Fundin Alsakal

Fundin Alsakal is an old dwarf in the campaign Zincirsiz ("Unchained"), a tailor and smith with an orange beard streaked with deep red, whose family name stands on the sign of Fundin's workshop in Sınır Sapı. When Jonathan River praised his beard in the northern tongue Fran, Fundin answered in the same tongue.¹

Trade and history

Tailoring, he says, was his family's true craft among the dwarves; finding too few smiths in the province, he has worked at both for about a hundred and fifty years. He has been in Sınır Sapı since it was founded, and before that lived for many years in Ak Şelale, moving to a small place for some peace. He speaks of the bond with metal as a tongue dwarves are born with, without counting himself among the great masters. His sayings that dwarves are the better smiths, that sickness cannot pass through steel, that elves are better at magic but dwarves must stay better at handwork, and his jokes about elves' long wanderings, are his own views and humour.²³⁴

Rune magic is used almost only by dwarven runesmiths, who teach it only to those they deem worthy.⁵

He says that the witch hunters like him for being a dwarven smith, and he grumbles at Ektelyon, an old friend, for sending work his way. He was angry that, when the innkeeper was allowed to bring in supplies, his own dwarven steel was not let in. He thinks dark elves will prove to be behind the sickness, though he admits he is no scholar and has never met such a thing.⁶²⁷

Jonathan in the workshop

Fundin agreed to let Jonathan come and help, but warned that if anyone asked about him he would speak as he truly found him. Jonathan left with him an enchanted long sword, well made and unharmed, that he had taken from an underground chamber and had carried wrapped on his back; it mattered little to Jonathan, and Fundin was free to give it to someone fit to do good with it. It was not sold.⁸⁹¹⁰

When the town guards and witch hunters brought gear damaged in training, Fundin said he did not hate magic but did not want a craftsman reaching for it before skill of hand. Jonathan worked by hand for three or four hours and lightened his load. When Jonathan briefly enlarged the captain's eagle-worked sword to ease the fine work of mending it, Fundin's response was mixed but warm: he valued seeing the problem another way and the hour or two it saved him. Jonathan wished to learn tailoring and perhaps to wear light armour; Fundin promised no armour, but agreed to teach him if his work eased and time allowed, joking about twenty-eight years of basic training.¹¹¹²¹³

Asked about the captain, Fundin named him Markus, and recalled that he had not brought his family and took an interest in young village women, but gave no word of any crime. He spoke warmly of meals with the hunters over dwarven tales.¹⁴

The heart of the forest

Weary of the quarantine, Fundin was quieter and less eager than usual when Jonathan came to him behind a closed door to speak of the danger and ask for help. Some seven or eight years before, Ektelyon had brought him to Lady Teresa's house, where they drank and talked; he was unsure whether she had said the heart of the forest or in the heart of the forest, but remembered a link drawn between a dead fey, a heart beneath the ground and the land's plenty. He admitted he knew no details and had been drinking that night. As a sign of that plenty he pointed to bananas, peaches, melons and strawberries, which want different conditions, growing in the same soil. He guessed that mind-shielding rings might be kept by men of office, perhaps the elf commander and perhaps the major.^15161718

Farewell

When Jonathan came to say goodbye, Fundin gave him a fine garment he had sewn himself, saying that its real worth lay in his long signature. In dwarven lands, he hoped, that name might win its wearer a hearing before the first blow; after that he could promise nothing.¹⁹