Mintiper's Chapbook

Mintiper's Chapbook was a collection of ballads and other poems and stories by the famed bard of the North, Mintiper Moonsilver.

Moonlight Paean
Moonlight Paean was a ballad written by Mintiper in the. It describes the Battle of Turnstone Pass the previous year, in which the Moonlight Men defeated a horde of orcs and saved the cities of Silverymoon and Everlund. The victory came at great cost, as only six men survived the battle.

Many scholars considered the Moonlight Paean to be Mintiper's most emotional work, as it shows a leader's anguish at the loss of his men. The ballad begins with six stanzas briefly describing the battle. The first stanza is then repeated as a refrain. Following this introduction, each and every warrior who fell in the battle is named with their fate described, including such valiant heroes as Lord Laerlos Silmerhelve II, Tsaelynos of Everlund, and "Firebeard" Battlehammer.

Tree of Wailing Souls
One of the folktales commonly attributed to Mintiper and included in the Chapbook tells the horrific encounter of the adventurer Lunargent and his five companions with a monstrous tree creature. The tree decapitated two of the six with its roots and branches, and the heads were added to the collection of others that shrieked and ranted insanely, impaled to the ends of the branches.

The story was a popular one in the North&mdash;told as a ghost story while the door was locked&mdash;but the setting of the monstrous Tree of Wailing Souls changed with each telling. The version of the tale included in the Chapbook was written in 1344 and was a first-person account of a true story, with Mintiper using the obvious alias of "Lunargent", as he often did. Despite the tale's truth, scholars often doubted its veracity.

History
Mintiper's compositions were transcribed by the Keeper of the Vault of the Sages in Silverymoon, where they were available for reading. The Keeper of the Vault also thoroughly annotated the works.