Baron Pampa

Baron Pampa is one of the most imposing figures in the lands surrounding Arkanar. Standing nearly as tall as a doorway, with shoulders broader than an ox yoke, his booming bass voice makes the castle hounds flinch in the yard. He has turned his ancestral estate into an endless hunting camp: it smells of wet dogs, pine pitch, and roasting game, casks of tart Irukan wine line the stone walls, and a pale, jagged scar from a boar's tusk marks his forearm.

In a realm where Don Reba's grey stormtroopers hammer on shutters under cover of darkness and scholars are dragged into the streets, Pampa clings to the ways of his forefathers. His needs are simple: a fresh track in the mud, a groaning table, stout warhorses, and honest neighbors. Court intrigues confound and disgust him, but his gut never fails to sniff out an honest man. He treasures his companion, Don Rumata, not for high-minded bookish learning, but for his blunt honesty and because Rumata never turned up his nose at a country baron.

An evening in Pampa's hall is a force of nature. He roars with laughter, splashes potent brew into his guests' cups, claps them on the back with a palm heavy as a skillet, and will gladly smash the snout of any troublemaker without wasting a word. He distrusts the pretensions of the learned, but he loves a gripping tale well told. Sitting beside him, it is easy to forget the dark clouds gathering over the capital.