Tavi the Bard of the Broken

Origins and Birth

Tavi the Bard of the Broken was born from the collective grief and stubbornness of the Goblins, a people whose history no lord would hear.

Goblin history is a sequence of places lost. In The Enclosure of the Seams (c. 465,000-c. 420,000 BR), early Dwarven holdmaking took the seam-warrens of the Ironspine margins. In The Unlisting of the Warrens (c. 180,000-c. 150,000 BR), the warrants Goblins had regained under the elder archive-law world were struck one by one, as the archive-keepers grew strong enough not to need them. Much later, the waste-ground doctrine of the Human frontier declared Goblin-held ruins empty ground, and frontier lords took them with hired swords and burning brands. Each was a taking by the stronger side, written up afterwards as rightful in someone else's record, and each record left the Goblins out.

Appearance and Presence

Tavi appears as a figure of ragged, radiant vitality, carrying the weight of a thousand stories.

• Visuals: He is small, wiry, and restless, with skin the colour of weathered parchment, marked with ink tattoos that seem to shift and move like living script.
• The Atmosphere: In places where he moves, the air becomes filled with sound.
• The Voice: His voice is a chorus of many voices, old and young, singing in harmony.

Powers and Abilities

Tavi does not just tell stories; he makes them real. He does not just remember; he recreates.

• The Living Tale: He can tell a story so vivid that it becomes real in the minds of the listeners, granting them the courage, skills, or emotions of those in the tale.
• The Memory-Weave: He can restore lost memories or weave a new "shared history" to unite a scattered people.
• The Song of Silence: He can silence an enemy's voice or cancel out a magical working by "un-speaking" its components.
• The Unwritten Law: He can declare a "law" through song that its singers accept as binding, overriding, among themselves, the name a lord has put on them.

Current Status: The Song of the Struck Warrants

Tavi is active and growing stronger as the Iron Compacts press their claims.

• The Movement: His songs travel with salvage bands, road crews, and lost-warrant households through The Broken Marches and The Headwater Marches.
• The Threat: Tavi's enemy is not a hunter but a refusal to listen.
• The Dilemma: Tavi is torn between two kinds of singer.

Relationships with Other Entities

• With Verba Prime: Tavi is a rebellious expression of Verba's nature, embodying the "meaning" and "narrative" aspects of the Prime.
• With Iskel the Scribe of the Silent (Verba): Kindred in the word, opposed in practice.
• With Ennor the Grave-Watcher (Umbra): Close allies.
• With Ostrin the Lantern-Bearer (Lux): Uneasy allies where corridor lords hear Goblin claims, when they hear them at all.
• With Varn the Shadow-Stalker (Umbra): Natural partners in the Broken Marches.
• With Calvesh the Chronos-King (Faded Aion): Never met.
• With Sessik the Tongue-Taker (Faded Verba): Opposed in principle, song against silence; see his page.

Legacy and Echoes

Tavi is a living legend among the Goblins of the Broken Marches and the Headwater frontier.

• The Singing of the Unwritten: At Iron Compact gatherings, after the living warrants are read, the struck ones are sung: seams, warrens, and duties no lord still honours.
• The Legend of the "Silent Song": Goblins tell of a lord who forbade a warren to sing in a ruin he had declared waste ground.
• The Tongue-Price: A Goblin caught singing the struck warrants in a corridor market can lose his tongue for it.
• The Stair Song: The warren that held the Broken Marches stair has its own song, sung at every clearing since: the names of the fighters, the lord's sellswords who came up the stair, and how many went back down.
• The Bone Lutes: In ruins that Goblins once held, there are lutes made of bone that hum with a faint, resonant vibration.