Halhigil was born in Mirkwood, and was always a quiet, withdrawn elfling who tended to wander around on his own with his head in the clouds. He always had a great deal of trouble with his lessons; though he had a natural gift for mathematics and a good head for facts, he and his tutors became terribly frustrated by his inexplicable difficulty with written work. This led to him being forced to cultivate a remarkable memory for lists of facts and data, as he could not deal with written information. Despite this, he always had a vivid imagination and was a talented artist, and spent much of his time either dreaming, drawing or watching the warriors on the practice fields. His natural inclinations towards physical tasks rather than clerical ones had sown in him a fascination with the ways of the warrior; he could sit happily for hours, content to watch or draw them as they practised, and the small, dark-haired figure sitting cross-legged on the grass became a familiar sight on the practice grounds. But his first loves were always art and mathematics, the latter of which instantly labelled him as odd.

If Halhigil’s father had lived, then things might have turned out differently. Nobody was quite sure who his grandfather was, but Halhigil’s father was a skilled archer who was away from home much of the time, patrolling the southern forests. Halhigil was the human equivalent of perhaps ten when his mother received the news that her husband had been killed in a nasty skirmish in the south. Halhigil, who now had a very young sister, became even quieter and more reserved, though he had always been serious and rather analytical for his age. Watching his mother’s grief and dealing silently with his own forced him to grow up rather quickly, and for the first time instilled a certain amount of quiet amibition in him; suddenly, he realised how much he wanted to be able to protect his family and his country.

Giving into his mother’s pleas for him not to enlist, he instead became an architecht. His gifts with art and mathematics, and his ability to visualise in three dimensions, made him more successful than he could ever have hoped, particularly given his youth. But hating the spotlight and never seeking praise, Halhigil rarely signed his name to his more well-known designs, and so avoided much of the credit he was due. His colleagues cared little about his terrible clerical skills – his designs were all that really mattered, and he felt himself happy there. More importantly, he could choose his hours, as his mother grew ever more reserved and depressed, and he began to take more and more responsibility for his sister. When Nelladel was around the human equivalent of eleven, Halhigil’s mother, who had never really recovered from the grief of her husband’s death, sailed West. Halhigil had just come of age, and continued his work as well as caring for his sister.

He and Nelladel were very close by the time she came of age herself, and despite the joy he took in his work, Halhigil felt uneasy. Never comfortable to do less than his share, he felt he was not making enough of a contribution: buildings do not need designing every day, or even every year. Accordingly, when Nelladel began to work as a weaver, he enlisted with the army to become a soldier. He had not neglected his practice over the years, though he never made any displays or entered competitions,and quickly fell into the routines. Over the years, his single-minded dedication earned him both a promotion to patrol captain, and the reputation of a ‘workaholic’. He kept himself to himself, was polite and friendly, but gave very little away until he was transferred to the southern forests, where his father was killed, and where Halhigil was to forge some lifelong friendships.

Unfortunately, the paperwork that went with the rank immediately caused him trouble he had not encountered for many a year. Though his work in the field was excellent, his written and spoken reports were of a very poor standard; and Halhigil, who had always hated speaking in public, became even quieter. His immediate superior, Antval, was deeply unimpressed. Something of an intellectual snob, and never one to easily alter opinions for the better, Antval had no compunction about making clear his opinions of Halhigil’s intelligence. His repeated inferences that Halhigil’s constant struggle with reading and writing meant that he was stupid and illiterate found their mark. But it was not in Halhigil’s nature to complain, and after many years of struggling against his hatred of public speaking in order to defend himself, he eventually gave up and simply accepted it as his due.

Given Antval’s quite public opinions, Halhigil’s colleagues tended to see him either as stupid and incompetent, but those who knew him better recognised his talent and how hard he really worked, though they were at a loss to understand how he could make such a terrible mess of his paperwork when he spent so many hours over it.

Several years after he first took the posting in the south, Mirkwood’s intelligence networks were crying out for spies and scouts, and Halhigil was asked if he would be willing to help gather information. He agreed, knowing the situation, and the workload was initially manageable, despite it cutting his free time and the fact that he took thrice as long over his normal paperwork as others. But over the years as the situation in Mirkwood worsened, the amount of work became heavier and heavier, eventually more than enough for two men.

By now very subdued and painfully shy, Halhigil felt unable to admit that he had a real problem with his work. He refused to let anyone make Antval aware of his work for the scouts, for he knew well that his commander would never take any of the reports seriously if he knew they came from Halhigil, whose opinions were far from high in Antval’s regard. The only two people who were aware of the extent of the problem were Merenel, a scout attached to Halhigil’s unit and a close friend; and Celeblas, the head healer, who had noted his pallor and weight loss, and eventually managed to eke it out of him. But neither could pursuade him to give it up; the need for men was greater than ever, and Halhigil had become trapped in a cycle of duty. Juggling the demands of the two posts was no easy task, particularly when they conflicted. The scouts had no problem with him having prior commitments to the army, but as he could not make Antval aware of the true reasons for his abscences, he earned himself a thoroughly undeserved reputation as a slacker who could not be relied upon.

Halhigil never complains about the workload even when it becomes ridiculous, but he is severely stressed and lives in a state of permanent exhaustion, routinely working twenty hours a day. Although, for the present, he believes he can cope, he is rapidly wearing himself ragged.