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Who is Bartram Humblefoot?
Character Description
A stout halfling male in his late sixties, Bartram Humblefoot is at the far end of middle-aged.
He has wispy gray and walnut blonde hair. Light brown, hazel eyes. He’s pale, taller than most of his peers, and is usually armed with a cheery disposition.
Born and raised in Applegrove Parish and raised with a noble upbringing, Bartram is a Paladin, a Faithful Warrior-Servant of Rillifane Rallathil, the Leaflord. He has taken the Oath of the Ancients.
As the Aevalorn Parishes have no standing army of their own, Bartram has served the Free City of Mumling in Gaelwyn for over fifty years.
Bartram’s gear is humble. He wears a silver oak tree around his neck; he must bear the weight of his family’s signet ring. He wears a simple ringmail shirt - tailored for the human men in the army of Mumling - a thick brown leather belt, gloves, and carries a round steel shield emblazoned with a matte silver oak tree. In battle, he wields a leaf-bladed short sword.
Bartram struggles with the hypocrisy of faith. He is also bothered by the way Man treats the poor. Bartram loves to travel and dislikes the proposition of settling down or retiring. He strives to find the biggest multiplier effect when helping people.
“Is right … always right?”
Stories
When I write about Bartram, I’m usually trying to explore a number of concepts: growing old, ageism, sexism, what is holy and devout, and wealth inequality. His stories are usually more serious and I try writing in a more neutral voice. I really enjoy detailing his spirituality, spellcasting, and connection to nature. As I continue to write the character, I’ll actually be traveling back in time and visiting him when he was younger.
Bartram made his first appearance in Aevalorn Tales, and I’m currently writing a long-form story for him titled The Goblet of Bone.
Author’s Note: Goblet of Bone, Episode 3
A discussion about the third episode of A Goblet of Bone, published on Wattpad.
On Friday August 26, I published the second episode of A Goblet of Bone in two parts to Wattpad. It’s still 43 in FantasyCreatures…
This episode diverges from Bartram’s point of view to another character, Renata of House Latenta. There’s a couple of things that I wanted to illustrate here.
The upside-down garden reflects Brigantia’s differences from contemporary fantasy settings, as I mentioned in my last post.
It’s also Renata’s life upended and turned upside down.
I wanted to introduce the character, her baby, and her friend, and kick off their arc in the story.
I wanted to tie in Creighton of House Brix and her relationship to him.
Renata is the sister to the Archon, now first in line to Ascend, and her newborn daughter is the center of a coming political change.
I wanted to play with a dreamscape in the 3.1 episode and try to turn the prose into a disjointed dream. I’m not entirely sure that I’ve succeeded; I ended up re-writing it three times. I’m still not sure I’m happy with it but I wanted to illustrate the character’s relationship with her mother without actually talking about it. I wanted to kind of describe it through the dream.
I also wanted to introduce the character’s central conflict which is how motherhood arrested her life’s plan; the dream sequence ends with an image of the baby in iron tongs. Seeing your baby in dreams … I think one could interpret that as change, or her subconscious unable to reconcile the change the baby’s introducing. Either way, I wanted to say all of this in a different way than just narrative and dialogue.
This episode also introduces another character, a mystery creature hanging out in the upside-down garden. Those who play D&D might recognize the critter as a Kenku.
Who is this mystery character? Why is he in the upside-down garden and watching Renata? Or the baby? Or both Renata and the baby? Well, you’ll just have to keep reading to find out!
Thanks for reading!
R
Author’s Note: Goblet of Bone, Episode 2
A discussion about the second episode/chapter two, of A Goblet of Bone and why Brigantia is structured the way it is for telling the story.
Over the course of Sunday August 21 and Friday August 26, I published the second episode of A Goblet of Bone in three parts to Wattpad.
It’s currently #42 in FantasyCreatures … yay!!
Please indulge me - I find joy in small things :)
This chapter is a walkabout to describe the setting and define terms.
My goals for this chapter were to lay down a couple of complex ideas once so I don’t necessarily need to repeat them in the future.
The general geography of the region.
Brigantia’s geography and layout (Lowtown, Midtown, Hightown).
The Houses and their political factions.
As my stories about Bartram are about broader themes concerning human suffering, I tried to illustrate at least two layers of suffering that are the target of this book.
Poverty and homelessness.
The suffering of women under patriarchy by contrasting with Brigantia’s matriarchial rule.
I needed to relate the setting and explain why Brigantia’s a different place, a “Jewel of Gaelwyn” I call it in the prose. I think most readers would recognize Brigantia as a classic wedding cake. It has three tiers: a small rich top, a delicious mid-sized middle, and a common round lower section for “common” people to enjoy. I’ll be adding more substrates to the cake as we go on and giving more depth to these layers, but Brigantia gives me a way to talk about classism, poverty, and power.
Conceptually, Brigantia is supposed to flip contemporary ideas about fantasy settings on their head, and I elude to this in chapter 3 with dead upside-down trees in a garden. Brigantia is an inverted comparison to what we normally read in fantasy.
This isn’t a “kingdom” and there’s no “king”; there’s no absolute ruler, but there is a monarch, and it’s a woman who is mostly a figurehead;
Men don’t have rights, women retain all rights to property and wealth, and men are side-lined; the only serfs are disenfranchised men (reminding me of women in the real world who’ve been divorced, “single mom’d”, or cast away at a spouse’s leisure), most everyone else lives comfortably and can pursue their goals (particularly women);
Brigantia doesn’t have a unilateral dictator. It has a politically-charged group of 12 families jockeying for power;
Women aren’t just pretty supporting characters for my male lead. I feel that Bartram is more of a spectator in that sense and must work around and within such powerful people;
That even though Brigantia is run by women and “different”, it still suffers from human qualities like greed, selfishness, power, and hate - there are upsides but it’s no utopia.
Further, I deliberately try to insert women who are in power that are old. Another theme about Bartram is aging and retirement, the roles we assume when we age, and I deliberately wanted to show dangerous, beautiful, powerful women as vibrant political and military animals, rather than spindly old crones with black cowls trying to get you to eat an apple. The young, the future, greatly want power, and this story talks about that transition where the young take power, or are gifted power, from the preceding generation.
It was a conscious choice to include women of different races, shapes, and sizes. One of my leads is what I’d call “classicly voluptuous” - curvy, maybe “obese” by today’s standards - and another woman with sagging, wrinkling skin. They are “imperfect” but strive for idealism, just as men do. They’re not permanently an appendage (or property) to men.
I also think fantasy readers would expect me to explain why so many different races and genetic characteristics are present in a limited breeding pool like Gaelwyn’s aristocracy, but I’m not going to :). I don’t care. There are many people of different racial backgrounds and it doesn’t matter.
There’s a little bit of foreshadowing in the work where I talk about goliath tigerfish, falconry, Dwarves, and Goblins. Keep your eyes peeled! There’s a lot more of that to come, not only in this work but in future works that I’ve planned.
Talk to you soon and thanks for reading …
R
Author’s Note: Goblet of Bone - Episode 1
On Saturday August 20, I published the first episode of A Goblet of Bone to Wattpad.
I’ve never been entirely certain about how Wattpad’s algorithm works but it’s apparently number 75 in Fantasy Creatures this week. That’s fun, huh?
It was nice to get started on a new project! Writing Skyer Dannon and submitting the story to the Watty’s was fun, but I am so looking forward to writing without the gloomy-doomy-ness.
The Goblet of Bone continues Bartram’s part of the story in Aevalorn Tales. Bartram has traveled to Brigantia for Captain Sumner’s tribunal.
Chapter one opens with Bartram appearing in the Sage and Rose. This inn appeared frequently in my D&D campaigns - along with the Portly Porpoise from Skyer Dannon’s story.
The name of the innkeeper in my story is Henry Bailey; for those who might recognize a variant of the name, Harry Bailly, that was the name of the Tabard Inn’s host in the Canterbury Tales.
Inspiration for the cat in this episode comes from two cats. The first is a black Maine Coon named Midnight that belongs to my partner, April. Its behaviors, though, are actually from another cat, Rowan, who belongs to my partner Camille. Rowan likes sitting on my head when I sleep. The cat in this story is orange which is my own thing.
Moffins are actually a joke! There’s a breakfast place in Ashland, Oregon called the Morning Glory that makes these huge muffins. There was a typo on their menu, calling them ‘moffins’, and they were huge and I loved the name!
Anyway, it’s fun for me to revisit Bartram and bring some aspects of his character to the surface. Chapter One will be describing the setting and major elements of the story, and reacquaint the reader with various characters. I’ll have more to contribute to chapter one over the next week; I’m looking forward to doing 2,000-word stints again under no deadlines.
Onward!
R