Malgrum - XERES LIVE!

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Basic Information

Full Name

Malgrum

Nickname

"Little Anchor"

Race (Grade)

Waveforged Dwarf (F)

Class

(None)

Height

2'9"

Birthday

Goldenleaf 9, 1304

Age

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Birthsign

The Phoenixborn Ifrit

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Bloodline Ability

🔮Unknown

Malgrum's bloodline has not yet fully revealed itself, but his family now knows for certain that large white dogs are part of it.

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Physical Description

Malgrum, Little Anchor

Appearance

At three, Malgrum is a sturdy, broad-shouldered, bright-faced Waveforged boy with a head of thick auburn-red hair that catches firelight like copper and still shows no interest in lying flat. His eyes are a vivid, clear blue, wide and alert, and quick to crinkle shut when something makes him laugh, which is often. He has the unmistakable density of Waveforged blood, solid and grounded in a way that makes him seem more planted than other children his size, and he has grown into it: he no longer toddles so much as marches. He still wears miniature dwarven armor whenever he is allowed to, and it took a lengthy family negotiation to convince him that school is not one of those occasions. Out of school, both small ornate hammers are almost always somewhere on his person.

Unique Characteristics

His grip strength remains remarkable for his age and has only grown as he has. His deep voice has found new uses: he sings loudly and without embarrassment, drums out rhythms on any surface within reach, and has a big, booming belly laugh that tends to set off every other child in the room. The Geodegazer household has long since learned the difference between his genuinely upset cry and what he considers a reasonable volume for ordinary conversation, though his new teachers are still learning. He bears a strong physical resemblance to a man he has never met and likely will not meet for some time, if ever, which is a coincidence that only a handful of people in the world have the full context to find significant.

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Personality

Positive Traits

Warm, friendly, and fits in wherever he is placed
A natural little leader among the other children
Eager learner who loves counting, stacking, and building
Fiercely protective of Solvana and the babies
Big, booming laugh that sets off everyone near him
Resilient; takes bumps and tumbles in stride

Challenging Traits

Volume management is still an ongoing discussion
Bossy when other children won't play it his way
The hammers are still his, and still not negotiable
Eats more than any three-year-old reasonably should
Contests bedtime on principle, every single night

"I am THREE. I go to SCHOOL." [announced to a visitor who did not ask]

"Hammers stay home. They guard the fire." [explaining, very seriously, why he left them behind this morning]

"Solvana, come. I show you." [taking his little sister by the hand, already leading the way]

Likes

His two hammers, still, always, both of them
School, especially counting, building, and drum songs
Mama, who is still the fixed center of his world
The fireplace, especially after a long school day
Showing the younger children how things are done

Dislikes

Anyone touching his hammers without asking first
Being told he is too little to help
Sudden loud noises that he did not cause himself
Waiting for food, which he announces at volume
Bedtime, which he contests on principle every night

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Background & History

A Birth of Hope, and a Name He Was Given After

The child now known as Malgrum was born on Goldenleaf 9, 1304, to Queen Hanabyrn of Stoneharbor, who named him Durric, or "Enduring Leader" in the Waveforged tongue, and held him with the particular ferocity of a woman who had already lost one child and would not lose another. He was healthy, loud, and dense with Waveforged heritage even at birth. His father, King Durgath Ironbreaker, held him and saw his own face in miniature. The city of Stoneharbor celebrated. The name Malgrum came later. It came with a plan, and a journey, and a decision his mother made that she has carried quietly ever since. He does not know he was ever called anything else. He will not know for some time, if ever.

Brought to Goodberry

Malgrum's earliest memories, such as they will be, are of the Geodegazer Estate: a large, warm, endlessly populated household full of siblings and honorary siblings and adults who treat him as simply one more beloved member of an already considerable family. He was brought here by his mother, along with his little sister Solvana, when the circumstances of his parents' lives made continuing in Stoneharbor impossible. He remembers none of it, which his mother privately counts as a mercy. He knows there is a fireplace and it is warm and he has two hammers. The transition from a royal nursery in a carved seamount to the organised chaos of the Geodegazer Estate has not appeared to trouble him in the slightest. He has adapted with the equanimity of a child who finds the world generally acceptable as long as the fire is lit and the hammers are present.

Born Under the Phoenixborn Ifrit

Malgrum shares his birthsign with the father he does not know: both born under The Phoenixborn Ifrit, a celestial alignment associated with passion, transformation, and the balance between destruction and renewal. Among the Waveforged, the sign is considered to mark those with force of personality and a particular kind of tenacity that bends but does not break. The dwarven scholars who noted it at his birth and spoke of its significance did so believing they were speaking of a prince of Stoneharbor. They were correct. They simply did not know they were also speaking of a child who would be raised in Goodberry under a different name, growing into whatever the sign intends for him without anyone to tell him what it means.

The Hammers

He found them in the household. No one is entirely certain how. He has had them since before anyone thought to track their origin, and he has made it abundantly clear that their status as his is permanent and non-negotiable. They are small, ornate, clearly made with craft and care, and he carries both simultaneously at all times. He does not use them as weapons. He does not use them as tools. He simply has them, the way some children have a blanket or a stuffed toy, except denser and more heavily decorated. Hana has noted, privately, that his father collects weapons the same way. The one exception is school. After a long negotiation, Malgrum agreed that the hammers would stay home during lessons, on the condition that they be left beside the fireplace to guard it until he returns. He checks on them first thing every afternoon.

One of the Family

Malgrum has settled into the Geodegazer household so completely that most people would never guess he was not born there. He knows every corridor of the estate, runs through them with the rest of the children, calls it home without hesitation, and treats the enormous family around him as simply his. He has no memory of anywhere else and no reason to wonder about it. He loves his mother, watches over his little sisters Solvana and Lynn-Marie with great seriousness, and throws himself into the noise and warmth of the household as if he had always been part of it. As far as he knows, he always has.

Starting School

Malgrum has just started school and taken to it remarkably well. He likes the routine, he likes the other children, and he especially likes anything involving counting, stacking, building, or singing with a drum, all of which he approaches with the same focused seriousness he once reserved for the hammers. Within the first few weeks he had become the child the others tend to follow: the one who decides what the game is, shows the smaller ones how to do it, and makes sure everyone gets a turn, provided they take it his way. His teachers describe him as loud, warm, and very quick to learn. Nobody at school knows that the name he was born with means "Enduring Leader." Nobody there would be surprised.

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Goals

To Have Both Hammers

This goal is still achieved daily and re-achieved immediately upon waking. The hammers remain the bedrock on which everything else rests. What has changed is that Malgrum has discovered compromise: he can now leave them by the fireplace for a whole school day, on the understanding that they are on duty, and collect them again the moment he gets home. He has also mastered holding both while eating, an engineering challenge he considers fully solved.

To Learn Everything at School

School has given Malgrum an entirely new set of things to be serious about. He wants to count higher than anyone else in his class, build the tallest tower, learn every song, and be the first to answer when a question is asked, preferably at full volume. He is not content to watch; he wants to do, and then he wants to show the next child how. After school, he still wants one thing above all: to sit by the fire with both hammers in his lap and tell his mother everything.

Growing Into Whatever He Is

Malgrum does not know what he is heir to. He does not know his name was changed, that there is a clone of him in a city to the north growing up as a prince, or that his father is a living legend who would move the sea itself to find him if he knew where to look. What he knows is that he is warm, fed, loved, a schoolboy now, and in possession of two excellent hammers, and that his mother holds him like she will not let go. The rest will come in time. Whatever it is, he will face it with the settled, unshakeable quality that seems to have been built into him from the start, which is perhaps, in the end, the most Waveforged thing about him.

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Current Status & Relationships

Residence

Goodberry

Role

Child

Parents

Family

ATTENTION!

Malgrum is the biological son of Durgath Ironbreaker, King of Stoneharbor, and Queen Hanabyrn, though he is being raised under an assumed name in the Geodegazer household with no knowledge of his true origins. His father believes he is raising Malgrum in Stoneharbor... he is, in fact, raising a construct fashioned by Nokko's bloodline ability. The real child is here, healthy and safe, and so thoroughly at home in the Geodegazer household that almost no one would guess he was not born to it. He does not remember anything before Goodberry, does not know any of this, and will not until someone decides he should. He is three years old, has just started school, and is doing very well there. He has the hammers. For now, that is enough.