For today, I wanted to write a completely new character. And by “completely new”, I mean “Robin Hood derivative.”
Now, Niamh is Half-Goblin, and I guess her Dad must necessarily be from Carog (the Ireland of Realmgard) to explain how she ended up with an Irish name, given that Goblins are Fantasy-Hungarian.
And, once again, Niamh is pronounced like Neev — like “knee” ending on a v sound. At least in English. Cromulent pronunciations of the original Irish seems to include ways closer to Nee-Av and Nee-Ew
It’s an Irish name, and Irish is basically pronounced exactly how it isn’t spelled.
Incidentally, the original Niamh is a Fairy Woman who fell in love with the mortal warrior Oisín (pronounced almost like “ocean” as “O-Sheen”) and spent three days in Tír na nÓg with him, which ended up equivalent to 300 years back in the mortal world. Naturally, he dropped dead as soon as he set foot back on Irish soil and said 300 years catch up with him, though not before he can relate his entire life story to St. Patrick.
“Brain Chop!” Niamh declares, unleashing her most devastating technique on the unfortunate mercenary. The Half-Goblin thief brings her green hand crashing down on the crown of the mercenary’s skull.
“Ugh,” the mercenary groans as he crumples to the ground. He’ll be fine in a few hours, but by then Niamh will be long gone.
In Niamh’s own humble opinion, she has absolutely cornered the market on righteous thievery in this part of Realmgard. Oh, she’s a darn good thief. They never see her coming. Or going. Or at any of the various intermediate points.
But what sets her apart from the common rabble is that Niamh is a thief of principle. She only ever steals things back that were stolen from their original owners in the first place. And, of course, being a woman of Integrity and Honour — plus, Grace, Beauty, and Intellect — her rates are altogether reasonable and affordable.
She’ll even work pro bono for the especially downtrodden.
Niamh continues to work her way through the camp, a green shadow in the gloom, Brain Chopping as necessary. In fact, she’s been handing out Brain Chops like candy on Heroes’ Eve. By why try to change a proven method?
She Brain Chops another one of the mercenaries and sinks back into the shadows. From she works her way closer and closer to the merchant’s tent at the centre of the tent, where the merchant is keeping his collection of smuggled artifacts illegally purchased from a gang of bandits.
Reclaiming stolen artifacts is the sort of job that will put Niamh’s eventual children through college.
She steps forward and winces as a branch snaps underfoot. Alerted by the sound, a nearby mercenary hurries forward.
“Oi!” the mercenary declares as Niamh steps into his line of sight. “‘Oo are you?”
She reaches for the pouches on her belt, her various bags of various tricks.
As the mercenary raises his sword and steps forward, she tosses a handful of powder at this face.
“Gah!” the mercenary cries. “My eyes!”
Niamh quizzically cocks her head. That was supposed to be the Sleeping Powder.
She glances down at the pouches on her belt and realises she actually reached for the Chili Powder.
“Oh,” she mutters. “Whoops.”
She steps forward and puts the bandit of his misery with another Brain Chop.
“Sleep it off, buddy,” she murmurs as she stalks forward, stepping over the prone bandit.
Niamh steps into the tent. The merchant wheels around to face her, bringing his full girth to bear. He’s about a Niamh-and-a-half tall, and probably three or four Niamhs wide.
Clearly, his ill-gotten gains allow him to eat well. And copiously…
His sheer size isn’t enough to completely conceal the chest behind him, filled to the brim to stolen artifacts that Niamh vows to return to their rightful owners.
“Oi!” the fat merchant declares. “‘Oo are you? Guards!”
“I don’t think they can hear you,” she notes.
“Stop this!” the fat merchant. “We can ‘ave a talk about this! I can pay you!”
“I don’t want your money,” Niamh counters.
What Niamh does want is simple, really.
She leaps forward.
“Brain Chop!”
FYI, “Oo are you?” is also what that weird Talking Wallet from The Hobbit says when Biblo tries to steal it. Kind of a fitting reference given Bilbo’s status as a burglar and as much as I love using the phrase “What’s all this, then?”, I don’t think it fits quite as well.
Though it did end up giving the mercenaries and the evil merchant Cockney accents for some reason…
Well, since the month’s almost over, I hope you know what to do at this point by now:
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