Andei
Junior Member
Ingvar Sindram
- Seeker of the Maker -
- Seeker of the Maker -
Posting Color: Cornflower Blue [#6495ED]
Name: Ingvar Sindram of House Arthen, second son of Faregar Sindram, Runemaster of Navigation
Race: Dwarf
Sex: Male
Age: 221
Hair: Dark brown streaked with grey
Eyes: Icy blue
Height: 4'5"
Weight: 180lbs
Languages: Dwarven, Common, Varden, Elven (basic), Yamatani (intermediate), Drakkaric (basic)
Alignment: Neutral Good
Vigor: 75
Arcana: 0
Strength: 50
Melee Warfare: 10
Ranged Warfare: 30
Speed: 30 ft
Ingvar is an exceptionally competent hand-to-hand combatant, being a traditional Varden folk wrestling champion as well as being well-versed in a number of barehanded martial arts from the Western nation of Yamatai. His techniques combine stunning palm strikes with locks, throws, sweeps and take-downs to counter enemy attacks. He is also a competent archer, on account of being a keen huntsman, but does not use his bow in battle.
As a priest of the Maker, Ingvar is able to perform Miracles of Creationism (resource link).
Utilitarian Miracles
- Guidance
- Unveil
- Scribe
- Light
- Piercing Light
- Spirit Touch
- Bulwark
- Rouse
Defensive Miracles
- Heal
- Great Heal
- Divine Shield
- Great Divine Shield
Offensive Miracles
- Silence Magic
- Lightning Spear
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FOOT GEAR
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RIGHT HAND
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A devout priest of the Creator, avid scholar and hardened traveller all rolled into one, Ingvar cuts an unusual figure among dwarves. Over gold and the glory of battle, for him the greatest treasures the world has to offer are meaning, purpose and truth, all of which he finds fulfilled in his Creationist faith. His unusual belief that the Creator, in his perfect power and wisdom, would not have created life only to withdraw himself from it, has crafted much of his worldview. As a believer in living a life that glorifies its creator, Ingvar shows open compassion and a self-sacrificial willingness to reach out to all he encounters, regardless of background.
Interestingly, he views all creatures to be incapable of living truly good lives as is worthy of being the Creator’s handiwork due to their inherent greed and self-interest. As such he does not see the value of men in their capacity to ‘do good’ but in their worth as the Creator’s sentient creation. It is for this reason that he reaches out to all others - as a fellow failure and criminal as the Creator’s creation. It is also why he is bullishly stubborn about refusing to take a life, even in battle.
Ingvar is among many things a thoroughly well-read intellectual and his desire to learn has not yet abated. When encountering something new, he is set afire with something between childlike curiosity and primal determination, like a hunter who has set his eyes on unusual prey. This manifests as a kind of quiet obsession that makes him both impulsive and focused in pursuit of whatever has got his attention at the time. This means he can sometimes come on a bit strong in his interactions, but in general, his inexhaustible collection of stories, friendly attentiveness and sharp wit make him a welcome presence by any warm fire.
Ingvar Sindram is the second son of the Runemaster Faregar Sindram of House Arthen and his wife Audhild, and younger brother to Árni Sindram, the firstborn. He was born in the northern dwarven colony in the Khaer Mountains established by the joint expedition between two Runemaster families: House Arthen of Navigation and House Hern of the Hunt. This colony, hewn into the caverns of the Khaer Mountains by the blood, sweat and toil of the two dwarven houses working in partnership, would eventually grow into the great city of Khaer Zendra.
Growing up amid the early days of diplomatic relations with the Varden native to the north, his immersion into their culture began from a young age. He accompanied his father on ambassadorial trips to their capital of Var’dur as soon as he was old enough to join the envoys in the journey across the Wilderness. He was quickly charmed by their guileless sincerity, upright sense of justice and open honesty. As he spent more time with them, the deeper their impact on him - he developed a love of stories and lore, learnt how to wrestle in the traditional Varden folk style (even winning an annual tournament), and began to cultivate his natural curiosity into a ferociously sharp inquisitiveness that questioned beyond the comfort of his fellow dwarves, whose worldviews appeared to Ingvar increasingly more wooden, disingenuous and aimless. But of all these influences, there was one which would change the life of the young dwarf forever - his introduction to the Creator.
As a son of House Arthen, Ingvar had been raised to always pursue the ‘what’, but as he grew older this was not enough to quench his thirst for the ‘why’. Why does the wind in the sails send the ship flying across the water? Why does the flame heat the iron so it softens in the forge? Why shouldn't our bodies fly into the sky instead of falling to the ground? The Varden presented him with a simple answer - because the Creator made it so. In his infinite wisdom and power, had created the world so balanced that all things within it worked perfectly according to his divine design. Though perplexed and sceptical at this simple reply, the more he asked, the more he learned, and the more he felt his eyes being opened to what had to be the 'why', the truth that he had always been seeking - that they were created beings that had been given life and form by the one known as the Creator. For Ingvar, whose resolve once firmly set was immovable even at his young age, decided that there was only one path for him - to dedicate his life in service of that truth.
His family were initially bewildered at his decision, but then again, Ingvar had always been a bit of an oddity even among the more open-minded northern dwarves and was well-known for his unusually close friendship with the Varden. As such, they allowed Ingvar to pursue the path of a Creationist priest, under the condition that he would endeavour to continue attending to his duties as the second son of House Arthen and maintain diplomatic relations between the northern dwarves and the Varden. After completing two years as a novitiate, Ingvar Sindram thus became the first dwarf to be inducted into the priesthood of the Creator's Temple in Var'dur, the capital city of the Varden Kingdom.
He served in the holy order of the priesthood for the next 37 years, primarily as an archivist in the Great Archives, where he would fill his days studying the methodologies behind the Varden's unique magics, the musings of past scholars and teachers, and most of all, the recorded meditations on the truths of the Creator. His dedicated scholarship also gained him access to the Mirákul, where his introduction to Miracles only served to bolster his convictions as he felt the Creator's radiant power at work. He continued to appear in wrestling matches even as a priest, and became a bit of a folk hero among the Temple and wider Varden communities due to his approachable nature and his incisive sense of humour which seemed to play against their expectations of a holy man (or dwarf).
Ingvar's curiosity never died down even once over the course of all those years, and perhaps inevitably, the number of questions began to start outstripping the number of available answers. Did the Maker truly withdraw from his creation - if so, why? Were their Miracles evidence of direct intervention on the Maker's part, or were they simply manifestations of traces of divine power entrusted to the world?
And of all these topics, there was one which he could not shake - what was the truth behind the Divine Instrument?
Such questions were beyond the capacity of even the wisest and most pious minds at the Temple, and Ingvar's well-intended but uncontrollable appetite for answers led to his decision to leave the north in order to embark on a pilgrimage to the Great Maker's Temple in Alicante and the Maker’s Isle Temple at Lake Sharn. With a brief stop at his ancestral home of Darkreach, he first travelled to Lake Sharn, where he introduced himself to the priests of the Maker’s Isle Temple in order to request permission to take up temporary residence as a scholar. Although initially reserved due to his lack of Asgardian credentials as a priest and his dwarven heritage, the monks quickly warmed to his affectionate disposition, deep love of the Creator and unique insight into Creationist doctrines developed over many years among the Varden.
It was here that Ingvar first noticed concrete signs of a different kind of theology from that which he had learned in Var'dur. First of all, to his great disappointment, there was little to no mention of the Divine Instrument, and if there were any such whispers, they were often dismissed as fairy tales in the same breath. Secondly, the Asgardian doctrines of Creationism seemed to focus a great deal on the distribution of authority and establishment of order across the Temples, with almost twice as many levels of hierarchy and models of structure than in the north. Thirdly, the Temples promoted tighter adherence to a far greater number of laws both within the faith (such as those concerning rites and religious practices and lifestyles) and in relation to the state (such as loyalty to the crown and performance of specific roles in wartime).
Ingvar was baffled by this inconsistency between an alleged belief in the same Creator and yet such a different, over-complicated interpretation of his will. How could such an arrangement cultivate a willingness to give and serve and follow when donations, labour and obedience were treated as word of law and were enforced as such? Having amassed more questions - and many of an unsettling nature at that - and comparatively few answers, Ingvar looked to the Great Maker’s Temple for a resolution to his quest.
The Maker's Isle Temple had graced him with an introduction letter for the High Priest of the Maker's Temple in Alicante, and so Ingvar hoped that he would be able to gain relatively prompt access to the tomes and records in the Archives and the Mirákul. Instead, he was met with reluctant frowns and not a small amount of confusion as to why the Maker’s Isle Temple would deem it fit to send them a dwarf on such high recommendation. In the end, they allowed him access to the Temple library, but determined that if he were to be given access to the restricted areas of the Archives, he would need to undergo a series of tests and inductions which would take place over the course of one year. Ingvar was intrigued as to why these things were considered of such importance, and why there were so many levels with complicated names in an even more complex hierarchical system, but since he’d come all this way to find answers, he agreed to undertake their evaluation.
The temple granted him room and board for the duration of his stay in return for his services in translating and transcribing some dwarven texts held in the library - due to the dearth of Creationists among the dwarves, the number of monks who had Ingvar’s fluency and literacy in the language were relatively few. As he worked and studied, he found that the distressing differences he had noticed at Lake Sharn were even more pronounced in Alicante. If the Maker’s Isle Temple showed signs of ignorance and over-complication, it became clear to the dwarf that the temple of Alicante was in a state of outright moral, theological and doctrinal disrepair. He was appalled to discover the level of corruption that poisoned even the highest echelons of the holy order, and how the holy texts were bent and reinterpreted in order to serve their convenience - whether it be the allocation of wealth, the administration of power or the machinations of the state. It was no wonder that they professed no knowledge of the Divine Instrument when the very fundamentals of their scriptures and beliefs were subject to their worldly desires. Thus, even after passing his evaluations and being granted access to the Archives, he kept his distance from the now-tarnished feel of the main Temple (unless necessity demanded it). Instead, he preferred to while away the hours in the smaller, far less extravagant Temple in the royal palace, a standing monument of humble reverence for the Creator in the midst of the materialism and egotism of the court within which it stood - a characteristic with which he felt a great deal of kinship.
However, most of the dwarf's time was spent out in the city, and it was upon its streets that he found the real fruits of his pilgrimage.
While Ingvar had encountered other races over the course of his life in the north and his journey across Asgard, this could not compare to the sheer diversity of peoples that made up the populace of the great capital. Humans, elves, dwarves and drakkar all mingled and bumped shoulders (some bumps were not necessarily as friendly as it was between others) within the walls of the city, and among them were those he had not even seen before, such as the elf-eared Kossar people of the eastern lands and the bronze-skinned humans of the distant Western empire of Yamatai. Being a city at the very heart of Western Asgard and placed next to the sea with all its mysteries beyond, there was a sense that Alicante was at the centre of not only Asgard but the wider world, as new arrivals from every imaginable corner of the land came to walk down the same streets he walked now, whether to take in the stalls selling unfamiliar wares in Commerce Square or to perhaps go ambling alongside the famous Shallow River as it glittered in the setting sun.
In an ironic twist of events, Ingvar’s distaste for the Temple’s moral deviation led him to find spiritual growth in the Creator through his efforts to interact with and minister to foreigners and non-believers. Among these was Tsunemori Takeda, an old retired Yamatani demonslayer who had fought alongside the Creator’s Hellguard during one of the demon invasions in his homeland. Tsunemori was a fount of untapped knowledge for Ingvar, and through their conversations, the dwarf earned a glimpse into the rich culture of the West, what it was like to behold the Hellguard in battle and how the Yamatani viewed the Creator. Over the months he spent with Tsunemori, he was also instructed in the Yamatani language and their martial arts (though he could never persuade Ingvar to try his hand at swordsmanship). In return, Ingvar shared with the Western warrior the histories and tales of Asgard, particularly those of the North, and his deep knowledge of the Creator that had been built up over nearly a century of holy service.
His time with Tsunemori led not only to a wider view of the world beyond Asgard, but led Ingvar to realise that whether it was in the Northern Kingdoms or Asgard or any nation across the sea, the Creator was universally true and infallible. As such, the only way to explain the stark insufficiency in the knowledge and discipline of the so-called priests of that infallible Creator was to ascribe this failure to the inherent fallibility of all created things. With this conclusion, he deemed that there was little more to learn within the Creationist order of Alicante. Taking inspiration from his time spent with sailors and journeymen, Ingvar decided to become a travelling friar, seeking the Creator's revelation of the truth through his journey across Asgard. He would stop by villages and towns to both spread the teachings of the Creator and to serve the citizens in their need.
After some time wandering in this manner, Ingvar received news from home that his ailing father did not have long to live, and so rushed north to see him on his deathbed. A few days after his arrival, Faregar Sindram passed on and Ingvar’s older brother Árni Sindram was declared the new Runemaster of Navigation and Head of House Arthen. At his brother’s behest, Ingvar remained in Khaer Zendra to help support Árni in his new role as Runemaster and to oversee the continuing relationship between the dwarves and the Varden. It was not long after Árni’s ascension that Ilhirel’s invasion of Asgard began.
The demon hordes moved at an inhuman pace across Asgard towards Darkreach, and by the time the first call for help reached them, the siege was already several days underway. But they had barely begun discussions about sending reinforcements when they received word that Knalga had fallen into civil war, and upon its conclusion had chosen to open its gates to Ilhirel and her monstrous army. Reeling from this news, House Arthen and House Hern decided that they would no longer participate in the political and military scheming of the Darkreach dwarves, and would instead focus on protecting the borders of Khaer Zendra and providing escorts for loyalists fleeing north following the betrayal of King Ragnar. Ingvar felt torn between fighting beside the Varden against Ilhirel’s forces and standing beside his brother in support of his efforts as Runemaster. Eventually, he was gently persuaded by his friends among both the dwarves and the Varden to remain with his own kind.
When word came confirming the death of those same friends who had left to defend Alicante, Ingvar wept.
Whether by a stroke of luck or some dark reason unknown to those not privy to her twisted mind, Ilhirel’s campaign did not extend to the far reaches of the Khaer Mountains and the lands beyond. With his brother’s position stable, Ingvar now looks to continue his search for truth in a land tainted by a new evil. And evil as it is, it cannot impede truth - for whoever seeks the truth will find it, if that is the will of the Creator.
TBC (but assume that it's majestic)
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