Ingrid the Tarnished's page

Though barely seventy years old, Ingrid the Tarnished is surprisingly wise for her age.

Born to the Goldfire clan under the western mountains, Ingrid was but one of eight brothers and sisters, all with the same brilliant red-gold hair the family was named for. As one of the older siblings, she eschewed the ways of her younger kin – while many of them did as they pleased, she and her older brother, Thalgrin, respected the ways of their people. He became a mighty warrior, a defender of clan and hearth, and she, a wise priest in Torag’s service. Displaying a decidedly more martial bent than many of the other acolytes, she trained as both a priestess and a soldier, effortlessly blending axe-blows with the spells of protection Torag blessed her with. She crafted her own suit of armour at the temple’s great forge, a gleaming suit of scale that shone in the fire-light. She was able to infuse her weapon with holy might, her armour with his divine strength, and her very soul with the knowledge of the old ways and the lost knowledge of the dwarves. She was fire and gold – stoic and beautiful, but with a righteous anger boiling below her surface.

As one of the few remaining holdouts of dwarfkind, the Goldfire clan and their home under the mountain remained solitary and strong, seeking out others only to mix families. And so it was that Ingrid was wed – to a dwarf she’d never met, one Edrukk Tharnhammer. Her parting gift from the temple where she’d spent most of her days was a finely-crafted dwarven hand-axe – a beautiful thing, with a solid haft, a head that shone like gold, and a strange socket in the grip, where a gemstone of some description had once sat – no doubt pried out by some enterprising thief long ago. She bade her brothers and sisters goodbye, and set out to Summermount for her own wedding.

It was a typical arranged marriage – as dwarves tend to do, both Ingrid and Edrukk settled into their newly married lives with relative ease. It was their duty to clan and home, after all, and Ingrid had no doubt her family had benefitted from the handsome dowry they were given for her. And as the years passed, the couple fell in love – as some dwarves tend to do. While Ingrid had accepted the fact that marriage was her duty, she found herself more and more surprised by good Edrukk made her feel. She’d never exactly longed for the ways of surface-folk who married for love, but it was a welcome feeling, and she grew happier as the years passed. With one small problem – she never bore Edrukk a child.

As the couple kept trying, Ingrid never gave up her devotion to Torag. The cathedral at Summermount taught her plenty, including the history of the dwarves, and of Dammerhall. Dammerhall, she learned, was where her axe had been forged, in a legendary smithy deep in the bowels of the earth. But Dammerhall was lost – and nobody knew why.

As she sat by the fire at night, watching the way the flames danced over her gilt axe, she thought of the knowledge lost, the armoury destroyed, the very ways of their people, gone forever.

With Edrukk’s support, Ingrid took to defending the subterranean reaches below Summermount. Along with hundreds of other dwarves, she delved into the caves and tunnels below, fighting back dark elves, deep dwarves, and all manner of hideous creatures with alien anatomy that haunted her dreams for years. On some of these delves, Edrukk himself accompanied her, a high-ranking member of the defense.

On one such delve, with Edrukk at her side, Ingrid’s life changed. A drow party attacked with acid and fire. In his heavy armour, Edrukk was cooked alive, his screams ringing in Ingrid’s ears to this day. She was sent flying by a spell from a drow arcanist; her helmet and shield flew from her limp body as she smashed into the ground.

Then, there were the flames.

Along with a few others, Ingrid made it back to the cathedral. She still gripped her holy symbol of Torag, and her axe was still clenched tightly in one fist. But the gilt head had been burned black by the fire, and – worse still – her hair as well. Once brilliant red-gold, now charred and blackened on one side of her head, burned away on the other. Ingrid hid beneath her helmet for months, ashamed to show her face to her people.

Though still a Tharnhammer, in name only, she felt distanced from the other inhabitants of Summermount. Her hair was gone, its golden braids and ornaments lost forever under the blackness. Her husband, her only link to this clan, was dead, slain by the deep elves. And when she went back to the forge, the flame and fire terrified her, serving as grim reminders to her husband’s fate – her own fate.

She took to other creative pursuits. Leather, she could work with. Wood, to an extent. She tried working with gems, but found their natural beauty too much to deal with, considering how her own was now gone.

To this day, Ingrid remains devout, thankful to Torag for sparing her life. Though she can’t serve him as well as she used to, being unable to work the forge, she never forgets her daily prayers, and never forgets the blessings.

There’s nothing left for her back home. There’s nothing left for her in Summermount. Perhaps, Ingrid thinks, she needs a new place to be.

Ingrid is a stern dwarf woman of some seventy years, of slightly below average height and weight. Indeed, for a dwarf, she could be considered downright skinny, having lost a fair amount of weight in the years following her accdident.

In profile, she is a strikingly handsome woman, with a strong nose and jaw, and brilliant amber eyes. However, the right side of her face bears strange tissue, a sign of old burn scars that have never quite healed. Running from crown to jaw, they are a shock when first sighted - and fortunately (unfortunately?), almost every resident of Summermount has seen Ingrid's scars at this stage.

Her hair, formerly a brilliant reddish-gold, is now black - it's grown back that way since the accident, much to her dismay. Occasionally, a small streak of its original brilliance finds its way in, but is almost always smothered by the charred remains of what it once was. No hair grows on the right side of her head, and she refuses to comb her hair to cover it - this is her scar, her shame to bear and wear.

She dresses in the charcoal and gold colours typical of her faith, though wears her armour less and less these days. She always wears her hammer-shaped holy symbol about her neck, never hiding it, and keeps her tarnished axe on her hip. In addition to these, she almost always wears a frown - pensive, regretful, wrathful, or simply beaten, it's as much a part of her as her scars these days.