Chapter One
'The Birth of a Legend'
'The City of Akathgethor,21st Slate, 15.'
'The Den of Thieves'
Tobul Splashtowers was screaming. She was trying to push the baby out of her belly, the baby which she had been expecting for some months now.
When her good friend Erush heard, he had treated her out and told her of his own wife, back in the Mountainhomes. She had had 2 children, a rarity amongst the dwarves. Erush had told her giving birth was easy. Not so now. 'Must be his father's blood..', Tobul thought as she pushed the new life into the world. The Pandaman doctor was trying to ease her birth with beer and ale, but it was no use. No matter how numb the pain was, it felt like she was pushing a rock out.
The screaming continued into the wee hours. She had not yet given birth to him when Erush came in to tell her that her husband was coming in from the forges to see their new child. 'Damn you, Muthkat, you did this to me!', she screamed, and at the sound of his father's name, the baby came out like booze in a barrel into a dwarfs mouth. Tobul felt the pressure go quickly, and she looked down. The child was amber-skinned. He was strong looking, though he had only just been born. His eyes were turqoise. Tobul named him after her patron god, Asmel. Just then, the father came into the room. The fire imp Muthkat held up his child. 'He looks like he'll be a strong little boy,' he uttered. 'Yes, Muthkat, that's all because of you,' Tobul responded and passed out. The doctors managed to revive her and she went back to work the next day.
The young Asmel was strange amongst his kind, for he was the only half-breed in existence. Indeed, he was half fire-imp, half dwarf. Such a combination had never been heard of. But, the Impborn, as he was called, would become great amongst the thieves of Winterdirge, as we will soon see....
(Based on true events. See the Dfusion thread.)
(The true events: In 21 Slate, 15, in Akathgethor, a child named Asmel Wheelscalded was born of a dwarf and fire-imp marriage. He was unique in that he was evidence that children could be born of interracial marriages without race-changing or adventurers. He was also unique in that his description was visible without crashing the game, a first for half-breeds, whose desc usually crash games because their appearance is unrenderable by the current DF engine. I named Asmel 'Impborn' to commemorate the new discovery, and he was made a metalsmith after his mother was killed going berserk by the militia and his father dying of old age the next year. I will add more details as his life story goes on. Some events in this story were fabricated due to the normal story being boring and the world Asmel was created in crashing beyond a certain point.
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