Description
This svirfneblin male stands barely three feet tall, his frame wiry yet
compact with the lean strength of years spent in the Underdark. His skin
is a mottled gray, textured like stone, blending seamlessly into shadow.
Sharp, angular features frame deep-set, glinting black eyes, always
alert, while a thin, hooked nose juts over a jaw often clenched
as if chewing rocks.
Role
the past - the first hole.
Added Sun Feb 2 02:20:18 2025 at level 1:
Smuthri was born into the cold stone halls of a necromancer's tower, deep
within the Underdark. Though a slave, his innate magical talent earned him
favor, and he was spared the harsher fates of others. His life was rigid,
structured, but safe, a predictable rhythm of study and service he found
comforting, even rewarding in its way.
He met his wife, a fellow svirfneblin, in the same tower. She dreamed of
freedom, whispering of life beyond their master's shadow. Smuthri found
her dreams quaint, unnecessary
But she grew restless, and when their child was born, her longing turned
to resolve.
One night, she fled with their child, leaving Smuthri behind. He never
understood her choice, seeing it as foolish pride. To him, freedom was
an illusion, a dangerous gamble against the safety they had. Her departure
left a void in him deeper than any chain ever could.
Years later, when battle ragers stormed the tower and killed the necromancer,
Smuthri escaped. But freedom felt hollow. He roamed the dark tunnels, not
searching for liberty, but haunted by the unanswered question, why had she
left, when they had everything they needed?
Noise
Added Sun Feb 23 01:20:44 2025 at level 25:
I was told to listen, but all I hear is noise. The wind moans through the
trees. The insects cry out without rest. The beasts call to one another
with no care for who might hear them. In the Underdark, such recklessness
would mean death. Silence was not just survival. It was wisdom. Only fools
made themselves known. But up here, they tell me this is harmony. They say
the world sings with its own order. I do not hear order in the howling wolves
or the chattering birds. If there is balance in this chaos, I have yet to
find it.
A songbird landed near me this morning, a tiny thing with moss-colored wings.
It watched me, head tilted, as if I were the strange one. Then it chirped and
flew away, unbothered. In the Underdark, such a creature would not last a
night. No wings could outpace a rothes charge. No song would go unheard by
lurking things in the black. And yet, here it sings, day after day, without
fear. I should call it a fool. Instead, I envy it. What would it be like to
speak without fear? To not listen for silence before daring to make a sound?
But silence is still my refuge. I will not let this world take it from me. I
listen, not because I expect to understand, but because the world will not
change for me. My wife never learned that. She fled discomfort rather than
endure it. She sought freedom in noise, in movement, in leaving. But was I
any different? I stayed, not for love of the tower, but because it was quiet.
Because it was safe. Because it asked nothing of me but patience. Now I am
here, in a world that never ceases its restless hum, and I cannot escape the
question. Which of us was truly the coward?
I was told to listen, but all I hear is noise. Yet I will respect the world
as it is, even if I cannot agree with it. I will keep my silence, even if
the world refuses to do the same. And I will have strength, because without
it, nothing else matters. The songbird sings because it does not know fear. I
do. I listen. I wait. I endure. And I will ever walk my path.
After all, there is nothing else left.
Noise?
Added Sat Mar 1 03:00:09 2025 at level 34:
Freedom, they call it. But for all my wandering, Ive yet to feel free of
anything. The world demands movement, battle lines shift, factions squabble,
and self-important men argue over laws they will ignore when it suits them. I
once believed I could impose some order on it, mold it into something I could
understand, something with rules. I had rules once, clear and clean as the
stones of my masters tower. Now, it is all noise and rushing about. When you
are an outlander, everyone is always hurrying off somewhere, usually to go
stab someone else before they get stabbed first. And so I march along, the
dutiful fool, to the next inevitable conflict. And, begrudging as I am to
admit it, I care. I care about the choices, the people, the way a single
well-placed word or blade can shift the course of things. The pace exhausts
me, but I have yet to find the part of me that wants to stop.
And pettiness, gods, the pettiness. I always thought myself above it, but I
see now that I only thought that because I never had the chance to test it.
Then came Sparatzi. What a petty creature, a pettiness so small and mundane
that it awoke my own. I do not even remember what it was over anymore, some
pointless tribunal ruling, some smug remark, but I remember feeling it, the
small, creeping irritation that had me snapping like an old rusted trap. I
disliked it in her, I disliked it in myself, but most of all, I disliked the
waste of it. And yet, I find I enjoy the fire in it, the energy of caring
about something, even if it is foolish. That is, perhaps, the most surprising
thing about this life, not how much I resent its chaos, but how often I find
myself caught up in it anyway.
In all this rushing about, something else slipped past me. I have not thought
of her in years. I do not know when exactly I stopped, only that I did. Maybe
that was always going to happen. Too much noise, too much life stuffed into
too little time. Strange how much you can live through before realizing you
have let go of something you once thought vital. But here I am, still running,
still keeping up, and, worst of all, begrudgingly enjoying it. The surface has
wormed its way into me, its big, open sky, its reckless creatures, its endless,
pointless chaos. I do not love it, I do not even know if I would call it home,
but I no longer dream of escaping it. And, though I will never say it out
loud, I think some part of me is grateful for that.
The tower
Added Tue Mar 11 05:12:20 2025 at level 37:
I wake, I stand, I wash my face and hands.
The bones are hidden, a kobold this time. Limbs twisted, the draugr had
their meal of sadism, I see. Cold amusements take me, as if there were any
other kind. That, as soulless as they are, the work of the dead does not
fail to prove red and wet and unnecessarily messy. The master, ever stern
of eye, is a superlative artist, but his children make poor apprentices.
They scrabble at it, painting with pain. A hue unknown to them, distant
and wild and cold. Yet, if they know not pain, one wonders why they are
always screaming.
I wake, I stand, I wash my face and hands.
The bones are hiding today, an overlarge dwarf. An opulence in blubber
clothes them. Digging them out will be a labor, but how best to go about
it? Do I flay, layer by life by love? Skin parting to reveal the skeins of
lard this lady so lusted for. The cold amusements take me. Do I carve, toe
to tongue, wig to womb? For ah, twas a man in truth. Boob bloated by
excess. Knife paused over the abdomen, I resolve to gut him. Gluttony is
such a sin. Evil doings of mouth and neck proven in belly and bile. Yet
the boy was born today, was he not? The wife asked for a name, a name, a
name The knife is set down, the amusements fade. It will be the acid
today. Skin sloughing, solid to slime. The master, ever stern of eye,
disapproves of waste. Yet the bones are what he cares for. What I care
for. The bones to be made pristine and white and pure.
I wake, I stand, I wash my face and hands.
The bones are in splinters, violently exposed. A punishment, I see. The
master, ever stern of eye, is displeased. He rewards no laziness, and
waste is waste, after all. Yet, how stern can his gaze be to allow an
escape? The bones will need to be stitched, a work of days, not hours. The
thread pulled from the straining limbs of the few recaptured. The cold
amusements do not come, a subtle thing that goes unnoticed at first. The
boy is gone. She is gone. And as I pull the thin meat from finger and toe
and eye, the recaptured scream. They should have known not to run. What
food of freedom do they find now? Only the freedom in loss, I say. Each
yank calls a cry from them. Each pull a plea. The cold has turned arctic.
The amusements to malice. My knife rises
I wake, I stand, my face is washed in smoke, my hands in panic.
Fire, fire everywhere. The dwarf this time is not so dead and terribly
female. Teeth gritted, the axe flashes, and the bones spill. The masters
eye is no longer stern. Taken in death, it sinks as empty as my loss. The
fire is malice. The fire is pain. The fire is terror. I make haste into
that night where all amusements go to die. I make haste to find a place to
bury my secrets, for my bones are still in use, and their master was never
stern. No longer cold, black panic looms before me. Within me, deep as my
coming grave, and I run. I run, for freedom is a curse born in violence.
The tower part 2
Added Tue Mar 11 05:28:05 2025 at level 37:
...
Tripping, tumbling into place, the acid spills. The work scatters. The
dwarf is chasing me now, a scrambling mess of limbs she makes of my
artist's hands. This dwarf lusts too, but her food is wrath. It is anger.
It is rage. How am I to survive?
The Master is gone, the work is gone, how am i to survive?
she is gone, the boy is gone, how am I to survive?
reflections - 1
Added Sat Mar 29 04:54:59 2025 at level 43:
As I approach and blow past my middle years, a certain melancholy takes
me. I-I cannot be the only one who notices this, no? The thought leaves me
feeling somewhat melancholy. Like a child peeking behind the curtain to see
that yes, the moon really is made of cheese, yet everyone pretends it is not.
Thar-Eris, the will of this world and her children. All grew in accordance
with primal instinct and savagery. The weak die, the strong live. It is
written even on her bark that those things which break this simple truth are
her enemies. Elementals, the undead, the shadow, and even angels of the
lightyet would any of these forces exist without the rise of the empire,
of imperial magics, of those mages of chaos and order long ago?
It is a sad realization to note that in time, even those mages such as I
who serve her will need come to ruin. Her roots anchored in our bones,
our blood flowing through her branches.
Reflections 2
Added Sat Apr 12 05:15:01 2025 at level 51:
I think... no, I know that my early years have done me a disservice.
Sheltered as I was not from blood and economic cruelties, I was so from the
wider world and all its chaotic pettiness.
Why is it that so much found outside nature is unnecessarily full of ego?
But ah, perhaps that is a stupid question.
When the dog barks and the viper bites, they are devoid of ego and questions
both.
To carry an open mind then is akin to hosting an open wound.
Both weep and are likely to fester.
It is only in my 294th year that I realize the burden of respecting one's
enemy.
Sparatzi, Faelorn, Hildt.
They all stand the same in my mind.
Ever questioning, ever questing for mortal purpose.
I would have thought an elf, of all peoples, would be wiser than to throw
themselves into temporary charges.
I fear that this quick-burning contempt that has taken root in me for them is
not a sign of my own ego, my own open wound.
For I suddenly have a desperate need to ask no more questions.
disappointments 1
Added Sat Apr 12 05:32:33 2025 at level 51:
1*
I see this day of my 294th year there is no seated emperor.
A shame, as Xaviun served quite the ice breaker when meeting new peoples.
I shall have to hope, controversially, that the next emperor is also a mummy
so I can continue to name them empress.
2*
The blood tribunal continues to be a mess of petty woe and frustrating
foibles. I wish Hildt could speak people.
3*
Veyrdoth the drillmaster refused to drill me in how to better find mages
to kill. Expected, but the irony should not be lost to the air.
4*
I continue to wake up bald. I am fairly sure tree sap is no cure for it.
Perhaps I should ask a different villager how to scalp so I can regrow it
with hair.
reflections 3
Added Wed Apr 23 08:53:20 2025 at level 51:
A last name? Vamnar seems to appreciate my efforts, but his suggestion
caught me off guard. What use had I for a last name, what use have most of
us who entrench ourselves outside societal norms.
And then it struck me. A last name is family. Or well, connection.
Something I had been born without. I could not even give a first name to my
own child at the time. I could not even...
No. This thought makes me feel childish. I realize now that my previous
decades were spent in willowing, which has a certain romance to it were I a
honey-headed noblewoman. But it just looks bad on an aging svirf. I lack
the height and hair for it.
Instead, I should write as I am now. Petty, spiteful, and so much more
alive. And in the living, I can now see that being born without hate also
left me not knowing love. Her name was Maye. My wife, that is. And I know,
I feel that will be the greatest tribute to myself, in giving me that
reminder of her gentleness that always struck me as naivety.
For now that I have found my hate, I know I do not hate her.
Disappointments 2
Added Wed Apr 23 09:14:50 2025 at level 51:
1.
The spire still stands, and now they have even a pair of transmuters of
their own. Live long enough and it will seem that your enemies mimic you.
2.
I have fallen to narcissism, but I find I enjoy it. How base.
3.
Lin-ha continues to heal and bless everyone else before me. It is as
though she knows I crave touch and specifically withholds it.
4.
I wake up with aggression these days. It gets me killed...
Reflections -4 - disappointments
Added Wed Apr 30 23:20:46 2025 at level 51:
Vengeance, such a curious volition. Even now I think back to the Tower with a
void of that same volition. I was born into slavery, bred for the purpose, and
my old master did well for yes even now I say again I feel nothing towards it.
I can see, can feel the disconnect. Talented though I was, I see now that I
was not spared all cruelties, and yet the absence of hatred for that past life
is disorientating.
Rather my hate is only bright and red for recent matters, as if those
cruelties of the past happened to someone else. An irony of spite and bile, a
stillborn stew of regrets quickened into a hidden, stinking mass that chokes,
strangles, sickens with fever.
The spire, the spire has become a fixation, an obsession, a totem to
everything I was once denied. Choice, freedom, the freedom to feel, to hate,
for only now that I have found that hate am I able to appreciate that which I
have gained. Color, that same color that led Maye away from me. The same color
that has taught me with liquid steel intensity one truth. I am not a forgiving
person. Mark me with trespass will you after my death.
In my time knowing of it, the spire has gone from unfortunate child to
misguided fools to stillborn edifice of moronic malice. Their word as fickle
as Porg's courage. Yet hold, for these may be my final words. I feel my bones
creak, and for them if not for anything else I would rather not end with hate
but with freedom.
My breath, it comes easy, my heft settles beneath the tree. Thar Eris, I thank
you, salute you for your waters that soothe the branches that shade. Your
kindness to me has been these truths, I have come, in slow tender way,
somehow, impossibly, to love thee.
Veyrdoth
Added Wed Apr 30 23:45:51 2025 at level 51:
In our battles, you bring me such peace
Thank you.
PK Wins
Mar 11, 2025|Lv 37|The Outlander Refuge|Tivarius vs 1: [37] Smuthri (100%, electrical discharge)
Mar 21, 2025|Lv 41|The Outlander Refuge|Adaros vs 1: [41] Smuthri (100%, disruption)
Apr 24, 2025|Lv 51|The Imperial Palace|Xellius vs 1: [51] Smuthri (100%, disruption)