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VERNANDU TUTOF

Level 1 Dwarven Monk

It’s been a long time since I left Raazak.  Hard to even imagine that I lived there once.  A person is always changing, like a rock-snake shedding its skin.  People change little by little just by living in this world; they change drastically when they search for understanding.  And now I have changed again.

The changes are hard to detect from day to day.  You don’t feel yourself becoming aware as you learn single ideas.  But after a year of discovery, it is difficult to ignore.  I am not the same.  A year ago, I was not…”me”.

The rift grows faster as years pass as well.  From the starting point, the changes began slowly.  Then, current changes ‘now’ blossom from old changes ‘then’.  Like a river, eventually the water washing the riverbed away is itself also washed away.  In the end, the riverbed is changed, and the water is far far gone.

When I was young, adults could not explain ‘maturity’ to me.  “That’s what happens when you get older,” they would say casually, all of them believing the answer obvious to one another.  Those dwarves need the comfort in believing there is order, though they do not understand it well enough even to prove it as such.

Maturity does happen as you get older, generally, but those who are ignorant of what that means must be bashed in the skull until they realize it.  It does not come automatically to the old.  Until the point of realization it develops too slowly to be useful.  It is the embracing of change, the understanding that your nature is to change, that allowed me to begin maturing.

I always took an interest in my mind, which segregated me from so many of my former brothers.  It is intimidating for the weak of mind to be outdone by qualities they deem unnecessary.  Funny, how the weak of body with qualities of enlightenment are not intimidated by thugs and bullies, heh.  The mind is stronger than the body – as it is the only thing which you can control.  Your body may be ripped to shreds by bone devils, but a strongest mind is never defeated.

My father was a constable in the Tuutoff Guard.  That was the calling of our clan, as it were.  Brendan Tuutoff, my father, the constable.  Imagine his frustration when I took to art and writing, eschewing the axe and the breastplate.  The Young Guard was what every boy my age wanted, or at least what any family wanted of that boy.  As part of the honored clan, and with my father’s distinguished record, I was assured more chances to succeed than most, for whom the Guard’s rigid discipline would defeat.  Five years I spent with those fools, force-fed that dogmatic tradition.  My questions, initially borne of curiosity, eventually became my tests to a new instructor.  In all cases, they were unappreciated, always replaced with the stock answers, spouted flawlessly by the next brainwashed “master”.

When my father went missing, my mother was strong.  While some would be eager to replace a lost warrior in the family by bringing up another, Finna Tuutoff let her only son follow his interests.  Discipline still kept a home, and for that I am thankful.  This discipline made sense, it was foundation, not dogma or “subjective tradition”.  So I learned to create, not destroy.  Sculpture of rock became my chief hobby, and hours would grow into days while I chiseled away.  Eventually, a miniature would present itself and generally, would end up on Finna’s shelf.

I began to read about the arcane.  Adults had figured me for a rebel, looking to be interested in anything that might make my forefathers roll in the clan tomb.  Offerings were rare, but I found a few mainstays.  Those I read over and over, working out every intricacy.  What interested me most was the way the writers thought – they “invented” things of their own consciousness, not relying on age-old traditions to guide their thoughts.  Fodder for my ever-questioning nature, my mind and spirit grew.

I guess I always had a penchant for philosophy.  It took Xiang Shou to focus it, however.  I first met him in the market in town – there I was, inspired by the movement of the crowd, trying to gather enough coppers to give my mother some board.  A young man my age would have been well trained and on his way, serving routine patrols on the wall.  I’m always amazed when I think of the time that has passed.  I still can’t believe who I was back then.  The thoughts I must have had, unintelligible to me now.

It must have been almost 13 years ago now.  Raazak had been “opened up” like some vegetable cart, ready for business.  Boost the economy and trick others into fighting our precious battles, thought the government.  Just like the dwarves to say one thing and want another – until you are willing to do things genuinely, you can’t expect things to go your way.  Raazak had to be opened to lure help, but every dwarf in that city resented every stranger that would fight for them.  It didn’t take long for word to spread that people weren’t really “welcome”, and that all the government wanted were their swords and their gold.  I’m surprised as many people came as did. 

My wares were displayed in my makeshift stall - a stool draped with brown canvas.  Three stone miniatures, lime, granite and basalt, watched the dwarven passersby with interest.  A patron pulled up, a stranger.  It broke the monotony enough that it convinced me to sit up from where my head lay against the fountain of stonehomes.

This stranger seemed interesting, and it wasn’t just my boredom.  He wore no armor, so I thought him arcane.  This is someone with whom I could discuss the mind.  But the worn hand he pointed at the figurines had no scholar’s touch.  Was he a farmer or workman, perhaps?  His clothes shone as if from moonlight, purple trimmed in green, based on the angle at which you examined him.  Not a peasant of any sort, with those clothes…A rogue then, without weapons?  Thinking perhaps that they were concealed, I became wary of the potential thief.

“Are you not superstitious?”

The man finally chirped.  His accent was different than any I’d heard, and had a musical, entrancing quality.  With a laugh, I ensured the man that dwarven superstition could be found all around but not at this stall.

“Well that explains your boldness in sculpting effigies of ancient demons.”

Surprised at his recognition of the soapstone miniature, I assured him that I knew the subject of my creation, and that indeed I did not fear the creation of art.  Sending 15 copper my way, the man snatched up a lime frog, leaving me with my sinister creation.

It was 5 months until I met Xiang Shou for real.  I had snuck through the wall to fetch stones.  With me, I had a volume of philosophy that I would read from in the caverns beyond.  Jogging and sneaking for about an hour, avoiding patrols, I reached a place of study only to find that it was occupied.

The man’s clothing remained as pristine as when I first met him.  He sat cross-legged in the corner of a small cave.  I was certain he couldn’t see me, as no light was present.  This human would have no facility of dark-sight.  I watched the man for a curious few moments, when his voice called me over, startling me.

“Come in, if you plan to interrupt me.”

I entered the cave, wondering how he had heard me sneaking.  Even when sounds are made, the origins of echoes require training and familiarization to locate.  I walked in slowly, and could feel him all around me.  Strangely enough, his body remained still as I approached it.

And so, we met – I spoke of my life, this dreary existence, and how I wished to discover something else.  We talked of tomes I had read, of which he was surprisingly familiar and he explained things in a light I would not have experienced on my own.  He had shown me the sun of the surface in these ideas, and I would never return to the shadows of Raazak.  Even had I wished to, I had stained my mind with this light.  The path I would come to follow would truly become a destination in itself.

Since one hour before that meeting, I have not seen Raazak.  Xiang Shou became my mentor.  Providing the basis of training, I developed and internalized ideas that changed my consciousness.  At the point of this enlightening, time became an asset.

My previous years faded from memory so quickly.  Once enlightening occurs, your self becomes the riverbed.  The changes come and are pushed by further changes.  Impressions are left by the water you push over yourself, and that which is pushed over you.  Understanding allows one to remain a soft, changing riverbed, and not become eroding rock that crumbles to the water of change.

Through this change, I developed my ideas under Xiang Shou’s tutelage.  More of a tour guide than a headmaster, he helped me explore ideas and achieve understanding of my own accord.  The ideas that govern me now -  those of unity – fuel strength unachievable by the body.  Xiang Shou taught me power over the body through power of the mind.

Excruciating trials of the mind shaped my body as it is now.  To affect a cavern wall with the hand is not power of the body.  It is the understanding that the cavern is your perception; that you and the world are the same; that you can affect yourself allows you to affect the unity.  A dwarf may strike a cavern wall with a fist.  If he can affect it, his fist will be broken.  The fist is not as strong as the cavern, the rules of bodies preclude him from affecting it.  As long as a man is a body, he will never affect a cavern wall.  If he cannot affect a cavern wall, he cannot affect anything, including himself.  This illustrates the unity.  Affecting one thing is affecting all things, including yourself.

Which brings me to myself.  Vernandu Tutof, this is my name.  My tribute is to Finna – I am no longer Tuutoff, for that time is long past.  The sounds remind me of her, and she is to reward for allowing me to grow.  But I am not ‘of’ that family, I am alone, and I am with unity.  So I am Tutof, with no doubled characters.

But I am also Vernandu.  For I was once Vern.  One year after having met Xiang Shou, his sarcastic humor was meant to push me, to force me to deal with conflict.  “Nan”, “Copper”, a word from his native language, he tacked on to mine.  This was to represent my old lifestyle – if I could not be comfortable speaking of it in a derogatory way, I would not have left it behind.  So I was “Vernan”.

I had lived underground for 50 years, but traveling for over 10 years underground with Xiang Shou taught me more about darkness than I had ever known.  I learned of my spirit, I learned of my mind, and the time went by quickly.  For a year I traveled downwards, and for years I stayed there.

Great dangers were experienced, but Xiang Shou’s wisdom bred safety.  I lived in societies stranger than my own, and from this I learned moderation.  I learned the language of the underdark, where I lived on the fringes with traders.  I traveled up for a year as well, and I found myself in the light.

The change has now achieved completeness, the rock-snake’s skin completely reborn.  I have been changed a thousandfold over my first 50 years, there is little trace of what once was.

And now I have changed again.  Xiang Shou is gone.  It is time to be my own teacher, to fully embrace unity as my experience.  I stare at this parchment, and I see my new name.  Never again will Xiang Shou give me a name – for never again will I meet the spirit I owe so much.  “Du”, “Brightest”, again in Xiang Shou’s native tongue.  “Vernandu”, “Vern, brightest copper”; this name does not force me to deal with my past, but instead to revere my gift of spirit.

So I guess it hasn’t been that long.  The “length” of time disappears when you are not there to remember the beginning.  A single moment is all there is.  “Ufraam Dimyach”, roughly translated from dwarven: “Knowledge of the Unity”.  I am no longer a dwarf, though I had a dwarven body once.  Some might argue that a dwarven mind is more stubborn than a dwarven body.  A dwarf would say his calling is to “protect of the world”; but to assume the world could benefit from anyone’s protection is absurd.  Instead, I understand the world for what it is: I am affected by it, as I affect it, we are bound as a singularity.  This is not the mind of a dwarf, as minds do not belong to a race.  I am individual, as all is individual: the unity just exists.