Like live moths to a flame,
She'll draw ire and acclaim.
- prophecy of the duskbringer
4990 A.D. Three years ago...
A short stout male strode down Crafter's way in Nolusberg, while his height would indicate he was but a lad, his girth and bushy beard told otherwise.
For Friedrich was a dwarf in a human city, an oddity these days. While it was true you could find them occasionally amongst the cities of men, as a race most dwarfs secluded themselves in a few ancestral dwarven strongholds scattered about and under the WorldSpine mountains.
Especially with the aftermath of the third great war, there just wasn't many dwarves left anymore, they having suffered perhaps the heaviest casualty rate of any of the races.
They had backed the losing side, Their mad king supporting the Pure Tech fanatics who sought dominion over metal and chemical formulae. The stubbornness and nationalism inherent in dwarvenkind ensured that it was only once the Mad King Toreg was slain in the final battle that the few surviving remnants of what was once a proud empire sued for peace.
Recovery, after they lost, was difficult at best. They had neither the reproductive capacity of the humans and orcs nor the longevity of the elves. So they had become recluses steeped in pacifist traditions over the ensuing centuries.
"Spineless Pootah's" cursed Friedrich as his memories brought up the dwarvish council of elders.
On top of the crippling decrease in population, heavy sanctions and loss of land after the war, and the dwarven population had recovered at a snail's pace compared to the other races, barring perhaps the elves. to the elves, each child was a treasure beyond measure.
"Serves the poor sods right" grumped Friedrich, "Those pointy eared bastards were the first to raze our cities and salt our fields, despite all their nature-loving claims"
Friedrich made his way through the busy streets. Steam puffing from his breath in the cold predawn air, most passersbys knew to avoid his stout but diminutive form, but he knew what people whispered behind his back.
The kinder folk called him an eccentric, the less kind swore he was a raving loon. He didn't mind much what others thought of him though, in fact, he often made use of his less than stellar reputation to his advantage.
Indeed It was useful when by word of mouth alone you got the kind of privacy and respect most people had to spend significant fortunes to achieve, all he had to do was occasionally play it up a little.
Friedrich grinned, scaring a few onlookers with his malevolent looking face. It was true he wasn't the prettiest, even by dwarf standards. Years of tinkering and a few good steam explosions had left him with burns and scars on his face and much of his body, his grizzled red hair and piercing emerald eyes only adding to his infamy.
He would boast that a good glare from him could curdle milk and peel paint from twenty paces away.
Everything considered, if it wasn't for his expertise in metal work, along with the prestige that skill brought him amongst the local craftsmen he figured he would have been run out of the city years ago. Thorum's beard, even his family name was Brasstuner, none could work the golden metal as deftly and delicately as he could.
Friedrich was jostled out of his musing when a man bumped into him, he heard a definite snap and sighed to himself.
"I would have thought word got around by now" He addressed the would-be thief who currently sat whimpering on the ground while clutching his bleeding right hand.
"No one tries to steal my coin purse and walks away whole." Indeed, the man was now bereft of 3 fingers and trying to staunch the blood with a handkerchief.
Friedrich wound up the protection mechanism that enclosed his coin purse and retrieved the lost appendages.
"Be glad I'm in a good mood lad"
Friedrich tossed the severed digits back to their owner. "If you hurry to the temple of Podos or Selena you can get them reattached and working with the help of a good healer. Now get out of here before I change my mind on how much experimental materials I need this week".
Friedrich then gave him a huge grin, to which the man visibly paled and quickly scurried away.
"Now that's just plain rude, not even a thank you" muttered Friedrich.
"And here I was on my best behavior, after all it's not every day a dwarf enters his best age at 70 years old".
Friedrich continued to meander his way to his workshop, hands in his pockets and whistling a dwarvish hiking song, but he did so so off tune that the street suks whined and barked at him as he passed.
He was closing in on his destination and finishing off a breakfast meat pie while passing through one of the side streets in the Craftsman Quarter, when he felt an anxious tug on his jacket. He turned around to see a human girl, barely taller than him, gripping his jacket with a determined look about her.
She had brown hair and eyes, and looked about 12, although Friedrich could never really tell with how varied humans were.
The girl was scrawny, but although her clothes had seen far better days she was respectable enough in cloth and flesh to rule out being a beggar or street urchin, neither did she put on a seductive air, so probably not a pink district worker.
In summary, Friedrich was stumped as to why she had stopped him.
"What is it lass? What business does ye have with me? If you're looking for a roll in the sheets you're neither old nor hairy enough for my taste." Friedrich leered slightly at her, attempting to intimidate her into letting go.
The girl started blushing profusely when she heard his words.
"I'm 14 years old already. and no, I don't work in the pink district, I'm looking for work and want you to hire me".
Friedrich blanked out for a second, before letting out a villainous laugh and slapping his thighs.
"YOU. WANT TO WORK. FOR ME???". He roared
It took a few minutes before he calmed down and collected himself. His workplace was no safe place for a half-grown slip of a girl, his own body bore testament to that, he decided to just scare her off, it would be for her best after all.
"Haven't ye heard the stories of me lass? About how I kidnap children and boil their livers for dessert, or torture grown men until they cry for their mothers, and beg me to put them out of their misery...What pit of insanity drew you to ask for work from Me?"
"I'm a dull," replied the girl
"I got tested when I was eight, even after I turned fourteen no one will take me in as an apprentice or for any job. I have no connections nor power to speak of to lean on.
But that's exactly why you'll take me as an assistant. I have no magic affinity, nothing to throw off your precious sensitive experiments"
Friedrich froze, his pretended threatening air turned real in an instant.
"Where did you hear of that girlie," he said in a distinctly less friendly tone.
He stared her down, putting his aura of intimidation on full display, even bleeding in some mana to make it more potent. Yet despite his efforts to crush her willpower, the girl stood against the buffeting waves of bloodlust.
"No-one" she squeaked, her breaking voice betraying the struggle it took her to stay standing.
"I watched and figured it out myself, you aren't insane, or any of the other things they say about you, just a bit angry at the world and grumpy towards others, you hate the magitech system just as much as I do"
Friedrich observed that as she spoke her knees were visibly trembling at the effort to stay standing. He sighed and stopped unleashing his bloodlust on the poor girl. She promptly fell to her knees and drew in a few sharp breaths as she recovered from the experience.
"What makes you say that lass?".
"My mother," she replied "I can feel she's dying, the draining got her in its grips now".
"Ahhh" exhaled Friedrich. "That'll do it alright."
A few moments of loaded silence passed between them before Friedrich turned around, embarrassed by the fierce staring of a lass with tears dripping down her cheeks.
His back cast a shadow over her in the new dawn's light.
"What's your name girl? I can't keep calling you lass now can I?"
"Gupalagia Bright," she replied, smiling wide in victory "but most people call me Guppy"