You poke your head into the scholar's tent, to find him pouring over parchments by the light of an oil lamp. The old dwarf is dressed solely in a loincloth, exposing the runed tattoos that cover his entire body. He doesn't notice your entrance until you cough.
"Oh! Hullo! You scared me there! I wasn't expecting any visitors at this hour, but I suppose I did promise you my story, didn't I? Come, come, sit! Let me put on something more presentable. It's nice to get the cool breeze on the tattoos when they start to ache."
Donnar shrugs on a nightgown, and sets a teapot to boil. "Can I get you a cup? It's not easy to get tea while in the field, so I carry a supply with me."
He sits down, listening to the water come to a boil. A minute passes before he says anything. "I'm trying to decide where to start. You see, most races are focused on the achievement of the individual; their life stories begin at their birth. This is not the case with dwarves. If you ask a dwarf what his qualifications are, he will list the accomplishments of his father, and his father before him, and his father before him."
"My great-grandfather, Valdek Hammerfist, was an armorsmith, one of the best in the empire. So skilled was he, that he personally armoured the emperor's personal guard. As the story goes, he never used a hammer, preferring to beat the metal into shape with his fist, hence our clan's name. His three sons were each a third as skilled as he, but each in a different area. Indur, in armorsmithing, Roral in weaponsmithing, and my grandfather, Azbar, in runesmithing."
"A dwarf does not measure himself against his peers; he measures himself against his ancestors. If a dwarf's great-grandfather slew 100 orcs, then the dwarf will strive to slay 200. If his grandfather built a house on a hill, he will carve his house from the hill. And if a dwarf's father built a statue to the gods, and he cannot raise one ten times as large, he is a failure."
"Valdek, bless his beard, could not runesmith for a pile of gold, so he gave my grandfather tutoring he never afforded to the rest of his children. Roral and Indur would always live in the shadow of their father, but Azbar excelled in his own field. He started a business runing weapons and armor, which would quickly expand. He passed it down to my father, Torult, his only son. Together, they would create entirely new runes, and the business prospered, raking in a tidy fortune for my family."
"A hundred and-EEEEEEEEEEEEEEE Ah, the tea is ready." He pulls two mugs from his traveling chest, and pours in the hot water, continuing his story as he does.
"A hundred and twenty nine years ago, I was born to Torult and Eiki Hammerfist, bless their beards, in the mountainhome of Kembohr. I was the third child, always the quiet one. I prefered my books to the swordplay of my brothers and sisters. I would much rather read about the respiratory system than play 'Bash The Orc'. Even from that early age, I had an interest in the body. Such an interesting mystery, how six races can be so different, but yet, on the inside, so similar. Do you take sugar in your tea?"
He hands you your tea, sits back down, and stirs his own mug thoughtfully for a moment.
"A Hammerfist, becoming a physician? Unacceptable. My father would not allow any son of his to not study the family trade, so I worked in the smithy, learning the art of runesmithy. I was quite good, even for a Hammerfist, but something was missing. Dwarves reach maturity at 35, and that is when a dwarf chooses his own path. If he goes his own way, as I did, then he is given a small stipend. I spent it on physician school. I chose to leave the dwarven mountains for the plains of humanity. Dwarven physician schools are rare, expensive and can take about 30 years to complete. Human schools are much cheaper, and shorter."
"Those five years were very hard. I didn't realize that anyone could learn so much so fast. But I did. I won't lie, I did not do well in my classes, but I graduated, and got a decent job working for a human doctor named Perren Fullbright, a man who was old when I met him. He specialized in multi-racial clients, and had a passion for 'solving the ultimate question: aging'. He was no mage, but he could give a seventy year old the speed, strength and... virility," he says, waggling his eyebrows, "of a man twenty years younger."
"I worked under him for almost twenty years, until he passed on, leaving me his notes and his practice. I continued the trade, and it prospered while I was at the helm. But after a few years, I began to have slight tremors in my hands. At first, it was nothing, but it quickly became irritating and interfered with my work. I scoured all of the medical texts I could find, but I could find no mention of anything that matched my symptoms in any human library. I resolved that this must be a dwarven illness, and returned to my home."
"It's called 'Pebble Quake'. A rare disease, with no discernable cause or cure. In just a few decades, I would completely lose control of my arms."
"When a dwarf is depressed, he drinks. When a dwarf cannot overcome an obstacle, he drinks. He'll drink besides that, but you get my point. I drank, and I drank hard."
"My father always used to say that a good strong ale loosens up all your muscles, including your brain. He wasn't wrong, that time. I had an idea. A wonderful, terrible idea. An idea that would change my life forever."
"One of the first runes I learned to smith was a stability rune. It traditionally is used still the unsteady hand of a novice swordsman. And so I thought, why not still my own hand? I said my goodbyes to my family, and returned to the plains, but not before copying down some rune designs."
"The first night back, I sat at my desk, with a vial of ink and a needle. With tremors in my hand from more than my illness, I picked up the needle, dipped it in the ink, and began to trace the stability rune on the back of my left hand. Then, when I was finished, I switched to my right hand."
He puts down his tea, and holds up the backs of his palms for you to see. They are tattooed with a faded black ink.
"The shakes went away! I wrote many letters to dwarven physicians detailing my success, but I was generally considered a crackpot. There was no proof I had had Pebble Quake, so no proof that it had worked. I didn't mind too much. My patients kept coming, and my business expanded. I continued my experiments with runesmithing tattoos in private, only on myself, to mixed success. I was a happy man."
"Then, seven years ago, I lost it all. I was a hundred and twenty-two, so this was about thirty five years after I cured myself. An elderly dwarf came in with an advanced case of Pebble Quake, having heard of my tale many years ago. He begged me to do something, so I broke out my tattoo kit. At first, it worked like a charm. Then, a few days later, his hands began to swell, and turn green. He was having a terrible allergic reaction to the ink, so I had to amputate the hands. Having only done a handful of amputations, his wounds got infected, and he died a few weeks later."
"His family sued me for malpractice, and I lost most of my fortune and my practice. I wandered for a while. I eventually pulled in some favours, and got an in with this mercenary company."
He sips his tea. "And that's my story."
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Topic: Mercenary Commanders, a Multiplayer Strategy and Roleplaying Game (OOC) (Read 4682 times)