The sound of battle is sweet to the victors’ ear; he hears hope, victory and the glory of war within its many dull clatters and screaming cries. Yet to the fallen foe the world seems a darker place and hell around, a wise man once said that the difference between madness and brilliance was perception and so I began my tale.

My father was a strong brave man in his youth, my mother said of him “that he looked as beautiful and proud as the mountains, yet he was hard and stubborn as them also” and from what others have told me he was tall in height compared to that of the Rohan he lived with, but perhaps only average to his own people, his hair was dark as the crows wing and he had piercing green eyes, the only feature I have taken from him in looks. He was a strong ox and always pulled his weight and more on the plough, which is how the people of my village remember him but that strength came from another endeavour. My father was a captain of Gondor before me and his father before him, I have met men who served with and under him and they describe him as a good man but that he lacked the killer instinct that was needed in war, I have not inherited this.

I have said that Rohan is where I lived and grew yet also that my father was captain to the white tower, I will tell in brief the tale that took him from his home and brought him into the arms of my mother.

In the third age of this world two thousand, seventy and six, my father road out to battle in Ecthelion’s last attempt to drive the powers of Mordor from south Iithilien. The orcs were foul and many, Uruks and Defilers from the dark lord’s blackest reach. Fighting upon the field that day was a terrible storm of blood and anguish for little but woodland and despoiled ruins, and so my father made the choice to disobey his orders that would condemn him and his men to death. He rode back to the white tower and there stood before the aged Steward of men and cried “O’ my lord I have broken my oath to thee, that I would serve unfalteringly till mine or thines death for though I would gladly charge into deaths black embrace for the glory of the city of the men of Numenor and your name, I cannot choose it for my men”. But despite my fathers words Ecthelion was unwavering and sent my father into exile, saying that he must never return into these lands and should he ever bear a son that he would be sent to Gondor to restore his fathers honour, or to die in his masters service as his father would not.

Since joining the great army of Gondor I have fought upon many fronts and earned great titles, I now stand lord of lands upon the Rohan border yet I am called away north. Now I am charged with seeking allies for the west in the great battle to come.