Miffli the Petty Dwarf
The clan that would one day settle in Cromm Bráighe wandered the wilds for centuries after quarreling with Ibun and leaving his band. They camped amidst the woods, high on rocky ledges in the mountains, deep in shadowed ravines by rushing rapids, and crouched beneath meadowland honeysuckle. Sometimes they sheltered for years in shallow caves abandoned by bears or Trolls. Always they sought an isolated site where they might delve deeply and live hidden from all outsiders under the earth.
Miffli was born while the clan traversed a steep ridge in the Misty Mountains. He grew up among the peaks, cliffs, and caverns there, conquering unclimbed summits, exploring mysterious boulder fields, and crawling through tunnels frequented by Goblins. He was bolder than the typical Ibunite, and more curious. How much hidden knowledge he uncovered in the heights and depths of the mountains is open to speculation, but it is certain that he came in time to possess a ring of great magical powers.
When he came of age, Miffli led his clan to the twisted hill of Cromm Bráighe and found the entrance to the caverns lacing its haunted stone. The Ibunites labored long to delve the halls they called Armok-ai-Wânu, but their numbers were few. Settled at last in a home of their choosing, they died, one by one. But Miffli lived on, far past the lifespan natural to his kind. His ring granted him a longer life — at a price. Although not dying, Miffli did not cease to age. His limbs grew ever more withered, his hair thinner, and his voice more cracked.
Tales and legends suggest different origins for his ring; one recounts Miffli's heroic efforts at a forge long forgotten by the Khazad, another tells of his challenge to the Dragon Angurth, and yet a third suggests that Sauron may have hidden beneath Cromm Bráighe during the centuries after the War of Wrath which ended the Elder Days. Whatever the truth, Miffli's ring preserved the Ibunite through the centuries and gave him the power to command the phantoms of his former companions, renamed Ta-Fa-Lish by the Hillmen.
In the spring of T.A, 164, Miffli aided the Hillman Mongán Finn in a rebellion against the Dúnedain. Eldacar of Arnor, the Crown Prince of Arnor, crushed the Hillmen and took Cromm Bráighe to be a royal fortress. Homeless and severed from the illusions of his clan, Miffli survived the conflict to wander across Middle-earth once more.