Farmer White — The Man Who Feeds the Hearth
As told by Ezrin Vyce, the Mad Magus
There’s a particular breed of dangerous man who doesn’t wear a crown, carry a legendary sword, or spend his afternoons explaining how dangerous he is.
He gets up early. Checks his fields. Fixes a fence. Knows how much rain fell overnight, which animal’s been acting strange, and how many people are counting on his next shipment.
And if you get between him and his work, he’ll probably hand you a bucket.
Meet Farmer White.
I’ve dealt with warlords, demigods, and creatures from the dark between worlds that make both look like badly behaved children. None has ever intimidated me quite like White staring at a broken gate and silently deciding I ought to be the one fixing it.
He’s a farmer. A businessman. A stubborn bastard. And one of the finest men I know.
Don’t tell him I said that last part. I’ll never hear the end of it.
A Man With Two Farms. Sort Of.
White’s main farm is on Sangara. That’s where he makes his living: the planting, tending, harvesting, hauling, repairing, and endless effort of persuading land to provide something useful. He’s not playing farmer because he likes the rustic aesthetic. He’s the real article, and anyone who’s worked a harvest knows the difference.
He also maintains what he calls a hole in the wall on the Elemental Plane of Earth.
Yes, that Earth plane. Because apparently ordinary property wasn’t complicated enough. The place is reserved for the sort of growing White politely classifies as questionable. I’ve learned not to press him on the definition unless I’m prepared for a long discussion about soil.
Between the two, he knows how to make an operation work. He sees a field and calculates weather, labor, equipment, transport, and timing before the rest of us have decided whether the crop would taste good in stew.
We see dinner. White sees six months of decisions and a bill someone has to pay.
The Business of Getting Your Hands Dirty
People romanticize farming. Golden sunsets. Honest sweat. Picture-perfect barns. Funny how nobody paints the broken machinery, ruined harvests, exhausting shifts, or the procession of middlemen arriving with their hands out.
He knows a successful harvest can still leave a farmer broke. That a contract can be legal and rotten at the same time. That the fellow doing the actual growing is often the last to receive a fair share. And when things go wrong, the people who’ve never set foot in a field are remarkably quick to blame the farmer.
He doesn’t hate business. He’s good at it. He knows his costs, his customers, and what a day’s work is worth. He expects to be paid fairly and has no patience for anyone trying to take advantage of him.
What he can’t stand is a system built to squeeze the people doing the work while rewarding the people who invented the paperwork.
Which brings us, regrettably, to sugar beets.
The Root of All His Problems
I’ve seen White discuss genuinely dangerous agricultural problems with a level head. Someone mentions sugar beets, though, and suddenly I understand why battlefields need warning horns.
There’s substance behind it. The sugar-beet trade can demand brutal labor, unforgiving harvest windows, and a miserable procession of permits, processors, and prices controlled by people who never swing a beetknife. White understands every way an honest farmer can get bled dry while the management congratulates itself on a successful season.
And then there’s the personal feud. The man’s feelings about sugar beets have reached the intensity most dynasties reserve for a war over disputed territory. The full history deserves its own account, ideally written at a safe distance from his fields.
Suffice it to say the Sugarbeet Nation has made an enemy of Farmer White. Its precise borders and crimes are a matter for further investigation.
Also, he really, really hates the beets.
Both can be true.
Magic Herbs and Terrible Marketing Decisions
White grows magic herbs.
That’s what he calls them. Magic herbs. He’s very particular about the terminology, which is hilarious considering his complete disregard for respectable product names.
He’s an expert: cultivation, conditions, magical properties, harvesting, quality, preservation. He can tell a magnificent batch from a mediocre one and explain precisely why. The work is meticulous, the products exceptionally potent, and his standards high.
He doesn’t smoke them himself.
The names, however, suggest someone left a grumpy farmer alone with too many labels. And he delivers them deadpan. Imagine meticulous grower’s notes beside The Wizard’s Third Testicle, Goblin’s Sweaty Left Nutsack, and The Almighty Clusterfuck.
The bastard is a genius. A deeply concerning genius, but a genius.
The Legendary Hoe
White has a hoe.
An enchanted hoe, to be fair. But still a hoe.
That’s him all over. He values things that work. He’d rather mend equipment than impress an audience. He’d rather finish a job than tell a story about how difficult it was. He’ll spend an afternoon fixing an ordinary problem that I might have handled with magick, improvisation, and one or two regrettable explosions.
His method usually leaves the barn standing.
The Year I Couldn’t Find Home
I met White during Mislock, when getting back to Sangara had become a private joke told by an exceptionally cruel universe.
Wrong worlds. Wrong roads. Wrong assumptions. Every time I thought I had a direction, reality moved the signposts.
Somewhere in that mess, I found White.
And he helped me.
He didn’t need an impressive title, a heroic résumé, or a promise that I’d repay him with some legendary favor. There was a traveler who needed help. White had a way to help. So he did.
We endured more together after that. Enough to learn what sort of men we were when plans failed and things got ugly. Enough that somewhere along the way, we stopped bothering to distinguish between friend and family.
White is my brother.
White is my brother.
Not by blood. Not because fate appointed us to some grand fellowship. Certainly not because either of us is particularly easy to get along with.
Because when things went sideways, he was there. And when the day came for me to stand beside him, I didn’t need to think about it.
Debts Nobody Talks About
Here’s the part White might prefer I leave out.
I’m not the only one he’s helped.
I know people who came to him desperate and left with a way forward. Some needed resources. Some needed a place to get themselves together. Others needed someone who would look at a nasty problem, roll up his sleeves, and solve it instead of delivering an inspiring speech about adversity.
Some promised repayment. Some never managed it.
I’m not naming names. Their bad days aren’t mine to publish, and White doesn’t advertise their business either.
Now, don’t confuse generosity with stupidity. He keeps track. He knows who owes what. He can spot a crooked bargain from a mile away, and he has little sympathy for anyone making a living off someone else’s desperation.
But knowing a debt remains unpaid hasn’t made him suspicious of every person who needs a hand. He’ll argue over a fair price one minute, then quietly give somebody more help than they could ever afford the next.
He knows what almost everything is worth.
He just doesn’t believe every kindness requires an invoice.
The Pïppers Incident
Our illustrious Herald once visited White’s farm to investigate me. Questionable judgment right out of the gate, but that’s Pïppers.
White wasn’t about to stop working for an interview. So he put her to work alongside him. Buckets, feed, crates, fences—the whole educational experience. She asked questions, got answers, and discovered that her natural talents do not include a deep love of unpaid physical labor.
Except the labor wasn’t meant to be unpaid.
White intended to compensate her generously in gemstones and provide an omelette substantial enough to be mistaken for a municipal construction project. Pïppers, convinced she was being recruited into a lifetime of fieldwork, fled before collecting either.
She believes she escaped. White believes she walked out before supper and payday. And I believe this may be the funniest misunderstanding on record that didn’t involve me, a portal, and an extremely offended noblewoman.
That’s White in miniature. He knows what he intends to do and sometimes forgets the rest of us aren’t sitting inside his head watching the plan unfold.
The Man Behind the Meal
Somebody has to grow the food.
Somebody has to make sure the kitchen has what it needs when a hungry traveler comes through our doors. Somebody has to do the dull, difficult, essential work that makes hospitality possible before the rest of us can be noble about offering it.
White does that work. He takes pride in it. And the results reach far beyond his own fields.
So here’s what he gets instead: a few words from someone who knows what a kindness can mean when you’re lost.
Farmer White is stubborn, shrewd, infuriating, generous, and capable of treating a disagreement with a root vegetable like a declaration of war. He grows extraordinary things, sells magic herbs with names that would make a sailor blush, and has never met a dishonest middleman he couldn’t despise on principle.
He’s also my brother.
And if you ever find yourself stranded at the wrong end of a bad road, I hope you meet somebody like him.
Just do yourself a favor. Ask about supper before you leave.
Ask about supper before you leave.
— Ezrin Vyce
The Mad Magus, Keeper of the Mughouse
Character Theme
Farmer White
Reap What You Sow
A grit-and-thunder anthem about a Sangaran farmer who will not be bought, will not be chained, and will feed the ones beside him till the last field is cold. Sugarbeet Nation not invited.
Read The Lyrics
REAP WHAT YOU SOW
Farmer White’s Anthem
[Intro — Low, gritty vocals, building guitars]
They built their thrones on broken backs,
And counted every grain.
But there’s a bastard in the fields
Who won’t be bought or chained!
[Drums explode — rapid double kick]
[Verse 1 — Fast, aggressive]
Sun ain’t up, but I’m already working,
Iron in my hands and a field worth hurting.
Broken-down plow and a busted old gate,
Got a hundred damn problems and I won’t be late!
They sell you the seed, then they sell you the rain,
Charge you for the harvest, make you pay it again.
Seven years of waiting for a fistful of gold,
While the bastards in the boardroom get fat on what you grow!
[Pre-Chorus — Rising intensity]
They’ve got the contracts!
They’ve got the crown!
They’ve got a thousand ways
To grind a working man down!
[Shouted]
BUT THEY AIN’T GOT ME!
[Chorus — Huge melodic gang vocals]
RAISE THAT HOE! LET THE THUNDER ROLL!
Hands full of dirt and a heart of gold!
Buy the mill! Bribe the throne!
You can’t reap a damn thing you haven’t sown!
FROM SANGARA’S FIELDS TO THE ROOTS BELOW!
You want my harvest? PAY WHAT YOU OWE!
Raise that hoe! Let the whole world know!
I’LL BE HERE TOMORROW—
REAP WHAT YOU SOW!
[Verse 2 — Driving galloping riffs]
Got a little operation where the earth runs deep,
Growing magic herbs that’ll put gods to sleep.
Wizard’s Third Testicle, a premium strain,
Sold out by sundown, made a fortune again!
Don’t smoke the stuff, but I know my trade,
Every leaf’s perfection, every copper’s paid.
Some folks call it madness, some folks call it sin,
I call it good business—and the orders keep rolling in!
But there’s one damn crop that I cannot abide,
A rotten little root with an empire of pride.
Sugarbeet Nation, you can kiss my ass!
I’ll burn your bloody contracts and plow your kingdom flat!
[Pre-Chorus — Heavy breakdown]
Bring your devils!
Bring your law!
Bring your crooked little kings
And everything they saw!
[Roared]
I’VE GOT MY HOE!
[Chorus — Full power]
RAISE THAT HOE! LET THE THUNDER ROLL!
Hands full of dirt and a heart of gold!
Buy the mill! Bribe the throne!
You can’t reap a damn thing you haven’t sown!
FROM SANGARA’S FIELDS TO THE ROOTS BELOW!
You want my harvest? PAY WHAT YOU OWE!
Raise that hoe! Let the whole world know!
I’LL BE HERE TOMORROW—
REAP WHAT YOU SOW!
[Instrumental — Blistering twin-guitar solo]
[Bridge — Half-time, powerful and heartfelt]
Found a stranger wandering,
Lost between the stars.
Didn’t ask about his kingdom,
Didn’t count his scars.
Just another weary bastard
With a long way left to roam.
Had a roof and had a fire,
So I gave the fool a home.
[Building drums]
I’ve seen men with empty pockets,
I’ve seen good men brought to heel.
I’ve seen friends who couldn’t pay me,
And I never sent the bill.
‘Cause a man ain’t worth his fortune,
And his word ain’t worth his gold.
He’s worth the hands he offers
When the world has turned its cold!
[Heavy breakdown — Gritty vocals]
You can take my money!
You can curse my name!
You can send your devil lawyers
And your bureaucratic games!
But touch my friends,
Or threaten my home—
[Roared]
AND YOU’LL FIND OUT
WHAT THIS HOE CAN DO!
[Final Chorus — Double-time, massive gang vocals]
RAISE THAT HOE! LET THE THUNDER ROLL!
Hands full of dirt and a heart of gold!
Buy the mill! Bribe the throne!
You can’t reap a damn thing you haven’t sown!
FROM SANGARA’S FIELDS TO THE ROOTS BELOW!
You want my harvest? PAY WHAT YOU OWE!
Raise that hoe! Let the whole world know!
I’LL BE HERE TOMORROW—
REAP WHAT YOU SOW!
[Outro — Pounding drums, final guitar hits]
No crown upon my head!
No master owns my soul!
I’ll feed the ones beside me
Till the last damn field is cold!
[Final shouted vocals]
THE HARVEST IS MINE!
THE HEARTH IS OURS!
AND THE BEETS—
[Full band stop]
CAN GO FUCK THEMSELVES!
[Final crushing guitar chord]
[End]
