El-agalay

An apeman from among the Daku, near Abyssinia. He pronounced his name Elgale, but everyone he met in the Greek and Arab lands, not fluent in Daku, mangled and mispronounced it horribly. Similarly, many have mispronounced Daku as Dakon.

Formerly a merchant, Elgale had the ill-luck to be taken by Moslem slavers, carried North to Asia Minor, where Harald helped free him with a fly spell. For a glorious moment, before the spell wore off, he was free. But curse the ill luck, he was retaken by pirates, then by Captain Halcyon, finally freed from the Patriarch by Justinian; and then, in the unluckiest turn of all, he decided to accompany the party on their quest that scarcely concerned him, which caused him no end of grevious bodily injury in damp and terrible dungeons no ape was ever meant to enter. Captured by Karmathians, he slept hanging in chains, and dremt that he had suffered the most horrible of all deaths, drowning in chains as the room he was in slowly filled with water. For long, agonizing minutes, he stood on tiptoe, hauled himself up his hanging chains, desperately trying to keep his head above the frigid and all-consuming waters, unwavering in his faith that someone would once again come along and rescue him before it was too late. He was wrong, of course, He died without his trademark fez and vest, abandoned by his friends, his fate unknown to his family, misunderstood by everyone, just another anonymous dead monkey-man.

His last words, heard only as burbling to his skeleton guards and almost drowned out completely by the screams of his doomed but slightly taller cellmate: "Compared to the flowers and the birds and the trees, I am an apeman."

Then he awoke with a start. *Grind grind* said the tower, as it began to rotate and sink into the ground. His trusty friend Harald appeared at the window and strained mightily at the bars. "Curses!" Harald shouted, "Your bars are too strong. I'll get Justinian to give it a shot." As he went off, calling for Justinian, the window dropped below the level of the ground, cutting of his cries. Elgale gathered his courage, saying to himself "I must fight my way out of this mess and return to Harald's side." He strained at the chains, but he couldn't budge them. "I don't really use tools that often" he thought, and began gnawing off his thumbs. The pain was so great he thought he might pass out, but his will held. Slipping his manacles he collected his thumbs and began his escape. After destroying some skeletons with a skull-bomb he eventually rode first a barrel and then some drawers to freedom. "Screw the flowers and trees, I am alive!" he thought as he collapsed on the shore of the island, sure that Harald would be along to collect him soon.