According to a clearly corrupt but nonetheless (mostly) plausible variant of this Writing, the Golias himself, early in his reign, put down a rebellion in a bumptious village in the mountains. When the fighting was over, the inhabitants were herded into the town square, whereupon the ringleaders were "tried" for treason, and a sentence of death pronounced upon their captain. Disdaining to carry out the sentence himself, the Golias commanded the first able-bodied citizen upon whom his eyes alit to behead the man on the spot. That man, the smith, seems to have been the Rectifier's father (or grandfather, or great-grandfather).

From that moment the only employment the former smith or any of his family could find was that of executioner, which at the time also comprised non-lethal punishments such as amputation, branding, flogging, and the breaking of bones — hence, perhaps, the playful cognomen "Bone-Snapper".