Aram the Jongleur

Aram sat in the dark corner of the room he was staying in. Baron Mooney, the man in charge of Castle Dynmoore, had graciously provided Aram with an empty bedchamber within the keep just down the hall from his own royal quarters. Both the local inn and the small number of rooms provided at the tavern were all fully occupied for the week, as the Easterland Festival was to take place beginning that Thursday. The Easterland Festival is something Baron Mooney put on every three years on the first day of December. It was a celebration remembering the constant attacks that Castle Dynmoore had survived for three consecutive years. The castle was a strategic position in the circumstances of a war since it was built just at the opening of a mountain pass at the bottom of the Evermarch Mountains. This pass was the only way the Westerners could enter the country in large numbers, and if Castle Dynmoore fell, there was no defense to keep the Westerners from launching a full force invasion in the East, so naturally capturing to the castle seemed the most logical thing to do.

This festival was the very reason Aram was here. He was a jongleur, and the large number of people present within the fief would guarantee him a very, very large amount of earnings. The chambers provided for him were well above the standard for an itinerant minstrel such as himself, but Baron Mooney had a soft spot for minstrels as he himself has an affinity for the mandola. One of Mooney's most trusted advisors, McKellan, had recently died two months prior, and the chamber was stripped and his belongings returned to his family. Since this hallway was so close to the Baron's own chambers, these rooms were reserved for only the most trusted and high-ranking personnel of the castle. Aram, while being none of these, has a personal connection to the Baron which granted him the room which he felt unworthy to stay in. Mooney's nephew, Joseph, resides in the same castle that Aram comes from; Castle Morant. Mooney's younger sister had married the Baron of castle Morant, so Joseph had lived a good life. Aram is three years his senior, but they had been great friends for a majority of their lives.

Aram's father was the resident cook in castle Morant and his mother had died when he was very young, so his parents were never really around to properly raise him. He had a great relationship with his father, and still does, but due to his duties he was not around as much as he would like to be. This freedom of time Aram had found himself in possession of left him with more indecisiveness than any young child of his age would normally have. He was not the mischievous type, so running off and getting into trouble was not something that had interested him. One day, he decided to walk around the castle and see if he could find something he could do. As he was walking around, he heard a series of melodic twangs carried in the wind. He decided to follow the sound and he eventually came across a man sitting on a bench playing some sort of stringed instrument. The man wore little clothes, and what he did wear was worn and disintegrating. He had a very unkempt look about him and Aram could only assume he was homeless, but the way the man looked so engrossed in his music is really what captured Aram's attention. He looked around to see if the man had a hat or some sort of bucket in which passersby could leave donations, but there was none to be found. The man was not playing for money; he simply wanted to share his love for music with the people of the castle. It was this experience that introduced Aram to the one thing that would define the trajectory for the rest of his life:

The lute.

Being friends with Joseph, Aram was able to get his hands on a lute quite easily, and one with immaculate craftsmanship at that. He preferred the five-course lute over the four-course as it gave him more range to play a wider variety of melodies.

Now that he was preparing for his performance in the grand hall of Castle Dynmoore, he was a bit disappointed in himself that he had only brought his lute and not his mandola knowing the Baron's special interest in them. He had only brought his lute since there was going to be such a large concentration of people in the castle and he did not want to have to worry about carrying around too much as well as the fact he was a great deal more proficient with his lute. He was not expecting Mooney to accommodate him with such a room in which he would have been able to store his mandola when it was not in use, but how could he have known?