They say it was in the year 4078, when the Fraternity’s blood ran thin and the goblins were surging like a black tide out of every hole in the world. The Rangers were breaking on the stones — too many young, too few old, and every patrol ending with fewer men than it began.
The Old Bear then was Tavin the Half, born of elvish blood and human stock. Some called him half a man, some called him twice the man of any other, but none denied his ferocity. He bore scars from tusk and claw both, and he had buried too many brothers in shallow graves by lonely rivers.
It was Tavin who left his bow and blade at the edge of the Deepwood and went unarmed to the circle of the White Robes. He did not kneel, as others might. He stood tall, his voice raw with grief and wrath, and demanded:
“You sit in your groves and chant of balance, while goblins devour the children of men. Give us the secrets of their kind, that we may strike them down! Give us the strength, or by the bones of the fallen I’ll tear it from you!”
The White Robes whispered, for never before had one of the Fraternity dared such insolence. Draegol himself, elder among them, warned him:
“What you ask is not gift but gall. To taste it is to drink of Naturia’s anger, and anger once swallowed is never spat out.”
But Tavin would not bend. He drew a knife from his own belt, cut his palm, and let the blood hiss upon their fire.
“If anger is all that remains to us, then anger we shall wield. Give me the gall.”
So they gave him trial. They set before him a cup carved of ashwood, filled not with wine but with sap drawn bitter from the oldest tree of the wild. Tavin drank it to the dregs, and it is said his eyes turned black as coal. For three days and nights he writhed in fever, and the ground where he lay was scorched bare as if fire had kissed it.
On the dawn of the fourth day, he rose, gaunt and hollow-eyed, but when he took bow in hand his arrow flew so sure and so straight it split a crow from the sky. The White Robes bowed their heads.
“So be it,” they said. “The gall is yours. But beware, for bitterness clings.”
Tavin carried it back to the Rangers, and taught them what he had learned — the wrath that hardens the hand, the fury that sharpens the eye. They called it The Bitterness, and from that day to this, no goblin sleeps easy when a Ranger walks abroad.
But there is warning in the tale, too. For the Bitterness is not without price. It cannot be wielded by the greedy, nor the faithless, nor the cruel. Many a Ranger who strayed into evil found the gall turned against him, leaving him hollow, his hand unsteady, his eye dim.
So when the fire burns low and Rangers gather in the shadows, they say:
“Thank Tavin for the gift, but fear the Gall. For it blesses only the just hand — and curses the hand that betrays its brother.”
