In the shadows of the great Nesting Mountains, a small village slowly crumbled like a disassembled puzzle. Pieces stripped slowly and carefully, in their place a new image slowly began to appear. The images clashed, the old and the new, pieces being pushed into place with force enough to break resistance. It wasn’t right, it wasn’t how things were meant to be, but the hand that held these pieces was set to have things their way.
This small village by the name of Podunk has gone through hardships in the past, but the loss of their allies in a region now known as the Mire was a tragedy. The Empire of Stone, a sworn enemy, fought an expansionist war and the Mire fell one day to a devastating new weapon. While only deployed once as far as anyone knows, it was enough to not only obliterate the folks of the Mire, but also the land itself was forever scared and remade into a shattered hostile wetland. With their allies gone, the Windy Hills, home of the Ratfolk and many of their kin, fell soon after.
It wasn’t lost for lack of effort, the natives fought with everything they had until all that was left were broken homes and scared souls. Some tried to cling to tradition in the years of occupation that followed, clinging to the parts that remain.
Podunk had a strong tie to the earth around them. Steep hills on the edge of a mountain, they prided themselves on the wild bounty of the forest, the land also ripe for goats and aging of cheeses. This odd mix left them a premier source of charcuterie supplies, wild nuts and fruit, cheeses and a prize mix of game both wild and domestic. This small claim to fame was a locally celebrated affair but it is one slowly being removed piece by piece.
Ebrulf was born near the start of the occupation but he and everyone here could see the struggle of the elders. A birthright slowly disassembled as institutions that favored the Empire of Stone rose up to replace tradition. Everything became form factor and modular, local foods vanished for cultivation of Empire standard affair. The lush vegetation of wild bounty and the hills of goats became a monoculture of grain fields. Sacred lands assessed not by the gifts they afforded generations of local inhabitants but by the estimated yield in timber and ore.
These cold calculations grew colder still when the ratfolk and their like were contracted to work under Empire law, a fiercely unfair and unevenly enforced rule that favored the prime citizens of the empire. Folk races such as the Ratfolk found that some were more equal than others under Empire law and they found little justice. The worst example being an event of mass poisoning when food distributed to the population was found tainted and led to the death of many local ratfolk, particularly the young.
Ebrulf watched people rebel only to disappear, either quietly or violently but always disappear. Others fled and were quickly arrested for the effort, it seemed fleeing was a violation of Empire law and the ‘contract of citizenship’. Simply put, those arrested were owned now by the empire to be put towards whatever purpose was chosen for them. All wasn’t lost however, many did flee the punishing grasp of the Empire's law through the aid of The Boldly Free, a group thought to have been founded by kobolds of all people, wishing themselves to know freedom. Ebrulf, for his part, did well not by violently overthrowing the Empire but by simply listening and making introductions.
He could stand to listen better sometimes but he picked up enough to know who needed what and how to get what was needed to whom needed it. After the first few locals escaped the crushing grasp of the Empire, he made a few contacts and helped a few more flee. He provided distraction in the form of talk and booze which often as it does loosened the grip of law just enough to have a few slip away.
It was a decent effort but in the end Ebrulf was contributing to the dissolving of his home. As locals fled, favored prime races of the empire came in to claim these lands. Contracted labor forced to tear apart Eberulf's ancestral home, the puzzle undone, piece by piece. Soon enough, Ebrulf himself was one of those pieces and removed himself, no longer able to watch his home fall to ruin.
With the connections he made, it was easy enough to obtain legal travel papers to spare himself the fate of others who had fled. Though he would not run to the distant lands, the rushed Alliance to fend off the Empire, the fabled prosperity of the Golden City just beyond the shores of the Windy Hills. No, he would work his way deeper into the Empire, make his home inside the den of his enemies and from there disassemble them, piece by piece.
In The Mire, homeland to his kin's lost allies, he settled into the capital city of Highrock. A dim and uninviting place filled to the brim of those shattered by war and others seeking glory in this hellish landscape. The Mire, though violently attempting to ward off habitation with wildly violent and unpredictable weather, a remnant of the great weapon, saw a flood of fortune seekers. It was believed that somewhere in the most hostile regions of this land an artifact left by the first civilization remained somewhere waiting to grant untold fortune and power to anyone who found it. It drew the attention of The Empire of Stone and many unsavory beaten folk who gambled their lives for this one fabled chance of glory.
In the years that follow, Ebrulf would find hard work and little gain. His work was stunted by the need to survive day to day until a chance encounter brought him both a patron and a lover. A citizen of the empire fell in love first with the odd foods Ebrulf painstakingly preserved and cultivated as a piece of home but then by their strange optimism. Despite having lost everything and given a life of endless struggle, Ebrulf found a part to play and did so with all the thrill and joy he could manage.
With the help of his new lover and patron a small inn was opened to preserve some of the taste of Podunk, a little place called “The Golden Mould”, terrible name for any eatery but some of the finest cheese you will ever find.
