Tarbron Dur-Urnâm

Tarbron Dur-Urnâm, Eldest of the Council

In the war schools, students study his campaigns before they learn to hold an axe. A hundred and twenty-four years on the battlefield, longer than any general on record, a hundred and twenty-four years of deciding fast and counting the cost of every decision made too soon. Today he sits as eldest on the council of the most prestigious lineage of Dol Murakh, keeper of the traditions that kept him alive. Peace has given him back his time. He will not give it up to anyone.

Describe him

You hear him coming in three beats: two steps, then the war hammer he uses as a cane striking the stone. No other footsteps come with him; at more than three thousand four hundred moons, he still walks without a guard. He sits apart, where the light barely reaches, and lights his pipe. You soon forget he is there. Then he speaks, once, without raising his voice, and the whole table turns toward the dark corner.

Play him

Never put him forward. Seat him in the shadows, pipe in his mouth, and let the others talk. When someone presses him to decide, have him refuse, calmly, with a line from the Writings of the Father-Mother on patience always at hand. Let the table feel that he has often decided long before anyone asked, and is only waiting for the others to get there. Hold one certainty underneath: in a hundred and twenty-four years, those who pressed him died before he did.

What he says (rarely)

"While you're alive, it can wait. Once you're dead, you have no more deciding to do."
"The stone does not hurry, and that is why it is still here. Writings of the Father-Mother. Sit down."
(drawing on his pipe, without looking up) "Guards? At my age, people don't protect me. They consult me."