The Grudgebearer's Oath

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Magile
Otyugh
Posts: 920
Joined: Wed Jan 07, 2004 7:00 pm
Location: The Big Nowhere

The Grudgebearer's Oath

Post by Magile »

A common misconception about dwarven culture, likely due to dwarves rarely sharing their beliefs with outsiders, is that if you've met one Stout Folk then you've met them all. The misunderstanding could easily be rectified, but the dwarven custom to not share their culture is one of the few traditions all dwarves follow to the Law. Simply put, the stubbornness of dwarves, combined with the mischievousness of hins and the maliciousness of humans, has cemented in the minds of all life among Toril that a dwarf is a dwarf, regardless of the colour of their beards. The Farranson Clan, being an exception, could not uphold the time-honoured tradition of never sharing their Clan's traditions.

After all, the other Clans never had their own Ivar Farranson, son of Bolgar, grandson of Boldur and descendant of [the Great] Farran Ironbreaker [founder of Clan Ironbreaker].

Historians would say that Ivar's rise to fame as the greatest Smithy Shoppe (the 'pe' being important) in Waterdeep would make for a wondrous tale. The more business-minded individuals may argue that Mr. Farranson's infamous renovations to what constituted as standardized excavation services were the true texts worth studying in detail. In truth, had this been any other dwarf from any other Clan, those stories would prove to be the most important knowledge - but most professionals had never met an Ivar Farranson.


There is a Book written within Clan Farranson, a tradition they continued from their Ironbreaker lineage, whose stone pages hold the greatest information any dwarf leaving their Clan's home could ever need. The Book, in its simplest form, provides details to the things no depths-dwelling dwarf from Clan Farranson could ever dream to fulfill, for its content can only be used outside of Mirabar Clan's lodges. It was a part of their culture that was practiced and maintained for centuries, but never acted upon - for no one had ever left. Once more, no one had been Ivar Farranson.


And so, as he was sent off with one (1) standard issue mining pick forged by Farran & Farranson Co., one (1) standard issue dwarven plate forged by ARME Inc. Forges, three hundred (300) golden coins of no particular origin, he was also provided with one (1) up-to-date, authentic, hand chiseled Book of Grudges produced by the Clan Elders of Clan Farranson. The Clan's greatest knowledge was to be unleashed upon the world above, galloping full force toward righting the wrongs, correcting the mistakes and punishing the misdeeds.


In other words, the real story of Ivar Farranson, son of Bolgar, grandson of Boldur and descendant of the Farran Ironbreaker, all revolved around a simple stone book that held the wishes of every generation of dwarf to ever etch their will into the Grate Book.

And so, the tale begins...
Part of ALFA since May 2000.
NWN 2 PC (BG): Layali Mae (Arcane Trickster)
NWN 2 PC (MS): Marius Lobhdain (Druid)
Curmudgeon in IRC wrote:(2:29:40 PM) Curmudgeon: The community wants 24/7 DM coverage, free xp, and a suit of mithral plate mail in every pchest.
Magile
Otyugh
Posts: 920
Joined: Wed Jan 07, 2004 7:00 pm
Location: The Big Nowhere

Re: The Grudgebearer's Oath

Post by Magile »

Finnegan Troolwalker was, by all accounts, a simple, small hin. The description may seem redundant, but to other halflings he was still considered small - a quarterling, at best. As the half-pint to a race of runts, he always tried to think outside the box to get a leg up on others; however, he was guilty of thinking inside the box as well, especially when his younger years involved teasing and bullying. As Finnegan aged, his stunted physical growth merely forced him into accelerated mental development. After all, there is more to it than just fight or flight - complex calculations to learn how many bottles were thrown, profanities were slung and men screaming "Get HIM!" were seemingly left out of this natural instinct.

A lot of the hin's adulthood was spent regretting his childhood. Finnegan knew it was just the usual childhood pranks. Cow tipping. Shop stealing. Granny tripping. Nothing other children hadn't done in the past. What's the point of being a youth if you weren't trying to push the boundaries to see what can and cannot be done?

But there was one prank he always regretted, and up to this point, never knew why it still terrified him.


There wasn't much to be said, once all the unnecessary details were removed. As an adolescence, Finnegan Troolwalker had taken it upon himself to, in the market places of Mirabar, shoplift from a fisherman's stall. Rounding a corner, the petite man's momentum had the large fish (in comparison to his person) strike forward akin to someone swinging a club. Had it actually been a club, he considered after the fact, the predicament would have gone a lot smoother. Instead, a loud slosh of a slap reverberated around the, now oddly quiet, market place. He swore the sound that followed was a bear's growl, if not a demon's cry, but his keen intellect was already explaining to his legs about fight or flight once more, and soon the fish-faced man was out of sight, but never out of mind.

Eventually, the old man's mind returned from his existential daydreaming to the present world. He was an entrepreneur now. That was something to be excited about. It may not have been much, but it was a good racket that went unnoticed. It was over fifty years ago, and he was beginning to simply consider it a trick of his imagination. Who knows what truly happened anymore, anyway?

Attention to the 'Fresh Feesh, Froot & Infarmaytion' stall he had set up a hop, skip, jump and, most importantly, out of view from the Sunset Gate watch guards. Sure, he was moving up in the business world, but that didn't mean he had to move horizontally across it as well - at least, Finn thought, it wasn't in Mirabar. Regardless, he had work to do, and so he began to carve a fresh fish from hardened clay, painstakingly paint every individual scale, place it among the other real in the stall and get back to reading that paper a traveler had brought him. Some daily news from the City of Splendors, yet all the articles read like fiction.

Chair tilt. Legs up. Eyes down. Paper level. Bait set. Now to wait for the next customer.


The regret of his stall's placement would always hit Finnegan about now, as the sun began to set. The Sunset Gate, untrue to its name, did not protect his eyes from the bright goodbye the world received just as it hit dusk. No amount of shielding, whether flesh or otherwise, could prevent the world from going white for the next few minutes. Yet, to his amazement, the blinding glare suddenly became more of a darker shadow - perhaps it was a cloud settling down for the evening. The hairy cloud, to add to the astonishment, seemed to make a noise.


"Ackhyem!" An odd noise, Finnegan considered, for an otherwise noiseless object in the sky. The way the light shone behind the eclipsing, woolly shape made the thing blacker, not clearer. "I think ye ken be of service ta me," it barked out once more "seein' as ye be sellin' yer... in-far-may-tion." It seemed puzzled with the idea, Finn noted, as if it wasn't sure it was the word it had originally thought.

"Ayah, I gotsomeinformation for yah, I'm sureassure I do. Whatdyaneed?" Dammit, Mr. Troolwalker thought, speaking too fast again. It was a nasty habit of his when his brain detected easy money, demanding that his tongue hurry up the process so the coin can be received. The fuzzy shadow seemed to sway slightly, expanding and compressing with sounds of metal, wood and stone celebrating with a dance in some pack. "Troolwalker, bytheby. Forgottotell you myname. It's Finnegan Troolwalker. Just Finn formyfriends." The noises emanating from the misshapen beast had stopped. The squawking from the birds, which Finn never paid attention to before, were absent. Grinding wheels from caravans departing and entering had vacated the area. In the distance, had there been anyone else to witness it, a single individual let out a muffled cough.

A crooked paw departed from the shadowed being and now rested upon the stall itself. Before the wood had time to settle, what looked like a large brick had also been motivated by the other paw to be within viewing distance for the, now worried, hin. The thick stone had looked split - No, it was not thick. It was individual sheets of stone bound together. It was important to something, Finn thought, but it had nothing to do with him.

"I be thinkin' of buyin' one." A pudgy finger pointed toward the stall's wares, lingering by the so-called catch-of-the-day. "I dinnae care which. I trust yer judgement, Finnegan Troolwalker." There was something in the way his name was recited that sent a chill over Finn's body. It sounded like the creature had regurgitated his name, rather than said it. Nevertheless, this was his chance to sell it off, not like the oaf would notice a difference. With some humming and bag rustling to elude to the atmosphere of a sale, he plucked the wooden trout from among the other fish, wrapped it with the heavy brown paper all vendors seem to have available and placed it on the counter top. Its hand had suddenly clasped one end of the wrapped package, but Finnegan assumed he merely had to remind the thing of what it was doing.

"Nononono, my friend!" He feigned a wide smile, placing one hand near the paw of the beast. "Remember, thisisasale! A sale! Yah have to pay coin. And don't forget - yah wanted some information too, right?" Now nod courteously, just like that, and await the payment. No matter how thick it was, it seemed to understand trade. He straightened his back and, with the hand near the beast already, turned it palm-side up.

Trees that were housing hundreds of birds in amnesty from the encounter suddenly evicted all residents in one motion. The sky was a flutter of avian creatures, feathers cascading toward the road. Metaphorical children had their eyes shielded from imaginary mothers. Nature's chaotic noises had deafened the loud 'ka-rak!' that otherwise would have been carried across the wind for miles.

-----------------------------------------------------

There are many misunderstandings that Ivar Farranson, son of Bolgar, grandson of Boldur and descendant of Farran Ironbreaker has, and will have in the future, but this was not one of them. An amount of certainty in how a fish works is very integral in understanding what a fish was, and from what he had witnessed in the small stall, he had had definitely pointed toward the aquatic-based creature. Knowledge of the world was in turmoil, as this fish-shaped, fish-scented object was not, in fact, of flesh and scale. It had never occurred to Ivar Farranson why drift wood existed, but upon examining the now-broken fish carving, he was starting to doubt if all fish were truly made of scales. The mind eventually came to a conclusion that it did not truly matter, as he never ate fish to begin with, and the splintered wooden trout was promptly dropped and forgotten.

"Finnegan Troolwalker." He was reading from the stone tablet, snuffling and rubbing his nose. "On tha third day of the second tenday in Kythorn, 1341 D.R., ye were accused of Trout Slappin' Grolik Farranson, son of Gralak, in tha market place of Mirabar 'round noon." The bushy eyebrows wiggled tentatively on his face, as if worried they may fall off, "And since ye fled, were found guilty of said Trout Slappin'. Yer sentence has now been officially carried out." The stone tablets were shut, concluding fifty five year old grudge. Eventually, he would chisel his emblem among the stone page's runes to signify the task had be complete; however, Ivar felt it best to leave the scene before anyone had the wrong idea.

The 'Fresh Feesh, Froot & Infarmaytion' Stall, that had been set up a hop, skip, jump and, most importantly, out of view from Sunset Gate, having withstood many tests of time, endured the sentencing of Finn the Quarterling, standing a silent vigil for the unconscious hin.
Part of ALFA since May 2000.
NWN 2 PC (BG): Layali Mae (Arcane Trickster)
NWN 2 PC (MS): Marius Lobhdain (Druid)
Curmudgeon in IRC wrote:(2:29:40 PM) Curmudgeon: The community wants 24/7 DM coverage, free xp, and a suit of mithral plate mail in every pchest.
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