Art by the amazingly talented @nebularum!
The Kulthaugol were best known for their berserker warriors. Admired throughout Goliath lands for their skill in battle, these were some of the most powerful warriors in the land. This is the tribe to which Glanalin was born.
Glanalin was once known as Ganokath “Songbird” Nikav’Enokuuea. Her mother had been ill while carrying her, and Ganokath came early. It was too much for her mother’s weakened body, and she died soon after delivering Ganokath. The child was smaller than average, but thankfully not sickly. As she grew it became apparent that she would never be quite as large as your usual goliath, though no other humanoid race would likely consider her small. Gifted with a beautiful, clear and haunting voice as a young child she was given the honorific of Songbird.
She was a quiet child, a listener more than a talker, which was especially strange considering her tribes somewhat rowdy heritage. Her tribe attributed it to the fact that she was born late in her mother’s life. Many considered her more than a bit odd. Some of the more superstitious believed her to be touched by Kuliak, the Dead Goddess.
When she was old enough she was apprenticed to the Lamenter. He was aging and the Lamenter's job is to know when a goliath is no longer capable of serving the tribe. He knew his own time was coming. Her slightly smaller build made her unsuitable for the duty of a dawncaller, which was more of a sentry and required more skill in battle and tracking than in song.
When Songbird was just 23 years old the Lamenter decided she was ready to take on his position in the tribe. Her first assignment as Lamenter of the tribe was to sing the dirge for her mentor, a song of the deeds and works he accomplished over his many years, as he walked away from the tribe into the wilderness to finish out his life on his own. As a parting gift he passed on a set of bagpipes he had gotten off of a evil bard the tribe had defeated many years ago. He had never played them, afraid of them carrying an evil power, but he believed that Songbird was uncorrupted and that if anyone could, she would be the one to breathe new life into the pipes. She began to practice with them, playing triumphant songs to cleanse the death from the pipes. Death is inevitable, a tribe of berserkers knew that better than most, but a goliaths dirge was one of great memories and fondness, not one of sorrow. She wouldn't learn what a song of sadness was until years later.
She was quiet and friendly and though many of the warriors didn't really understand her, the music she played gave them fire for battles as well as the many competitions among the tribe, and she had soon earned a good deal of respect for her musical abilities. The warriors were suitably impressed with her ability on the bagpipes. If nothing else they could recognize the raw lung-power required to play them. There were a few in the tribe who did not like the idea of the lamenter playing a set of "evil" bagpipes. This small group of uneasy individuals were goaded to further unrest by one of the dawncallers. He was jealous of her singing talents and the attention she received. After all, he protected the tribe all night and sang the morning songs. Were his vocal talents any less impressive than hers? (The fact that his vocal "talents" actually were far less impressive than hers never seemed to occur to him.) He would make small comments about the battle against the evil bard and the terrible acts he used the pipes to accomplish.
After a few years, Songbird was appointed adjudicator by the chieftain. Mostly because a level headed goliath is difficult to find in a tribe of berserkers. This only served to deepen the dawncaller’s jealousy. Another handful of years passed and the chieftain decided to step down. He was getting old, the winter had been hard, and he knew that a younger chieftain would be better able to handle the next winter. A series of competitions, set up by the soon-to-be-ex-chieftain, was arranged to give all those who would like to compete for the Chieftain honorific a chance to do so. The jealous dawncaller was one of the candidates. The competitions began and Songbird acted as adjudicator as usual. At the end of the contests, both the jealous dawncaller and another goliath had proven themselves in the eyes of the chieftain, but there was no clear winner.
The chieftain took Songbird aside to consult with her on his recommendation to the tribe. Songbird knew of the dawncaller's mistrust of her, but also believed he would be a better choice. The other goliath was a berserker warrior, who knew little except battle and competition, and was also older. Songbird suggested that the dawncaller be the choice, but the chieftain had fought many battles with the other goliath and felt that the older goliath would be wiser than the younger dawncaller. The chieftain announced the older goliath as his choice and the tribe quickly agreed. The celebrations began!
The dawncaller incorrectly assumed that Songbird had talked the ex-chieftain into choosing the other goliath and was determined to prove his superiority to the tribe. (You may have noticed that this fellow is a little mentally unstable...) A few nights later, during his watch, his alarms went off, and assuming it to be a large wild animal, he decided to let it get close enough to camp so that his fight would awaken a few tribespeople and they could witness his skill in battle. His pride would cost the tribe almost everything. This was no lone wild animal, but a scout for a band of giants intent on capturing the tribe as slaves. Finding no dawncaller on watch, the scout signalled to the rest of the giants, and soon the tribes campsite was surrounded. The attack was fast and merciless. Without any warning from the dawncaller, the entire tribe was caught unawares and most were bound before they were even fully awake. The dawncaller realized his mistake as soon as the attack began and stood to fight the giants, but one goliath against of band of giants is an impossible battle. He fought well but was taken down soon enough. Soon the entire tribe was marching in chains to the giants caravan.
As far as giants are concerned goliaths make excellent slaves. They’re nearly indestructible and you don’t even have to feed them all that much. The only trouble is breaking their spirit. If you can break them, then they’re wonderful. The stubborn ones aren’t worth the bother and should just be killed, preferably in front of their brethren as a way to further destroy the tribe’s spirit.
So began the months of hell for the Kulthaugol tribe. The children were imprisoned and generally used to force the adults to work. Any goliath that was deemed to not be working hard enough would be killed, but any goliath that deliberately revolted would be asked to choose which child would die for his or her disobedience. This strategy worked quite well to keep them in line but their spirit was not dead just yet. The tribe communicated secretly and planned an assault on the giants after the giants largest festival of the summer.
The goliaths who served the grog added herbs to assist with sleeping and were very generous with their distribution. The plan was to wait until the early morning. The mothers and children would flee while the warriors would guard their exit. They all knew it was likely the warriors would be giving their lives to buy the others enough time to escape. They knew of a cave system a half days travel away where they hoped to hide until it was safe to move to Thella-Lu.
With the help of some of the other prisoners the giants had captured they were able to reclaim Songbird’s pipes and some weapons. Once most of the giants were passed out, they broke their chains as quietly as possible. Most of the prisoners had made it out before one of the giants awoke to the call of nature. He was killed quickly and quietly where he went to relieve himself but soon other giants began to awaken. It wasn’t long until one of them noticed the missing prisoners. The alarm was raised and the giants staggered to their feet to try to capture the escapees. The goliaths were ready, and angry. From the hills opposite the direction of the women and children’s escape route, Songbird began to play. A song of blood and warriors. The goliaths fought like never before. Songbird played while most of her tribe fought and died to ensure their tribe would live on. She played their fury and rage and they responded by unleashing death upon the giants. But a berserker does not go to battle to survive, and none did. They did enough damage to ensure the giants could not safely follow the others. Songbird played until the last goliath fell. From her vantage point, hidden in a crevice high on the hill, she played a dirge for her people. The giants who survived mounted a half-hearted search for her, but the echoes in the valley made it nearly impossible for them to discover her actual location. As the sun set, she left her hiding place and headed towards the meeting point of the caves. Leaving a trail of tears on the dry ground as she went.
Eventually, she met up with the survivors, and told them what had happened. They left the next morning to Thella-Lu. After two weeks of hard travel, they arrived. The remnants of the greatest warrior tribe in the goliath lands. They were able to set up a rough camp at Thella-Lu, and told their story. The other goliath tribes swore vengeance and a war party was formed. Most combat for goliaths is a game, a contest, and it’s no fun to simply overpower a foe. Often, a goliath will handicap themselves if they believe the fight to be too easy. This was not that sort of battle. This was not a game. The giants were finished off with no mercy.
The tribe would spend nearly three decades at Thella-Lu, recovering from their near-extinction. Songbird oversaw the tribe as best she could for a while, but soon a young goliath was old enough to take on the role of chieftain, and she gladly let him take over. She knew she could not serve the tribe any longer. She found another tribe’s Lamentor who was being left behind at Thella-Lu because he was too old to continue the nomadic lifestyle of his tribe. He agreed to take over as Lamentor and train a new replacement for the tribe. She left shortly after the new chieftain and Lamentor were ready. Her dirge was sung by the Lamentor, and as she walked away, she surrendered her name.
It would be many years of travel before she found a new name that suited her.
Her current name was given to her by the Drow. She was captured while sleeping in a cave one night. Brought down into the Shallows of the Underdark by the Drow slavers, she sang quietly in her people’s language while shambling along. Normally, slaves aren’t permitted to speak. They are bound with chains and gagged to keep them quiet. She hummed with the gag in her mouth. At night when they removed the gags just long enough to stuff some gruel in the slave’s mouths (It’s a waste of effort if the slaves all die before they get there) she would sing. Still quietly. She never resisted and the quietly mournful melodies must’ve touched something in even the hateful Drow’s souls and they began to leave her ungagged. The Drow were concerned she would alert one of the many dangers of the Underdark, for even the Shallows are never safe, but instead they encountered nothing at all. The very walls seemed to move aside to allow safe passage. They made record time returning to their city. The slave masters were surprised to find their battle-hardened slavers speaking in hushed tones about the singing goliath. They called her Glanalin which meant the Lost Singer.
The auction would be held in a few days. Until then, Glanalin and her fellow slaves were corralled with the other slave parties. For their part, the other slaves regarded her with a vague uneasiness. On one hand, she kept the slavers from harassing them, but also seemed to have accelerated their descent into the darkness.
She accepted the name they gave her. It was as good as any other, and she was certainly lost. This place intrigued her though. It was a place of sadness and despair. The Drow burned with hatred and bitterness to keep it at bay, but she saw her goddess in this place. Kuliak, the dead goddess is not often spoken of in Goliath culture, but after the slaughter of her people, Glanalin found comfort that Kuliak would watch over their souls. She was an exile herself now, and though she chose that fate, it is still a lonely one. Her songs while in the Drow custody had been prayers offered to Kuliak, and Kuliak had responded. All of these slaves were exiles, but not by choice. They had homes and small clans to return to. The Drow were the same as the giants who had captured and killed her people. They would suffer and die.
All the slave hunting parties had returned, the auction would be the next morning. She dreamt of a new song that Kuliak sang for her. She awoke and sang, but this was a very different song than the ones the Drow had heard her sing thus far. This was a song of pain and death. A reflection of all the Drow had inflicted on their slaves. First they felt sorrow, a sorrow so deep that is sapped their will to survive. Then they felt loss. A loss so great that the mind breaks under the weight of its absence. Then with their minds in disarray, the song attacked their bodies. Draining their strength and mobility, reducing the Drow warriors to the weak bodies of their slaves. The slaves in turn felt courage for the first time in a long time. They thought of the sky and sunshine and the need to return to it. They suddenly found the strength to lift themselves up and tear down their cages. Some fought. Beat the Drow as the Drow had beaten them. Others just grabbed whatever supplies they could. One found a map showing the paths to the surface and they all quickly gathered. Glanalin kept singing. She made no move to follow the slaves. She had simply moved to the cart that contained her meager belongings and dug out her bagpipes. When it became clear she would not join them the other slaves left, headed for the surface. They could hear the drone of the pipes all the way up. Only when they reached the sunlit world above did the song finally fade. Some felt they should honor her somehow, she had saved them after all, but no one could think of how. Then a older woman began to sing. A song she thought she had forgotten. It was short, a simple melody, and no one would’ve mistaken her for a bard, but it had a beauty all its own. One by one the people sang a song they knew. A song from their homes that the lost singer had given back to them.
The lost singer herself was no longer lost. Deep in the darkness. The place of sadness and sorrow and death. She had finally found a new home.
She knows it must be years that she’s been down here. With no sky, there’s no real way to track the time. Not that it matters. Time is of little importance to her. She sleeps when she is tired, eats when hungry. It is a life of sorts. This place is dangerous, but so is the rest of the world. Safety is an illusion, she prefers the constant knowledge that death is always a breath away. She’s seen some strange things in these depths. She often finds what remains of the few who did not accept the strange world she inhabits and tried to fight against it. She sings a dirge for them, even though she knows they were fools. This world isn’t something you can fight. You accept it or it will destroy you. Some aren’t as lucky, and the darkness destroys their minds instead of their bodies. Those she puts out of their misery.
She doesn’t often take from the dead. She has no need for most of their trinkets. She’ll eat their food and drink their water of course, that would simply be wasted otherwise. The rest she leaves to the darkness. The Underdark will distribute as it sees fit. She takes only what is needed. Once or twice the Underdark has left her a gift in return. While wandering she will find a single item on the path in front of her. At first she just ignored it, but then it would appear again. The exact same item, a day’s travel away. And while the Underdark is known for its ever shifting walls, she’s knows she’s not in the same place. So she said thank you to the darkness and took the gift it offered. Sometimes a simple headband for a creature smaller than she, but it fit around her upper arm just fine. Once it was a hole itself. A scrap of black cloth made of darkness that had its own space inside it. The most valuable gift took her the longest to figure out. A glass sphere with a small, nearly transparent cube suspended inside. The cube always faced the same direction, no matter how she rotated the orb. At first she just thought it a pretty bauble, but she knew better than to reject a gift from the darkness. She simply found a gossamer web, the kind that are made of nearly indestructible silken strands, and created a sort of bag for the orb, so she could wear it around her neck to see if it ever reacted to anything. She was wandering along one day and looking at it again, not paying much attention to where she was going when suddenly the sounds around her changed. Looking up she realized she was enveloped in some sort of clear liquid. Not liquid, ooze. She had seen them sometimes from afar, with the bits and baubles of their own floating around inside. She had realized fairly quickly that they were to be avoided, but were also quite easy to avoid due to their slow speed. Now she had gone and walked right into one. This was different though, she wasn’t being touched by the acidic, gelatinous non-liquid. She was suspended in the cube in a sphere, just as her amulet’s cube was suspended in the sphere. Not only that, but she felt a connection to the ooze. Not a consciousness per se, but a presence of sorts. Not good, not bad, just there. An instant feeling of camaraderie enveloped her. Another creature, dwelling in the dark. A wanderer like herself, allowing the Underdark to quite literally shape it’s path. She gave thanks to Kuliak and the darkness again. She hadn’t worried about death before, she knew it would come eventually, but now she could sleep within the ooze without fear. She could truly let the darkness guide them both.
That is how she found them. Another first for her, to find a group still alive. None were mad (yet) but they also seemed to belong down here. They showed her what they had found, what the darkness had blessed them with. A fountain of raw chaos spewing forth in the dark. They claimed it came from their god called Ghaunadaur.
While in the presence of the fountain, her comrade became more than what it had been. A voice returned to the voiceless ooze, though a voice only she could hear. Her stalwart companion affirmed the Elder Eye’s power. This motley group informed her that this Ghaunadaur required her submission or she would be destroyed. She was unconcerned with the threat of destruction, but it seemed easier to simply agree. After all, she knew that for all the gods plotting and scheming, the only certainty was that there would come a time where they all would fall. Death is a certainty for mortal creatures, but even the immortal gods would face the end of all things someday. Which god she pledged allegiance to mattered not at all. She would still worship Kuliak through helping these exiles, with the Elder Eye none the wiser.
The darkness had granted her a new tribe of sorts. They would destroy the Drow and the slavers would face the consequences for their attempted subjugation of others. The Drow’s foolish belief that their Spider Queen would save them would soon be abolished. She would help to show the Drow that the futility of their empire and they would see just how ridiculous it was to attempt to fulfill the demands of their Queen.
Glanalin is her name for now. She is still the Lost Singer. Her name will change again, as all things do, but for now she will remain Lost until the darkness offers her a different name.
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