Olive Ruskettle

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Olive Ruskettle is the name of the female halfling who is a sometimes companion of the Forgotten Realms fantasy setting her Alias. Her first appearance is in the novel Azure Bonds, written by Jeff Grubb and Kate Novak.

[edit] Appearance

Olive is a typical female halfling, averaging the height of a human child, with curly red hair and green eyes.

[edit] Biography

Though her birth name may indeed be Olive, the surname Ruskettle and the reputation as a bard came from someone else: Olav Ruskettle, who was referred to by Finder as a true bard. Olive won a game of dice (with unloaded dice, no less) from the apparently elderly Olav, who she described as being without a right hand and that his "voice was beginning to fade." This is in keeping with Finder's knowledge of the man, who himself describes Olav as having a bad habit for gambling and would have wagered his own mother on a roll of the dice. As her prize, she claimed his name.

Despite her less-than-truthful claims to be a bard, Olive is actually a fairly talented musician. Additionally, as with many halflings, she is accomplished at having "lost" items turn up in her possession, that she's just been waiting to return to the proper owner.

Olive first meets Alias when the latter is contracted to rescue the kidnapped "bard" from the red dragon commonly referred to as Mist. Olive quickly found herself mired in the mystery surrounding Alias, and traveled with the swordswoman for the remainder of the first book.

In the second, Olive has parted company with the others and journeyed to Westgate, meeting up with one of the clones of Alias created by Phalse, named Jade More. Jade met a quick end at the hands of Flattery, who had mistaken her for another clone, Cat of Ordulin, who Flattery had enslaved in a plot to claim the Wyvernspur family treasure. In the course of that adventure, Olive found a picture of Nameless, and found on the back the name "Finder" after the blacking concealing it had been removed, thus providing Nameless with his own name.

In the events of the third book, Song of the Saurials, Olive has reunited with Finder (giving him back his name in the progress, and eventually wound up being named a member of the Harpers organization, ironically something that she had occasionally claimed was truth to lend more credence to her words. Sadly for her, she was immediately given an assignment that suited someone "just like (her)," in the words of one of the senior members of that organization.

[edit] References

• The novels Azure Bonds, The Wyvern's Spur, Song of the Saurials, by Kate Novak and Jeff Grubb, TSR.