Doorman/MjollnirHistory

InCharacter/MjollnirTheGoremaul

My name is Mjollnir. Folks in the arena used to call me Goremaul.

I was born in the year 741 of the Dragonblooded, in a little town a few days off of Gem. Mother died in childbirth. Father left her before I was born. Got handed off to slavers before I could even learn to read. They dragged me off to Gem and gave me over to some hopeless civilian wannabe-spellchucker named Jumal. Something tells me that idiot couldn't even read Old Realm. I was his servant for most of my life, watching quietly from my little corner as he experimented with blood and tried to manage even the most minor of summoning spells. He took my blood a few times, but not often.

After I turned sixteen, he decided he needed more money to fund his growing research, and in observation of my good health, decided to throw me into the Gem pit fights and use the rewards to build his library. This being one of the few times I was let out of the little book-lined shack he called home, I didn't resist. Turns out this was one hell of an investment. Lot of civilians don't expect you to keep fighting when you've got four bleeding wounds. Unnerves them.

Always been a talent of mine, this skill of ignoring the pain. My skin's thicker than most, I suppose. I was a good half a foot taller than a lot of my opponents. My fists and muscles got me far enough, that is, until they put me up against some genius who wanted to fight "like well bred folk" and use weapons. He was pretty impressive with that oversized sewing needle of his, that is, impressive in that he looked like a damned fool, skipping about and giggling at me to show him what I had. Damnable coward was pathetic when I picked up a hammer from the dust, though. Never seen a grown man weep before that day. The audience called for a kill, and I was half tempted to give it to them. But I didn't. No, instead I shattered the bones of his right arm like glass and broke a few ribs with a swing of that weapon.

Audience loved it. Fight after fight from then on out, someone out there, an official or sometimes a rabid fan, would throw a hammer down into the arena if I didn't have one already. They would shout "Goremaul!" when this happened. Lot of fights got won. My name didn't make it too far out of Gem, though. They loved a hundred fighters just like me. So when I dissapeared from the arenas in 764, no one shed any tears.

No one, that is, except Jumal. I got pulled from the arena for a few months when I had my arm broken while brawling with three other pit fighters. Jumal wasn't happy about this. He gave me all ends of hell since I wasn't bringing in very much money, though he had already found himself a fair sized estate with the money I earned for him. Three days he berated me, three whole days. I figure I was justified when I finally lost it. But the terms on which I lost it weren't ones I was expecting.

I remember finally rising up to full seven and a half feet, glaring down at him and watching his face turn to an expression of horror. I remember his eyes darting from my clenched fists to settle, oddly, on my forehead. I remember the light that morning seeming to only be in the room I stood in. I remember the shelves rattling, shaking, falling. I remember glass vials falling and shattering. I remember thunder filling the cramped room, and lightning dancing along my arms. I didn't fear what I was doing. It was a familiar as picking up that hammer from the dust.

The light show didn't last too long, but when it faded, Jumal was whimpering on the floor, whispering to himself. "One of them...why gods, must I be faced with one of them..." I didn't know what he meant at first, that is, until I turned and looked in the mirror, and saw it. My hair was mussed and clothes were mussed from the static, but that wasn't the odd thing. No, I was staring at myself, glowing and burning with a golden fire unlike anything I had ever seen. And on my forehead, I saw the mark. The mark of Exaltation. I was a Solar. A Dawn.

When I looked back to Jumal, he was begging again. Just as pathetic as the dancing fool in the pits. He would give anything, if I would only spare his life. He gave me a severance pay, of a sort, and I walked out with his thaumaturgy notes and a book on Terrestrial sorcery that I knew he would never use. I felt something calling, pleading my presence, in the mountains to the east, and so I used some of my pay and went, leaving Gem behind.

It took months to get where I was going, but I knew it when I saw it. I almost felt like I was being criticized when I climbed up those mountain trails and finally discovered, nestled in the peaks, a windmill. The windmill looked fashioned to be powered by the wind and the river that flowed into the mountains. As I approached it, the Dawn sunlight came down through the clouds, and in the shadows on the west side of the structure, I felt that call. I approached and knelt there on the dirt, digging with my gauntleted hands into the grassy soil, almost frantic, and unearthed it.

"It" was a hammer. But more than a hammer. The balance was perfect, the weighting was enough for devastating blows that made my old hammer look like a rock on a stick. I knew what it was. It was a goremaul, the weapon I had been called in the arena, and it was forged of orichalcum. When I took off my gauntlets and held that weapon, I felt like I had just gotten back a limb I had lost long ago. Inscribed along the handle were the words "I am the Rolling Thunder", in Old Realm, a language I had taught myself on the trip.

The windmill had one hidden entrance that led down into a series of chambers lined with traps, but for some reason, I knew where they were, and how to get by all of them. Good thing, too. No real reason to shrug off pain if you get sawed in half by an axe on a pendelum. Once in there, I found scriptures, and an armory. The armory was abandoned save for a whole mess of mortal weapons and an orichalcum set of breastplate. Took that too, felt right. Like I was getting something back. Next thing I did was read the scriptures. I hunted for food in the mountains when I got hungry, drank from the stream when I got thirsty, and I stayed there and studied for about a year.

The writing was all along the walls of a sizeable chapel area in the highest tower of the windmill. It talked of the First Age, of things of lore. I read it all. Apparently it was written by a Solar, a Dawn Caste named Mjollnir, who wielded the Rolling Thunder and fought many battles for the Solar Deliberative. But it didn't make any sense. While I read it all, I heard the exact opposite of the propaganda I heard about the anathema, and for some reason, I knew it was true. I simply couldn't deny that whatever this Mjollnir had written, it was right.

I trained with Rolling Thunder there, learning to fight in ways that far surpassed my old mortal abilities. I studied the lore of that place and learned much of the First Age, as memories of it came flooding back through the images and scriptures. I researched the thaumaturgy and the knowledge of the occult through the White and Black Treatise I took from Jumal. I found myself swinging Rolling Thunder with the force of crashing lightning. I found myself dreaming of things, remembering things, that had happened far before the year 741, or even the Year 0. I found myself unlocking sorcery and magic that before, I had thought impossible to reach.

And finally, in the year 766, I found the last writings of Mjollnir in the First Age. He said he was going to war with the Dragonblooded. He said "I'm real dissapointed that I'm going to have to put down the soldiers I led so many times before". He said "I'm leaving Rolling Thunder, and the stone. I won't need them to handle these upstarts."

And he signed it. Mjollnir of the Dawn Caste. And there was the Caste Mark. The same one that I had carried when I terrified Jumal. I had heard stories of reincarnation, but I had no idea it could be true. But it was. I was Mjollnir of the Dawn. And I lived again.

There was a single, green stone in the center of that caste mark, placed right where the dawn sunlight could fall on it. According to the geomancy I could understand of the windmill, it had to be the hearthstone of the manse. It was still there, right where he...I...had left it, before going out to fight those Dragonblooded. And despite the assured victory that I stressed then, it would seem I didn't get it.

I attuned to that manse and gathered supplies for a trip home. I took the gem, the breastplate and Rolling Thunder. I left, leaving those mountains behind. In the year 767, I came home to Gem. I signed on with a mercenary team that worked in the outer part of the city and waited for work. Word around the city was that Jumal had called some Dragonblooded down to Gem to try and kill the anathema he had seen, but when I was already gone, the legionnaires, already ticked from the growing civil war, had killed him and left, blaming it as the paranoia of an old man.

I kept Rolling Thunder hidden with a charm I had mastered, and wore a tunic over my armor. I did little jobs, but few people bothered me, and I was able to save a bit of silver here and there to keep myself going. But I never did fit in as a civilian.

Then, in 768...that archer, that Zenith...Auran of Idras'ha...looking for mercenaries to serve him as soldiers and retake the satrapy of his parents, who had exiled him and barred him from his rightful inheritance...

He came to Gem, looking for soldiers.

He left from Gem, leading those mercenaries who were going to help him.

And I left from Gem, following him.

--Mjollnir of the Dawn