Tabask

The oddly-named Tabask, a keep and small hamlet of some 250 farming folk, is home to an ebullient and color ful Yatils dwarf with a highly suspicious name. Molvard is certainly the first name the dwarf was given, but the second name of Mohsin is hardly dwarven. Eccentric the master of Tabask certainly is, since he acts the part of a Tusmit exile to the full. It is not just an act, either. Molvard has a fine stock of Tusmit costumes, goods and equipment and regularly supplies Strychan with exotics for his entertainments. So taken was Strychan with the odd little fellow that he gave him this hamlet to administer in return for some free supplies every year, and Molvard delights in the role of the squire of the manor, even in a place so small.

Molvard himself entertains visitors in a glass aviary, magically heated with semi-tropical plants flourishing inside it, with multi-colored birds chirping and swooping around the startled guests. Unsuspecting visitors should beware the long-beaked torkan birds, which have a gleeful habit of nipping at earlobes.

Molvard certainly has a mysterious and eventful past. He very rarely shows the ability uninvited, but the dwarf can transform his arms and hands to the texture and weight of stone seemingly at will, the skin changing color to gray and feeling cold and hard to the touch. Molvard can slam his fists into stone when they are in this transformed state without ill-effects, a dramatic party trick which has amused Strychan's guests more than once. How he acquired this clearly potent magical ability he will not say, nor does he discuss his past. However, he is fairly knowledgeable about the area around Mordenkainen's home in the Yatils, though he keeps this to himself, and some connection between them is whispered among the knowledgeable.