[PK] The Last Will and Testament of Callum B. Fiddleberry

[tazombo 180]

[!] A roughed up sailboat has been dashed upon the shores of the Shiredom of Dunwen, its aged planks scattered and its sail tangled in a mess with the boat's shipwrecked passengers. A familiar blonde halfling lies thoroughly waterlogged in the wreckage.

 

After Marigold Fiddleberry, the long missing community member of the halflings and previous owner of the Fiddleberry Cheese & Wine Company (prior to her having a mental break and leaving her twin sister Maggy to take the family business) was found and brought ashore, she began her work. The soggy and disheveled halfling brought with her stacks of weathered parchment, clutched closely to her chest with far more care than for her son Cal that trailed after her. 

 

The parchments carried with her across the ocean would turn out to be the will of her late father, Callum Fiddleberry.

---

In their home in the now-lost shire of Bywater, Mary remembers her father's last days clearest. Callum Fiddleberry, a poet of the weefolk since the later days of Arcas- had always had a foggy mind. From what could only be assumed to be head trauma from the halfling's childhood, Callum had a faulty memory which only seemed to get worse with age. In his later years, he would hardly leave his burrow: clinging to the side of his husband Hawthorn, he would often ask his family for news of his friends: of Iris Peregrin, of Filibert Applefoot, of Rufus, of James, of Monkey. It was difficult for Mary and for her twin sister, but they tried to look at the bright side of things; he was among family, he was comfortable, he was safe.

 

It was the final days that stood out to Mary. Callum would wake early, far earlier than usual even for when the halfling was in his prime: bustling around his abode, dusting and mopping and baking and sewing. And writing. In the weeks following up to his end Callum would set himself upon hefty stacks of parchment daily at his desk and write feverishly until forced to go to bed when his family grew concerned for the elderly man.

 

And finally, on the last day, Callum would come to his beloved daughter Marigold and place a brown paper package in her arms. Tied with thread and smelling of ink, the package was only to be opened after he was gone, Callum instructed her. Mary's father never asked anything of her or her sister, so when she was told to make sure his will was enacted she took it to heart. Hushed whispers of goodbye and tearful embraces, Callum left his burrow with Hawthorn on his arm, the two of them having secured a nice little sailboat that they would take to somewhere warm. Callum wasted not the time to speak to the village members or to say his goodbyes to his friends: for none of his friends remained. The poet thought it a cruel irony he would be the last standing among so many great and honoured halflings who'd perished before him.
---

[!] The parchment would be tarnished from a voyage at sea, but the words are still legible.

 

THE LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT OF CALLUM BERLAN FIDDLEBERRY, former Patriarch of the Fiddleberry household, former Head Librarian at the Soggy Sonnet Library of Bramblebury and whatever it was we named the one in Honeyhill though I think I lost my job there, former team member & cheerleader of the undefeated Honeyhill Hedgehogs, former Elder of Honeyhill, former Thain for a few days when the Thain at the time went on holiday, former member of the Neighborhood Watch Alliance until I quit cause' Greenholm is a ****; poet, singer, lute player, painter, baker (poorly), father, husband, amnesiac, (mostly) valued community member, cat enthusiast, and friend

 

Dear halflings of [INSERT CURRENT RESIDENCE OF WEEFOLK], if this paper has been published then it means I have passed.

 

I have no doubt this will come as a great tragedy to you all, and I understand that this may be hard news to bear. Do not despair- as I am happier now, and roam the wheatfields with my beloved husband Hawthorn, blissfully free of any overbearing biggun visitors telling us how much they admire our culture and wish to live with us. Ugh. Please, try to keep any weeping to a minimum, crying dries up your eyes and makes you look like an old hag. Here are some tips on how to cope with this:

 

 [The following three pages are filled with instructions on how one might try to recover from the absence of Callum Fiddleberry, and an assurance that you will probably be okay and that you can live without him. It seems to stretch on endlessly until finally returning to the contents of the will.]

 

With that out of the way, this is the part where you skim to find your name and see if you got anything good in my will.

 

TO LILY PEREGRIN, OR HER CURRENT LIVING DESCENDANT
One of my greatest regrets in life was not realizing how fortunate I was to have a friend like Iris Peregrin in my life. Your mother was an amazing woman, full of light and joy that managed to balance out the dour I brought into a room by being a malcontented bastard. Iris was the best of us all, and I am sure you will do great things just as she did. 

 

TO FILIBERT APPLEFOOT, OR HIS CURRENT LIVING DESCENDANT
Filibert was a simple man in the grand scheme of things, but also one of the most steadfast friends (acquaintances? I never really asked if we were friends or not…) one could ask for. When I found myself untethered and overwhelmed with the abject horror of existing in this universe, Filibert was the grounding anchor telling me to shut up and stop staring at the clouds and help him harvest the bloody crops because it's gotta be done and his back hurts. I haven't spoken to him in some time so he's probably dead, so I leave this bottle of wine to either him or whatever living descendant of his remains.

 

TO MONKEY PEREGRIN
I hope this finds you well, Monkey- I hope it finds you alive. I dearly regret that I did not do better at keeping in touch with you and keeping track of your doings but, as all boys do, they grow up to be men et cerera et cetera… I'm glad you found your path, and I'm glad to know you found belonging even if it took the form of hocus-pocus shamanism… At least it meant you had a good pipeweed supply! I have to say that out of all of the halflings I met in Bloomerville and Bramblebury you felt the most like family, like a brother to me. Stay strong and stay true to yourself, Monkey. Whatever it is you've chosen to do with your life, I'm proud of you.

 

TO CYRIS COLLINGWOOD
You are a bastard and I am going to haunt you. How did you outlive me? Stop it.

 

TO SEVREL VALIN'DAR
If you were about to think I'd forgotten you, and that you would not be mentioned in this document: you would be very correct, because I very much did forget you up until two hours ago. I can't remember much of what we talked about, but I recall the presence of a kind dark elf with a magnificent beard, and merry evenings spent conversing over good food and good pipeweed. May Knox keep you and your family, as I'm certain you're still alive because elves are weird like that. I leave you a bottle of wine from my cellar, may you raise a glass of it in my name.

 

TO WINTER… If you're alive somehow
Sorry I was a prick. Thank you for helping me realize I don't like women.

 

TO MAGNOLIA FIDDLEBERRY
I leave the best and most dear to my heart for last, Maggy. I don't know when this letter will reach you. I don't know how old you are now. As I write this, you're in your fifties, learning who you are… You've started a cheese business, and people from all over come by the burrow to trade for these magnificent wheels of cheese you craft… I've never seen my family burrow receive so many visitors, and it is all because of you. I hope you've stuck with it- but if you haven’t, that’s fine. In whatever you do, I know you'll be the best. You're my child- so of course you will be. Your grumpy old man will always believe in you, and I hope you look back on your childhood with me fondly… I don't know how good a father I was, I was never prepared. But despite my incompetence you've surpassed my every expectation and have grown into a halfling more talented and clever and beautiful than any other and I hope you know it. Don't ever let anyone tell you you're not perfect, cause' they don't know what perfect is cause' they're not you. Be good to your sister, be good to yourself. In the end it's just the two of ya. Your pa loves you, keep being yourself- whoever you decide that is.

 

I leave you this mahogany walking cane- pray your knees never deteriorate enough you should depend on it- and my smoking pipe. Anything other material possessions I have you may split up between you and your sister.

 

OOC:

Spoiler

First off, I'd like to thank you for taking the time to read this post. Second off I'd like to apologize for the length of it. 

 

    I've been a long time procastinating this post and writing and re-writing it: though Callum was a character so dear to my heart, I'd been absent from LOTC for so long that it was hard to wrap up a story that had grown stagnant while I'd been busy having a life and other boring stuff. I started playing Callum Fiddleberry just at the very end of Arcas, specifically October 10th, 2020. I joined because my older brother told me to, and because I'd enjoyed roleplay and fantasy in general for many years and the setting was something that interested me- and again because my brother told me to, peer pressure and all.

 

    Callum wasn't actually my first character: my first character was the one I'd applied with months prior named Aki Siirenor, a wood elf from nowhere with a cardboard-flat personality just about as interesting as my free new-player skin that was a magnificent blob of beige and grey over a vaguely tan-skin man shaped blob, which I really couldn't fault the skinner for because the reference I gave them was drawn on my phone with my finger. My entire experience with him was logging on with my brother, being given a tour of Aegrothond which apparently blew up or something while I was offline, and then I logged off and never played that character ever again. 

 

    On October 10th the next year (at least, I think it was a full year- website says I made my profile in 2019 but I don't know if I applied that same year because I can't find my whitelist app) I was told about the halloween event that the halflings of Brandybrook were hosting, and told I should make a halfling persona to join. I like Lord of the Rings, and hobbits are cool, so I drew up a concept doodle of a blonde-haired and brown-eyed halfling wearing what was essentially a knockoff bilbo outfit of a maroon coat and some shorts. His first skin was ugly as all hell, and so was the next, and so was the one after that until a halfling community member took pity on me and made me the skin Callum would wear until the day I stopped playing him (thx nerddyy luv u)

 

    I decided he was an artist, a poet, and I gave him amnesia when I panicked and realized I hadn't given him any backstory or familial ties and couldn't think of any while I was on the way to this event with my 5-minutes old halfling character. I insisted the amnesia was a very deliberate character-development choice and had nothing to do with how last minute Callum was made. He showed up to a lovely village of lovely people for a lovely party and had a lovely time until a demon possessed a giant pumpkin, spewed acidic pumpkin guts all over the lovely village, and then the lovely people he met detonated explosive mini pumpkins under the entire shire and told everyone to evacuate to a sailboat far too large for people who were on average 2 feet tall, and was also named after a crustacean. Brandybrook fell to ruin as Callum and his new friends sailed away on the Spicy Shrimp, months before the actual world-ending roleplay events were supposed to start happening but ST don't care about halflings so we did it ourself.

 

    I played Callum for a long time, and I poured a lot of myself into my involvement with the halflings during those years- for a time I was one of the more active members of the halflings, which isn't really something I say with pride because I really did not have any other hobbies at the time. Despite how often I got tilted over OOC-fueled petty squabbles and witchhunts in the halfling scene and how many times I said this time I'm leaving you losers for sure and how many times I wished bodily harm on people in our now-deleted (thank Knox) politics channel I'm glad to have met the people I did while playing Callum, and I'm so grateful for everyone who ever contributed to his story in some way.

 

I had a lot of fun roleplaying Callum over the years, but it’s time he has a proper send-off. Thanks for reading!

 

https://imgur.com/a/ObX7ejT

 

[Notic 941]

Griff Peregrin found himself reclining lazily in the recedes of a lumbering elder oak, hands clutched loosely on the piece of worn parchment paper he had received as he glossed over it haphazardly. With his off hand, he took a lengthy grasp of pungent liquor from his rusted flask, his drunken eyes slowly grazing the words written upon the paper. It was upon a particular name that he found himself pausing, taking to a deep ponder. "Knew the bloke, did you, Gramps?" He said as he licked his lips fiendishly, now greedily scouring every word- nay, every letter- of the will regarding a certain Monkey Peregrin. It was upon reading the final words that he stopped, intent on reading it again. For nigh on twenty minutes, he found himself pondering what was written, before stopping entirely. "Not a lick for your best friend, ey... Callum?" He said, his pausing deriving from his need to reread what the dead man's name even was, "Not an ounce of sympathy? Eh? Cheapskate!" He then tossed the parchment to the wind, drinking himself deeper into his stupor...

 

Monkey Peregrin watched distantly as Callum found his way through the final gates, down the path of a different afterlife. He smiled. Even if they would never meet in their afterlife, he knew that his closest friend had found his way. "I' was 'n 'onor, brot'er. Rest easeh."

[Le_Psit 277]

"May the Spirits guide yar soul an' res' in The Golden Whea'fields, Lord Knox bless ya an' Res' in Peace" Breasal said respectfully, hoping that the deceased Halfling will find their rightful place

[salamanderfantasy 667]

Hawthorn Fiddleberry had gone in a way, looking back, he was quite happy with. In a way that was both beautiful and horrible -- fittingly poetic. He had died feverish, but calm, full of wine and pipesmoke, hand in hand with his husband, and finally slipping away before dawn one night. Leaving behind a flute, a dozen drawers full of unpublished poetry, and Callum. He died content for once, his wanderings stopped, and his works left imperfect. When Callum would find his way to the Wheatfields, he would find the song of a reed flute leading him home.

Magnolia wasn't sure at what point she went from the thought process of 'my old dad who lives out on the seaside', to 'my late father' -- but the change had happened a while ago. She isn't shaken by the sudden appearance of a will, moreso lightly amused, and secretly a little glad Callum hadn't died horribly to demons the moment he left.

The appearance of Marigold again, though, is quite different indeed.