Finnan Halvess

Gnome / Bard

Submitted character story

Finnan Halvess is Franzer's older brother by almost a decade, but looks younger by at least the same amount. He's the captain and lodestone of Korrin's train, the caravan in which the brothers grew up. Where Franzer flung himself outward to taste the world, Finnan stayed and lived the road. Same Halvess grin, same dirty-fight instinct, favoring a hundred new people and a thousand old miles rather than on the next soirée. His leadership and his sword cane both parry: steel with one, words with the other. 

The brothers were caravan-born, raised among the rolling wheels of Korrin's train, a far-ranging company that ran the western circuit — Ciroon's luxury goods out to Craghant for mountain ore, down through Vervain for forest timber, and back across the Glimmerdrift breadbasket to Ciroon again. They learned letters from a ledger, geography from the road, and fighting from the lessons of road, tavern, and bandit. Franzer was the show-off even then, turning any brawl into a show, even a performance. Finnan counted the wagons, learned everyone's name, and loved the things Franzer came to chafe against: the same horizon, the known faces, the turning of the seasons along a route you could trust. The old trailmaster, Dessa Korrin, raised them both to the trade. The caravan's hedge-witch, Mother Yarrow, patched their scrapes and taught them a secret or two.

When the circuit brings the train back around to Ciroon, Finnan parks it at the Tumult, the permanent wagon-park-and-festival outside the Silt's Iron Gate, and Franzer always seems to know when his brother is near. Together the Halvess brothers have a reputation of their own that threatens to escape Ciroon to the others of the Seven Cities: two gnomes with the same smile; one prismatic peacock, the other pale and understated, both trouble in a pinch and good company in a tavern.