100th Jarthenpedia Post: Eldernoth Furblog, in his own words

The screaming. That was probably the worst part.

We had been part of the column of Imperial troops sent into the Erkenheld to root out the rebels once and for all. Sure, you would think that if it was so easy as that -- just a quick walk in the woods¹ combined with the wholesale defeat of an enemy that had succeeded in flouting the authority of the empire for more than a century -- we wouldn't have taken so long to get down to it. At the time, of course, I didn't think such things. I was just a farm boy, caught up in something much bigger than me or anything I have seen or ever will see. I was perfectly content believing that this would be the decisive blow, and I was proud that I would get to be a part of it. What honest Elothninian wouldn't?

I was so naive.

The first night at the front we were as full of elan as ever a group of young men bent on slaughter and bloodshed was. We joked and caroused, many of us getting our first taste of the firewater soldiers are so fond of drinking. The older soldiers watched our revelry with a sort of mute sadness, which, at the time was easily dismissed as the recalcitrance we associated with all of our elders. Their fatalistic melancholy, the result no doubt of their knowledge of what was to come and simultaneous inability to in any way affect the future, did nothing to sober our ignorant joviality.

The pride of youth, or the folly of war?

I remember writing a letter to my young wife that night. I told her how much I missed her mush, and how I hoped to make our as yet unborn child proud with the same deeds of bravery that all youth dream of before seeing their friend's face smote in twain by the cold blades of some eerie battlefield specter. But I digress. I wrote to her that she might name the child after herself it was born a girl, but that if it was a lad I wanted him to be called Jarthen.

I didn't know then, that love can be tragically fragile in the face of war.

The subsequent 8 months completely vanished from my recollection. I am told that I was found three days after the battle ended in a small pit where four of my comrades from the Fethil had been slain by the rebels. I was chattering away like a madman -- why shouldn't I have been? -- seeking solace from my fallen friends. After a month in hospital I was at last sent home to West Fethil, where only the birth of my son was enough to rouse me from the stupor that consumed by weary body and tortured mind.

Of course, I tried to regain some semblance of normality for the sake of Jarthen and his mother, but I don't know that they ever bought into my feeble facade. There always seemed to be a strangely piercing look in the lad's calm, measured countenance -- it was as if he was able to see the constant fear that felt like my only companion.

I feel a tremendous amount of guilt for Jarthen's mother. Before I left for the front, we were just a pair carefree young lovers, but, after my convalescence, it was all we could do to make it through the protracted agony that was our day to day existence. Her, slaving over a steaming vat of mush with a young son constantly tugging at her apron strings, and I, startled by the scarecrows in a field that would yield no fruit, condemned to wander the earth as specters of despair and vanquished dreams.

I knew that they would come for me again some day. The war, it never ends -- not on the borders of the empire, and not in my mind. I knew that I would be unable to answer the call.

Oh my dear boy! How I have failed you! I may take comfort, at least, in the knowledge that yours was a quick end. I, on the other hand, must now live not only with the ghosts of those young soldiers who died so violently in the forest, but also the blood of my own child upon my conscience. Perhaps you are the lucky one, Jarthen. Perhaps you are the lucky one.

A father's despair

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¹This in particular refers to that great tragedy in 1032, Randle's Folly, which Eldernoth Furbolg is known to be a survivor of.