Vili, The Old Goat of Erebor

Character Name: Vili

Name Meaning: (Probably a variant of Fili.) A file or rasp which is a wood or metal working tool.

Age: 211

Date of Birth: December 2941TA

Race: Dwarf

Residence: Erebor, formerly of The Iron Hills

Profession: Blacksmith, Jeweler and Prospector (He’s worn many hats in his time but his first love is smith-craft)

Appearance: Standing a rather respectable 4’4” he’s not the tallest Dwarf but certainly hard to miss, broad of frame and usually with his chest puffed out and back ramrod straight, he carries himself with a definite air of pride but rarely appears haughty. Rather his ruddy cheeks and ready smile convey a Dwarf very secure in himself and very willing to put an experienced hand in for anyone who’ll ask for it. Having sported raven hair in his youth, time has worn and greyed his luscious mane and luxuriant beard so that now in amongst the white streaked gray there is only the merest memory of something darker. Though his aged face is crossed with many a line and blemish, the healthy glimmer in his eyes often make him seem at first much younger than he actually is.

Vili, like most Dwarves, is rather proud of his beard which despite his age and the continued greying of his hair (rather an annoyance considering) is kept immaculately braided and rarely seen to be frayed or disheveled. The style he favors includes a broad central braid and numerous other, much smaller ones along the line of his jaw on either side. Being advanced in years the old Dwarf’s mighty beard reaches now almost to his knees, but seldom seems to obstruct him.

As with most of his kin Vili favors simple, practical clothing, often roughspun trousers and tunics all the better for working a forge. While walking abroad he wears scaled bracers, greaves and boots of his own make, carved with elegant but harsh geometric patterns and bearing runes around their edges. These belong to a full suit which he still owns but only wears to battle, he hasn’t touched the rest of it in decades. Along with a chain vest for easier movement he’ll also wear a wine red hooded cloak secured with a similarly carved broach passed down through his mother’s line, not only is it said to have inspired his engraving style it’s rumored to be from the First Age of the sun. For weapons he carries a vicious looking mallet of dense steel nearly as tall as himself, with a rounded hammer head on one side which tapers in towards the shaft and is balanced on the other side by a fierce spike shaped in a shallow crescent. On his belt he often wears two or three small hand axes either for utility or for hurling.

Another thing he’s fond of is a good smoke and he’s often seen puffing away on a white clay pipe, now yellowed with age which bears the image of a snarling beast of yore on its bowl. Once the stem may have been straight but now has a noticeable kink in it where Vili repaired it following the Battle of the Five Armies. He can’t seem to part with it. Other bits and pieces he often carries include parchments, ink, quills, one or two loupes (jewelers eye glass) flints, a tinderbox, a small pocket knife and of course a pouch of the best pipe leaf in Dale.

Personality: Having been a stubborn and fierce Dwarf in his youth, anyone who’d known Vili in that time might scarce recognize him these days. Long years of peace and tenderness have worn away his rough edges, leaving a gentler but admittedly more polished fellow behind. In particular since he became a grandfather some decades past he’s known to delight in the frolics of children, showing a fondness and fierce protectiveness not just for his own descendants but for youngsters in general. Then of course, at more than two-hundred years old he’s a good number of folk to feel protective over. His first love may have been the forge but the old Dwarf is scarcely more at peace than when he watches his younger grandchildren at play or when they huddle by the fire to sing for and hear old stories from their grandfather.

Much as he might dote on his grandsons and granddaughters, with his own children he’s noticeably more gruff and much more stern. Firm but fair, warm but rather inflexible. The only exception being his third son and youngest child Snorri, who simply reminds him too much of his long departed brother for him to ever stay mad at.

Though an amiable and open-handed a Dwarf as you’re likely to find, long years have taught him to keep an open heart yes, but not to bear one’s chest that someone may drive a blade through it. He holds fellow Dwarves in easy trust and having lived now more than sixty years cheek and jowl with Men he flatters himself that he can discern their stature and character given a bit of time. Amongst the Free Peoples it is only Elves which he is inclined to mistrust, even then he likes to think himself not unreasonable and unlikely to rebuff friendship where it is readily offered. He doesn’t seem to care so much where you’re from, more so what you’ve done between there and here. Gems might be found in dark, sweat stinking tunnels after all, but it doesn’t follow that given time they cannot be made beautiful.

The only two places one might now observe the Dwarf Vili once was are in the forge and on the battlefield. A lover of the timeworn and imperfect and at the same time an artisan of the highest order, Vili holds his own work to the absolute highest standard and will stomach neither laziness nor horseplay when it comes to matters of crafting. Similarly when he readies for battle he’ll leave nothing to chance. A meticulous tactician and still mighty warrior, though he never enjoyed violence particularly he apparently has quite the talent for it.



Parents: Finni (Father, Broadbeam, deceased) and Sigrun (Mother, Longbeard, deceased)

Sibling(s): Dori (Brother, older, deceased) and Janna (Maternal Half-Sister, younger, alive)

Spouse: Edda (192)

Children: Three sons (Valdi, Throri, Snorri) and two daughters (Ragna and Yngva)

History: Vili never actually knew his father and though he’s since seen cameos of him he has no recollection of the man himself. Not long after he was born his father Finni and elder brother Dori marched off from the Iron Hills to the Misty Mountains and fought in the Battle of Azanulbizar which would claim Finni’s life. As such he, Dori and their mother Sigrun lived with his maternal grandfather Sigmundur.

His mother’s family, which descended matrilineally from the line of Durin the Deathless, was originally from Erebor and had profited much by its splendor before it had been overtaken by the dragon Smaug. Many was the time a young Vili would sit by his grandfather’s side as he recalled in painstaking detail the lay of the land around the Lonely Mountain, the manner of gems and riches which it bore up to its miners and the majesty of the Arkenstone itself. More than anything though Sigmundur would wax on about his old forge, the forge of his father and his father before him that had blazed undimmed for centuries and where the ring of hammers had sang for just as long. Sigmundur would never see it again, but through time and fate it would pass in to Vili’s possession, though he could not have known so then Entranced by the lost glory of the Kingdom Under the Mountain and feeling little to no connection with the father whom he had never known, Vili ever afterwards counted himself amongst Durin’s Folk.

Though his elder brother Dori would often head out abroad with other Dwarves who sought to reclaim or else carve out new holdings for their people, Vili was at first more of a home body and while he would go adventuring now and again at his brother’s insistence he much preferred pursuing smithing under the watchful eye of his grandfather. Though Sigmundur would often bemoan the poor quality of the materials they had on hand or of the forge they were made to work it was clear to him that his grandson had a great talent as an artisan. Unfortunately he was unable to ever see Vili’s first masterwork, passing away at a ripe old two-hundred and three years, after which Vili let his hammer fall idle a while and went off with Dori all the more willingly.

Around the same time Vili was wed to the daughter of a local brewer, Edda, a match his grandfather had arranged before his death. Though she urged him to take up his craft again and provide them a steady income for him the pain of losing his grandfather was still too near and even after their first son Valdi was born he made the majority of his money from scant treasures snatched back from Orc raiders or from the rights to poor veins happened upon in his travels. The second in particular he developed a knack for surveying and while it paled before the coin he could make working a forge of his own he was able to make an decent and more importantly honest living at it.

The years dragged on and they were blessed again, this time with a daughter, Ragna but it would be decades before Edda would again be with child. It just so happened that when she did, Thorin Oakenshield put out his call to recover Erebor. Honestly Vili did wish to heed the summons and the thought of Sigmundur’s forge lying cold and neglected filled him with a jealous fury at Smaug’s usurpation. He remembered with a heavy heart though the shadow of his own father who had abandoned him to rush off to the call of honour, to his death. He was adamant that this son would know his face at least before he would pursue what was lost, but in hopes that the old King’s grandson might succeed he named the newborn Throri.

His chance to aid the quest came quick on the heels of his son’s birth when Dain Ironfoot gathered veterans of the War of Orcs and Dwarves to occupy the now liberated Mountain Kingdom. Dori was amongst the first to volunteer of course, while Vili came not long after, taking up the war mattock in place of his fallen father. After a hard march they came at last to what would be known as The Battle of the Five Armies. But for the meddling of a certain old grey wizard the Free Peoples might have turned to devour one another that day, but instead they rallied together on the slopes of Erebor to put the goblins of Gundabad to rout. Though they carried the day many Men, Elves and Dwarves fell that they might do so, Dori amongst them. Even Vili, standing fast over the broken body of his sibling eventually fell, his armour hewn and lay upon the battlefield perhaps half a day before being brought safely in to the Mountain. The last thing he recalled before that though was a sound like thunder as Thorin and Company threw down the wall that they had secured across the gates and seeing them sally in the finest armour he’d ever seen, wielding swords and axes that cut Orc flesh like fresh barley.

He awoke days later, the clamour and fury of battle still fresh in his heart and eyes and almost without thinking made his way down into the delving of the Mountain, sealing himself up inside Sigmundur’s forge, taking no food and little drink until he emerged again. With him he carried a finely made corslet of scales, treated with a process of his own devising so that they not only shone bright but caught and split the light after the fashion of a rainbow, giving the piece the appearance of carp scales. So Sigmundur’s loss had been avenged and with this first mastercraft his forge passed at last to his rightful descendant.

This corslet he eventually gave to King Dain in honour of the coronation he’d missed and it then was given to Thorin Stonehelm when the newly created Prince joined his father beneath the Mountain.

Vili’s family too came to live in Erebor and have stayed there ever since and as he found new life in himself and new vigor in his works so too did his family grow. Not only did he and Edda have another two children, Yngva and Snorri, but Valdi and Ragna in time both gave them grandchildren. And however often Vili might have been called away to help find new veins or plan new delving, never again was Sigmundur’s forge permitted to gutter out, being tended always by Edda or their children.

There comes a time though, if a Dwarf is lucky, when one looks in to their grandchildren’s eyes and laments at the things as yet left unfinished. For Vili this time only came after long years forging plate and keening blades, but now he has judged the Mountain’s recovery not enough. It is not simply sufficient to pass off their old home to his descendants, but it must be made safe and its Enemies who still are many must be driven away into the uttermost wilds that the Sons of Durin may prosper forevermore.