Part Two: Characters of the Diamond Throne
CHRIS SIMS
Paushen Pugwhistle A sibeccai with a faen name, Paushen has a story that really begins in the late days of the giants’ war against the dramojh, around the Common Year 1389, when the settlement that would later evolve into the city of Erdaenos was but a depot on the giantish supply lines. This place, populated by giants and their sibeccai servants, free faen, and humans, provided goods and a rear position where battle-weary troops could refresh themselves before returning to the front lines. The area enjoyed not only a good view of the war front in the Bitter Peaks, but also the cover of an arm of the Harrowdeep. Unfortunately, dramojh spies uncovered the depot’s location and engaged in a brutal, flanking counterattack against it in the winter of the Common Year 1390. The giants of Erdaenos, as the repository was already named (after an obscure faen deity of secrets), died to the last. All other forces were routed, while any who stood to fight were killed. A large group of sibeccai retreated into the Harrowdeep, led there by faen allies. These were Paushen’s ancestors. Paushen was apparently born among the dwindling Harrowdeep sibeccai on the twenty-second day of Flameleaf, Common Year 1719, near the faen settlement of Whistlebark. At the time, many of the remaining sibeccai in the faen homeland were leaving, knowing their kind would not survive without fresh bloodlines with which to mix. Paushen’s unknown parents were among these pilgrims. Like many before him, the stagnation of the blood among the Harrowdeep sibeccai showed on Paushen—he was born deformed and tiny. Perhaps for this reason, Paushen’s parents rejected him, leaving the infant to succumb in the chill of the harsh, northern autumn. Loresong faen children playing among the fallen leaves found the infant. One of the kids, a girl name Shaouri, was the daughter of the local and renowned ollamh lorekeeper of Whistlebark—Haem Pugwhistle. Shaouri convinced her father to keep the sibeccai newborn, whom she called Paushen. The name means, quite literally, “puppy,” for “pau” is Faen for hound and “-shen” is a suffix added to anything that is small and cute. Haem, in his wisdom and power, saw the promise of greatness in the little sibeccai. The stars had been just right when Paushen was delivered to the village. So, the Pugwhistle clan of Whistlebark cared for Paushen, who never grew to dislike his childish name. As Paushen grew, his adoptive father discovered the youngster’s knack for remembering things—even things the pup had not been told. Haem trained the young sibeccai in his art, the craft of the akashic. That is, the old lorekeeper did so when “Puppy” wasn’t running about the forest of Whistlebark with Shaouri and her cohorts. A curiosity to the faen, Paushen was treated as something special and grew to think highly of himself. His supernatural abilities to tap consciousness allowed him to
mine his racial nature without a sibeccai teacher. This served to reinforce his pride, ironically strengthening his feelings of inferiority at the same time—Paushen is not a “true” sibeccai in his own mind. By his naming ceremony, at 20 years of age per faen tradition, Paushen was as sprightly as any loresong faen, as genteel as his station as a lorekeeper’s son demanded, a bit self-centered, and only slightly taller than a faen man. With a great desire to serve his community, Paushen trained as a quick-footed warrior, even helping to put down a group of displaced rhodin raiders from the Bitter Peaks. Such activities garnered him adulation and respect, the praise of his father, and even the half-jest title of “Wolf Knight of Whistlebark.” Yet, the dwarf sibeccai had a growing feeling of sadness—although he was among loved ones, he was alone. Haem advised the youth to leave Whistlebark and seek his destiny, but Paushen could not. Fate had bigger plans. In the Common Year 1751, a small group of litorian mercenaries, led by the inscrutable warrior Vanian Kaldori, passed near Whistlebark. With them they carried a young human girl who, at age nine, though not a runechild, bore a runic birthmark on her chest. Gurta Ritter, as she was named, had been kidnapped from her uncle’s fiefdom of Grunwald, just south of the Harrowdeep. While the forces of Whistlebark did not engage these trespassers, they did watch. When Gurta’s older brother, Taodric, and his party caught up to Kaldori and the mercenaries, Paushen impulsively joined the fray with some of his faen companions. The litorians were defeated, Kaldori fled, and Gurta was rescued. Of Taodric’s original party, only he survived. Gurta, it turned out, had the potential to be a powerful mind witch, and Taodric had already focused his innate skill with magic as a mage blade. Why Kaldori and his mercenaries had kidnapped the lass was a mystery, but Paushen felt a strong connection to her. When Gurta and her brother made to leave Whistlebark a few days later, Paushen went with them with his adoptive father’s blessing. The sibeccai has been their companion ever since. Many years later, during a visit to Whistlebark, Paushen and his companions sought out the source of some mysterious disappearances and goblin sightings in the western Harrowdeep. They traced the events to a hidden keep in the treeless hills near the great forest. Aided by Paushen’s sister, Shaouri, who was now a greenbond, the group successfully infiltrated the hold. The party defeated the harrid magister who lived in the place, along with the creature’s goblin and undead servants, rescuing a few enslaved faen in process. Shaouri was struck down by the wicked sorcery of the harrid in a final confrontation, dying in Paushen’s arms as acid and poison churned in her body. All was not strife and loss, however. As strange fortune would have it, the explorers also discovered old records that
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