Legends of Belariath
Fortinbras
Fortinbras was born the son of a Halfling ranger and an elven mage named, Sulima. She’d been in a mortal conflict with a sorceress from a warring clan. He had stepped into the fight to protect her, seeing her as the “good” one and became embroiled in the fight. Somehow, his father wasn’t too clear on the point, they were struck with a charm that wasn’t dispelled, even after he was able to help dispose of the sorceress.
Soon after the battle, while cleaning themselves up and reviving from the fight, an intense lust over came them both. The sun set and rose, and found them still in each others arms, exhausted from repeated copulation. The elf maid knew that morning that she was with child.
Whether as an after effect of the magic or just simple good nature to make the best of an awkward situation, they felt a connection and an unwillingness to separate. Fortengrim, the ranger, created a shelter near the spring and later a small cabin. The mage helped make the home comfortable, somewhat, while he hunted to provide their food. But how long can a Halfling in the woods keep an elf happy? As the child in the womb grew, things became more difficult.
Sulima eventually slipped away while, Fortengrim was hunting, and so, Fortinbras was born among the elves, receiving from them the blessings of health and other wardings and support that elven lore bestows upon the newborn. Despite her initial happiness at his birth, his mother grew sad and bitter, as the relentless mocking and ridicule behind her back over her Halfling ‘love-child’ took their toll.
When Fortinbras was but two years, he was sent to live with his father. The Halfling were awed to see and elfling raised in their village, though some feared it would bring trouble on them. His mother had wisely seen that he would have a much happier childhood raised among Halfling children. But this sadness didn’t leave his heart of hearts ever, as he watched her walk away.
Fortengrim had no idea what to do with a child and sought help from a neighbor’s wife. It wasn’t long, however, that the entire village was involved in raising this most singular of Halflings. The Elder and the Keeper agreed they could recall nothing, not even a legend of such a thing, and so everyone agreed he was a treasure.
So Fortinbras was raised with as much love and attention as a village can give, which also brought with it many problems. For one, the envy and jealousy of the other children who weren’t treated as special. The other was an estrangement with his father. Despite trying to please his father, it was evident that Fortengrim was disappointed with his son.
Fortengrim tried to show his young son the ways of the wood. As soon as the child could walk he was following his father. But Fortinbras displayed his mother’s fascination with things and their reasons for being, and her voice for song. In the woods, he would often drive off the prey because he’d get so happy over the sun shining through leaves, or the green of the water reflecting the light shining through the trees and start singing about it.
Grudgingly, Fortengrim realized he needed to provide a different education for his son. Also, in this time, the foster-mother he’d found for his son became his lover and then, after a little bit of scandal, his wife. Fortinbras spent most of his days, after he was old enough to write, with the Keeper. His family grew mostly apart from him, his half-brothers and sisters almost strangers.
Under the tutelage of the Keeper he learned everything he could about their clan and the legends of where they came from. He also learned reasoning and the beginning of philosophies. The Keeper was well read and was glad to find a pupil who was actually interested in these things. Most Halflings see learning as a waste of time and an excuse of the lazy to avoid work.
When the fifteenth year of Fortinbras’s arrival was celebrated by his family, a messenger from the elves arrived. It seemed that his mother was worried about his education among the rustics and was offering gold and assurances to have him return to the elves. Fortengrim, at first, was bitterly opposed.
The gold had been insulting to him, for one, but also he felt slighted that Sulima had not come herself. Then there was the implication that the Fortinbras’s education was deficient among the Halflings. But it wasn’t long before his wife, who saw the sack of gold, convinced him that he should be more amenable to the idea. She was a smart woman and knew how to guide him to go where she wanted, without nagging. Fortengrim told the messenger that he would send the boy back, but only if his mother came to escort him, “Elves are not well known for keeping their promises with non-elves.” The messenger was angered by the obvious insult, but kept his calm and reported all when he returned.
Fortinbras was overjoyed to be going on a trip with his mother. When she arrived, though haughty in manner and appearance, she couldn’t help but warm up to see how strong and strapping her young son was. He was already nearly a head taller than the tallest Halfling in the village. He had a look on his face that reminded her of her grandfather, however, and this endeared him more to her heart, despite her misgivings. But when he saw her, he broke into a song he’d prepared for her and she wept.
When they returned among the elves, Fortinbras’s joy was diminished by the lukewarm to cold reception many of the elves gave him. Yes, he was special here too, but, among the elves, it seemed, at best a curiosity- at worst a blemish on their history. Some were down right antagonistic, wanting to wipe clean this marring of their honor. But his mother did not diminish in her love, but rather she began to gush with pride, seeing how her son faced it all with honor self-control. Deep inside, however, he slowly gathered and pooled a disdain and bitterness against the elven boys who pestered him that slowly spread to include all male elves.
The females, however, soon learned to appreciate Fort’s odd quirks. Though decent families made sure to keep their daughters from frequent contact, Sulima soon found her hands full keeping scullery maids and others away from him. Thus Fortinbras learned much of romance, but little of love making.
Among the elves he learned much about the world, of places outside the immediate environs of the woods. His world was made, at once larger, and smaller: larger in expanding all the places he’d never heard about, but smaller, seeing how little of it his known world actually was. He was being trained as a court bard, and so was learning laws and justice, as well as the harp, lute and song.
It was from his lessons as a bard that the burning desire to leave these odious elves— with there never-ending slights and petty insults, always side-long, always behind the back—crystallized into a plan to see the wide-world. Unfortunately, the lord’s daughter also wanted to go. She was looking to escape an arranged marriage with an older man, who was rumored to have twisted tastes in bed. The seeds of his prolonged exile were sewn when she first heard him whisper his plans to himself, tears of frustration streaming down his cheeks as he sat in a stairwell nursing a new welt from a recent “joke” by her brother.
Fortinbras was easily taken in and bewitched. He had been sheltered from the ‘wiles’ of women most of his life and wasn’t very prepared for it. He idolized his mother, to a certain extent, and expected all women to be as virtuous and guileless as he saw her. She would send him little notes and he began composing her a song, which turned to be the undoing of their plans.
Once she convinced him to make his plans real and to include her, they began to spend more time together. She did start falling for his easy and even innocent charms, though she assured herself it would only be for as long as he was useful. However, her mother noted the increased attention she favored him and became watchful, sending spies about the town.
When the song was discovered, full of such flowery words and sensuous metaphors and imagery, the lord was enraged. Assuming the worst he had Fortinbras arrested and beaten, locked in the lord’s cellar.
Sulima immediately stormed the manor, angered by the breach of justice. When she found out the cause she was became even more heated and things would have gone ill, had the lord’s daughter not stepped in and confessed it all. Lord was embarrassed now, but his anger was not abated.
He did, however order to have Fortinbras released into his mother’s custody and a healer sent to deal with his wounds. Sulima threatened to ruined the land with a plague and tempests if he didn’t make amends. Secretly she cursed the lord’s daughter, with a longing for Fortinbras’s voice, so that she could never be happy without him.
The lord, not wanting the public humiliation that would come of the scandal, and not wanting to put the alliance marrying off his daughter would bring him, agreed to only return Fortinbras to his father’s people, with the condition that he never return. He was, however, given a title and a parcel of wooded land between the his land and the Halfling village, to be his in perpetuity.
Fortinbras was unhappy with the arrangement, however, because he felt that he’d never see the wide-world now. His mother, not wanting him to wander off far, was torn. She wanted her son to be great and knew that would not happen with his father’s people. She decided to take the money the lord had given in recompense and book passage on a coach that would take him to the lands of the elf king, who the lord served.
Within a week, he was packed and on the road, a hundred weight of gold in a chest on a pony and two elven guards as escort to the distant capital. Unfortunately, his father’s words rang true in his head, when nearing the port city, the elven guards tied their young charge and sold him to elven slaver, taking with them his money, and selling the rest. Neither father nor mother has heard from him since.
Fortinbras was fortunate, however, as slaves go, he didn’t have it that bad. But he hated the confinement and control. He didn’t make a good slave. His Halfling blood and his bitterness towards elves forced his owner to keep him in the kitchens. There, he fascinated the other slaves with songs he’d learned or wrote, but he was unimpressive and was regularly in trouble. Had he stayed there longer, however, he may have gotten to know a thing or two more about women. The maids soon found out that his mixed blood had produced a rather well-endowed Halfling. There was a prize pot set up for the first maid to seduce him. No one was ever able to cash in.
After only several weeks of being a slave in a wealthy manor, He managed to escape on a ship headed to a far off place he’d only slightly heard of—Ilfirinor, Empire of the Stormbringer, or so he’d heard it called in his studies. His escape had been assisted by an enemy of his owner, who magically removed the collars of many slaves, during a wild banquet at this home. Since he was knew and generally kept out of they way, it was a while before he was missed, too late to know where to search for him.
Fortinbras had stolen some gold and some clothes, not much, but enough to make his arrival to the empire possible. He paid the captain for his passage, something that stunned the captain, who had not known that Fort had stowed away. It was not long, however, that he found he could use his voice to make a little coin, and began to wander from village to farm-house, until one day he found the Lonely Inn. At first he thought of it as just one more stop. But it turned into his new home.
One of the first things that happened to him in the town of Nanthalion, was that he found a “real” bard who was not jealous of his talent and actually took him under his wing for a time, guiding him and instructing him. The wolven was a good teacher, even though their time together was brief.
The other major event that rooted him to the Inn was a meeting with a flaming redheaded sylvan elf, named `fyre’. She had thought him just another visitor, but soon found his innocent charm and smile adorable. He, on the other hand, came to practically worship her. She was his first love. She showed him the ways of a man with a woman, and taught him other things besides. It was, however a tumultuous relationship that ended when he ran off in a jealous fit and was not seen for months. When he returned he found no sign of her, and so he left again.
During his absence from Nanthalion, he found passage back home, using what little resources he had to try and get there. But robbers waylaid the caravan he was with and he was, once again changed and shipped off to be sold. Fortune smiled on him as the slavers were in-turn attacked and Fort got away. He wandered for years, his voice quiet, his music nearly stilled by the cruelty he saw around him; the injustice he was impotent to stop. He worked for a time with his hands. He taught the children of small villages to read, and about the elven gods.
In this time he attempted to start a family, but soon found that he could not. He was a mule, sterilized by the very union that gave him life. Saddened, he left his would be wife, and thoughts of a place where that wouldn’t be an issue returned to him. The Lonely Inn. The name echoed in his head, a lopsided grin on his face marking the irony of its name and his situation. It was the place for him now.