Frimsi Gembeard is a young and ambitious Dwarf merchant from the Lonely Mountain. He hails from a family of ruthless merchants and vault-keepers. His father Frimgor is one of the wealthiest vault-keepers under the Lonely Mountain…and one of the most feared. His cutthroat business practices forced countless men in both Dale and Lake-town into bankruptcy. But just like any Dwarf Frimsi idolized his father and sought to be like him. That is he wanted to earn his own fortune for the family just like his father had. When Frimsi was just a beardling he idled in the mines a lot, dreaming of ways to make money without actually doing any physical labour, but when he finally came of age he immediately got to work as a merchant in the markets of Dale. Frimsi quickly developed a penchant for working with eccentrics and outcasts when concocting his various market schemes. With the help of a struggling craftsman named Thorgonsi and a gruff miner from the Iron Hills named Gornori, Frimsi invented a way to make convincing fake jewelry at an extremely low price by utilizing a combination of mining waste and…cave-claw fecal matter.

So it came to pass that Frimsi specialized in selling useless crap in quite the literal sense. He was able to pass his fraudulent product as genuine Dwarf jewelry, and as a result Frimsi made a fortune in the markets of Dale…but of course his profits were cut short when people began to realize that not only was his jewelry fake but was also actual shit. He was promptly banned from the markets of Dale. He then packed his wares and went to Lake-town, where the same thing happened again. He made a fortune, but then the people caught on, and he was then banned from the markets of Lake-town. Frimsi then sought to continue his business practice across Mirkwood in the settlements of the woodsmen in the Vales of Anduin, and for a while he was able to turn a sizable profit from those markets. As he transported his wares through Mirkwood, he would devise all sorts of crazy schemes to avoid having to pay the elven road tolls which met with varying success. He often colluded with the smugglers that operated in the ruins of Esgaroth-of-old to do this. At this time, Frimsi worked extensively with one smuggler in particular named Greyson who was just beginning his smuggling business. Greyson helped Frimsi save a fortune by getting him out of paying countless road tolls by smuggling his fake jewelry. And in return Greyson was not only paid well but also had his reputation grow as a skilled smuggler so that other legally skeptical merchants would take notice of his business. So with this arrangement, Frimsi was able to keep his transportation costs extremely low. Frimgor was proud of his son, as he was making a fortune by making use of the most useless rocks and wastes of the mines. It was an extremely cost effective business strategy, if also completely immoral.

But then one fateful day during his usual route through Mirkwood Frimsi came across a young elven guard that was unusually naïve and unassuming. He could not resist the temptation of scamming an elf, and that is what he was able to do. He invoked the healing that was going on between their peoples, and suggested that she accept (and pay for) this “jewelry” as a potent symbol of the growing friendship between Dwarves and Elves. The poor elven guard was delighted at this gesture and eagerly paid for it. Needless to say when she found out, Frimsi got in a tremendous amount of trouble and was promptly arrested and thrown into the dungeons of Felegoth for a month. His father had to pay a huge fine for his son’s release. Frimgor was disappointed in his son, mostly for getting caught and costing the family a lot of money. Frimsi was distraught at his father’s disapproval and so had a very slight change of heart. Since he was basically banned from all of the markets east of the Misty Mountains, Frimsi decided he was going to expand his business into Eriador. And rather than outright lying about the nature of his product, he was going to rebrand it as ‘an affordable alternative to traditional jewelry’ so as not to get banned from all the markets again. After all, half-truths make for the most effective lies.