A/N: Written for the Flt Greenroom challenge: write about a minor character as a major character. My minor character is Gobbs from Tales of Deltora – despite being one of the Councillors of Del, he doesn't get much page-space. Also for the 5,10,20,50,70,100 fandoms challenge, fandom 64: Tales of Deltora.
Additional A/Ns at the end to explain a few adjustments to canon-verse.
The Uniting
I. Introduction
The people of Del knew of the malice that stirred behind the mountains, but they were people of faith, if somewhat misguided. They turned instead to the shores of the south, where their thriving city spread almost to where the strange hills to the North could be seen. Os-mine hills they called them, after the wild-man Ben Os-mine, who had long since died in solitude.
But the South was far more captivating to those of Del, the South with its lazy shores stretching out into the dangerous Sea of Serpents beyond, and even further than that, other lands filled with riches the Land of the Dragons could barely know. Because of the distrust between tribes, only Del tasted the elegant riches from those other lands, and they were asked to pay a hefty price for those treasures that few – and certainly no modest man – could afford it.
Councillor Gobbs was more than content to keep things that way; the Commonfolk, as he called those hard-working men and woman bathed in rags instead of fine silk like he, were far better suited in maintaining the basic working level of their society. After all, they needed someone to grow the wheat, and someone to bake the bread, for somebody else to be able to eat it. And they needed people to spin wool and sell clothes in order to wrap oneself in them – or for someone to hammer away at the forge in order to make shoes for their horses, and arrows, shields and swords for their army. And they needed someone to stand at the head of the city as well, somebody with intellect and mental fortitude, to make decisions that would have the Commonfolk curl in a broth of emotion if only they understood.
He might appear the greedy fool in the presence of his other Councillors, but he was a clever greedy fool, if, like many spread throughout the Land of the Dragons, he thought himself and his people superior to the other tribes. And like those other tribes, he never considered it a weakness; he was more than content to let them keep to their own lands, and guard their own borders and treasures. In his view there was no treasure they possessed that was not equalled in Del, or could not be obtained from the lands across the Sea.
Oh, he had heard of those jewels that each of the seven tribes so jealously guarded – and who some stragglers on the roads cursed, believing their appearance to be the thing that ripped apart the tribes. Gobbs thought otherwise; he was well acquainted with the jealous and curious nature that humans possessed, gifted with a good deal of it himself. But he found useful tasks for it, tasks that had earned him his wealth and his position. After all, even the ordinary folk of Del were content enough with their lives, and the few glittering fineries that made their way to them was enough to sedate the horde. Tales of rivers flowing gold were laughed at and scorned: a pretty shawl they could accept and fawn over perhaps, but gold running so smoothly was nothing but a fool's dream. They laughed at even the Toran magic, Tora who walled themselves away in a place they called their Paradise.
Del was lively. Del was rich: food, sustenance and glamour was aplenty, and visitors were always too and fro, from the coast and the lands beyond. And it was not always from the harbour in Del, but some of the other landing points scattered about the Land of the Dragons coaxed weary sea-farers their way, for no other tribe welcomed such strangers. But there was value in those acquaintances, and with those the treasures within Del grew, until what was once rare and fine had become commonplace.
But Gobbs pushed for segregation, as his father had done before him. It was important, after all, to have a hierarchy of things. Equality meant there was no foundation – and so he played the part of the tyrannical leader quite admirably, for he really did have Del's best interests in heart, even if his plans ultimately filled his pocket more than another's.
But haggling Captains regarding voyages and products and prices soon decreased in priority as travellers to Del changed in appearance. Their nature was much the same: the beasts of Sea of Serpents was something that shook even the bravest man, but their stiff salt-baked clothes were instead shreds knotted together, and their cracking skin scarred and bloodied. Only their eyes remained the same, burning from the golden light of the Topaz Dragons on Os-mine hill and the guards at the Gate, but even they had an extra haunted layer about them.
And the tales they told off were quickly snatched off the streets and into the Meeting Hall, where only the Councillors could hear details beyond a malice stirring in the North behind the Mountains of the Dread Gnomes. The whispers that spread through the Commonfolk were, thus, easily quenched. The North was quite far away after all, and it was enough that their leaders saw no danger fit to tell them about.
The little restlessness that was incited was all well and good; the restless children created lavish stories from the feeble whispers that reached their ears, which their fathers passed over mugs of ale. The women, strong and hard from their work in the fields or the shops beneath the sun, smiled scornfully at the men pretending to quiver in their beds. No peril had yet come to Del, apart from the occasional bandit from the streets and the beats from Os-mine. In a sense they were quite fortunate to be so far South for reasons other than the harbour and the sea; the malice that lived beyond the Mountains had a long path to pass through before reaching them.
Del was well protected by the enemy tribes who had unwittingly guarded their back, and the Sea of Serpents stopped all but the best sailors making it past. Those sailors who carried with them riches to sell and trade and little else – for there was yet to be a war between humans on the Sea of Serpents, and no-one could envision one.
Gobbs was content with that; the other tribes held no interest to the citizens of Del, who looked instead towards those lands across the sea from where riches – and the occasional wild tale – arrived. It were those riches that they saw and captivated them, riches that eventually became commonplace and accessible as new unaffordable delectables took their place. And Gobbs was sure that, no matter the strength of that malice that stirred in the North, it would never reach the golden gates of Del. And if it did, there was a salvation across the sea waiting for them, a salvation that the other tribes had their backs towards.
And so the babbling sea-folk were listen too, revitalised by food and drink and a small loan, and sent off again. By the time they arrived in their own lands the terrors had passed them by, and only the little bag of gold clinked in their pockets: a reminder of the good-will of those they had met in the Land of the Dragons. And they would bargain with their folk and gather a ship-full of things and then return, return to prosper the connection between their lands on a sea already twice-braved, and the other Councillors would see the wisdom in dismissing those babbling words that had come to them.
Oh, Gobbs did take note of them, when he lay in his silent and cold bed and imagined the looming mountain so far away. But, he also remembered the other tribes: the beastly Dread Gnomes who shot anything who dared step foot on their mountain and horded their treasure in the high caverns. The devious people of Mere who could wheedle a knife from a man's heart and claim it to be luck. The wild Plains folk in their rough silver armour and barren terrain. The mysterious Ralad people who were rumoured to haunt the countryside. The savage Jalis who cared only for fighting any moving thing that came their way. All that stood in the way of that malice beyond the Mountains and their safe-haven in Del. All that animosity and jealousy that lead each of them to guard their own borders with such ferocity that few things, man or not, could slip past.
He did worry sometimes, but the rationale was flawless: it was impossible for any enemy, however strong, to reach Del without first obliterating all the land that lay in between – and then the Dragons, who while disliked for the most part by Del's citizens, were ferocious defenders of their rightful land. Those Dragons that soared above Os-mine and could see what stretched for hundreds of leagues beyond. And then, if all else failed, there was the Sea of Serpents, which Del had spent generations navigating and the unknown enemy had not.
And so his priority was keeping those barriers between the tribes, and between the people. Joining paths would lead to an easier path for enemies; trust was a thing that had no place in the business world, and that was the only sort of world that existed. It might be a heartless thought, but he much rather preferred Del was not ripped apart by offering it up on a silver platter. And the happiness that came as another's expense was not anything new in the world.
There were in a time where most people thought that way, or not at all. But there was a woman called Opal the Dreamer who had not, and she had paved the way to his unsettlement. In time he would come to see the merit of unity, and die before the failings he had long foreseen were finally revealed – for to be one meant to have one weakness, and Del might as well have been offered up on a gold platter for all the good their geographical safety net did them…and their faith.
A/N: This doesn't quite follow the canon laid out in Tales of Deltora.
1. I may have overdeveloped Gobbs a little, at least compared to Rodda's one and only appearance (that I know of) of him, so that will subtly change things.
2. The leaders of the respective clans, plus the people not restrained to ignorance by those leaders (like stragglers on the road) know about the legend from which the seven tribal gems originated, though they all believe theirs as the only valuable one. They don't actually know the powers of the other six, just that they exist, but in thinking themselves superior they put little value to that existence.
3. If Tora was so determined not to let strangers cross their land, and no-one from Tora ventured out, how was it that knowledge of Tora's magic and paradise leaked out? I assumed before reading Tales of Deltora that it had to do with the Ancient Torans, but it seems to go further back than that. I'm not sure how much is known of Tora at this point, but I'll assume it's the paradise and magic part and go from there.
4. I changed the story of the Ralad folk a little as well, since having them "haunt the countryside" is a little more interesting, from the POV of someone like Gobbs who hasn't set foot outside Del, than "Ralads disappeared". And since Adin didn't seem to know they had disappeared until he crossed into Ruby territory from the Plains, well…
I think that was more or less it for this stage. It was supposed to be a proper chapter, but I think reading Tales of Deltora twice in the past day might have warped it a little more into an introduction.