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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Boddynock" data-source="post: 1974277" data-attributes="member: 21506">Ah, well. Today's the day my wife chose to finish her thesis - on my computer. Still, I've grabbed a few minutes online, and I'll jot down a few ideas to flesh out as soon as I can.Rory Highlea - village carpenter. A simple individual, with a capacity for hard work and a strong sense of duty. He is scrupulously honest - Alton learned the importance of honest, dependable behaviour from his father - and wholeheartedly in love with his wife. Alton is his only son, and he is a little disappointed that he won't be following him into the family business, but so long as he does what is expected of him, Rory will not complain. He does take pride in Alton's skill as a woodcarver, and has been known to say to him, "You know, son, if this 'knight of virtue' stuff doesn't work out, you could make a fair living as a carver. Although you'd make a better one as a cabinet-maker!"Talia Highlea - housewife and bakery assistant. Talia is a more complex character than her husband, Rory. While she, too, is reliable and generous, she occasionally dreams of a different life. Not radically different - she would not give up her family for the world - but with an added dimension of excitement, something to bring a light to her eyes during the long evenings of winter.Talia, as a halfling-lass, knew Rory - they both grew up in Amblestock - and liked him, in a gentle, general way. But her heart (so she thought) was given elsewhere. In fact, she had a crush on Hugh Highdumple. In those days he was slimmer, and had a face both kind and a little fey - both appealing to Talia in her dreams of romance and adventure.Talia was one who never indulged in the wanderlust. Her mother needed her too much. Talia's father, Derry Longleaf, was killed in the goblin incursions of '92, and Blossom, her mother, never recovered. Indeed, she was found drowned just four years later - and Blossom, at the tender age of 22, was left on her own.She had set her cap at Hugh, and he, in a vague way, had responded. But he was just too slow, too unambitious, to imagine that there was a life for him with fair Talia. And then, after her mother's death, he was sympathetic but already too set in a way of least resistance to make the running - at a time when Talia needed someone of strength and initiative.It was during those months that Rory came to the fore. Thoughtful and attentive, he made sure that Talia was all right. He spent long hours listening as she poured out her grief. He was there when she needed him - and she came to understand that this good person would be, always, a good friend, and could be a good husband.And so they married. And Talia began working for Hugh - who was not, after all, completely oblivious to her needs, but just didn't want the complication of a wife at that time. Talia, for her part, knew clearly that she had made the better choice. And if there was just a frisson of excitement sometimes when she looked at the slow-moving Hugh, well, who would condemn her for that?Talia supports Alton - and indeed is secretly thrilled that the goddess has chosen her boy - and that he might have the life of adventure that she had never followed.</blockquote>

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