Eobe
Eobe is one of the few living Dwarves of the Dwarven city of Khazar, a once sprawling city-state underneath the mountains of the Spine. He now resides in the Valley of Tholbor, a Dwarven settlement that lay beneath the shadow of the Spine. He travels regularly as a mercenary while trying to find those who would listen to the plight of his clan.
Appearance
Dirty as mud and as hardy as stone, Eobe is a well traveled wanderer and experienced warrior. His arms and legs as sturdy as oak trees. Despite his incredible strength he is limited as a Dwarf, standing far shorter than most other races. He is often seen wearing his blood-red gambeson and brown trousers. He wears large brown leather boots and sports a thick beard. A bear pelt adorns his shoulders and chainmail hugs his torso and ends at his knees. His hands are kept within a large pair of gloves and even larger gauntlets.
Skills and Abilities
A warrior of outstanding ability, Eobe wields his hammer as well on the field of battle as he does at the smithy. Practiced and trained from apprentice, journeyman to master in the craft of the Dwarves. He is content and happy to ply his trade across the lands as either armorer or warrior.
Personality
Eobe is a challenged but hearty Dwarf. Despite the loss of his people he continues to hold a bright smile at taverns and on the road, keeping cheer and merriment with those around him. He can be both calm and impatient, for all beings are hypocrites. He is warm towards strangers and friends alike and is an excellent travelling companion. He is slow to anger but erupts like a volcano when the last vestiges of his tolerance is worn.
Biography & Lore
Eobe was born and raised in Khazar. It was in his childhood that he was apprenticed as a smith and learnt to raise his hammer as not just a tool but a weapon. Born into the Clan of Tholbor, a family of a couple dozen Dwarves that lived in the foothills and plains below the underground mountain fortress of Khazar. Eobe was one of only a few relatives to be born and raised in Khazar to learn the precious art of smithing to become the local smith for Clan Tholbor.
Eobe never knew his clan well, isolated far up in the Spine from his bloodkin. He felt through his soul and spirit a true citizen of Khazar. In the years to come he would later become a journeyman in his craft and master, taking his knowledge south to the Valley of Tholbor and being greeted by his bloodkin as the long lost son of their clan that he was.
He took to the town smithy quickly, allowing the former smith to retire, a venerable Dwarf of extreme years. Eobe's comfortable stone halls and cavernous roof was replaced by open fields and homes of oak. A cart each week would bring metal and stone from the mines of Khazar, Eobe would take the metal and bend them to his will, fashioning tools and weapons for his Clan.
The Valley of Tholbor was a poor village. Unlike their mining kin they worked the nearby forests, cutting lumber and crafting carts and wheels for merchants, commissioned to build homesteads for humans on far away farms. It was on his one-hundred-and-twentieth birthday that the weekly cart failed to show. Eobe did not fret, perhaps snow had buried them in for the night.
A few days passed and the town grew worried. A volunteer company of Dwarves took the mountain tracks to Khazar to find the merchants, believing them to have broken a wheel. They came across no cart and in time they reached the entrance of Khazar. The mighty gates were closed. The lookout towers that perched atop the mountain were empty. There was not a single guard in sight. For thirty-three years the gates have stood closed and the city silent.
Eobe, unable to stand the mystery of Khazar, broke away from his position as the town smithy and ventured to Khazar. He too failed to enter the great underground fortress. It was horribly silent. There was no smoke from the great chimneys. No lit torches in the small windows carved out of the mountain stone. It seemed the people of Khazar had vanished.
The Dwarf took the long road home, pondering the plight of his people. Soon the Valley of Tholbor became increasingly impoverished with the lack of metal and stone from Khazar, now importing the resources from far away Belgrath. A jounryeman smith from a human settlement came to Tholbor to be the town smith, allowing Eobe to travel and wander the land. Earning coin as both smith and warrior and to tell his fellow Dwarf kin of his plight. It has become his duty to solve the mystery of Khazar or so his honor is forfeit.