Tomber Schnick

[scrappayeti]

I really struggled with Tomber, he fell a bit flat until the last day, which was made of pure unmitigated epic. It was a lesson on sticking with a character through rough patches, because you never know when things will turn the colour awesome.

Tomber, sporting his trademark un-svirfneblin like beard. With sproutlings. First person to pass a sproutling app wins EfU, imo.

 

Team photo.



Both teams line up for a photo. Question says it all, really.



After hundreds of years of isolation, every smurfneblin needs to visit a disco at least once. Sadly, Tomber never got to meet Ordinant Toran Dax, so he went to a nightclub instead.



We were so desperate to find even one piece of the Earth Wheel, we went door knocking in Traensyr. It went as well as expected. I told them we should have put up ‘missing’ posters instead.  



Lots of searching the Lowerdark for the damn wheel segment. Second character who has searched the Lowerdark endlessly without success. I reserve the right from now on to PvP any character who finds anything other than death down there, out of pure spite.



More Lowerdark, this one is narrative foreshadowing (see, drider-elemental, only smaller? Nice work EfU!)



This is just a pretty screenshot of walking around the canal district, strategizing who is going to die where, and how horribly they will do it.



Can you play spot the gnome? (Hint: he is next to a spider).



On of my favourite RP moments on Tomber, where one of the sky folk tries to explain what the sun is, and why it being eaten is such a big deal.



I took like 700 of these screen shots, thinking I would freak everyone out by how often I was walking behind a party without them seeing me (40-30 stealth at the end, fully buffed), but then I realised they were all really boring to look at. This screenie I liked the light, however, so pretend you were in the group on the horizon, and are totally freaked out I stalked you? Kay, thanks.



Brown and grey was all the rage in the 1360’s, but its really embarrassing to see the pictures now.



The ritual! It’s a wheel, see, made out of gemstones? Come on, tell me you don’t think that is awesome.



And bam, the ritual is complete. More foreshadowing, this time just of the coming casualty rate.  



Hello.



And with the power of epic ritual, Tomber is transformed into the… second... most scary thing in the cavern… sigh.



One of my favourite screenshots. The demon approaches in badarse silloute. I actually overconfidently emoted “Charges forward” at this point, only to find lag was unconvinced of my conviction.



Fortunately, the DMs drove that demon straight at me, and we went at it mano-a-mano (gnomo-a-dridero?).



Fighting on a boat. In the lag my poor elemental was teleported back from one ship to the other like 6-10 times every time I crossed boats. I was sure I was going to die like 17 times, waiting for even one potion to work.



"Ah! Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal!"



Last but not least, here is my story for the AllMYBudgies competition:

[SIZE="5"]No Second Chances[/SIZE]

Tomber tentatively set off down the canal. He placed each foot with care, feeling the irregular rock beneath each foot before committing weight. Grey clothes, grey skin and ancient ritual wardings stood between him and detection. His wide nostrils twitched as he picked up the scent of a gloomwing in the air. He gave it fair distance, flitting from cover to cover, sliding ever forward towards his destination.  

He had walked this path only once before, decades before. A trade deal had been made, drinks were drunk, and in the quiet merriment, and a group of four youngsters â€" Pippint, Groto and the Fishinwhale twins â€" had decided to go off on an adventure. The four were in their triple-teens, and typical for that age. They had sworn they would be famous bards, the first and only svirfneblin quartet, and had called themselves the Glee Club. They had boasted they would walk to the human settlement of New Dunwarren and woo themselves a human maiden. It was all talk, as it turned out, and the next day they would be discovered sleeping off hangovers by the Scamander.

But the traders had not known that, and Tomber, as quiet and sombre as a svirfneblin could be, was chosen to return them to the Blue Mushroom, or at the least record their fate.  

So it was for the second time in his life that Tomber slunk along the canals edge, passing huge rusted pipes chugging rivulets of thick gelatinous slime into the water, which fanned out as it wove into the slow moving currents. The canal had run faster and cleaner last time he was here, or perhaps it was just his memory. Every stone grows greyer with age, they say.

And for the second time he found himself at the low gates of the Dunwarren. This place was shunned among his people, a real life parable on the evils of greed, innovation and overpopulation. He would rather pass the Wall of Faithless than the walls of Dunwarren, but it must be done. He remembered the two levitating spheres, rotating softly above the battlements, their dim blue glow spilling across rock and water alike. He sucked a deep breath and scuttled onwards.  

Last time he was here, his next step nearly cost him his life. Out into the docks district, and into the cavern, the sight of so many others drew an involuntary yelp from his lips. A few men gutting a sharp-nosed pyrimo shark looked up and around in surprise, but his illusions had held. After the fear had subsided, he had unfrozen and found a ledge up high. Humans, elves, hin and dwarves worked side by side, shoulder to shoulder. And all so white! Every face seemed to flash out of the darkness, as though they were tempting fate with there very countenance. It was one thing to be born so bright of skin, but quite another to keep it exposed. In a world of hungry monsters, what hubris, what madness!

However, but for the strange faces, the scene was anything but unfamiliar. The houses and buildings were classic Thromblian period, a little flasher than those of Tomber’s home, but composed of familiar lines; the same care and quality craftsgnomeship. An owner of such a house could be sure ten generations of his children could live there and only have to retile the roof once or twice. And while these people’s fishing tools looked rudimentary, the principles were the same. From up high on the ledge, the scene was less terrifying than he had expected, these were people who lived and worked as his own people did.    



So twice shy, Tomber was tight with nervous tension as he stepped past the gate into the docks for the second time. But now the cavern was entirely empty. Tomber had thought to make contact here, but even the homely ammonia smell of cut fish was gone, and instead an acrid unnatural smell permeated the air. Tomber had never smelled the like, but he knew the smell would have been last odour detected by many a nose. It was the smell of chemical death.  

He followed the path he travelled the time he had been here before. Last time, as he watched, the people had put down there tools almost as one. A buzz had passed from person to person, and they all started moving with a purpose. They were both agitated and motivated, and Tomber had feared the worst. If it was the captured Glee Club, it was his duty to follow and record the proceedings, no matter how dire. He had triggered his strongest ward, pure invisibility, and dropped down after the crowd.

He did so again, touching the well polished gem of invisibility with his wrinkled finger before following his own distant footsteps from decades past.  

He entered the plaza, moving as a shadow of a shadow, to find it almost empty. He stopped before a ghostly pale dwarf - short and ugly even for its kind. It staggered as it worked, either brain damaged or drunk, muttering and humming the same lewd half verse about mermaids. But it was not canal he fished in, rather a think stream of sewerage that had formed down the middle of the town plaza since Tomber's last visit, and he watched in dread fascination as the dwarf skilfully netted a dead fish from between turds. The dwarf flicked grime off it with a broken grin, and dropped it into his sack.

It was right here, thought Tomber, that he had heard his first surface dwarf speak. He had followed the buzzing crowd, but had stopped to listen to the huddled conversation of three women. “Well what’d he expect” said a red bearded lady, “he says the Spellguard should become a part of them Seekers, to fix up animatrons for them. What’d he thinks would happen?”.

“He speaks for us, Deadrie! Don’t chide him none for his having the courage! We hates the Spellguard, why shouldn’t the slave drivers know of that?”

He sidled around the dwarf, and intent upon the lights ahead, his foot came down on something soft and yielding that gave way with the faintest of sighs. The sharp toxic odour wafted up strongly, mixed with the smell of decay. He squatted down, realising he was in a corpse pit, filled with the bodies of Chosen, now bloated and swollen. They were in varying degrees of putrefaction, but as he locked eyes with one, its long pink tongue lolling from muzzle to black earth, he realised nothing was eating them. Not ants, nor roaches, nor rats.  

He removed his boot from the torso of his cursed cousin as reverently as possible, and stepped forward into the heart of the plaza.

Last time it had been awash with people. A mob larger than Tomber had rallied around a single speaker, standing head and shoulder above the crowd on a wooden box.  

The man was not a natural speaker, that much had been clear. He had faltered at first, his speech forced and his tone wooden, as he struggled to overcome his rage, impotence and sorrow. But the crowd was patient, and they drank in his words. For Tomber sensed that this man was telling them things they already knew, but craved to hear out aloud.  

Tomber, enthralled, had crept closer than he should, the heartfelt words touching him as he had not thought possible.

The man spoke of poverty, and lack of opportunity, and hunger; and the crowd mumbled and nodded.

He talked of the waste, the corruption, and the hedonic excesses of those above, and the crowd spat and swore.

Then he spoke of his father’s imprisonment and of the tortures that awaited him, and the crowd hissed and booed.

Finally he pumped his fist into the air, saying “We did not fight our way here, we did not cross hell and high water, to be slaves a second time!”
 
And the crowd roared so loud Tomber had feared the roof would fall.

They yelled and brandished weapons - “Down with Dhogur!” “Liberty or Eternity” and “Bread or Blood”. But one rose tall above them all, a giant more orc than human, brandishing a boating hook above his head, and he bellowed at a deafing tone - “Fuck the Spellguard”! And at his call the men and women became of one voice, chanting “Fuck the Spellguard! Fuck the Spellguard! Fuck the Spellguard!”

And with that the humanoid wave surged towards the spiral stair. They fought each other to get to whatever lay above, taking four or five of the gnome-sized steps at a time.

Buffeted on all sides, Tomber had panicked, he was so deep among them and they were so many.

But now, no crowds, no speaker, no unity. Only half a dozen people were visible, and worse by half than the nightmares of his last restless attempt at sleep.

He watched a small boy covered in fungal infection urinate on a wall. A few tough looking youths snorted something from a pipe, their eyes rolling back into their heads as they coughed and spluttered. A few bitter looking men rubbed their hands for warmth round a fire composed of yet more poisoned chosen, the smoke from the corpses flickering eerie greens and blues as it rose. A human’s body, skinned and flyblown, was casually impaled on a large spike, and no one even glanced at it as they passed by. A goblin covered in brown fur armour traded a stick covered in freshly killed rats for something that twisted and bit as he pulled it from his sack.

When last he stood in this spot, the people had been poor, their cloths darned and patched, and their faces gaunt. But those faces held pride. They were face of people who had seen the worst, but pushed through; they could see a better future. The people here were broken marionettes, strings pulled by the most base of desires and impulses.

Tomber stepped carefully now, as dry bones littered the dirt. All the polyglot races of the ex-slave colony, still shoulder to shoulder, now left to rot where they fell.

And the buildings, what had they done to the buildings? Tomber had built a few houses in his time, each giant block hauled to place by elemental force, before the masons carved it into perfect interlocking shape. These houses should last for eternity, but instead the plaza had more rubble than homes. Explosives, demonic rampages, hordes of orogs with sledgehammers? He could not even imagine the disasters that had befallen this place since last he was here.

Tomber turned and fled as he had done the time before, he would find no allies here. The hope he had once seen was decades gone, a generation past.

Previously he had fled from anxious terror, his kind’s racial agoraphobia having finally caught up with him. This time he fled from nausea.

He followed the same track though, where last he had run, almost to the edge of the town. A tiny domicile, with a tiny mother on the doorstop, feeding a tiny child. She had looked straight at him, with the tired eyes of a seer, and asked “And you, grey one, which side are you on?”

Caught off guard, not realising in his panic that the magical obfuscation had expired, he blinked at the woman in shock. And although she could not be a tenth his age he stuttered “No ones, ma’am, we would never interfere”.

The woman snorted as she rocked her infant gently. “Then you are on their side. All it takes for them to win is for good folks to do nothing.”

Tomber slowed as he walked to the same house. He feared seeing the woman, old now, her eyes full of judgement. He feared two skeletons, one tiny, one adult, entwined in deaths embrace. But when he got there, there was nothing, no one to see.

The empty step was testimony enough. “Which side are you on, Tomber?” He had turned away when the humans were in need, and now he had come to them for help. Had that been a tragic mistake all those years ago?

He had lived his life in peaceful seclusion for decades, yet he knew that out here the world had not stopped turning. So was it all a lie, a dream built from wilful delusion and ignorance?

Now the empire and its endless tides of imperial thralls had usurped Toril, and yet he was afraid because a pitiful few drow refugees threatened his home?

The questions haunted him as he traced his steps back along the canal. What side are you on, Tomber? And, just as importantly, did you leave your decision too late for it to even matter?

[Black_TopHat]

Tomber... Tomber Tomber Tomber... He was like the old Svirf uncle. Gloik couldnt figure out if he hated him or admired him. Some sort of the mixture. A staunch fundamentalist to then end.

Probably the only Svirf who WASN'T rolling pathetic persuade checks whenever asked!

Was butt loads of fun!

[MaimedGod]

Cool :)

[Moonlighter]

Tomber was the smurfneblin I interacted with the most. Was always fun to wander and quest.

Great job.

[Aethereal]

It was nice meeting him and sharing tales. He seemed to be someone searching for something... something not easy to grasp.

I liked the subtle touch depicting the Svirfneblins' seclusion you gave him with how he found Arantras's speech patterns somewhat perplexing, though I admit that could have just been a peculiarity of that specific character and not all surface folk, or even elves.

[Letsplayforfun]

Cool pc. Great event to see him off.

[Arc]

Awesome character. Got to deal with you more then any other snirveblin by a large margin, and enjoyed every meeting, even if you cleaved my head in once or twice. Awesome job!

[Knight Of Pentacles]

literal crush elemental

[wundyweiss]

Glad you stuck with him through the end, and got a really neat event for it too! Good luck on the next pc, Scrappa

[Stranger]

I am glad that the Reformed Order of Starscream could not overcome you, sensei.

May your vigil be long and peaceful.

Rawr.

[efu1984]

Tomber Schnick: [Talk] And so ends the story of Wrangler Tomber of Schnick.  
Tomber Schnick: [Talk] And starts the story of Tomber the Fool.  
Howlando [DM] : [Talk] *The mighty Elemental wanders into the waters... as the wall rises...*
Tomber Schnick: [Talk] *stiff like a board, he slowly topples off the dock into the water*
Howlando [DM] : [Talk] *Needing breath no longer, he walks upon the stony seafloor and wanders away.... *

What an end, very tragic but equally amazing.

[NecronomiconV]

my favorite of the deep gnomes :( Actually managed to scare emelia a few times you badass little dude :3 RIP and cant wait to see what you play next