Role

Chapter 5

Frumpledunk has no idea who his parents were, what his real name is, how he
left the underdark nor how he came into the service of the traveling carny in
which he spent his entire childhood and early adolescence. He does know
however that before he was assigned to the knife throwing act, his bones were
set and his skin was normal, his arms did not sometimes grow or shrink, and
his spine was straight. He was not a to other gnomish folk as a midget is to
humans. He had originally been assigned to cleaning and other manual tasks
among the carny, but eventually he was assigned to Thuelzin, the transmuter
and knifethrowers act. Thuelzin would put Frumpledunk in the center of one
of the rings, and hurl a knife at his head, then unleash a spell of reduction
on the poor little svirf, making the knife miss by a heairsbreadth, or hurl a
knife a Frumpledrunks stomach, and then cast a spell of enlargement on him,
making the knife pass between his legs. The climax of the act was when they
would bring a large rat into the ring, Thuelzin would reduce Frumpledunk and
enlarge the rat, and they would be made to fight. At this point they would be
nearly of a size, but being a tough little bugger Frumpledunk would prevail.
Needless to say, this was not an enjoyable life, but it did have a finite
longevity. The constant strain on frumpledunks system eventually took its
toll, and he was permanently shrunken and twisted. However, the affect of
constant transmutation on his system, coupled with the innate svirfneblin
resistance to magic and constitution meant put his body into a constant state
of flux. Little things are constantly shifting in his body, not enough to
incapacitate him, but enough to cause disconcerting shifts in appearance and
inconveniences to the little svirf.