The Real Kender Creation

by Stuart Gibson

I was reading your page on the creation of the race kender when I remembered a First Quest section in Dragon 214, the article, by Harold Johnson had information about the creation of Kender you might be interested in, you may have already read it somewhere, I don't know...

Harold Johnson wrote in the First Quest section in Dragon 214: "My hero Almar Tann, a wandering halfling thief was created to playtest the Desert of Desolation module series in a campaign run by Tracy Hickman. Almar was a clever little fellow with a heart of a true hero and more pluck than men twice his size. Other that having a knack for getting into trouble due to his curiosity and willingness to take risk, and making the rest of the party deal with it, Al's tenacity and luck helped the party to emerge victorious in the end and win a limited wish. Almar wished for a coin case that would always refill with nine gold coins in it once it was emptied. This seemed practical and not too greedy at the time. Tracy was very agreeable. Little did I suspect that Tracy was about to whisk Al and the others off to the developing world of DRAGONLANCE Saga and the first adventure, Dragons of Darkness. Gold has no value on Krynn.

Almar left his mark on the world when he discovered a lone pillar standing in the middle of a room. He climbed the pillar to the top and found nothing there. I told Tracy that it didn't make any sense to have a pillar just sitting in the middle of the room with nothing on top. Tracy said it wasn't important to the adventure. So Al opened up his coin purse and left a stack of coins for the next adventurer to discover.

Almar went on to discover many new things in the ruins of Xak Tsaroth, until we decided that halflings had no place in this new world, especially since Almar also had a ring of invisibility; it all sounded too much like another story. So Almar went wandering off into the barbarian plains of Abanasinia and was never seen again.

It was up to me to create a replacement, so I found my God of Krynn hat and fashioned the incorrigible kender, that childlike race that refuses to grow up, and the first kender representative, Tasslehoff Burrfoot.

Now anyone who has ever played a kender, had the misfortune to bump into a kender, or ever heard of kender has swiftly discovered there is no more aggravating, though brave and clever, race of creature in the multiverse. Let's see somebody top that for annoying!"

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