Paired with the Device of Time journeying, Tasslehoff Burrfoot made as much or more of an impact on the fate of Krynn than anyone else. Let’s learn more about that taunting, light fingered and aggressively affable kender Tas. Buy The Art of the Dragonlance Saga: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/17389/The-Art-of-the-Dragonlance-Saga?affiliate_id=50797
Transcript
Cold Open
Keep him at arm’s length if you want to keep your possessions and prepare to hear about that damnable wooly mammoth!
Intro
Welcome to another DragonLance Saga episode. My name is Adam and today we are going to talk about Tasslehoff Burrfoot. I would like to take a moment and thank the members of this channel, and invite you to consider becoming a member by visiting the link in the description below. You can even pick up Dragonlance gaming materials using my affiliate link. I am referencing The Art of the Dragonlance Saga, The Annotated Chronicles and Legends, The Lost Chronicles, Dragons of Summer Flame and The War of Souls. If I leave anything out that you find defining about Tas, leave a comment below!
Discussion
Tasslehoff Burrfoot is a difficult character to nail down. In every sense of the phrase. Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman see him as a peripheral character who plays the role of the fool in the classic sense. We laugh with Tas, not at him. He is ‘innocence incarnate’ with no reverence for anything or anybody. The authors had difficulty with his race and the characters need for growth, so the deaths of Flint Fireforge and Gnimsh the gnome became moments that changed and defined him. He gained depth and wisdom through the Chronicles and Legends and grew even more, at times relearning the same lessons over and over again, in the War of Souls trilogy. I have always seen Tas like R2-D2. He may get people into trouble but equally gets them out of it. Arguably, they are the real heroes of the story as they provide direction and possibility to overcome insurmountable odds.
Even his appearance dramatically shifted depending on the artist portraying him. Caldwell saw Tas as more impish. Parkinson depicted him as a teenager, and Elmore painted him as both aged, ageless. His personality and even manner of speech were defined primarily by Roger E. Moore in his short story A Stone’s Throw Away, which first appeared in Dragon Magazine. This was what Weis and Hickman called back to and of course Janet Pack’s dramatic reading of the character in the first public reading of Dragonlance at Gencon in 1984. It took artists, writers and performers to truly nail down this character. I can understand why player’s don’t enjoy Kender in their home games, as they can be terrorizing to a party if allowed. But Tas as a character is the audience’s IN to the story. It’s through him we understand what is important or scary. What should and should not be done. It is also through him we get to experience divinity in avatar form. Fizban alone is an old man. With Tas in the mix, he is a funny, bumbling power to be reckoned with that is playing down to the audience.
We are introduced to Tas in the same fashion that we would forever know him. By ‘finding’ an item of magic and being transported or transformed by it. One could argue that this is his sole contribution to the narrative and in righting the Dragonlance Campaign itself when it left the rails in the Fifth Age. Tas is known as the hero he is, through his interaction with the Device of Time Journeying, and ultimately through his sacrifice in the Chaos War. His best friend Flint Fireforge was more aggravated with his behavior than arguably anyone else, and even he waited in death to be reunited with him, much to Reorx’s consternation, as it was at his forge under a tree that Flint waited, Some of the most impactful moments of the saga were experienced through Tas directly. From Flint, to Sturm, Gnimsh, Raistlin’s Krynn, Chaos, Caramon, Lord Soth, etc. Tas was always worried when he felt that strange feeling in his stomach known as fear to everyone else, and his ability to crack jokes at the most important moments, also the least opportune! As mentioned earlier, we first met Tas as he was transported into a Magus’s tower who was making a pact with a Demon. It wasn’t long after he ‘handled’ a bracelet from Flint which started a whole chain of events and led to his first adventure with Tanis and Flint. It wasn’t long after that he was turned into a minotaur and saved the companions. The companions would become embroiled in the War of the Lance and if it weren’t for Taz and the Glasses of True Seeing Flint never would have won the Hammer of Kharas and Derek Crownguard would never have learned about the Dragon Orb.
He saw his own death through the shared nightmare in Silvanesti and would journey with Fizban all through Pax Tharkas, the Tomb of Huma and Southern Ergoth with a Dragonlance. He would echo our collective frustration with the Whitestone Council and destroy the Dragon Orb they fought so desperately for, and lost two Knights of Solamnia claiming! Tas couldn’t help his insatiable curiosity, which was as much a detriment to himself as anyone else, and we witnessed an incredible amount of introspection with him all through the Summer of Chaos and the War of Souls. He knew who he was, but not why he acted the way he did. Only that it was natural. He never fully understood why other races made life so difficult for themselves and others on the macro scale, ironically, all while he was doing the very same thing on the micro scale.
We experienced true joy when he flew on the dragon Khirsah’s back, accidentally capturing Bakaris, and piloted a flying citadel, upside down at times, and abandoned it in a lord’s back yard!. He was instrumental in stopping Raistlin from destroying the world and then allowing Raistlin to find it again. He has had personal encounters with Paladine, Takhisis, and Chaos to name a few, and is beloved by the residents of Solace, and Kender worldwide! Recounting every event Tas experienced is far too tall a task for any ten minute video, but that is not what is special about the character.
Tassllehoff loved maps, his entire life. His collection featured both pre and post cataclysm maps, and his favorite artifacts included the knife Rabbit Slayer, and the Kender spoon of turning! His fearlessness provides incredible opportunities for humor and his insistence in being involved with every situation, because his friends will get into trouble without him is in itself hilarious. This is a point I think worth reiterating. Tasslehoff Burrfoot was a great friend. He actually cared about his friends feelings and went out of his way to help, even when he wasn’t any help. He tried, in spite of himself. That endeared him to the audience and made him a fan favorite, world wide.
If I had any problem with Tas, it’s one I alluded to at the beginning of this episode. He would seemingly learn and relearn the same lessons over and over again. You can argue that it’s simply him being a Kender, but I would counter with the idea that it’s just lazy writing. He knew what fear felt like with Khisanth, yet had to relearn it through three trilogies? Each time, he didn’t understand it? Then in the War of Souls, he felt Beryllinthranox’s dragon fear and that changed him? Not the war of the lance, not traveling through time and interacting with Lord Soth or Takhisis, not facing Chaos itself…. But Beryl… I don’t buy it. It began to get tedious. We would be shown how much he cares for his friends and that he was willing to die for them, then in the War of Souls he refuses to do that same thing? Again, chock it up to whatever you want, the fact is, it’s inconsistent with a character that is integral to the saga.
I wonder how he will be treated or portrayed in the upcoming Dragons of Deceit. We have to recall that the working title was Tasslehoff’s Wife… so we know he is important to the overall story in some way. This will be Tasslehoff after Legends, but before the Summer of Chaos, so he has seen some crazy stuff, traveled through time and is by all accounts, free of conflict and expectation. Let’s hope he will remember the lessons he has already learned.
Outro
But that is all the time I have to talk about Tasslehoff Burrfoot. Are you a fan of Kender? Was Tas the true hero of the novels? And finally if you had the opportunity to meet Tas, would you? Leave a comment below.
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This channel is all about celebrating the wonderful world of the Dragonlance Saga, and I welcome you to join in the celebration. Thank you for watching, this has been Adam with DragonLance Saga and until next time, remember:
I’m not a thief! You know me better than that, Theros. That purse was planted on me…
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