Post by Stranger on Jun 15, 2014 21:02:03 GMT
Name: Short Tom Tinker (Hill)
Age: 63
Role: Expert
Background
Short Tom Tinker was born Tom Hill, as low a birth as ever there was and so long ago, he likes to say, even his mother’s like to have forgotten it ever happened. Even he seems to have forgotten where he came from, or has chosen not to remember. Each time he tells the story that city that surrounds the streets he was born on changes. One time it’s an alley behind a brothel in Golden Tooth, the next a butcher’s porch in Ashemark. Ask a third time and he’ll tell you he was born upon a radish wayn on the road to Lannisport. Whatever the truth of his birth, Tom Hill was apprenticed to old Hollis Tinpenny some fifty years gone and has wandered the westerlands ever since.
Hollis Tinpenny has been dead thirty years, but left young Tom his mule, his packs, and the names of every village, farm and croft between Oldstones and Crakehall. The packs have been mended a hundred times and the names Hollis gave him have died and come again, but the ancient mule still brays when it rains and carries Tom’s goods and tools on the tracks and trails of the west.
Tom is a bent old man these days, never tall but shorter now after years of hauling his things from village to village. Most of his hair is gone, but what’s left rings his head, bristly and gray. He has bird’s eyes, black and sharp, and a large, bulbous nose somewhat gone to red from the wine that warms him against cold nights upon the road. He’s more bone than meat and wears a quilted coat against the chill as well, ‘to keep the warmth the wine makes!’ he says.
Tom knows everyone and everyone knows Tom. Lowly fishwives and highborn ladies alike come out when they hear his packs come jangling up the road. Tom mends their pots and kettles, sells them candles, salt and spice, and tells a merry tale or two and gets a meal, sometimes even a bed of a night. And all the while, he watches, he listens, he sees.
It was a bitter winter, and lean, the year Tom met Harald Dulver. Harald was but the heir of his house back then. That year had been a thin one for Tom, else he would not have been upon the road so late, looking for silver and a place to spend the winter. Harald had been out upon the Heath as well when both men were surprised by a sudden, early blizzard that came blowing off Ironman’s Bay. Harald was ahorse, well-fed and warmly dressed, but Tom’s poor year had left him hungry, threadbare and leading his mule on foot, unwilling to leave his goods by the road and save his shoes the wear.
When the wind came up and the snow came down, Short Tom nearly froze to death. Harald came upon him on the road. Harald tied the half-dead tinker on his horse and led both mule and horse up the road to Deepen Hall through drifts and wind and blinding snow.
Short Tom Tinker spent that winter with the Dulvers and many an evening over wine or ale trading stories with young Harald. When the Spring came, old Lord Dulver had gone into the cellars and would not come out again. Harald was the Lord now and Short Tom was in his service.
More winters have come and gone since then, summers, springs and falls as well and through them all Short Tom Tinker has been Harald Dulver’s eyes and ears out in the world, a valuable service for a lord who looks greedily at land he dreams of owning. Tom wanders for a time, a month, a year, a season, and comes back to tell Lord Harald what he saw.
Short Tom grows old. He is not so spry as once he was. He bought a horse a few years back, a shaggy little garron from the north to spare his feet. In all his years of wandering, Short Tom has never carried a sword. ‘And now,’ he says, he’s ‘far too old to start.’ His wit and words serve just as well, and better. But against the day when they don’t he keeps a crossbow in his packs and a long, thin dagger in his boot. ‘More for scaring than for stabbing,’ he says. ‘But if stab I must, then let me stab a bit of suckling pig over a cup of Arbor gold.’
Age: 63
Role: Expert
Background
Short Tom Tinker was born Tom Hill, as low a birth as ever there was and so long ago, he likes to say, even his mother’s like to have forgotten it ever happened. Even he seems to have forgotten where he came from, or has chosen not to remember. Each time he tells the story that city that surrounds the streets he was born on changes. One time it’s an alley behind a brothel in Golden Tooth, the next a butcher’s porch in Ashemark. Ask a third time and he’ll tell you he was born upon a radish wayn on the road to Lannisport. Whatever the truth of his birth, Tom Hill was apprenticed to old Hollis Tinpenny some fifty years gone and has wandered the westerlands ever since.
Hollis Tinpenny has been dead thirty years, but left young Tom his mule, his packs, and the names of every village, farm and croft between Oldstones and Crakehall. The packs have been mended a hundred times and the names Hollis gave him have died and come again, but the ancient mule still brays when it rains and carries Tom’s goods and tools on the tracks and trails of the west.
Tom is a bent old man these days, never tall but shorter now after years of hauling his things from village to village. Most of his hair is gone, but what’s left rings his head, bristly and gray. He has bird’s eyes, black and sharp, and a large, bulbous nose somewhat gone to red from the wine that warms him against cold nights upon the road. He’s more bone than meat and wears a quilted coat against the chill as well, ‘to keep the warmth the wine makes!’ he says.
Tom knows everyone and everyone knows Tom. Lowly fishwives and highborn ladies alike come out when they hear his packs come jangling up the road. Tom mends their pots and kettles, sells them candles, salt and spice, and tells a merry tale or two and gets a meal, sometimes even a bed of a night. And all the while, he watches, he listens, he sees.
It was a bitter winter, and lean, the year Tom met Harald Dulver. Harald was but the heir of his house back then. That year had been a thin one for Tom, else he would not have been upon the road so late, looking for silver and a place to spend the winter. Harald had been out upon the Heath as well when both men were surprised by a sudden, early blizzard that came blowing off Ironman’s Bay. Harald was ahorse, well-fed and warmly dressed, but Tom’s poor year had left him hungry, threadbare and leading his mule on foot, unwilling to leave his goods by the road and save his shoes the wear.
When the wind came up and the snow came down, Short Tom nearly froze to death. Harald came upon him on the road. Harald tied the half-dead tinker on his horse and led both mule and horse up the road to Deepen Hall through drifts and wind and blinding snow.
Short Tom Tinker spent that winter with the Dulvers and many an evening over wine or ale trading stories with young Harald. When the Spring came, old Lord Dulver had gone into the cellars and would not come out again. Harald was the Lord now and Short Tom was in his service.
More winters have come and gone since then, summers, springs and falls as well and through them all Short Tom Tinker has been Harald Dulver’s eyes and ears out in the world, a valuable service for a lord who looks greedily at land he dreams of owning. Tom wanders for a time, a month, a year, a season, and comes back to tell Lord Harald what he saw.
Short Tom grows old. He is not so spry as once he was. He bought a horse a few years back, a shaggy little garron from the north to spare his feet. In all his years of wandering, Short Tom has never carried a sword. ‘And now,’ he says, he’s ‘far too old to start.’ His wit and words serve just as well, and better. But against the day when they don’t he keeps a crossbow in his packs and a long, thin dagger in his boot. ‘More for scaring than for stabbing,’ he says. ‘But if stab I must, then let me stab a bit of suckling pig over a cup of Arbor gold.’
It's set just before the historic Blacks v Greens period