History of Ivor (DRAFT)
Born to a family of travelling merchants, Robartobolo’s uncommon intellect became apparent at a young age. From the moment he could talk, he drove his parents to distraction with his constant questioning. Unlike his siblings, the short answer never sufficed, and his constant chorus of ‘Who? What? Why? When? Where? How?’ became frustrating- the last thing you need when trying to navigate a wagon along a treacherous mountain pass is a 7-year-old trying to discuss the precise reasons as to why boats and ducks could float, but rocks and gnomes couldn’t.
When he came of age, he was apprenticed to an elderly clockmaker of Gablehead, by the name of Vannocinni. Robartobolo quickly took to his new occupation, soon rivalling the quality of his master’s work. Indeed, as the old gnome’s sight began to fail, Robartobolo’s work was commonly passed off as a ‘Vannocinni original’ to nobles desperate for a fashionable piece for their homes.
In time, however, Robartobolo’s natural inquisitiveness got the better of him, and he started to wonder about how clockwork could be applied to other aspects of daily life in order to make life easier for people. This experimentation was brought to an abrupt end one night when his latest prototype backfired (quite literally) and caused a blaze that destroyed not only the workshop, but also the adjoining properties. Thankfully, an earlier device, designed to play jaunty tunes on church bells, was able to alert the neighbourhood to the danger, and casualties were avoided.
With his workshop gone and his old age catching up with him, Vannocinni decided that the time had come to retire, and made arrangements to travel to Maritaan to see his family. Unable to bring himself to get suitably cross with the naïve, repentant, young gnome, he used his influence to secure a place for him in the Royal Sardian College of Higher Learning, where he could indulge his curiosities in a safer environment. After a few years of study, his talent for design caught the eye of a fellow student, a young nobleman by the name of Lucien Lafayette, who offered Robartobolo the patronage of his family if he would move to their holdings in the mountains and realise some of his sketches in their castle. This sounded like the chance he’d been waiting for, and as such he grabbed it with both hands. Little did he realise that, in fact, things are rarely as they seem.
The Lafayette family was perhaps the most powerful noble family in the north of Sard, though undoubtedly the cruellest. Taxation in their lands was high, though little benefit was seen by the general populace, nor did much seem to find its way into the royal coffers. The gaols were filled with those who couldn’t or wouldn’t pay their dues. All of this was initially hidden from Robartobolo, content enough to stay in the generous suite provided for him in Castle Lafayette. To begin with, the family made much of his suggestions for Really Useful Engines (a catch-all term originally coined by a kindly university professor who was beginning to tire of Robartobolo’s convoluted names for his contraptions) such as the Auto-syste-hydromatic-uphill-fluid-delivery-and-dispersion system (designed for helping farmers to water terraces) or the Grain-free-clockwork-horse-replacement-triwheeled-variable-speed-wagon-locomotion-machine (designed to replace pit ponies and hence cut out the need to deliver feed to remote mountainous regions.)
However, it wasn’t long before their interest in such things began to wane, and requests for less savoury designs became increasingly frequent. Robartobolo had no intention of helping them come up with a device to increase the efficiency of the executioner, or to destroy siege engines at great distances, so began to purposely sabotage his own designs, coming up with something so impractical as to be useless, or neglecting to add in the vital component in a complex mechanism. Eventually, the Lafayettes realised that he was up to something, and imprisoned him in the dungeon, torturing him for his insolence and demanding he design new siege weaponry for them. The plucky little fellow refused more than once, and was left hanging in chains for days at a time until, almost driven mad with pain and hunger, he relented, promising to design a machine powerful enough to break any siege.
Deep in the bowels of the keep, he toiled his doomsday device, a cannon designed to throw vast quantities of alchemist’s fire at extreme ranges. As a last gesture of defiance, however, he wired the machine to self-destruct if set to maximum.
Unbeknownst to Robartobolo, the Sardian army had laid siege to the castle; the Lafayette’s neighbours had grown tired of their attempts to seize their lands, and successfully petitioned the government to take action. His infernal machine was wheeled out by the Lafayette loyalists, eager to defend their holdings from the encroaching hordes, only for it to detonate in a massive explosion, destroying the gatehouse and allowing the besiegers entry to the castle.
When Lucien realised what had happened, he flew into a rage and began beating Robartobolo senseless. It was at this point a troop of Sardian soldiers entered the room, dispatching of the young nobleman and saving the gnome’s life. Robartobolo had just enough energy to smile before lapsing into unconsciousness.
It was several days before he was lucid enough to speak to his rescuers. The beating, combined with starvation and the strain of the past weeks, had taken their toll on the gnome, and he fell into a delirium. Upon regaining consciousness, he found himself up in front of a tribunal set up to determine the fate of Lafayette sympathisers. He told of his role in this, holding nothing back and, indeed, taking more blame than was due him. In light of his attitude, the tribunal agreed to his request that he repay his debt to the man that saved his life by joining his troop, thus leading to his first proper encounter with the man they call Raul.
At first, Raul was unimpressed at being lumbered with a soft academic. Indeed, it was hard to see what good Robartobolo could be to a squad of fighting men; slower, weaker, and much less disciplined than the others, he could only be a hindrance. However, after salvaging enough parts from the remains of his workshop in Castle Lafayette, he was able to demonstrate the usefulness of someone capable of throwing fire at the enemy or generating thick fog to cover an advance, and the squad soon warmed to him. In a night of heavy drinking after their first victory thanks to Robartobolo’s contraptions, they decided to call him Ivor, for reasons that were never entirely clear since, though the name has stuck.
A year or so later, cutbacks meant that the squad was discharged from service, going their separate ways. Ivor had no idea what to do, having followed Raul for the past year, and so ended up tagging along with him, hoping to prove as useful to him in civilian life as he was in the military.
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Topic: Ivor, Paul's character (Read 10271 times)