Heroes of the Third Age

One of my favorite reoccurring NPCs in my D&D campaigns and also occasionally in my stories is the scholar Grimble Crumbol (yes his name is a nod to the Pink Floyd song “The Gnome”). In my setting, Grimble lived from the end of the Third Age (dark ages) well into the middle of the Fourth Age (high middle ages), though given dimensional doors and such, he might appear in my Fifth Age (early modern, muskets and pikes) campaigns as well. 

I’ve been working on his writings as well, since the players in the Fifth Age campaigns are well aware that there exists in the campaign setting a multivolume set of Crumbol’s The World of Olkhar. 

From Grimble Crumbol’s  The World of Olkhar Volume IV, “On the Heroes of the Third Age.” 

Much must be said about heroes, our world owes so much to them, and yet they are a topic of much complexity. 

What is a hero? The word conveys a sense of someone righting wrongs or performing deeds that help the helpless, and yet more often than not the tales of the heroes we hear sung in taverns are of rogues and scalawags out for their own reward and when they do accidentally stumble into a situation where they help other people it is rarely what they set out to do. 

Does a hero ever know that that’s how they will be thought of long after they have died and the details of their lives have either been forgotten or embellished? 

Certainly the heroes we know the most about rarely fought or ventured alone for long. Most sought the company of others during their adventures. Perhaps part of the trouble of our understanding of heroes places too much weight on the concept of the lone hero when as civilization marches on we see that many together are stronger and more capable than one alone. 

Did the ranger of the Third Age known as Stink, know that his name would be sung in taverns for ages to come? His name, while easy to rhyme, is hardly flattering. From what we know he generally shunned human society, and yet he too travelled with companions who his deeds were recorded with. The Old Man the Very Sleepy, Fezwig the gnomish wizard and speaker for the gods, and Hejwol the hafling. 

Of their deeds little is truly known although they are the source of many songs. That they transformed into giant beasts to tear the Necromancer asunder is probably the result of embellishment by bards over the ages, but it does make a compelling crescendo that never fails to boost the ale sales at the inns. 

Oddly of the Third Age, Hejwol and the halfling Trish were, despite their stature, the two greatest fighters. But neither came in contact with one another despite adventuring during the same years. They came close once, while Hejwol and his party were combatting the Necromancer in the Choke, Trish and her team were just on the other side of the mountains, attempting to save the world from the madness unleashed by the darkest aberrations. 

The party that Trish adventured with was by all accounts a strange group. A bird person from the eyries of the Spine named Qi, a monk by the name of Kreme, and a curious character of history sometimes referred to as “Old Letty.” The stories of Letty vary. Some hold that she was but a crazy old woman who collected cats. Others say that she was a great and powerful mage. What is consistent in all these stories is that this odd troupe helped save the world from the rising of a powerful fiend. Without these odd characters, the Three Kingdoms would never have formed, and at best people would still be limited to toil and their would be no scholarship for the likes of myself to engage in. 

You can read tales of heroes of the Fourth Age in A Cookbook For The Besieged available now.