a year of routine. I remember my first sail aboard Sea Sprite, for example, as keenly as my first kiss from Catti-brie, and though that journey lasted mere tendays in a life more than three-quarters of the way through a century, the memories of that voyage play out more vividly than some of the years I spent in House Do’Urden, trapped in the routine of a drow boy’s repetitive duties.

It’s true that many of the wealthier folk I have known, lords of Waterdeep even, will open their purses wide for a journey to a far off place of respite. Even if a particular journey does not go as anticipated for them, with unpleasant weather or unpleasant company, or foul food or even minor illnesses, to a one, the lords would claim the trip worth the effort and the gold. What they valued most for their trouble and treasure was not the actual journey, but the memory of it that remained behind, the memory of it that they will carry to their graves. Life is in the experiencing, to be sure, but it’s just as much in the recollection and in the telling!

Contrastingly, I see in Mithral Hall many dwarves, particularly older folk, who revel in the routine, whose every step mirrors those of the day before. Every meal, every hour of work, every chop with the pick or bang with the hammer follows the pattern ingrained throughout the years. There is a game of delusion at work here, I know, though I wouldn’t say it aloud. It’s an unspoken and internal logic that drives them ever on in the same place. It’s even chanted in an old dwarven song:

For this I did on yesterday

And not to Moradin’s Hall did I fly

So’s to do it again’ll keep me well