They say a man never really knows himself...until his freedom's been taken away. I wonder...how well do you know yourself?
Toy, or rather Toy'urn, was a merchant, a crafter of joy and wonder in a very small town of a very small nation.
Human by race, explorer by trade. Always chasing his own shadow in a race to the end of the yard, smiling and joking with those around him. He was popular in his town, especially with children, for whom he crafted toys all day long. They even called him the Toymaker, little rascals.
So when he heard about a mysterious castle, with an owner who had disappeared suddenly, he could not contain his curiosity to explore the place. And it was marvelous, even if robbed of everything valuable. Declared haunted by locals, abandoned, and hollow.
He even made a small camp in the courtyard of the place, as he explored, day after day, every room. Truth be told, the place, even vandalised as it was, could be a great place for a workshop or even a toy factory!
He brought his own tools, started to dig here and there, so he could size the place up, and later order saws, drills, and other appliances. His very own place, a toy shop of his dreams.
One day of digging, he destroyed, by mistake, a wall, and behind it, a workshop, which he found none like the others. And as he entered the room, that was the end and the beginning of his life.
Most people live a life like a line. The line starts, and then it ends. But for Toy'urn it started, ended, and then started anew.
Everything went black, and when he woke up, he was in a pitch-black room. No feeling was the first sensation that startled him. He could not feel cold, or hot, or anything at all, to be honest. His first thought was that he had died. But he could move, he could speak. And when he shouted into the darkness, it all started.
Wall of glowing words. He was lucky his job made him learn languages here and there. It took him a while to read what was written, apparently, in dwarvish. To initiate, enter password.
Whatever this room was, it would not allow him out without it. So he tried to speak some dwarvish, shouted some words at random. But nothing happened.
Hour after hour, day after day. He tried and tried and failed. He forgot about sleep. He forgot about hunger. He has forgotten even what made him human in the first place.
Maddness took the place of the knowledge. He even tried to harm himself, but for some reason, he could not.
Only gods knew how long he was there. Word after word. Phrase after phrase. Until one day, he remembered something. A bit, some words on one of the walls near the broken passage he discovered. Something about life and metal. He tried and tried, and by pure chance, something got through.
Ljef e murmal.
Dwarvish slang, for metal slaves they used as clockwork workers. It means more or less Life in Metal. And it worked. The room lit up, and he could see again. He could touch again. But the joy was momentary only, as he stood up and looked at two corpses in the room.
The rest is history. He found out he stepped into a prepared machine that would transfer him, the user, into a metallic body, prepared to live almost eternally. The body of the castle owner, lying on the floor near the controll panel, his own body, decomposed, near the input chamber.
From the owner's diary, he found out why it was built in the first place. How a fortune, used by a dying old man, was used to create this place, this machine.
And some basic information on how to operate his new body. Some weapons, properly kept, did not spoil with time. At some point, he learned other passwords, functions of the body made for defending itself.
The last bit of tragedy was the knowledge that when he got back to the town, the town was no more. Some folks along the way told him that it was raided over 20 years ago and abandoned without a trace. Not even the nation survived, now a part of some republic, all meaningless to him.
So when he heard that there was a place where adventurers could go to a new world, he took his chances. He had nothing here.
But out there? His new life.
Toy still made toys, from time to time. To remind himself of who he was before this. To hold back the Madness that was born in his mind that day.
Toy'urn died that day, so Toy the Toymaker could live. And he will not be forgotten.