Diadems of Promethion
07-09-14, 03:40 PM
Name: Throld Sartet
Pseudonym: -
Titles: -
Age: 68
Race: Dwarf
Hair Color: Red
Eye Color: Green
Height: 150cm (4'11")
Weight: 114kg (251lb)
Details
Occupation: Runekeeper, Loreweaver, Spymaster
Personality: Drunkard, braggart, gambler, lech. Throld maintains a very specific impression for those who might find him in a tavern at high noon on a working day. He advertises himself as a connoisseur of all things beautiful, whether they be food, drink, art, artefact, woman, or story. With the attention span of a butterfly and the loquacity of a spring thrush, he works himself into prominence in any tavern where he chooses to drink, regaling patrons with tales as they buy him tankard after tankard. His haunts are plentiful and varied, for he has spent many a month wandering Alerar and Salvar in search of the best ales and the finest wines - drink is drink, after all, and idle fourth sons of outcast merchant clans can't be choosers. His vice is his greed; have something he wants, and he'll go out of his way to find a way of taking it from you. His redeeming qualities are his absolute loyalty, his unquestionable integrity (in all matters other than his greed), and his ability to quietly look after those he sees in need. All serve to inspire a certain camaraderie amongst the dispirited and the downtrodden likely to find themselves in his suave company.
In reality he is no less a storyteller, but far more calculating in his demeanour. The leering drunkard is but an act, the hours spent in the tavern but an excuse to act blindly besotted when the subject of his interest turns up. His stories are told to empathise and to evoke, drawing out shreds of information and motes of weakness that he can file away for later use, and he has no qualms deviating from the truth to suit his purposes. Thus he is quick to tell the stories of others, or to boast of the deeds he has witnessed, but never once does he speak a word of himself. For all that, his loyalties lie to his clan, to his people, and most of all to those he deems worthy of a tale themselves. He is a well-travelled individual, but uncomfortable anywhere that there is no nearby tavern to spend the night.
Search for the best-dressed dwarf in the low city taverns, and you'll find Throld Sartet spinning his tales and rewriting history as he drinks the room blind.
Appearance: Cleanly shaven and well tailored - a good shirt can sell a story, after all, and the right clothes are every bit as valuable as coin - Throld is on the tall side for a dwarf and equally as bulky. The Oriental cut of his spidersilk robe reveals a rug of short, curly red hairs, over which he wears a vest of expertly-cured auroch hide. Gold chains hang around his neck, silver bangles dangle in his ear, and his exotic wooden clogs are polished to pristine perfection. When expecting danger he turns up in dwarf-forged plate armour and an auroch-hide longcoat to cover it all... because even when fighting for one's life, one must look his absolute best.
Throld himself, however, is a particularly ugly dwarf. Flat of face and square of jaw, his intense green eyes and broad mouth droop downwards as if pulled by gravity. His skin has the colouring and consistency of coal. His brows sag from too much drink, and a permanent five o'clock shadow resides on his chin. His nose is bulbous and red, jutting like a small mound at the centre of his malleable features, and a large wart sits above his left eye. Bristly red hair is kept back in a tight ponytail, more often than not hidden beneath a cloth cap with flaps hanging down almost to his shoulders to hide his cauliflower ears. Corded muscle, the absolute minimum expected of a dwarf, hides beneath the layered fat of a beer belly. But he is particularly fastidious of his personal hygiene, and keeps enough perfume about to ensure that he always smells of aromatic citrus.
Throld's deeply expressive baritone conveys every emotion with ease, from withering irony to the deepest of sympathy.
Belongings
Weapons:
A customised dwarven dragon-belcher that Throld has named Vera after a certain person in his past. Effectively based on a miniaturised matchlock handcannon, Vera integrates a pump action mechanism to reload cartridges into the breech of the weapon. It lacks the firebreathing option of the standard dragon-belcher due to the limited heat tolerance of the reworked iron barrel, and the smaller cartridges necessarily limit its stopping power as well. Vera can fire solid shot to a range of approximately ten metres, or metal pellets with an effective kill cone approximately one metre wide and two deep. Of course, the cartridges can only be fired in order in which they are loaded, which means that Throld must be extremely careful about how he loads his weapon. This is done by pushing cartridges (currently up to two) into Vera's oaken stock, closing the loader, then cocking the mechanism to load the breech. Reloading the weapon is a time-consuming process requiring at least a minute of peace and quiet. Vera's cartridges are not bulky, but are extremely time-consuming to manufacture. At any time Vera loads two solid shot and one pellet cartridge (in that order), and Throld carries two full reloads upon his belt. Vera also mounts a hidden steel bayonet, a little smaller than a shortsword, hidden on a spring mechanism beneath the barrel.
At his waist Throld wears an antique, finely balanced waraxe named Brigitte. Of bearded blade (trailing lower edge, thus increasing cleaving power), the wrought iron head is inscribed with ancient runes tracing the weapon's heritage, whilst the oaken handle is inlaid with intricate decorative patterns and reinforced with iron langets. The head of the axe is approximately the length of Throld's forearm, and its haft the length of his arm as a whole.
Throld carries a pair of iron dirks tucked upon his person as emergency backup weapons.
Armour and Clothing:
Fine quality full-body robe of spidersilk, auroch-hide vest, auroch-hide longcoat, and oaken clogs.
A relatively inexpensive suit of plate armour forged by dwarven smiths from wrought iron. Consists of pauldrons, vambraces, gauntlets, cuirass (back and breastplate), greaves, and sabatons. The complete suit weighs around thirty kilograms, well distributed over the body, and Throld remains able to move freely and run as necessary whilst wearing it.
Books:
In the folds of his longcoat, Throld keeps a small hide-bound book with neither title nor illustration. Handscribed in dark rusty ink is a tale of loss and penance that only he has ever read.
Accessories:
Gold chain around his neck, silver bangles in his ears, and copper rings upon all fingers. Throld is a dwarf of considerable wealth, and not afraid to flaunt it for the right impression.
A spy glass worn on a leather strap about his shoulders, useful for keeping an eye on friend and foe alike.
Skills and Abilities
Runekeeper: Words have power. Throld is trained in that most ancient dwarven craft of runekeeping, although he didn't get far beyond mere dabbling before the strict rituals and hours of grim study numbed his lively mind, and then his family was kicked out of dwarven society altogether. Runekeepers recognise the perils of tapping into the forces of magic in their raw form, and instead capture and harness the magic in mighty runes of power. Runes generally take either of two forms: the spoken rune, wielding lost language to blaze paths of destruction or to restore morale and strength, and the written rune, accumulating magic over long years of dormancy to unleash their power in a single explosive burst. The mightiest of runekeepers are known as runesmiths, for they can craft the runestones that enhance the spoken rune and allow runekeepers to carry with them the written rune; the greatest of runesmiths are known as runelords, who with their great anvils of war are able to cast written runes on the fly. It would be many, many years before Andvar could count himself amongst such company... and in any case, the path there is far too boring for a dashing dwarf such as he.
Spoken Rune: Shocking Words: Throld reaches into his opponent's soul with words that shock them to their very core. The spoken rune manifests as a jolt of arcane electricity arcing directly through their body, causing minor nervous and physical damage and stunning them in place for a couple of seconds. The number of times Throld can use this rune is tied to how well he knows his opponent. For example, if he has only had the chance to observe his opponent for a minute, he might be able to come up with a single word. Given the chance to gather intelligence on an opponent beforehand, however, he may have two or three such words up his sleeve.
Loreweaver: If words have power, then stories hold the keys for life and for death. Throld's incomplete runekeeper training, and his own undirected studies that followed, bestowed upon him a unique gift to imbue artefacts of ancient times with a portion of the mythical powers his imagination might expect them to hold. The more he is able to imprint said lore from his mind upon the Firmament through the act of storytelling, the more powerful the artefacts become. On the other hand, the targets of this ability are limited not only to artefacts from before the Sundering of the Tap, but also those whose purpose and history he can guess at (for the lore magic will not imbue unless it bears a passing resemblance to actual events). Needless to say, they must also remain in his possession for long enough to be repeatedly imbued by his stories, which puts him in conflict with many who would rather appropriate them for other purposes...
Spymaster: If words have power, and if stories hold the keys for life and for death, then truths can topple entire nations. In essence, Throld's truths just come down to knowing enough people, and having enough leverage over them to get their tongues to wag or for their fingers to loosen their grip in his presence. A surprisingly large number of people - man, dwarf, and elf - find themselves in his debt in one way or another, and many are quite happy to lend their aid when necessary. Many even find themselves working for Throld on a regular basis, supporting a cause beneficial either to Clan Sartet or to the dwarves as a whole. Wherever he goes, Throld is able to call on the services of such people loyal to his name.
Diadems of the Dullahan: Throld, though he does his level best not to let it show, is forever haunted by the ghosts of his past. He flaunts the heights of his current status almost as protection against the depths he's plumbed before. The efforts he goes to manipulate people and rewrite history merely mask the desperation with which he seeks his penance. Will successfully recovering the artefacts that doomed his clan stave off the headless knight stalking his shadow? None can tell.
Character History
Throld was born in the dwarven stronghold of Hamdarim, far to the south of Althanas in Austral Dheathain. The fourth of five children to the merchant house of Sartet, Throld led a relatively uneventful childhood. Like many younger sons of dwarven merchant clans, he was given a chance to find his own calling in life rather than forced into support of the family business. Naturally friendly and garrulous, Throld was taken in by the Guild of Runesmiths for apprenticeship, but his inability to devote himself to the long hours of study required soon distanced him from his tutors and his peers. He did, however, gain an appreciation for history, artefacts, and a well-told tale there. The first two, in particular, meshed well with his family's trade in identifying, restoring, and dealing in antiques of historical value.
At least until his family was tasked by the Arl himself to arrange for the safe delivery of a set of priceless artefacts, the Daughters of Mnemosyne, from the elves of Eluriand. Unfortunately the delivery coincided with the first rumblings of Xem'zund's return to Raiaera. The caravan was lost with no survivors somewhere in the Black Desert, the artefacts scattered to the wind amidst the Death Lords who had claimed them, and the fortunes of Clan Sartet plummeted. In a series of related disasters they lost all the goodwill and reputation they had built up over a thousand years of trading, losing their position as the premier antiques dealer in dwarvendom to the upstart Clan Blum. It was not until later that Throld learned that Clan Blum had orchestrated many of the disasters against them, taking advantage of the chaos caused by the loss of the first caravan.
In the end Throld, along with his parents, his three elder brothers (Gorim, Darman, and Adal), and his younger sister Vera, were exiled from Hamdarim and left to start a new life in the unforgiving surface wilds of Dheathain. Rumours of war in both the south and the north drove them to seek refuge first in Corone, then when civil war broke out there as well, in Scara Brae. But the island nations were never truly for them, and with the Corpse War coming to a close they set sail once more, this time for Raiaera and the northern dwarven stronghold of Gunnbad. There they hoped not only to re-establish themselves as respectable merchants - albeit forever tainted by the brand of outcast - but also to seek redemption in the eyes of their peers by unravelling the loss of the Daughters of Mnemosyne and retrieving the artefacts one by one.
On the journey there, however, the dwarves came under attack. Throld's father perished in defiance, and Vera, the apple of all their eyes, was lost to darkness. None of the Sartet brothers ever talk of what happened, but the disaster seared itself forever more in their minds. Throld, the youngest survivor, took Vera's disappearance particularly poorly.
Upon arrival in Gunnbad, the remaining Sartets followed their father's dying wish and set up shop. Eldest Gorim took over day-to-day operations with leadership the Arls themselves would have envied, second son Darman's diplomatic skills stood him in good stead in negotiations with the other outcast merchants and their counterparts in the Guild of Merchants, and third son Adal looked after their accounts with all the mathematical precision of an engineer. Throld's not-entirely-feigned drunken moping persona made him the ideal dwarf for gathering underworld contacts and the tidbits of information they would need to stay one step ahead of the opposition and to prevent another Clan Blum from usurping their business. After establishing a base in everyday commodities, they were soon able to move into the niche of antiques and priceless relics in which their interest lay. The fall of Hamdarim in the south coincided with an influx of extended clan members joining them in Gunnbad, and Gorim welcomed their expertise and their hunger in further expanding his power base.
And a year after arriving in Gunnbad, Throld finally stumbled upon the first positive lead towards the Daughters of Mnemosyne.
Pseudonym: -
Titles: -
Age: 68
Race: Dwarf
Hair Color: Red
Eye Color: Green
Height: 150cm (4'11")
Weight: 114kg (251lb)
Details
Occupation: Runekeeper, Loreweaver, Spymaster
Personality: Drunkard, braggart, gambler, lech. Throld maintains a very specific impression for those who might find him in a tavern at high noon on a working day. He advertises himself as a connoisseur of all things beautiful, whether they be food, drink, art, artefact, woman, or story. With the attention span of a butterfly and the loquacity of a spring thrush, he works himself into prominence in any tavern where he chooses to drink, regaling patrons with tales as they buy him tankard after tankard. His haunts are plentiful and varied, for he has spent many a month wandering Alerar and Salvar in search of the best ales and the finest wines - drink is drink, after all, and idle fourth sons of outcast merchant clans can't be choosers. His vice is his greed; have something he wants, and he'll go out of his way to find a way of taking it from you. His redeeming qualities are his absolute loyalty, his unquestionable integrity (in all matters other than his greed), and his ability to quietly look after those he sees in need. All serve to inspire a certain camaraderie amongst the dispirited and the downtrodden likely to find themselves in his suave company.
In reality he is no less a storyteller, but far more calculating in his demeanour. The leering drunkard is but an act, the hours spent in the tavern but an excuse to act blindly besotted when the subject of his interest turns up. His stories are told to empathise and to evoke, drawing out shreds of information and motes of weakness that he can file away for later use, and he has no qualms deviating from the truth to suit his purposes. Thus he is quick to tell the stories of others, or to boast of the deeds he has witnessed, but never once does he speak a word of himself. For all that, his loyalties lie to his clan, to his people, and most of all to those he deems worthy of a tale themselves. He is a well-travelled individual, but uncomfortable anywhere that there is no nearby tavern to spend the night.
Search for the best-dressed dwarf in the low city taverns, and you'll find Throld Sartet spinning his tales and rewriting history as he drinks the room blind.
Appearance: Cleanly shaven and well tailored - a good shirt can sell a story, after all, and the right clothes are every bit as valuable as coin - Throld is on the tall side for a dwarf and equally as bulky. The Oriental cut of his spidersilk robe reveals a rug of short, curly red hairs, over which he wears a vest of expertly-cured auroch hide. Gold chains hang around his neck, silver bangles dangle in his ear, and his exotic wooden clogs are polished to pristine perfection. When expecting danger he turns up in dwarf-forged plate armour and an auroch-hide longcoat to cover it all... because even when fighting for one's life, one must look his absolute best.
Throld himself, however, is a particularly ugly dwarf. Flat of face and square of jaw, his intense green eyes and broad mouth droop downwards as if pulled by gravity. His skin has the colouring and consistency of coal. His brows sag from too much drink, and a permanent five o'clock shadow resides on his chin. His nose is bulbous and red, jutting like a small mound at the centre of his malleable features, and a large wart sits above his left eye. Bristly red hair is kept back in a tight ponytail, more often than not hidden beneath a cloth cap with flaps hanging down almost to his shoulders to hide his cauliflower ears. Corded muscle, the absolute minimum expected of a dwarf, hides beneath the layered fat of a beer belly. But he is particularly fastidious of his personal hygiene, and keeps enough perfume about to ensure that he always smells of aromatic citrus.
Throld's deeply expressive baritone conveys every emotion with ease, from withering irony to the deepest of sympathy.
Belongings
Weapons:
A customised dwarven dragon-belcher that Throld has named Vera after a certain person in his past. Effectively based on a miniaturised matchlock handcannon, Vera integrates a pump action mechanism to reload cartridges into the breech of the weapon. It lacks the firebreathing option of the standard dragon-belcher due to the limited heat tolerance of the reworked iron barrel, and the smaller cartridges necessarily limit its stopping power as well. Vera can fire solid shot to a range of approximately ten metres, or metal pellets with an effective kill cone approximately one metre wide and two deep. Of course, the cartridges can only be fired in order in which they are loaded, which means that Throld must be extremely careful about how he loads his weapon. This is done by pushing cartridges (currently up to two) into Vera's oaken stock, closing the loader, then cocking the mechanism to load the breech. Reloading the weapon is a time-consuming process requiring at least a minute of peace and quiet. Vera's cartridges are not bulky, but are extremely time-consuming to manufacture. At any time Vera loads two solid shot and one pellet cartridge (in that order), and Throld carries two full reloads upon his belt. Vera also mounts a hidden steel bayonet, a little smaller than a shortsword, hidden on a spring mechanism beneath the barrel.
At his waist Throld wears an antique, finely balanced waraxe named Brigitte. Of bearded blade (trailing lower edge, thus increasing cleaving power), the wrought iron head is inscribed with ancient runes tracing the weapon's heritage, whilst the oaken handle is inlaid with intricate decorative patterns and reinforced with iron langets. The head of the axe is approximately the length of Throld's forearm, and its haft the length of his arm as a whole.
Throld carries a pair of iron dirks tucked upon his person as emergency backup weapons.
Armour and Clothing:
Fine quality full-body robe of spidersilk, auroch-hide vest, auroch-hide longcoat, and oaken clogs.
A relatively inexpensive suit of plate armour forged by dwarven smiths from wrought iron. Consists of pauldrons, vambraces, gauntlets, cuirass (back and breastplate), greaves, and sabatons. The complete suit weighs around thirty kilograms, well distributed over the body, and Throld remains able to move freely and run as necessary whilst wearing it.
Books:
In the folds of his longcoat, Throld keeps a small hide-bound book with neither title nor illustration. Handscribed in dark rusty ink is a tale of loss and penance that only he has ever read.
Accessories:
Gold chain around his neck, silver bangles in his ears, and copper rings upon all fingers. Throld is a dwarf of considerable wealth, and not afraid to flaunt it for the right impression.
A spy glass worn on a leather strap about his shoulders, useful for keeping an eye on friend and foe alike.
Skills and Abilities
Runekeeper: Words have power. Throld is trained in that most ancient dwarven craft of runekeeping, although he didn't get far beyond mere dabbling before the strict rituals and hours of grim study numbed his lively mind, and then his family was kicked out of dwarven society altogether. Runekeepers recognise the perils of tapping into the forces of magic in their raw form, and instead capture and harness the magic in mighty runes of power. Runes generally take either of two forms: the spoken rune, wielding lost language to blaze paths of destruction or to restore morale and strength, and the written rune, accumulating magic over long years of dormancy to unleash their power in a single explosive burst. The mightiest of runekeepers are known as runesmiths, for they can craft the runestones that enhance the spoken rune and allow runekeepers to carry with them the written rune; the greatest of runesmiths are known as runelords, who with their great anvils of war are able to cast written runes on the fly. It would be many, many years before Andvar could count himself amongst such company... and in any case, the path there is far too boring for a dashing dwarf such as he.
Spoken Rune: Shocking Words: Throld reaches into his opponent's soul with words that shock them to their very core. The spoken rune manifests as a jolt of arcane electricity arcing directly through their body, causing minor nervous and physical damage and stunning them in place for a couple of seconds. The number of times Throld can use this rune is tied to how well he knows his opponent. For example, if he has only had the chance to observe his opponent for a minute, he might be able to come up with a single word. Given the chance to gather intelligence on an opponent beforehand, however, he may have two or three such words up his sleeve.
Loreweaver: If words have power, then stories hold the keys for life and for death. Throld's incomplete runekeeper training, and his own undirected studies that followed, bestowed upon him a unique gift to imbue artefacts of ancient times with a portion of the mythical powers his imagination might expect them to hold. The more he is able to imprint said lore from his mind upon the Firmament through the act of storytelling, the more powerful the artefacts become. On the other hand, the targets of this ability are limited not only to artefacts from before the Sundering of the Tap, but also those whose purpose and history he can guess at (for the lore magic will not imbue unless it bears a passing resemblance to actual events). Needless to say, they must also remain in his possession for long enough to be repeatedly imbued by his stories, which puts him in conflict with many who would rather appropriate them for other purposes...
Spymaster: If words have power, and if stories hold the keys for life and for death, then truths can topple entire nations. In essence, Throld's truths just come down to knowing enough people, and having enough leverage over them to get their tongues to wag or for their fingers to loosen their grip in his presence. A surprisingly large number of people - man, dwarf, and elf - find themselves in his debt in one way or another, and many are quite happy to lend their aid when necessary. Many even find themselves working for Throld on a regular basis, supporting a cause beneficial either to Clan Sartet or to the dwarves as a whole. Wherever he goes, Throld is able to call on the services of such people loyal to his name.
Diadems of the Dullahan: Throld, though he does his level best not to let it show, is forever haunted by the ghosts of his past. He flaunts the heights of his current status almost as protection against the depths he's plumbed before. The efforts he goes to manipulate people and rewrite history merely mask the desperation with which he seeks his penance. Will successfully recovering the artefacts that doomed his clan stave off the headless knight stalking his shadow? None can tell.
Character History
Throld was born in the dwarven stronghold of Hamdarim, far to the south of Althanas in Austral Dheathain. The fourth of five children to the merchant house of Sartet, Throld led a relatively uneventful childhood. Like many younger sons of dwarven merchant clans, he was given a chance to find his own calling in life rather than forced into support of the family business. Naturally friendly and garrulous, Throld was taken in by the Guild of Runesmiths for apprenticeship, but his inability to devote himself to the long hours of study required soon distanced him from his tutors and his peers. He did, however, gain an appreciation for history, artefacts, and a well-told tale there. The first two, in particular, meshed well with his family's trade in identifying, restoring, and dealing in antiques of historical value.
At least until his family was tasked by the Arl himself to arrange for the safe delivery of a set of priceless artefacts, the Daughters of Mnemosyne, from the elves of Eluriand. Unfortunately the delivery coincided with the first rumblings of Xem'zund's return to Raiaera. The caravan was lost with no survivors somewhere in the Black Desert, the artefacts scattered to the wind amidst the Death Lords who had claimed them, and the fortunes of Clan Sartet plummeted. In a series of related disasters they lost all the goodwill and reputation they had built up over a thousand years of trading, losing their position as the premier antiques dealer in dwarvendom to the upstart Clan Blum. It was not until later that Throld learned that Clan Blum had orchestrated many of the disasters against them, taking advantage of the chaos caused by the loss of the first caravan.
In the end Throld, along with his parents, his three elder brothers (Gorim, Darman, and Adal), and his younger sister Vera, were exiled from Hamdarim and left to start a new life in the unforgiving surface wilds of Dheathain. Rumours of war in both the south and the north drove them to seek refuge first in Corone, then when civil war broke out there as well, in Scara Brae. But the island nations were never truly for them, and with the Corpse War coming to a close they set sail once more, this time for Raiaera and the northern dwarven stronghold of Gunnbad. There they hoped not only to re-establish themselves as respectable merchants - albeit forever tainted by the brand of outcast - but also to seek redemption in the eyes of their peers by unravelling the loss of the Daughters of Mnemosyne and retrieving the artefacts one by one.
On the journey there, however, the dwarves came under attack. Throld's father perished in defiance, and Vera, the apple of all their eyes, was lost to darkness. None of the Sartet brothers ever talk of what happened, but the disaster seared itself forever more in their minds. Throld, the youngest survivor, took Vera's disappearance particularly poorly.
Upon arrival in Gunnbad, the remaining Sartets followed their father's dying wish and set up shop. Eldest Gorim took over day-to-day operations with leadership the Arls themselves would have envied, second son Darman's diplomatic skills stood him in good stead in negotiations with the other outcast merchants and their counterparts in the Guild of Merchants, and third son Adal looked after their accounts with all the mathematical precision of an engineer. Throld's not-entirely-feigned drunken moping persona made him the ideal dwarf for gathering underworld contacts and the tidbits of information they would need to stay one step ahead of the opposition and to prevent another Clan Blum from usurping their business. After establishing a base in everyday commodities, they were soon able to move into the niche of antiques and priceless relics in which their interest lay. The fall of Hamdarim in the south coincided with an influx of extended clan members joining them in Gunnbad, and Gorim welcomed their expertise and their hunger in further expanding his power base.
And a year after arriving in Gunnbad, Throld finally stumbled upon the first positive lead towards the Daughters of Mnemosyne.