Castor Garet

Castor Garet is the human baron of Gromkar in Sürgün Günlükleri ("Exile Chronicles"). He belongs to a rich family with wide lands, and wears his clothes and beard after the dwarven fashion. Since childhood he has been guided by his counsellor, the dwarf Balgur Demirkapı, who also guided his father.^{1 2}

The rulers of Gromkar have traditionally been raised and guided from childhood by a dwarf mentor. In the city Balgur's house keeps the defence by the rank of thane, while the baron sees to trade and the city's works; Balgur still calls him his old pupil.^{3 4 5}

The baron's fortress

The baron lives in a fortress that juts out of the mountain with no gate to be seen from outside; it is reached through tunnels in the rock. It is his home and the city's last stronghold, holding his guard regiment and armoury, and its narrow tunnels hamper an assault as much as a sortie. Visitors give up their weapons politely and are received in a stone waiting room. Sara sensed many dwarven ghosts there that could not leave and remained bound to the old stones.^{6 2 7}

The companions

The baron told Kemp Corvus that he would listen to him not only for his birth but as a warrior who had lost an eye in battle and travelled with companions; he had looked into them beforehand and was troubled by new reports of drow. When Kemp said that Ephorus was a dark elf, the baron warned that he might be taken for an assassin and required that he never show his drow face within the city walls.^{8 9 10}

He believed the house of Demirkapı was losing strength and that Balgur was too proud to say so. He offered the companions entry to the dwarven kingdom of DağAltı, in his name, if they would help the Demirkapı; otherwise they would have to leave the city. Kemp accepted for the good of the land's people, though not as anyone's sword. The baron suggested that they first find Karak Dağdöven, the Demirkapı champion, who had gone into the tunnels three days before and not returned, and promised potions for seeing in the dark from an alchemist he knew. He also proposed that Ephorus hide what he was before Balgur and tell a tale of a family avenging a drow raid, which Ephorus feared would harm trust.^{11 12 13 14 15}

Four winters earlier, he said, while the passages just outside the city walls were being explored, his only son and Balgur's two grandsons had been killed fighting drow; that was why he could not trust Ephorus.¹⁶

The drow threat

In the tunnels the companions found Karak gravely wounded among dead creatures, and later attacked a drow forward post: a widened gallery with five small stone huts in a pale silver light, guarded by an unseen alarm. When the fighting ended, five drow warriors, a wizard and a drider lay dead. A metal spider idol was left in an emptied room of luxury, and Ephorus kicked it to pieces.^{17 18 19 20 21}

Ephorus took from the wizard's room notes in elven letters that he could not read, and Sara read them with the help of a friendly drow spirit. They were the draft of a proposal by a house wizard of common birth to the house's matron: experiments in forced breeding and mind control on captives taken from the surface, aimed at a force that could fight in daylight and serve as spies within thirty years. When the companions reported it, the baron said he would inform the proper authorities, and ordered that the news be kept secret so that the people would not panic. He had heard of drow attacks on the Corvus lands, and Kemp told him that his father had taken part in the campaign into the underdark.^{22 23 24 25 26}

When Ephorus revealed his true face before the baron and Balgur, the baron admitted that he had known all along, asked Sara whether she would stand surety for him, and announced that the city's order to kill drow on sight would make an exception for him. He said that this made the city harder to govern, and offered a few guards to see Ephorus safely through the streets.^{27 28 29 30}

Over the following week and a half he strengthened the city's guard and hired mercenaries, humans, tieflings and mages among them, at a cost that strained even his wealth; the companions signed the long contract as the "Osterhn Guards" to hide their true task. People were vanishing from small settlements near the mountain. For a secret mission to win the trust of a drow prisoner, the baron's people dressed Ephorus and Sara as thieves caught in the act and sent them to an imperial holding post, where the other cells were filled with dangerous prisoners condemned to death.^{31 32 33 34 35}

The quarrel over the tunnels

The baron said that he had not given the companions the task of entering the dwarven tomb and would never have sent them into such danger. He feared most that the dwindling dwarves would be wiped out in a war they could not win, and believed that the city could be held with the help of the Empire and the Inquisition. He was ready to close every tunnel even at the cost of the trade, and hoped that the Inquisition's war priests would bring their daylight magic below, admitting that most ordinary guards would only be a burden underground.^{36 37 38}

He asked the companions to tell the dwarves of DağAltı that the Empire wished to help and that there was no shame in accepting, recalling the battle at the Dwarf Gate as an example, and said he would press for that help with his influence in the Empire; one of the companions answered that he had no authority to speak for anyone. When Balgur poured the ashes of his ancestor Bardin on the square and the dwarves gathered with their hammers, the baron put his head in his hands and asked with what army they would fight.^{39 40 41}

The Inquisition comes

In about ten days the baron hired newly arrived adventurers and raised taxes; the local nobles, he said, supported him only because they had to, and he relied on help from the Empire. Walking the walls with Kemp and Sara while supplies were counted, he told them that their fame as heroes would help the appearance of unity, and that being seen at his side would keep the witch hunters away from Ephorus.^{42 43 44 45}

By his report more than eight hundred soldiers, four captains, twenty hunters and their Grand Master were coming from the garrison of Karatepe, two days away, which stands on land that came to him through his wife and which he lets them use; granting it, he said, gave him political weight. At the gate the Grand Master, Hemlock, promised not to pursue any case of his own in the city without the baron's knowledge.^{46 47}

Later counsel

When the companions returned to the fortress, the baron now kept guards about him at all times. For the long road ahead he gave them three horses, white, black and brown.^{48 49 50}

Spoiler: After the priestessRevealSpoils: Sürgün Günlükleri #37 · Say what you have read

He told them that since the killing of the drow priestess the enemy's ranks were in confusion, and that the drow had given up a direct attack on Gromkar to try to slip around its defences; the surface was under control, but he expected a long and irregular struggle.^{48 51}

The companions showed him what they had taken from the priestess and asked who should have it, since none of the Demirkapı remained. The baron said that he might wish to keep it to remember his master by, but that the dwarves deserved it more, and advised giving it to the officials at the fortress of Gazad.⁵²