Lentil Spume
Lentil Spume was an industrialist who lived towards the end of the Second Age of Flight. The son of Foundry Master Hemuel Spume, Lentil sought revenge for his father's death in the War for the Free Glades and discovered how to manipulate Stormphrax to create explosive Phraxfire Globes. Though he seriously disfigured his face in the process, around 102 ᴇ.ʏ. Spume enlisted goblin mercenaries and numerous Nameless Ones to create the Phrax Glade in preparation for an attack on the Free Glades. Spume's activities were discovered by a troop of Freeglade Lancers and he was killed by a force led by Rook Barkwater at the Battle of the Phrax Glade.
Biography
Early Life
Lentil Spume was the son of Hemuel Spume, an ambitious Leaguesman who established the Foundry Glades in the Deepwoods during the Second Age of Flight. After Stone-Sickness struck and all trade had to move overland rather than by Sky Ships, the Foundry Glades grew into a vast manufacturing centre, heavily dependent on slave labour. Lentil Spume came to share many of his father's ideals, believing in the rule of the strong and the right of the rich to exploit the poor.
In an effort to claim more slaves for the Foundry Glades, in 88 ᴇ.ʏ. Hemuel Spume formed an alliance with the Goblin Nations and attacked the Free Glades with Goblin armies and immense armoured vehicles known as Glade-Eaters. However, the attack ended in failure, and Hemuel was killed in the War for the Free Glades and the Foundry Glades were abandoned. Enraged, Lentil came to despise the Freegladers and became determined to avenge his father's death.
Discovery of Phraxfire
Spume discovered how to manipulate the explosive properties of Stormphrax to release large amounts of energy. Spume was severely disfigured in the course of his work, but succeeded in creating the Phraxfire Globes—small metal spheres that could create a highly-destructive explosion. Establishing himself at a single foundry in the Phrax Glade, an isolated clearing near the border of the Deepwoods and the Twilight Woods, Spume formed an alliance with the Red Dwarf Squive, the Shryke Sister Blackbeak, and a tribe of feral Hammerhead Goblins led by Gutgurn. He provided the Hammerheads with Phraxfire in exchange for plunder from the villages they raided, while Sister Blackbeak and Squive enslaved Death-Cheaters and Nameless Ones to build up and defend the Phrax Glade. The slaves hauled large amounts of scrap metal from the Foundry Glades to develop a new industry, and cartloads of stormphrax from the Twilight Woods to develop new phraxfire globes.
In the course of Squive and Blackbeak's activities, however, a Nameless One escaped from its stable at the Foundry Glades and, almost delirious with pain, staggered towards the Free Glades. The Nameless One was killed by a splinter of Freeglade Lancers led by Sergeant Logglimb, and the body was examined at Lake Landing by the Librarians led by Xanth Filatine. Determining that the Nameless One had come from the Foundry Glades, Sergeant Logglimb's splinter was sent to investigate, where they suffered casualties from a phraxfire globe thrown by Squive and Blackbeak.
Pursuing them to the Phrax Glade, Sergeant Logglimb's splinter observed Lentil Spume affirm his alliance with Gutgurn, and witnessed the explosive effects of a phraxfire globe, killing several Death-Cheaters. Pursued by Knights academic enslaved as Death-Cheaters, two Lancers, Rufus Filatine and Tam Whytewinter, returned to the Free Glades to raise the Lancers on Sergeant Logglimb's orders.
Battle of the Phrax Glade and death
- Main article: Battle of the Phrax Glade
Led by Commander Rook Barkwater, the Third Roost of the Freeglade Lancers raided Phrax Glade. Despite suffering heavy casualties, Rook Barkwater's Lancers overcame Spume's defences. In a final act of defiance, Spume cursed the Freegladers for his father's death and vowed to continue his legacy. He barricaded himself in his workshop, setting the building ablaze to prevent the Free Glades from claiming phraxfire.
Legacy
Unbeknown to Spume, Rufus Filatine had recovered a single intact phraxfire globe, which was disassembled by his father, Xanth Filatine, and Tweezel. Uncovering the device's secrets, together they were able to build the first phraxchamber, developing powered flight and ushering in the Third Age of Flight.
Despite his dubious intentions, Spume was remembered as late as the end of the Third Age, and was memorialised on an information plaque for a phraxfire globe on display in the Academy of Phrax Studies in the city of Great Glade.[1]