The warm tainted contents of the meat pie spread quickly over copper skin like the gripping tentacles of a kraken pulling a laden ship down into the sea, searing its bane into open pores. An unknown poison within its contents not only seared like napalm, but numbed and culled Garron into a spinning vortex of involuntary hallucination. Viridian eyes glazed over, pupils dilating, and the mercenary was tossed into an adolescent memory; back into Concordia, when trying times and a hunger to prove himself as a young man had taken precedence, as it does with every growing boy looking for approval from their idols.

Torgrin gazed down over him with a sly look in eyes that were as dark and sharp as obsidian. A piercing gaze was bordered by a face red and rough with healed scars collected over many a year of battle, and long wild scarlet hair drenched in curls looked as if it rarely ever met a brush or comb. The halfling smiled, parting his bushy facial hair like a stage curtain with a row of crooked teeth and offered his large hand down to muss up Garron's hair, as he always did when the young man accomplished something for the first time. Pride sparkled in Torgrin's ebon eyes. Those sparks didn't come easily putting flint to steel. Garron spent a great deal of time scarring the dagger, and chipping chunks of flint into nothingness within fingers nicked and bleeding. Finally a blue spark fell over the dry bark and broken branches piled for a cook fire that Torgrin had taught him to find under brush and tree, then stack squarely to optimize burn. A meager stream of white smoke arose signaling Garron's long awaited billowing banner of victory while his mother stood in the copse backdrop watching over the two; a slight glimmer of pride formed in her own judging eyes.

As far as Garron was concerned, Torgin Oarhell was his father, and Torgrin would forever see Garron as a son. Being a significant role-model since Garron drew his first breath and met the crisp clear night with shrill wales from blossoming lungs, Torgrin felt a paternal connection with the child, dubbing himself a life-long protector and teacher. To this day, Garron knew little about his birth-father, for his mother had felt it best to keep her son in the dark about the Salvarian bloodline, detouring Garron's attention elsewhere when his questions arose. And they did indeed arise often. Through the formative years of youth, Garron had sought out the halfling for advice and direction when answers could not be found in his own way.

The dwarf hailed from northern Alerar, having spent his early years underground overseeing his family pound away relentlessly at stone for some sort of asset beneath mountains millennial solid. Long sweltering days and nights seemed an endless damnation for such little shards of metals for some ridiculous Lord to fondle away, adding to his own riches and leaving those that actually put the exhausting labor in to keel over with rumbling bellies. Not at all wishing to follow in his family's doomed footsteps, Torgrin played the stowaway on the first supply cog southeast to Corone where he met Garron's pregnant mother in Underwood. The two became quick friends after his introduction to not only her, but yet another chapter written with drunken foolishness. His vulgar obnoxiousness had been a refreshing release from the normal routines for Nuana, and he too was attracted to her personality and drive to be the best at anything she attempted. Torgrin valued a tough woman, more-so than Nuana could probably imagine at that time.

Gruff and rough as the stone itself, the voice of Torgrin lightly tugged at the frayed strings of Garron's hallucination, fizzling out the throes of intoxicated purgatory. A dull white to a blank darkness, Garron grasped at the outer edges of his mind trying to scrabble back to reality from the visions to which he was falling. His voice echoed from a distance, barely discernable on the saltine wind. Falling was more of a reality than he had hoped, watching the wonderment of crumbling wood pulling away as he crashed back-first through muffling rotted deck and sped dead-weight to the sharp earthly daggers of the crag below through cool, blue-green eyes. Salt-stained stone smoothed with centuries of wind and water honing rushed up and plowed into his back, tearing leather and flesh like burning meteorites plummeting into atmosphere and branding the ancient soil of Althanas with no discrimination of where it chose to land in mind. Craters dug into muscle and muscle sheared against bone, and Garron met the ground with a resounding thud and an ear-shattering protest of iron under the entirety of his weight. Solid forging of Garron's simplistic warhammer thankfully saved him from a future of eating meals through hallowed bamboo, protecting his spine and rear skull from a crippling fate.

Dancing on the feeble brim of consciousness, Garron focused away from the pain, garnished heavily with an intoxicated reprieve. Shifting silhouettes darted between the splintered pilings bracing the dock above, and poured over stone like liquid snakes. It was difficult to focus on to even one of the distorted blackened silk ribbons streaming in shells of lithe bodies. Spinning circular portals just large enough to transport a peculiar individual glazed in wickedly hypnotic violet static, branching out and blooming randomly, black as the void and just as relentless. He witnessed long, slender ears wrapped inward against the skull as soon as new bodies emerged through nothingness, marking them as some sort of Elven ancestry, but their pigment and garb flagged a far more sinister kinship exotic to him.

Several slithered quickly into position around the broken man, flashing a dull gleam from each individual's ring finger and the shrill flash of steel that was as cold as ice to the touch, while a second group moved up the embankment. Garron's flooding emotions welled up; vehemence bristled into a crimson cyclone all its own. Feeling as if he were experiencing an astral projection out of flesh, the Son of Winter felt himself look down over his own riddled body gushing life-blood and let loose the gates of self-control, releasing his rage to limb and iron. A tsunami of heightened energy and strength burst forth, he found the haft of his warhammer snug at home in hungry palms; worn leather beneath boots bit into the terrain, and Garron dove into the fray amid the dancing, flitting shadows…