About Farn

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The Basics

• Name: Farnam "Farn" Burrowsbuck
• Race: Halfling (Paradis)
• Profession": Rogue
• Birthplace: Icemule Trace
• Favorite Location: Cavernhold
• Preferred Weapon: Light crossbow
• Favorite Foods: Gnollish mushrooms, baked potatoes
• Favorite Drink: Farn's Root Beer (Yes, it's actually named after him. He foraged the ingredients for it and everything!)
• Favorite Town: That's a tough one. Wehnimer's Landing is where it all started for me as a player, and seems to have an extra helping of history and secrets. As much as I love Icemule as Farn's birthplace and Solhaven as where he spent most of his later adventuring career, there's just something magical about Wehnimer's.
• Society: Order of Voln
• Least-Favorite Stereotype: The whole cutesy bouncy squeaky eternal-sugar-high halfling thing. I'm fine with other people enjoying that, but it's not Farn's thing, and it got annoying being treated that way just because Farn was a halfling.

(Above drawing of Farn by Balah's player)

Trivia/History

• Since 95: I first started playing Gemstone in 1995. I was a freshman in high school and my friend said "Hey, you're into Lord of the Rings. I bet you'd like this game I found on AOL." I tried it out and was immediately hooked. My friend's character was Gawmuldor, a Giantman warrior. He was a total goober and went around attacking people in town and trying to pick their pockets and generally being deliberately disruptive. He didn't last very long, but I went on to play for many years.
• Farn's Many Names: When I was first playing Gemstone as a dumb kid I made a zillion different characters. I had Farnham (named after the drunk in Diablo I), then created another version as Farnam for some reason, then I think it was when Gemstone went from free to paid that I ended up making a new account and created him yet again as just Farn.
• Hailing from Icemule: I was intially annoyed when Farn genned as a new character in Icemule, because I wanted to be in the Landing. I spent some time in Icemule over his first few levels though, and ended up taking a liking to the place. While I did end up still moving him to the Landing before long (that's where my friends were), I'm now proud to have Farn claim Icemule as his original home, solidifying that decision by choosing to make him a Paradis halfling once culture selections became a thing.
• Kobold Neighbor: When I was still pretty new, I *think* it was Farn or at least one of his incarnations that I claimed lived in either the shanty or the hovel in the Kobold Village. I'd insist people come meet me there and stuff. It was goofy, but back then it felt like some pretty great RP I was doing.
• Regrets: I occasionally did some pretty stupid stuff as Farn, particularly when I was younger. I distinctly remember one time I used the ACT command to have Farn "disappear in a cloud of cucumbers" when I had to log out. Young me thought it was hilarious. Thanks to everyone who put up with me when I pulled dumb stuff like that, though I think (and desperately hope) I only did egregiously awful stuff like that a small handful of times when I was still pretty new and young.
• Axe-Crazy: Back before ranged weapons were particularly viable, Farn used a handaxe as his preferred weapon. Hide, ambush left leg, hide, ambush head!
• Order of Voln: Farn didn't really know what he was getting himself into when he first joined the Order of Voln. Still fresh into his adventuring career, just about everyone was saying that it was important to join a society of some kind as part of that. Farn wasn't particularly fond of the undead, so Voln seemed like a fine enough choice. Despite not taking it particularly seriously at first, over the years it's become something very important to him. It's one of the few things he can feel good about having dedicated himself to.
• Infamy: Farn was "featured" in the first edition of the Elanthian Journal, along with his partner in crime, Defij. They were interviewed after trying to steal from the Wehnimer's Landing grocer and being chased halfway to Solhaven. (They managed to elude capture.) Click here to go to the GSwiki copy of that article. I guess Rharosch wasn't impressed with how the interview went because he just paraphrased us in a single 5-word sentence and called it good.
• Death's Sting Research: I can't remember who it was that enlisted Farn's help, but Farn helped out with the initial research into Death's Sting mechanics. He was particularly useful at being small enough to get into the depths of Cavernhold and do those steps of that whole immense puzzle. I remember being excited about that, but also a little bummed at the idea that Cavernhold would probably become a more frequented place rather than an out of the way destination for intrepid explorers and niche enthusiasts like Farn and Thuunk.
• (Drunk, Fake) Solhaven Constable: I can't remember how Farn got his hands on something like "a fake tin constable's badge", but once he did he constantly wore it and claimed to be a constable of Solhaven. Of course no one believed him - "fake" was right there in the badge's description - but people would humor him every now and then and that was fun. This was during his later adventuring career, having gotten older and at least a little more mature, though he had also turned heavily to drinking. I think Farn was struggling with self-worth at this point and wanted to feel like he was contributing to his community/society.
• Mountain Man: Possibly Farn's last "character arc" while I was still regularly active in the game involved him getting away from the life he'd known to become a rugged trapper. He spent a lot of time around Pinefar, hunting and skinning the animals up in the snowy mountains there. I enjoyed having him do this as he grew beyond his more immature younger self (alongside me, the player). I used my old Geocities website to send letters to people, having Defij's player whisper the webpage links to the recipients back in other areas so they could read them while Farn was away off in Pinefar across the mountains. It was a janky workaround for a mail system but a lot of fun to do. To me it really helped sell the idea that he was far away from the people and life he'd known.

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