Characters: The Irregulars
Return to Tegel Manor (2005-2009)
Six brave adventurers set out to solve the curious happenings of the ancient manse, Tegel Manor, and the dark and tangled trees of the Dreadwood. As their story begins to unfold so many questions are yet unanswered, so many mysteries unsolved.
Avery McIlHenny
Rescued by Dan the Dim from a shipwreck nearly a decade ago, Avery grew up in the confines of the Dagda orphanage. He barely survived his ordeals at sea and the loss of his family in the process. Avery has little recollection of the time before the orphanage. He grew up a sickly child, by dwarf standards, not putting on much weight and his beard has yet to fully grown in. By Avery’s standards the food served in the orphanage was horrible, either portage or mush, neither of which is appealing to a dwarf let alone any hominoid. He was teased often being called a beardless Gnome or Halfling by the other orphans and towns folk. This often resulted in the other children with black eyes. It was only after the town experienced a string of disappearances of cooling pies and other baked good that Avery started to fill out and his beard grow in.
Over the last several holidays Avery has had the opportunity to help prepare various meals excited over the spices and dishes that where prepared. Lately he has acquired his own set of cooking utensils and dabbles with preparing any dish that seems the least bit appetizing. Most would say that he over spices to the point of poison and his combinations of “food” leave a lot to be desired. Avery has recently started to venture outside of town gathering all kinds of ingredients including rodents, insects, moulds and wild mushrooms.
Not truly knowing his family name Avery has taken on the famous McIlHenny family name as his own claiming to be a descendant of the famous fighting chefs. Avery has a typical dwarf temper, never one to turn down a meal or a pint and always out to have others try his latest kitchen creation.
Ronic
Things would be a lot less complicated if I could remember anything prior to my enslavement by the minions of Harek Bloodaxe. Unfortunately, my earliest memory is a vivid image of a thick wooden spoke on a massive, horizontal wheel. I pushed the spoke each day until my feet and hands were bloodied, my body ached, my skin blistered under the heat of the sun and the whips of my captors, and my mind went black with the boredom of endless repetition. I never spoke to the other scraggy captives pushing the adjacent spokes of the giant wheel.
I couldn't forget that memory if I wanted to. It was my life, hour after hour, day after day for uncountable months. The orcs and foul undead creatures that composed the forces of Harek Bloodaxe's army had no problem forcing even very young children into service when there was work to be done. They used any means necessary to ensure that the wheel creaked steadily along on its endless circular journey. For me there was no war, no good versus evil. There was a wheel, a spoke, and pain. A series of ropes, pulleys, and gears connected the axel of the massive wheel to a wide belt with iron buckets attached to it. The buckets rose with the turning of the wheel through a crack in the dusty earth. Less fortunate slaves toiled below ground filling the buckets with whatever minerals the earth would surrender. Such was life before General Axeworthy and the heroes of the realm defeated Harek.
Many of my fellow slaves were killed shortly before the fall of Harek. I would have surely been among the slaughtered had I not been rescued by Ellindell and Aryishia Farshot, my parents. Are they my flesh and blood? They saved me from death and raised me as their own. However, I do not appear to be fully elven so how can they both be my parents? Memory of my early childhood eludes me, leaving me with the reality that I may never know my true heritage. To this day, they refuse to answer questions about my origins insisting that they are my parents. I tried to explain to them that it is the mystery that drives my desire to know the truth, not the need for any other parents. Either they are just being extremely stubborn or they are trying to protect me from something.
My parents bribed the orcs with a large sum of gold to release me from the slave camp. I don't know how a fletcher acquired such a large sum of currency during a time of general poverty. In fact, I know of only one source of wealth capable of producing that much gold, and it resides in Tegel Manor. In addition, I cannot overlook the fact that I am driven towards the order of Paladins like the lineage of the Manor. Perhaps there is a connection. Perhaps my imagination has gotten the best of me.
Evil continues to infest the entire region. I fear it has infiltrated Tegel Village as well. It seems impossible that a lawful society ruled by the forces of good can ever regain control of this area. It certainly isn't a fair fight at the current time. If I am to help, I must attain skill and power. Tegel Manor is a good place to start. My gut tells me that my destiny is tied to the Manor. And if my gut is wrong ... I'll always have my music.
Rukhs
The ogre, whose birth name is Zern, was born in foothills of the Shadowyarn Mountains in the area known as the Vile March, a wild and desolate land ruled by the overlord Grarg Dwarfstomper. His parents belonged to the Black Heart warband, and it was expected that their son would grow to become a great warrior. He was small for his age, but not unusually so.
Early in his life, Zern's mother realized that her son had very poor distance vision, a death sentence in the competitive training ogres undertake to become warriors and members of the tribe. In teaching her son to hide his disability, Zern's mother also realized that her son was unusually smart. While other ogre children were torturing dwarf prisoners, Zern would draw pictures in the sand with sticks and collect rocks of different minerals. Zern quickly learned to hide his interests and pretend to be a normal ogre boy. He even escaped detection at javelin throwing by memorizing the shapes and locations of the targets the night before his coming of age ceremony.
During this time, Zern made another discovery. At first assigned to and then later volunteering to feed the dwarven prisoners taken on Vile March raids, Zern befriended an old dwarven warrior, Billi. The grizzled veteran, familiar with the basics of the ogre language, taught Zern many dwarven words, eventually telling him of dwarven history and heroes. Zern was instantly fascinated. The ogre even bought some old dwarven books being sold by a raider returning from the destruction of a nearby village. Secretly, and with the help of his friend, Zern learned to read the dwarven language.
It was at the time of his coming of age ceremony that Zern made a life-changing decision. After being offered acceptance into the warband with the honorific Bookwurm, Zern declined, invoking instead an ancient and little-used rite. He declared himself Adhun, or alone. This rite was typically invoked when the son of a warchief wished to leave the tribe and form his own clan because the ogre population in the area was growing too numerous. Usually, the warchief's son would be granted ownership of the appropriate number of ogre men and women to start the new tribe. In Zern's case, he had no rights to companionship, so he left alone. Zern was exiled by Grarg Dwarfstomper, and his name was stricken from the records of the Black Heart warband. In abandoning his tribe, Zern forfeited the rights to his name taking instead the dwarven word for ogre, Rukhs.
From his homeland, Rukhs made his way across the Shadowyarn Mountains, stopping to visit several dwarven villages. At the home of Billi, Rukhs told his widow of the dwarf's capture, torture and death. So moved was Billi's widow of the ogre's kindness that she gave him a weathered stone tablet. The tablet told of an ancient dwarven expedition to the Reaches during the Second Age called the migration of the Bluestone dwarves. This expedition sought mithral on the northern shores of the Inner Sea. She told Rukhs that Billi had often spoken of making an expedition to find the Bluestone dwarves once his military career was over. Now, she told Rukhs, that adventure was his. Years passed. Rukhs undertook extensive study mastering the ancient dwarven dialect and learning the ways of his adopted race. Finally, the time for adventure had come.
Making his way east, Rukhs finds himself in Tegel Village. Just west of that strange town, an ancient ruin lies in a swampy moor. Untended since the Second Age, it shows great promise to be the homestead of the Bluestone dwarves. An initial foray almost ends in disaster as Rukhs is ambushed by a party of hostile orcs. Two subsequent attempts to get to the ruins end the same way. Why are the orcs guarding the ruins? His poor eyesight and the general distrust of the villagers have given the ogre no choice but wait. Quietly, Rukh studies his books in the local pub waiting for adventurers to aid him.
Thistledown
Thistledown is a fey creature of the court of Queen Phoebe of the Eldritch Woods. In human terms, the Eldritch Woods is tiny, just a sliver of the Dreadwood where the Darnby River forks before cascading into the Inner Sea. But to Thistledown, this small copse is her entire world.
Thistledown was born on a Midsummer's Eve seven years ago, a sprite in service to her queen. Her days are spent guarding the fairy ring, a small circle of stones around the base of a hollow hill. While her queen, the court and the night fey sleep, Thistledown "guards" the forest, which mostly consists of playing tree tag with the other sprites, tormenting squirrels and the occasional human visitor, eating nectar, and frolicking. Each night, as the queen wakes, Thistledown makes her way to the ring and watches the splendor of the evening's court comes into session. After some dancing and a few words from the queen, Thistledown usually falls asleep to the sound of music, soft and faint, floating up to her perch high in the trees. Near dawn, she wakes. The sound of merriment has died to the sound of rushes blowing in the wind. The day creatures of the forest are starting to stir, and Thistledown assumes her post.
The human reckoning of time does not adequately measure the passage of days and months and years in the fairy world. But, to the best of her recall, Thistledown noticed a change in her queen several months ago. It was subtle at first. The queen, always being given gifts by the denizens of the woods, was wearing a necklace which shone in a blue-black light. Each night, the darkness grew and each night the court became more somber and lethargic. Even her fellow sprites seemed to spend more time during the day napping in the sunshine than playing amongst the boughs. Only Thistledown saw the transformation.
One night, with trembling wings, Thistledown approached the queen. Timidly, she reported what she had observed. The queen looked up, her head had been drooping as Thistledown spoke. Phoebe's words were clear and strong, but with an edge not heard before. "Thistledown, you have called me false. For that, you are banished from the Eldritch Woods!" With that proclamation, the queen fell fast asleep. As her guards and retainers began to drop in a catatonic slumber, Thistledown fled. Out of the woods she soared until she spied a human village. An ugly, sprawling mess of homes and animals. For three days, she circled the town. Each time she tried to return to the Eldritch Woods, she felt sleep starting to rush over her, and she fled. At night, she dreamt of snakes attacking her queen. Not the friendly snakes of the forest, but huge misshapen creatures from deep within the bowels of the earth. Finally, she entered Tegel Village.
In a rush, she headed to the human's meeting place, the White Horsed Sleigh. She told her story to the human leader, as he poured her some nectar from a large spout. After a few sips of the brew, Thistledown slept. When she awoke, a hundred humans had crowded in to see her. So she has stayed for the past days. Drinking the human brew, which seems to keep the evil dreams at bay, and telling her story to the humans, begging them to help. Her queen is under an evil enchantment. Someone must help her break the curse.
| Evan Granger | Hune Grimhaft |
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| 76% Done | Information lost. Or was it? Stolen? |