The Clan Dugallach
Blood and Cunning
I am Daidh Dugallach, the third Ymherador in the service of the Greyling king. My grandfather, the Lord Clansman Cormac Dugallach II served the Ymherador Taegarch of Achdirmac in the days of old. My grandfather was a wise man, unlike the king he served, and when Achdirmac and the other kingdoms of the Red Men rose to fight off the Grey Men and all their sacrilege, my grandfather counseled peace. Foolishly, the Ymherador Taegarch ignored him, and began a futile and bloody war which led only to ignominy and defeat for our proud people. My grandfather was a loyal servant to the Ymherador and fought in his hopeless, terrible war, losing so many of his faithful kinsmen and three of his own sons in that bloodbath. When the Grey Men slew the Ymherador Taegarch, my grandfather gathered the lord clansmen in one of our land's many sacred places and convinced them to speak peace to the Grey Men. This is the story of how my grandfather, Cormac Dugallach II, came to be the Grey Man's Ymherador.
There are those who still say that my grandfather delivered our people up like sheep to the slaughter, into the hands of a hateful and tyrannical foreigner, and was rewarded by the Grey Men for his cowardice and duplicity. Men that say such things are foolhardy and hot-headed, like so many enemies of our ancient and noble clan. My grandfather, unlike my father after him, was cunning like the fox upon our banners and knew the meaning of leadership. So many of our kinfolk dead, our armies scattered like leaves, he sought to preserve our homes and our ways in the face of the terrible adversity and the Grey Man's terrible vengeance. In doing so, he spared our people a thousand torments. Great men are seldom admired in their time, and so my grandfather had many enemies, and built himself a great fortress in the style of the Grey Men to withstand the sieges of his enemy's armies, and to guard against the daggers of their assassins. This was the Red Keep, ever since the epicenter of our great clan's power and authority. Sadly, not long after his Red Keep was finished, my grandfather died of age and the wounds sustained in the Ymherador Taergach's foolish war. Our cunningmen gave him a proper funeral in the old way, burning his corpse in the great hills and depositing the ashes in the ancient and hallowed burial cairns of our ancestors. His mausoleum, like so many holy places in our land, I visit often as is my duty and privilege.
My father, Eanraigh, ruled bloodily and with an eye to impress. Shamed by my grandfather's surrender to the Greylings, he sought to reassert the power and majesty of his crown, and consulted often with strange and cruel-minded cunningmen who advised him poorly and endangered our leadership in the eyes of the Grey Men. Always fearful of reprisals and uprisings, he earned himself the moniker of the Mad Fox. The only good thing to be said for the man is that he built many fortresses and strongholds both large and small throughout the land to cow his bannermen into submission, and compel the fear and respect of the smallfolk. In his old age my father's already loose grasp on sanity began to slip further, and the realm grew restless. My father was a pious man, well versed in the Faith and our God of Fire, Wood and Stone. He called for his cunningmen, and they attended him constantly. I knew that the leader of these cunningman, the one who called the spirits to attendance in the Mask of Fire, was wresting the leadership of the realm from my father in his dotage.
So, I killed him. And then I put my dear father out of his misery, and blamed both these foul deeds on our clan's enemies. This is how I, the Young Fox, rose to the throne of the Ymherador of the Red Men of the Fennglaerd. I called a moot of my clansmen thereafter and censured the names of my father's murderers, and under my rule, we cast them out from their halls and placed their heads on the block of our executioners. In their killings there was the Red Man's justice, dispensed by the Red Man's Ymherador, and no Greyling was ever asked for permission. My younger brother grew suspicious in these early years, and so I made him my chief adviser, and bought his loyalty with titles, honors and land. They call him the Gold Fox now, for the jewelry he wears in sick and miserly imitation of the Athsarach merchants the Grey Men hold in servitude in the east. I have my own cunningmen now, as loyal as they are skilled in calling the aid of the Red God. It has been ten years, and I have ruled well.
I am Daidh Dugallach, Ymherador of the Red Men, the Lord Clansman of Dugallach, Lord of the Red Keep, Servitor of Fire, Wood and Stone, the Young Fox. You may kneel.
Daidh Dugallach (41) - The Young Fox, Daidh succeeded his much disliked and distrusted father as Ymherador of the Red Men under dubious circumstances. He was quick to identify his father's killers as the Clan Dugallach's disloyal bannermen. He had these clansmen publicly executed and seized their land and their halls, doling them out as favors to political allies and buying the loyalty of his younger brother, the so-called Gold Fox. Daidh has quickly earned a reputation of pragmatism and measured leadership, marked both for his generosity and magnanimity as well as his incredible cruelty to his enemies. A politically advantageous marriage produced several children, to whom Daidh is a dubious father, preferring to delegate to his wife and court servants. The exception to this rule is his eldest son, Murchadh, whose upbringing has been almost entirely a product of Daidh's plans for his succession. Whether this has made him his father's loyalest servant or greatest detractor varies with the weather. Pious in similarity to his father, Daidh is in good standing with the advocates of the Red Faith, the Fennacht religion of the God of Fire, Wood and Stone. Feared among his enemies, respected among his clansmen, the Young Fox is the most capable Ymherador since his grandfather.
+8, -4 = 4
(+4) Heroic - Cut a very dashing figure in armor and with red, fox-covered banners when he cut down his father's supposed killers and scattered their armies
(+2) Smart - Very intelligent in terms of book-learning
(+2) Clever - A good reader of people and a natural strategist
(+0) Cynic - Not very optimistic about the world or its inhabitants
(+0) Amoral - Perhaps his moral compass is just a tiny bit skewed
(+0) Pious - Has a very... interesting relationship with his court cunningmen and the Red Faith in general
(-1) Temperamental - Has been known to have fits of anger
(-1) Dishonest - He might have lied, just once or twice
(-2) Cruel - Perhaps the punishments he has visited on those who have displeased him have been rather extreme. Also overly-fond of using cunningmen as glorified hangmen and torturers
Raghnaid Dugallach (38) - Sometimes called the Broodmatron, opinion among the clansmen is divided as to whether Raghnaid is as dangerous as her husband. The daughter of one of Daidh's father's more doubtful supporters, Raghnaid was married to Daidh when she was 17 and produced three children for her husband in quick succession. Influential in the management of the realm, Raghnaid is seen with her husband as often as the Gold Fox, and is a fixture in the Red Keep's throne room. Though she takes a more active role in raising the children than Daidh, she still delegates a great deal to handmaidens and the like. Sometimes the respect that is paid to her by her husband borders on the equal treatment of a professional relationship, and those enemies of the Ymherador who remain brazen and hale (few as they are) sometimes suggest their marriage is wholly without intimacy.
+5, -1 = 4
(+2) Clever - Just as apt at reading people as her husband. Perhaps moreso
(+2) Attractive - Still pretty young, still really pretty. There is a definite coldness and edge to her beauty, however
(+1) Handy - Good with a needle and thread, as befits a Red Woman, though she's rarely seen doing any kind of domestic work
(+0) Patient - More even-handed and capable of biding her time than her husband
(+0) Cynic - Very hard-minded about the world, probably because her father wasn't the most consistent man
(-1) Distant - It is sometimes very obvious that she is not genuine with people other than her husband, but she can fake it to some degree
Amlaigh Dugallach (39) - The Gold Fox, Amlaigh was always the more dutiful and loyal son, even if Daidh was marked for greatness. His title is not a prideful or even laughing matter with Amlaigh, who has begun to resent the treatment his brother lavished on him upon becoming Ymherador as having been design to patronize, blind and embarrass him. His fondness for the fashion of Greyling lords and uselessness at court has not ingratiated him to his brother's bannermen, and even if he thought of himself as his brother's closest adviser, he is beginning to wonder if his brother listens to him at all. Conspicuously, still unmarried.
+8, -2 = 6
(+2) Attractive - Very good-looking for an unmarried man
(+2) Kind - Generous and magnanimous, and without an edge
(+1) Skilled - Good horseman. Again, for an unmarried man
(+1) Friendly - Easy to get along with
(+0) Moral - An upstanding guy in most respects
(-1) Vain - Very, probably too, aware of how good-looking he is
(-1) Homosexual - He gay
Murchadh Dugallach (18) - The eldest son, Murchadh has grown into adulthood an attractive, capable, angry young man. In many ways, he is his father's son, and values the old man's advice highly. In other ways, however, he is desperate to step out of his dad's shadow and assert himself as an independent person.
+4, -4 = 0
(+2) Attractive - A fetching youth
(+2) Clever - As intuitively smart as his parents
(+0) Cynic - Just as cold-minded as his parents, too
(-1) Temperamental - Not good at managing his anger
(-1) Arrogant - Well aware he is the son of the Ymherador
(-2) Rebellious - It's getting to be kind of an issue now that he's older, he has a disturbing tendency to disobey orders
Asgall Dugallach (16) - Middle child, quiet and intellectual in comparison to his brother and parents, so extremely smart and extremely quiet. In childhood he acquired a limp. Not at all debilitating, but not great for his self-esteem by any means, and not great at stepping out of the shadow of his favored-for-succession older brother. Enjoys a close relationship with his younger sister.
+5, -2 = 3
(+5) Brilliant - Very, very smart
(+0) Patient - Good at waiting and biding his time
(-1) Distant - Has a hard time forging close bonds with people
(-1) Shy - Has a hard time even talking to people, really
Floraidh Dugalach (12) - The youngest child, an increasingly curious and assertive girl. Gets along well with her older brother, Asgall, though this isn't to say her relationship with the eldest Murchadh is awful or anything.
(+2) Attractive - Growing up into a decent-looking Red maiden
(-1) Dishonest - Catching the family lying disease at a young age
Map comes later. I'm just so glad I managed to poo this out. God of Fire, Stone and Wood, Grey Men out of our hood! sweg2k14