BarrumHistory
From ToEE
Barrum Hwylfaer, Elvish Scoundrel
Personal History
Here is a riddle for you...
- Q - When is an elf not an elf?
- A - When it is Barrum Hwylfaer.
Elves do not behave the way Barrum behaves. Elves haunt forests and groves, not taverns and gambling halls. They drink honeyed wine made from rare forest berries, not tankards of ale and mead, and cheap whiskey by the bottle. Elves sing airy madrigals, accompanied by flute and harp. If asked, none of them could sing that bawdy old song about the poor carpenter's five lovely daughters and their encounter with a rather naughty python.
None of them, that is, except Barrum.
Everybody assumes that there is some deep, complex tale of betrayal of a heartbroken youth fleeing to the bottom of a bottle, a veritable elvish tragedy, giving birth to an outcast. Everybody, however, is wrong. Barrum was born under normal circumstances in The Wood of Grey Mist (Swryoch Mohr'Hein) to full-blooded elvish parents of good reputation. He was a third son, an extremely unusual occurence among elves, who will commonly have but one or two offspring. Despite his mildly controversial birth, Barrum was well-treated and well-loved by his family and peers.
Perhaps what set him on his strange life-path was merely that third-born children have no designated role in Elvish culture. The first is the heir, the second is the artisan - leader and maker. Barrum had no role for which he needed to be groomed, and he merely learned as he wished. Everything seemed to be going along fairly normally, when he discovered women. Human women.
While away from the forest on one of his many expeditions, he encountered a beautiful young human woman, the daughter of a farmer, bathing in a pool. Rather than the willowy creatures of his home, this lady had wonderful curves which caught and held the young elf's gaze. When she saw him watching, she too was entranced. While Barrum was not considered a particularly handsome elvish man, he was still an elf. With hardly any words spoken, they made love in the grass - the first time for both.
At this point, one would expect the familiar old tale of the long-lived elf grieving the passing of the beloved but short-lived human companion, but it was not so. The encounter was fleeting, and while both remembered it fondly to the ends of their days, they never met again. However, Barrum's appetite for human women had been whetted, and he started spending more time in human company, engaging in their pastimes. Apart from the expected drinking and gambling (both of which turned out to be pursuits in which the elf excelled) he tried his hand at all manner of activities - farming, brewing, building, and even less reputable pursuits like smuggling and burglary.
Barrum had discovered a fascinating thing: while elves live for many centuries, he felt that they never truly lived, and humans crammed far more living and loving into a handful of decades than a typical elf would experience in five hundred years. In such a way, Barrum lived several lives of men. He saw human babes squint and scream into the light, watched them grow, lived as their friend (and sometimes as their lover), gave them care as they aged, and then remembered them fondly after their deaths. He felt no sorrow at their passing, for he knew that their brief lives had been spent well, packed full of bright joys and glorious sorrows.
The time has now come when Barrum wishes to be an adventurer. While he has tried his hand at such pursuits in the past, he has never devoted several years at a time to the adventuring craft. He has only minimal skills as a warrior, but his talents lie in the weaving of sorcery, and the shadowy skills of the rogue. While he cheerfully cultivates a reaputation as a carefree scoundrel, he is at heart a being of kind heart and generous nature, and as such has sought out a place where evil is said to be growing. Following these dark rumours, he has found his way to a little town named Hommlet.
