Gryffyn the Stout¶
Domains: Creation, Life
Gryffyn the Stout was an infant dwarf when his parents' cart was waylaid by bandits who killed his mother and father, stole all their wares, and set fire to the cart. They were unaware of the child nestled within.
A nearby farmer saw the flames and rode out to investigate. When she arrived, she could hear the bawling of the dwarf babe. Though wreathed in flame, the infant's skin was too hardy to feel the heat. In the horse's pack were a pair of tongs the farmer used to extract the child without harming herself, and she took the baby dwarf home to her husband.
Naming the child Gryffyn, the farmers raised him as one of their own. The boy grew up wanting to be a farmer like his adoptive mother and father, but they encouraged him to take up masonry, believing stonework to be a natural part of his ancestry.
Gryffyn had no particular aptitude for stonework, but desirous to please his parents he worked hard until eventually he was apprenticed to a mason and, after many years effort (more years than most, it was noted) he produced his master work and became a master mason.
One day, years later after his parents had passed, hundreds of people from other nearby towns and villages arrived at the quarry where Gryffyn worked. Cinis the necromancer had discovered an ancient tome of lore and summoned a horde of ghouls. She used her new army to conquer the surrounding barony, causing a flood of refugees. Gryffyn's quarry could not shelter a tenth this number of refugees, so he proposed the people cross the White Ravine to the north and seek asylum among the elves of the Orchid Court.
The people were appalled, the White Ravine was impossible to cross for any but the most experienced ranger. "There is no choice" Gryffyn said. "Cinis's army will be here in a matter of days, and there is nowhere else to run."
The people cried and prepared for death. Gryffyn saw this, and his heart felt like it would burst. "There are stones enough in the quarry," he said enigmatically. "Yoke the oxen and bring the stones to the ravine and do not stop, even in darkness, even in rain, until the ghouls come or the quarry is empty."
When the army of Cinis the Pale arrived, the people fled to the ravine, the path being easy as their carts and oxen had worn a clear road. Thinking they would throw themselves into the ravine rather than be eaten by the ghouls, they were astonished to discover... the miracle. A great stone bridge crossing the ravine. It had not existed three days prior, and all agreed it could not have taken less than a year to build.
Fleeing across the bridge, the refugees found the body of Gryffyn, author of this marvel, his fingers bleeding, hammer in his hand, his heart having finally failed. He knew his labors would cost his life. But Gryffyn's Arch still stands, almost a thousand years later.
Saint Gryffyn the Stout teaches that despair is the enemy of action. That unyielding endurance is the cure for impossible odds. That more than sword and spell, hard work is the savior of the people.