Bartholomew Fallowfield

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Full Name: Bartholomew Fallowfield
Age: 45
Class(es): Fighter (with plans to develop to weaponmaster)
Race: Dwarf
Subrace: None
Alignment: Neutral
Deity: Lucinda
Domains (if cleric): N/A
Biography and Description:

Bart was born in Lar to a family of long time farmers. His family had worked several small patches of arable land in the narrow valleys of the high mountains. It had never been a prosperous life, but put food on the table with a bit left over to sell for other essentials. Bart was the youngest in a family of 9 and always felt that he got the smallest portions and the dirtiest jobs as a result. (In truth he was just another mouth to feed in a large family that was struggling to get by.) His family suffered from the way Lar was isolated from the rest of Mistone by the treacherous mountain passes and marauding ogres and giants. In recent years the climate change had a devastating affect on the family farm. Many of the crops were lost and the family barely had enough food to survive. His father directed all his children to work harder to protect the precious crops that remained. Bart found himself spending many cold hours in the fields removing even the smallest weeds and chasing away birds and other scavengers. He couldn

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I miss my time in Spellguard.  The world is a hard place now.  The only thing I really like is this bindstone thingy.  I found myself in a fight way over my head soon after I arrived in Hlint.  I had asked myself "what could a couple of skeletons with rusty old weapons do against a hardy, well trained dwarf like myself?"  Unfortunately, by the time I learned the answer, I was doomed.  

The first sword stroke was bad.  It took me through the meaty part of the thigh, but I could still hold up my axe and my shield.  There's lots of blood in a dwarf, I figured I could take it.  But then the other skeleton, who I foolishly let behind me, slashed me across the kidneys.  I could barely stay on my feet.  My shield drooped down and his buddy punctured my lung.  I fell to the ground, leaking blood everywhere and praying that the pain would stop and that somebody would show up and heal me.  It was right in a busy little town.  I had seen others visiting the crypts.  Surely someone else would come by.  A bandage and a trip to the healer would fix everything.

I don't know how long I lay there.  At first the bloody pool I lay in seemed warmed, but then my whole body started feeling cold.  I didn't even have the energy to moan and curse anymore.  Then I became aware that I couldn't feel my body at all anymore.  Suddenly with a wrenching pain I found my soul forced back into my body and my body materializing at the bind stone.  I felt my wounds with amazement.  They were gone!

My armor was still slashed and bloody, but I had time to clean and patch it as I thought of what went wrong.  I felt so lucky to have a second chance.  I resolved to become more careful.  For a bit, I was.  However, greed eventually got the better of me and again I pushed my luck to far and found myself back at the bindstone.  About the time I started to get confident about the bindstone bringing me back, I found that my trips through the bindstone left me weakened.  Even worse than the worst hangovers of my life.  At the same time, I noticed that some presence in the void between death and rebearth was searching with a terrifying hunger.  I asked around and learned about the soul mother.  It seems that everytime I pass the bindstone, she is waiting to take a piece of me for her own.  Since then I have resolved again to be more careful, and yet I have so much to learn and can only really learn the ways of battle through practice.

I love this axe of iron I was able to purchase.  It is so much sturdier and sharper than my old copper axe.  I have seen a few with even better weapons made of adamantium.  I hear the mines for this are far off and even more dangerous than the redlight goblin cave.  Some say they are even more dangerous than the haven mines.  I have learned a lot so far about how to handle this axe to strike home against my opponent and to strike hard when I do.  I've watched other fighters with lesser weapons and have noticed a few seem to really know exactly how and where to hit their opponents for the most devestating results.  They have all told me that to do this requires many years of practice and training with special masters.  I got some advice on the skills these masters require before they will even consider an apprentice and have been trying to learn these basics.

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I really love my axe.  It takes care of me.  Now if I can just get my brain anywhere near to as sharp as my axe.  I helped some folks search for a ring recently.  It was for what seemed to be a spoiled brat of a child, but everyone seemed to sense she was something more.  Trouble was that no one else was willing to stand up to this little girl.  I mean she hired a pack of mercenaries to do the job she had already offered to these folks and she was threatening them all.  

This job took us down into a ruins I had never been to before.  The rats down there were the size of small ponies and chock full of disease.  Plus they had ogre friends driving everyone away from their doorstep.  We battled our way through and kept running into these other mercernaries who tossed magic about without any regards to who they might burn.  My buddy Bill traded some insults with them but everyone else seemed reluctant to stir things up with them.  Their mage was extremely powerful and had one of those golems that seemed unstoppable.   Remembering what I had learned at Spellguard about summons and mages I bided my time.  When I got a good opportunity I sidled up to that mage and started whacking her as hard as I could with my axe.  That golem started beating on me really good but I just kept hitting that mage.  It was a near thing but she died before her golem could finish me off.  As soon as she lost consciousness the golem fell apart.  It made me feel pretty good about my axe, but I worry about how I will do next time.  

I need to learn to kill those mages faster or I'm toast.  I think if I refought that fight a dozen times I would lose 6 of those times and I don't like that bindstone.  Makes me feel all hollow inside when I go through.  That time in the darkness before it pulls me home is particularly unnerving.  Speaking of which, I found something terrifying in that darkness recently.  I was exploring the woods near Hlint and came across a beatle with particularly large jaws and a really hard shell.  It was proving a good opponent.  It bit hard enough to make me learn from mistakes and forced me to time my swings just right to catch the joints in its hard shell.  I was having a goodtime and being a solid fellow not too worried about what it was doing, but then its friends showed up.  I don't mind those dire spiders one at a time, but 4 is a lot and they all jumped on me.  I felt the poison course through my veins and my strength melt away.  I fought back desperately but didn't stand a chance.  As I collapsed to the ground I thought "well at least the bindstone will save me."  And it did, but during that time in the darkness I felt a malevolent presence grab at me with cold fingers and it was if a part of me were violently ripped from my soul.  It took all the coins I had earned that day spent on ale before I could sleep that night.  I've been a lot less willing to rely on the bindstone since then.  

I gotta find someone to teach me the finer points of using my axe.  I'm pretty good with it, and I've run out of tricks that most people can teach.  I need to find an axe master to teach me how to really hit where it counts.  This dancing around and letting other critters chew away at me has to end.  One good whack from an axe should do for most critters and that way I won't be using that bindstone.

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My axe work continues to improve, but it still isn't up to standards.  I am getting a little better at avoiding getting hit, and I can usually hit most foes most of the time, but I'm not hitting hard enough.  I was watching the way Ellis swings that bitty little sword and noticed they she was finding the joints in the armor a lot more than I was.  When I struck true my axe really did it's job, but I was usually just a hair off.  

I ran into Lillian in Port Hampshire.  I asked her how she got so good with her sword.   She said practice, lots and lots of practice.  She told me she has killed so many things that she can't even remember what she has killed.  That made me feel a bit better because I'm certainly practicing a lot too.  Guess my thick dwarven head just makes things sink in kinda slow.

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My axe work is still progressing and my hunger to improve it only increases.  However, I found myself troubled recently when traveling with Ellis and some fellow dwarves.  These guys were ardent followers of Vorax and it was apparent that they assumed I was as well.   When they started singing his praises in battle it was hard to not follow along.  It seems a conflict between blood and brain.  I left all that behind when I left the mountains and really haven't missed it.  It makes so much more sense to follow Lucinda, I know the weave has so much to offer.  But the habits of my childhood threatened to grab me and carry me back.  I didn't say anything either way to them.  They probably assumed that was silent agreement.  When they turned down Justa's spells, my brain told me that they were just being dumb, but habit told me that was the dwarven way.  I must follow the path of rational thought not just habit.  If I am to progress as a fighter, brains are every bit as important as brawn.  I'll leave the religious philosiphizing to the clergy and just concentrate on my axework and my footwork.

For a scrawny little human wench Ellis is actually pretty handy in a fight.  Although I wouldn't want to admit it to her, she hits hard and fast with that bow of hers.  Recently I've also been running around with another human named Sy.  His powers have been growing fast and with his spells my fighting gets a lot better.  It's nice to have some other folks I can count on in a fight.

I traveled to this music place on Rilara with a whole pack of folks.  They are gathering bits of an ancient soul and trying to beat this other guy to them.  It was impressive to watch the bard Acacea perform to bring out this musical elemental.  It evidently did carry another bit of this soul, but in bringing the elemental there the magical thingy they been using busted.  Now we're trying to figure out how to fix it.

I really think I'm closing in on a new method to swing my axe better, but it's hard to commit to changing my style.  I guess the way I swing right now may look a bit like choppin' wood to one of the masters, but I'm getting the knack of it.  If I try to change my swing it seems like it's going to take a lot of practice before it ever becomes really effective.  Can I survive the fights in the interim until the new style pays off?