- This page refers to the character. For the fantasy novel, see Galaphile.
Galaphile Joss was an Elf and the person who brought together the most learned men and women of all the Races together after the Great Wars to create the first Druid Order at Paranor. As leader of the Druids, he was the first Ard Rhys.
Biography[]
Early Life[]
As a young child, Galaphile lived with his parents in their home on the outskirts of the Westland, away from Arborlon and most other Elves. When his parents died of sage fever, he saw two options for his life: to be taken into an orphanage run by the Elves, or strike out on his own. He decided to do the latter and ended up making his way south to a small village in the Midlands called Parrish Rahn, where he found work in a general store.
A few years later, at the age of fourteen, Galaphile encountered a man named Starns, leader of a settled community camped out in the forests above the Dragon's Teeth. Many of these settlements existed across the Four Lands, but in a land without laws and rulers they were often vulnerable to attack from raiders as well as rival camps.
Starns had come to Parrish Rahn looking for a strong man named Ratcher so that he could invite him to come be a part of his settlement, and help defend it. After Galaphile directed Starns to Ratcher, Starns challenged the big man to a fight, and Ratcher agreed to join the camp after being bested by Starns' magic. But when Galaphile asked to know more about the settlement, Starns, who had been impressed by Galaphile's intelligence and determined personality, invited the boy to come along as well and to be trained in the use of magic. Seeing no future for himself in Parrish Rahn, Galaphile took the offer immediately.
Galaphile spent the next few years at Starns' camp training both physically and in the use of magic. Over time he came to realize that Starns maintained the safety of his camp through the use of brutal tactics like "preemptive" massacres, and that Starns was therefore no better than the raiders and thieves he was defending his settlement against. However, Galaphile bided his time and became a valuable member of the camp as he came into adulthood.
When Galaphile turned eighteen, Starns announced that he had mastered all the magic that Starns had to teach him, and that if Galaphile wanted to learn more, he needed to find an old hermit named Cogline who lived near the Kensrowe Mountains above Elven territory. For the next couple of years, Galaphile had no interest in learning more, but by the time he was twenty, he was growing ever more concerned about the growing threats to Starns' camp. The longevity and persistence of Starns' settlement kept attracting more attention from groups who wanted the settlement for their own, and Starns' brutal tactics had earned him many enemies over the years.
One day, when Galaphile was twenty, he was sent out to hunt food for the settlement. He returned to find every structure burned down or ruined, and everyone killed—including Mayele, the young woman who had recently become his first love. From the brutal way in which Starns was murdered it was clear that the massacre had been a revenge killing orchestrated by one of the many enemeies Starns had made over the years.
Dazed and grieving, Galaphile left the encampment after burying Mayele and her relatives. Resolving to do what he could with the rest of his life to stop the senseless, endless violence happening in the Four Lands, he headed for the Westland to find Cogline, not knowing what else to do except to do what Starns had once suggested and become better versed in the use of magic.
Establishment of the Druid Order[]
Galaphile knew a great deal of knowledge from the Old World, and after the cataclysm caused by the Great Wars, Galaphile knew that the only way to bring the new Races together and lift them out of a near-primitive existence was to recruit the wisest of each Race to come together in an effort to gather and protect the remains of knowledge from the past and create solutions for the future.
In honor of an Old World term for learned men, Galaphile named these men and women Druids. They became known as the Druid Council, and Galaphile was named the first Ard Rhys. The Druids resided in Paranor, the Druids' Keep. Built to be both a revered cultural center and an impenetrable fortress, Paranor was the result of the work of craftsmen and scholars from all the Races, but its creation was Galaphile's inspiration.
This first Druid Council was responsible for creating what was for a time a durable, lasting peace in the Four Lands by dividing up the lands between the Races: the Elves controlled the Westland, the Trolls controlled the Northland, Dwarves and Gnomes controlled the Eastland, and the Race of Man controlled the Southland.
Galaphile recorded the history of the Elves before the Great Wars in the Druid Histories, including the secret of the Ellcrys. It is also believed that Galaphile created the Druid Well inside Paranor.
At the outbreak of the Second War of the Races, the shade of Galaphile showed Bremen four visions of what was needed to defeat the Warlock Lord.
Trivia[]
- An airship is named after the Elf. It was used as a flagship by the third Druid Order.