Thursday, January 24, 2013

Thor's Day Hero: Bruenor Battlehammer


Dwarves were always just that, Dwarves. Another race in the Player's Handbook; they had beards and preferred axes, and got some kind of underground direction sense or something. I was never really intrigued by their entry enough to want to play one. Then I read Salvatore's The Crystal Shard in 1988, and I suddenly loved Dwarves.

One of the main characters, one of the "Heroes of the Hall", was a Dwarf named Bruenor Battlehammer. There wasn't a whole lot of D&D Dwarf fiction out there (other than proto-Tolkien), so Bruenor wasn't anything fresh and innovative, he was pretty much your stereotypical Dwarf. But he was a well-written stereotypical Dwarf, as were his Dwarf peers, and for that I was hooked. Salvatore has gone on to write a lot of books, and his Dwarves don't ever disappoint. I'm getting a wee tired of reading about the goth/emo Dark Elf Drizzt, but Bruenor and his Dwarven cousins are still a lot of fun to read about.

Bruenor's the reason I lean to the Dwarf race nowadays when rolling up new characters and the like. He's a man's Dwarf, tough as the stone he carved an empire out of with a wit as sharp as his axe. He loves beer and is a loyal friend to the end. That's reason enough alone to make him a Thor's Day Hero.

13 comments:

  1. Never read any of these books but I do note that he is one of the playable characters in the Legend of Drizzt board game.

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    1. Tristan beat me to it, but the old Drizzt books are just great. Not literary masterpieces mind you, but lots of fun nonetheless. Start with the Crystal Shard.

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  2. OMG Brad dude read these books! The first stuff I read apart from Tolkien and definitely got me hooked!!

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    1. Definitely the first fantasy I read and "got", those and the Dragonlance books were very fundamental for me.

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  3. Dwarves man. I loved dwarves since the days of warcraft 2. For some reason I loved the stuff about the Bronzebeards and any other dwarf lore. The Hobbit is an excellent movie that displays dwarf awesomeness.

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    1. Obviously I'm a big dwarf fan too, an those Warcraft dwarves were awesome. The Hobbit movie, wow, warfdonculius piece of cinema.

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  4. I love this feature, I love this Blog, jmezz and Mik are top tier awesome guys as are all you readers.
    I say this with the utmost respect because I gotta say, I really really despise fantasy Dwarves.
    (This can be blamed on a year managing a GW store in the 90's, and years of awful Dwarf player behavior in our WHFRP and Shadowrun rpg campaigns.)

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    1. You are forgiven Spacejacker lol

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    2. Thanks bro. I felt bad as soon as I finished the comment...

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  5. Superb books, Have you read the Cleric Quintet, The two Dwarven brothers in that series are very funny characters.

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  6. For my money, Thibbledorf Pwent and his Gutbuster Brigade of Battleragers were Salvatore's greatest contributions to dwarf-lore. Bruenor is cool and all, but I got kind of frustrated with the eventual conflict between his kingship and his(i.e. Salvatore's) desire to have him out adventuring with his friends.

    Also: dwarven "holy water" is beer? Can't argue with that!

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