Bumolins family belonged to a small group of dwarves, who left the mines beneath droskars crag during the second age of toil. Like many others they wanted to start a new life somewhere else, before they would be crushed between the wheels of the theocracy in Droskars name. Unlike most of the other fugitives from Droskars Crag in those days they didn’t head for one of the other dwarven settlements, because they had come to the conclusion that the dwarven passion for artistry and their urge to always form their surroundings after their will and their idea of beauty and sense was the deeper reason for those atrocities and corruptions commited in Droskars name. If they would return to the old ways – so they thought – it would just be a matter of time before a similar corruption would take place.
Instead they founded a community of their own: they found a natural cavesystem on the southwestern side of the mountain Onik, north of the Darkmoon Forest, and tried to live there and make it their own while changing those caves and their surroundings as little as possible. They called their settlement “Olora”. Their new philosophy of life as a dwarf meant that they never returned to the faith in Torag or one of the other dwarven gods. Some in the new community refused to take part in any kind of religion. Others started to form a relationships with druidic circles in the Darkmoon Forest and found a new spiritual home in their own interpretations of the Green Faith.
When Bumolin was born, the theocracy in Droskars Crag was already history and the community of Olora had grown to a few dozen souls and many rites of the Green Faith had become part of daily life. His father Hersolim and his mother Nasigit had taken over responsibility for the livestock of the community, which consisted mostly of mountain goats and a herd of barely domesticated woolly pigs. Bumolin grew up learning everything they knew about those animals and how one should take care of them and from early on he developed a special affinity to them. Especially later, as his life in Olora started to become troublesome, he tried to spend as much time with those animals as he could and whenever inevitably the time came to butcher one of them, he made sure that he was the one to do it, because he trusted no one to do it as it should be done.
The dwarves of Olora still held firm in their believe that only their strict separation from traditional dwarven living could protect them from another age of toil. But while this general idea was not questioned by anyone who spent his life in Olora, discussions began soon after the fall of the theocracy about the strictness this separation had to be observed with. Over time Hersolim and Nasigit started to take a more and more “liberal” position in this debate: After they had seen dwarves and animals die during harsh winters, because the small community couldn’t build up enough reserves, they urged their fellow dwarves to start trading with other settlements - human and dwarven - at least when it came to the basic necessities. The more “radical” thinking dwarves in Olora thought that this would result into being reintegrated into traditional dwarven culture in the long run and therefore should be avoided at all cost. When this conflict promised to result into violence, Bumolin adressed the elders of Olora to find a solution before things could go that far. After long debate they decided that they could guarantee his parents to live the rest of their lives in peace in Olora only if they handed their responsibilities over to another family and if Bumolin went voluntarily into exile so that when his parents succumb to old age, dissension would die with them and there would be harmony once again between the darves of Olora. Bumolin had a hard time to persuade his parents to accept this proposal, but he did persuade them. He knew they were too old to adapt to any other life than that, to which they had been used to all their lives and at the same time he felt he had lost his believe into the vision of Olora during the petty arguments of the last years: part of him was eager to leave and find a new place to live.
Together with his parents he decided to venture the journey to Maheto in Taldor, where a cousin of Hersolim and some other distant relatives lived. Hersolim hadn’t seen any one of them in decades, but without obvious alternatives it seemed the best place to start. Because the dwarves in Olora didn’t use any currency – based on precious metal or otherwise – Bumolin was allowed by the elders to choose five animals from Oloras herds. He could run them to Falcons Hollow or another human settlement and sell them to fill his pockets with enough gold to facilitate his journey and not come as a beggar to his relatives in Maheto. Bumolin did just that. But one of the animals was a young woolly boar with long crooked tusks and a wild temperament. When he chose him back in Olora Bumolin knew that he wasn’t a very sensible choice. But he had grown fond of him over the years and taking him made leaving his herds behind a little easier. By the time Bumolin reached the Darkmoon Vale, the boar listened to the name “Abon”. And when Bumolin left Falcons Hollow a week later on the eastern road with a small pouch of coins on his belt, Abon still trudged behind him constantly sniffing the ground for something to eat.
The longer Bumolin followed the road to the east the more he was surprised to meet more and more people who followed the Green Faith travelling in the same direction. He soon discovered that most of them were druids travelling with animals at their side, avoiding towns most of the time all headed for the Verduran Forest to take part or witness the Moot of Ages. Although almost none of them were dwarves, Bumolin soon found companions for the road among them and joined them during their attendance of the Moot of Ages. Fascinated and thrilled by anything he had witnessed he humbly asked to spend some time there to learn from the Forest.
He stayed for a long time and almost forgot about his original aim to travel to Maheto and see his relatives there. But part of him missed being among dwarves and therefore when he heared one day that a man called Silas was looking for a guide through the forest, he decided to leave and travel with his caravan to Belhaim and then later through the forest to his relatives in Maheto.
