Grath J'Gar - In His Own Words

It was a long trip from Mendiera to the Macinar Isles, and while the ship was large for a ship, it was fairly small for the number of people crammed into its hold and onto its deck. Still, in the forward bilge, someone had gone to the trouble of setting up a couple of boards that served as a bar and a number of long plank tables and benches. The place was doing a rousing business, what with there being little else to do on the boat, and so when Grath entered that evening with the dark-skinned human he'd met earlier, the place was nearly full of bodies, drinking and laughing.

"Ah," Grath said, raising his arms in a wide gesture above his head, "now this, this is more like it!" He muscled his way into the throng. "Now, we just need... ah, here we are!" He came to a place at the table, bodily lifted a gnome in a dark robe off of the bench, and sat down where the little man had been sitting. The gnome raised his eyebrows, and then wandered off into the crowd. Grath liked the little man; he knew he would be back at some point to riposte with some prank or another, but that was part of the game, and it was a game Grath enjoyed playing. The dark man sat down opposite Grath.

"So," said Grath, "you asked where I come from." Grath picked up the ale from the table and took a long swig. "There is, I fear, not terribly much to tell. My father carries my mother off in raid on human village, decides to keep her alive when he finds out I've quickened, and so I am born, one way or another. I grow up, I learn to fight and kill, I learn to take what I need."

Grath sat back. "Then, I get bored. Thing about living with orcs is, they are dumb. I am not exactly smartest man in world, but orcs are dumb. Orcs think there is one solution for every problem; he steal your woman, you kill him and take his stuff, he knock over your ale, you kill him and take his stuff. He kills your buddy and takes his stuff? You kill him and take his, or maybe you don't, depends on how much you liked your buddy and how good his stuff was. I try to tell them, 'Look at king. People give king money all the time, 'cause they like him. What if we make people like us?' They get confused, say, 'But then how we get their stuff?' Point is, orcs are dumb. So I leave. Father tells me not to leave, so I kill him and take his stuff." Grath shrugged. "I don't want to, but is tradition."

"So I leave, and I come to civilized lands. Civilized people are smarter than orcs, but also sometimes dumb. Bad guys come, steal things, hurt people, and people hide and think 'maybe if we let him this time he not do it next time.' Civilized people not understand that sometimes, answer really is 'kill him and take his stuff.' So I do it for them, sometimes, and they give me things for doing it, plus I keep the stuff. Is good setup, until the evacuation. I spend all the gold I have for place on boat, and so, here I am!" He slammed his mug down on the table, and looked across to an empty bench where the man had been.

Grath sighed. "And then I talk to myself. Fantastisch." He took another long swig of his beverage. It tasted strange, like anise and... and whatever it was that that gnome had put in his last drink. "Oh... yebat," he said, and then he slid back off of the bench, his head hitting the deck with a thud.