Character: Drogo

[Shadowdancer 4]

Name: Drogo

 

Race: unlikely though it may seem... gnome.

 

Occupation: wizard apprentice.

 

At least, that's what the parchment signed by his master said. That he was making the fire, carrying buckets of water, cleaning hourglasses and potion bottles until they were sparkling, cutting the most pestilent smelling herbs and cleaning the mess left behind by his master when he was leaving the room in the top of his tower... That he kept for himself.

 

Drogo was the son of a respectable gnome family in the Orsraun Mountains. However, two traits have turned him into the black sheep of the family: first, when he was little he fell into a potion cauldron and has grown much taller than a usual gnome; he was reaching to the shoulder of a middle sized man. Secondly, he had a special talent for misscasting even the simplest freezing spells.

 

Theoretically, there was magic in his blood: his mother was the best healer in the county and his father was an accomplished alchemist. In his workshop, he made small magic 'toys' that he was selling in the South to wealthy people. Once a year, around the winter solstice, he was sending them South with a caravan. Theoretically, Drogo was to learn the job from him, but there was no way his father could have kept him in the workshop without going bankrupt in a couple of years: whatever he laid his hands on, he broke. Did his father make a music box? Drogo would want to add a tune and ended up making it scream and screech that it needed be thrown into the precipice near the village. Did his father make a magic wand that would make rabbits appear out of hats? Drogo would "improve" it, so that the wielder would find himself wearing a proud pair of huge white rabbit ears.

 

Finally, his parents managed to convince an old moody mage to take Drogo as his apprentice, in his tower three days away from the village. Cleaning the tower was obviously Drogo's job. Actually, all the unpleasant tasks were his job, since he was hardly fit for anything else, being so clumsy... who could blame the wizard?

 

However, in spite of his clumsiness, Drogo wasn't stupid, though he often pretended to be so to get away without punishment. He was upset with his own incapacity to remember spells correctly, even those related to Water and Ice, which should've come naturally to him as a gnome, as well as with the old wizard who seemed to wish to get rid of his presence as soon as possible, in order to lock himself in his study room, where he would mutter spells and burn herbs till late in the night.

 

This went on for a while until through an acceident, lucky or not, he found out just what the old wizard was doing at night in his chamber. He had discovered proof that the legendary Vanished City wasn't just spawned from the imagination of frightened people, but had truly existed. And it also seemed that the legendary treasures of the Mage-King Kayffa, who had ruled for centuries with an iron fist, were also the stuff of reality rather than mere legend: magical and non-magical treasures, hoards of riches and artefacts.

 

In short, Drogo had managed to one day slip into the wizard's chambers when he was away to stock up on his herbs (he never left that too Drogo, they were too precious), and what he had discovered reading through his master's notices scared him out of his wits. Either the old man had gone completely mad, or he had always been a matchless and ruthless megalomaniac. If his plan worked... it was terrible.

 

Without wasting a second thought, Drogo took all the notices he could with him, broke his masters scrying glass and ran away from his tower. He didn't remember much of his first nights and days of running and hiding, save for the nightmares in which his old and former master was coming afterhim in hideous shapes to recover the papers that meant a life's work to him. Drogo suddenly felt the urge to prove himself to all those who had laughed at him, by preventing the mad wizard to carry out his plans. That would be his masterpiece and the one thing that would redeem him

Editat Aprilie 10, 2007 de Asfaloth

[Shadowdancer 4]

Drogo is extremely talkative and lately he has suffered for lack of a talking partner (meaning someone who would listen to him rambling on without telling him to shut up because he babbles from time to time or because he has become incoherent out of a wish to express too much at once).

 

He prefers clothes in vivid colours, especially red, yellow, green, orange and blue. His shoework consists of a sort of short boots, soft and comfortable (it is enough that his head aches from memorising spells, no need to have aching feet from blisters). His brown hear is tied to a short tail in the back and covered with a matching hat. A distinctive feature of all his clothes is the multitude of pockets (better not find out what's in them). He wears a belt that also sports many pockets, not all of them visible. In the belt he wears a long dagger, his only weapon if you don't count the heavy and thick tome of spells that his mother gave him as a gift and which at all times he carries around in his bag: it could successfully break the skull of an orc. Also, hanging from his pouch, there are various little bags and sacks full of small stuff and spell ingredients.

Editat Aprilie 10, 2007 de Asfaloth