May to Z: G

Today's character is one that a friend and I created for her to play on the rare instances that we get together to game. Mostly we just chatter back and forth at work.

Megan was reluctant to "be" the only dwarf in the party at first, but as we developed her story more, she really took a shine to it. I didn't have to ask many probing questions before we were off and running crafting her persona.

Her character is the jilted Greta Glitterstone. 

While wealthy by human standards, her family is barely considered lesser nobles among the dwarf clans. As such Greta was betrothed to Rikkur of the more powerful Silverbeards. At the very young age of 60, she left her own meager unterholm (under home) for the maidenhall of her fiance's clan where she was to abide until she came of age (around 75-80).

King Ordig Silverbeard was not very keen on the idea of marrying his son to a lower house, but he agreed because the "young" Glitterstone clan had founded a gemstone mine that showed some promise. However, he broke the pact (something unheard of in matters of dwarven honor) when he received a much more lucrative offer of payment from the filthy rich and much older Goldfist clan. He and King Solaf Goldfist struck a secret accord to marry Princess Solda to Prince Rikkur.

Greta's parents, Glimur and Gelda, have no idea that they've been cut out and their beloved daughter shamed into waiting in the Silverbeard maidehall barely hoping that decades from now perhaps some middling cousin of the clan may ask for her hand. After spending nearly 25 years with the clan, Greta is so ashamed and humiliated that she flees in disguise and escapes the hold with a trader caravan. 

She can't return home because when her father learns that she was rejected and the betrothal broken, custom dictates that he would have to go to war to avenge his daughter. But the Glitterstones couldn't possibly hope to win a war against the alliance of the Goldfist and Silverbeard armies. She now wanders alone and heartbroken, not daring to go home and endanger her family. 

But dwarves are not a race known for forgetting or forgiving an insult.

The dwarf kings Solaf and Ordig, who besmirched Greta, fear that she knows of their greedy plot. If word gets out it would surely lessen their standing in the eyes of all other dwarves. It may even drive others to join the Glitterstones in rising against them. They simply cannot allow that possibility. So they put a price on Greta. It is preferred that she be captured and returned alive to the dungeons, to die slowly over decades alone in the silent dark. Should she be killed while walking the world and the treachery reached her clan, it would spell all out war and the Silverbeards and Goldfists could lose everything.

Greta in fact does not know why the kings have her hunted, she only knows that unsavory people are after her. So she must remain on the move and surround herself with heroic friends of various races. This both affords her protection and leads to a life of adventure to keep her occupied and avoid the longing to return to her parents.