[Story] Journey of an Elven Brawler - Prologue
“Jurl!…..Jurl!...how about flinging more coal into the forge and less into the basket?
Elves don’t mine hard coal like dwarves do. Instead they harvest hard words from the nearby forest, and then stack cords end to end in a smokehouse to slowly smoke out all the moisture. What is left is a charcoal suitable for firing the forges and tempering the steel, but it doesn’t burn nearly as long. It means a servant elf like Jurl has to keep the forge constantly fueled and the bellows constantly pumping.
Jurl wasn’t always a servant. It was rumored he was learning to be a great warrior in the prior age, or at least that is what his dreams reveal. As a very young elf, he may have fought as a simple foot soldier at Battle of the Gladden Fields. He was allowed to work with the Dúnedain to learn the Thangail, the shield-fence formation to hold off attacking armies, and once mastered, take it back to Rivendell to teach to elves. Being overwhelmed by the attacking orcs and suffering a serious head wound, Jurl was left for dead. Even after recovering, he could remember very little of his prior life or training, or so it would seem from the bits and pieces of foggy dream-memories.
Elrond himself had revealed part of the mystery, where Jurl had been sent to Gondor as a messenger for Rivendell, to convey letters and messages from King Isuldur’s wife and youngest son to the King, along with well wishes from Elrond.
Jurl never made the journey to Gondor armed, but nevertheless piqued the curiosity of one of Gondor’s weaponmasters, Brand of Minas Tirith. Brand wanted to know if elves learned their battle skills more slowly then men, being much longer lived. But Jurl has barely progressed through shield and defensive skills before King Isildur decided to visit Rivendell and quartered Jurl with his squires.
Ohtar, an esquire to the King and putative sole survivor, mentioned that a Rivendell elf was part of their host traveling north, but barely survived with his own skin, and could not recount all of the fallen. Jurll’s dreams of large bears and honey suggest the Beornings may have rescued him and brought him homeward through the High Pass. Which would make sense, as many years ago Jurl emerged from the foothills of the Misty Mountains, dressed in furs and as savage as a Hillman.
“Alright, alright! I’ll practice my hurling skills at the Forge, just give me a minute,” sniped Jurl.
Holding a piece of coal like a tailor’s chalk and marking up his metal armor design on the leather pattern, he finished the diagram of an elbow joint and tossed the chunk and eleven of its brethren into the forge.
“I’ll get to the bellows as soon as this pattern is dressed on the tailor’s dummy.”
