After sleeping on last nightâs episode, I think Iâve finally put my finger on whatâs missing with the Fjord backstoryânot necessarily the answers, but at least the right question.
The problem with Fjord, for me, has always been that heâs always felt like heâs hiding something and like heâs being completely honest at the same time. He goes around with a fake accent, sliding around any mention of his pastâand yet he has told us things. Heâs told us painful things. He grew up in an orphanage, and it was awful. He was a sailor, and Vandren was kind to him when nobody else ever was. I wholeheartedly believe those things. I wholeheartedly believe pretty much everything Fjordâs ever told us about his past, except for when he tries to downplay any of it as not mattering much.
And the past heâs shared doesnât necessarily have the kind of gaps that would account for the fake accent, or the feeling that thereâs something Fjordâs not saying. It all tracks, from the briefly-outlined childhood of neglect and peer abuse to the far more settled adulthood of a career and something like a home with Vandren. Itâs not too shiny to believe, it hurts, but itâs a logical and complete backstory, and Iâm pretty sure all of itâs true. Weâve seen Fjord try to be honest about his shit, ever since the first dream with Uâkotoa. He evades and he omits, but he doesnât lie. He doesnât seem to lie.
So Iâve been trying to find the disconnect, the place where the things we know about Fjord donât quite meet up, the place where heâs protecting something so precious and vulnerable to him, and I think Iâve finally got it:
Why, exactly, was Fjord so ready to leave his old life instead of rebuilding it, after Vandrenâs shipwreck?
Fjord washes up on a beach with a sword and his continued survival, and no idea why heâs in possession of either. Vandren is dead and his ship is wrecked, but there are hundreds of ships in the sea. Why doesnât Fjord, with his skill and competence (and Fjord is a good enough sailor to captain a ship where half the crew have never even seen the ocean before for two months, and Fjord is calm and decisive in the face of crisis, and Fjord is good at Getting Shit Done) just find a job on another ship? Work may be slim for half-orcs, but sooner or later someone would be willing to take a chance. A merchant sailor out of Marquette or Talâdorei, who didnât care as much about Port Demali prejudices. Somebody.
Iâve written in passing about how Fjordâs life fell apart, much like most members of the Nein, but the truth is that for the sort of life Fjordâs led us to envision him having, that shipwreck should not have been a finishing blow. Someone with Fjordâs people skills, his hardworking diligence, his loyalty, could have rebuilt that life. So why didnât he?
It feels like the shipwreck and the brand new Uâkotoa powers were an opportunity for Fjord to escape something legitimately awful.  I donât get the sense that itâs anything he did. There were no nerves in Nicodranas about anybody catching him from some crime, and Fjordâs issues donât seem to be guilt-based, certainly not on that level. I think itâs far more about who he was. I think itâs a function of his everyday life before that boat sank, that was so unpleasant heâd leap at any chance to try to be someone else, that hurt so much (more than his orphan childhood?) he doesnât even want to put words on it now.
Maybe anti-orc prejudice in the Menagerie Coast is far worse than Fjord ever really let on. Maybe Vandren wasnât just the first near-family Fjord ever had, maybe the rest of the crew barely tolerated him, maybe he was a pariah from day one. But that doesnât quite fit with how Fjord was treated in Nicodranas, with Avantikaâs willingness to accept a half-orc with barely a blink. Maybe the thing Fjord doesnât know how to tell Caleb is simply that he wasâŠnothing. Nobody. There was nothing special, nothing good about him at all, and in this crew of truly powerful and special people who respect him, Fjord canât bear to let them down by revealing how very small he used to feel. Maybe.
Itâs clearly emotions-based: Fjord can admit weakness or incompetence, if begrudgingly, but admitting to his own emotions is so much more difficult. Itâs big enough that he feels like there is something worth telling Caleb that heâs been hiding, some reason that âI took this new accent to go with my new life because the old guy was kind of a loser, and I like this me so Iâm keeping itâ isnât the full answer. And yet it doesnât feel like one specific event that took place pre-shipwreck that Fjordâs running from. It feels like what Fjordâs hiding is, specifically, the very intimate and personal and everyday mundane truth of who he used to be as a person. Why was that person so miserable? Thatâs the Fjord piece weâre missing. Thatâs the thing he can barely bring himself to say.
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