Horfar Grimmr
 Horfar Grimmr
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| Race | Trollkin | |
| Gender | Male | |
| Weapons | Rathrok Rivener | |
| Birth | Unknown | |
| Death | 2200 BR | |
History
In the time of Golivant and Grimmr, the Molgur were not a people inclined toward collective action. Villages yet untouched by Golivant's bloody crusade were glad for the misfortunes of their rivals, and even when driven from their lands, proud Molgur chiefs did not acknowledge weakness or ask for aid. Molgur warbands had drawn strength from a multitude of villages in the past, but it had always been on the promise of easy plunder, not for mutual defence.[3]
Horfar Grimmr led his warriors to battle against the Calacians time and again. Most often the humans won, surprising the Molgur with their ferocity and immovability. Grimmr first ascribed the losses to the enemy’s superior equipment, but soon he came to believe that these enemies were different from those the Molgur had battled in the past and that his people must find a different way to confront them. He changed his tactics from one engagement to the next, always looking to use his warriors’ power to its full effect, and he began to see more triumphs. Then, after a particularly hard-won victory an event occurred that clarified his thoughts and forever changed the path of his people.[4]
Horfar Grimmr judged the time to be right for the embattled Molgur to rise up together rather than as individual tribes or kriels. Such a thing had never been done among those peoples, but Grimmr saw this enemy would not otherwise be destroyed. Grimmr went to one Molgur village after another, confronted their chieftains, challenged them and demanded they bow to him and band together to wage war against Golivant. Grimmr and his staunchest champions eventually attached dozens of tribal banners to their cause. He promised that together they would shatter the Shield of Thrace and burn Calacia to its foundations. He wielded the axe Rathrok, the World Ender, said to be a weapon that could channel the strength and hunger of the Wurm. For months Horfar gathered the Molgur, and his army was the largest and strongest Molgur horde ever assembled.[3][4]
In the fading fall, when the Menite excursions had lessened and the humans would be withdrawing into their villages for the winter, the Molgur army set out for the Shield of Thrace. The tribes among the savage army were numerous, yet Horfar Grimmr led them as one army, the Wurm’s own. Even driven by the hunger of the Devourer, Grimmr saw the advantage of careful planning and tactical execution. His forces would simultaneously assault two sections of the wall, concentrating their efforts on breaking through one of the small sally ports set into it.[4]
The Molgur at the northern gate had an even harder time of it, and thousands were slaughtered over many days of battle. After a difficult battle the southern forces finally managed to breach the wall at the small gateway there and eventually claimed the nearby Menite keep. Propelled by the excitement of victory, some number of tribes broke off to pillage and destroy the surrounding farmlands. Grimmr sought to restrain his followers, to pull them back to the wall to prepare for the battle to come, for he knew that Golivant had not yet shown his strength, but the Molgur were not so easily controlled. With the taste of victory on their tongues they rampaged, ignoring the warnings of their chieftain.[3][4]
Just as Grimmr suspected, Golivant was even then raising an imposing army at Calacia. He marched forth to reclaim what had been taken. Scattered and disordered, the Molgur were unprepared for the Menite army, which possessed all the discipline they lacked. Soon a large number of the Molgur had been killed or captured, and Golivant moved to confront Horfar Grimmr directly. Horfar Grimmr battled on, watching for the Menite leader, the one he must defeat in order to break the will of his enemy. With that victory, they could advance on the city uncontested.[4]
In this first clash between the two leaders, each scored wounds upon the other as they tested the enemy and pushed themselves to their own limits. In the end they were forced to disengage.[4]
Calacia endured against the raging Molgur, for they did not possess the discipline of its defenders. The Molgur were put on the defensive, yielding ground before the holy fire of the Menites. As these battles became desperate, more of the Molgur routed. Only the resolute stayed with Horfar Grimmr, as they were surrounded. Rathrok took a weighty toll on the Calacians, but Golivant refused to fall. His victory at hand, Golivant delivered a crippling blow to Horfar and seized him.[3][4]
Taking Grimmr alive cost the Menites dearly, but Golivant had the numbers to pay the cost and was more than willing to do so. He ordered Grimmr strapped on a Menofix and put on a wrack in full view of the remaining Molgur army so that they might despair and quail before Menoth’s might. He meant for the anguished cries of their hero to haunt them for eternity and inflicted upon Grimmr tortures so horrible that surely no Molgur would entertain any thought of returning in the future to assault the wall.[3]
Horfar Grimmr spat curse upon curse at his hated enemy. The Menites redoubled their efforts at the wrack, but Grimmr’s agony transformed into bile with every crank of the gears, and his epithets only increased in intensity. The sight of it burned so deeply into the hearts of his warriors that when Haymor Nine-maker’s chronicler Alanda Kaleeh sought to record the greatest of the curses decades later, their remembered power alone threatened to destroy her and her entire kriel.[4]
His last act of defiance was not lost on the Molgur. Though they retreated into the mountains they continued to fight against the Calacians in the months and years to come. They would never gather in such strength again, though, and their efforts ultimately proved fruitless. The Menites would endure, while the Molgur would dwindle.[3]
Seeing the destruction wrought by the unfettered rage of the Wurm, many surviving kriels would in time return their devotion to Dhunia. Regardless, they still tell the story of Horfar Grimmr, the trollkin who could not be undone even when stripped of his weapon, bereft of his followers, and facing the certainty of a slow and agonising death.[4]
In his last moments, Grimmr’s soul raged and lashed out. He was too powerful to be contained yet permanently scarred and disfigured by Menite rites. Due to Menite curses, Grimmr did not reach Urcaen, languishing instead in the void between Urcaen and Caen. In his unending suffering in this hellish state, Grimmr's memories were erased.[2]
Over two thousand years later, Lich Lord Tenebrous discovered Grimmr's soul and called him from the void. The lich lord bound the spirit, now given the new name Bane Lord Tartarus, into the stitched-together remains of several unearthed and defiled warrior-kings to become a unique necromantic masterpiece. He was encased in rune-inscribed armour and given the axe Rivener.[2]
For centuries, Tartarus has wandered the shadows of western Immoren, where the forgotten dead lie deep below the murk.[2]