Editing User:G026r/PBP Characters/Hrar (section)

==Background==
When the dwarfs still peopled the Darlode stronghold in the Skyreach Mountains in great numbers, the Cairnbuilder clan lived among them and served as watch-keepers and tenders of the look-out fires atop the rocky crags. When the ore veins were mined out and the Troubles came, the dwarfs began their migration to the Northern mountains. Still the Cairnbuilders remained behind, tending the fires and keeping watch for those dwarfs who lingered.

When these too were gone, the fires were allowed to extinguish for the first time in generations and the Cairnbuilders began the trek north. All save for a small number of them who refused to abandon the land of their forefathers. But a small group of dwarfs is not enough to hold a fortress and in time the incursions of orcs and goblins had dwindled their numbers, and they too fled -- not north, but rather to the safety of the human villages in the southern hills that had prospered in the intervening years.

Here the community lived out their lives largely as smiths, masons, woodcutters, carpenters, and other physical labourers. Their population dwindling over the generations from disease, accident, and the lack of any new families, going from a small group, to a handful, to a few, to finally one family.

Hrar Cairnbuilder has been a smith in the small village since he was small. His father, Rkaf, was a smith, and he learnt his trade at his knee. He never gave much thought to life outside of the village, save when as a child he listened to his grandfather tell him the stories of his ancestors and the great deeds of the legendary dwarf heroes. He spent most of his time from adulthood on hammering metal for the village's inhabitants and caring for his increasingly elderly parents.

Even after his parents went to join their ancestors in the halls of the afterlife his routine changed little. Up at dawn. Heat the fires. Build a spade for one neighbour. Horseshoes for another. Monotony day after day, but a safe, comforting monotony.

That is, until the morning of his 40th birthday when Hrar realised that, with his passing, the last of the Cairnbuilders would be gone from this region and their works forgotten. The revelation shocked him, and he vowed that if his family name was going to die out it should at least be remembered. Taking the money he had saved for the purpose of building a home with the wife he had never found, he bought quality metal and set about building for himself a suit of armour.

In his newly wrought armour and with his grandfather's axe, he turned his back on his forge and set out to a name for himself to be remembered alongside the figures of dwarven legend.

His exploits since then have been fairly mundane: guards for uneventful caravans, providing assistance to villagers as they hunt wolves, but he is always on the lookout for a chance to prove himself and attain the glory he seeks.

===Family Tree===
[[Image:Hrardf3.gif]]