"Damn it!" Rhydd swore under his breath. The acrid smell of woodsmoke mingled with the sickly-sweet smell of burned flesh, and all that was left of the homesteaders' hut were blackened, smoldering remains.

"An Orc warband, most likely," muttered the slim Elf who was known to Rhydd by the name that she was granted when she was accepted into one of the bands of local rangers: "Eyes-of-the-Hawk".

"We tried to warn these people that it was not safe to settle in this area, but they were stubborn Southlanders who thought that they knew better than we did."

"And now it has come to this," Rhydd sighed, shaking his head.

"The far North is an unforgiving place, as you well know," Eyes-of-the-Hawk commented. "If one first chooses poorly, oft-times a second choice is never available."

"I have buried many pilgrims who learned that lesson the hard way," Rhydd replied. "So many of the Southlanders consider themselves to be superior to us -- they think us ill-favored lackwits for choosing to live up here amongst all the ice and snow, on what they perceive to be the backside of beyond. They think that the way of life that they are accustomed to will work equally well here in the far North. They are wrong, of course."

"Enough talk," said Eyes-of-the-Hawk, as she cut the conversation short. "My brothers and sisters and I need to catch up with those Orcs before they reach the mountains, and they already have a lead on us. Can you take care of putting up stone cairns over whatever is left of these fools?"

"Consider it done," Rhydd said with a nod.

"Good hunting."

---

Rhydd (pronounced "Ride") Maldhon is a wiry, gray-eyed Human who stands about six feet fall. He wears his raven-black hair long, and it falls to his shoulders. He also wears a neatly-trimmed beard that he always tends to when he comes out of the wilderness. Around his neck is a necklace made from bear-claws. As might be expected of an outdoorsman his skin is well-tanned, and his traveler's clothes are a huntsman's mixture of gray, green and brown.

Rhydd tends to be a bit taciturn and to keep his own counsel, mayhap because the idle chatter of others holds little interest for him. When on the hunt (whether it be for game or Orcs) he wears a mail shirt (painted or dyed a dull, flat dark-gray so that it does not reflect light), and is rarely seen without his longbow and quiver of arrows. Those who have seen him shoot can confirm that he is uncommonly accurate with it. He also wears a rapier and carries a wooden shield, and looks to be quick enough to give a good account of himself in close quarters, if need be.

Rhydd is an outlander who disappears from what passes for the civilization of Ten-Towns for weeks at a time. He seems to be fully at home in the wilderness areas, and like many others in the hardscrabble land of the far North, he does several things to make ends meet. At various times he has been known to be a forester, a hunter and trapper, and a guide for those who are unfamiliar with the areas around Ten-Towns.