New Character Submission - Toby Jenkins

[Acacea]

Character: Toby Jenkins
Age: 25
Gender: Male
Classes: Rogue/Fighter
Race: Human
Alignment: Chaotic Good



Biography:

True enough, it was the gypsy. Who else? Not that many knew. Many women came and went from the Leringard Arms, and he made smiles at most of them; in his younger years some of his mischief had manifested in plots to hide under tables to try and get a peek up their skirts, but Kali was another game entirely, and one he was content to wait to win. He saw the many men coming and going from the Arms just the same as the women; they would mess up, eventually, or her eyes would wander. If he happened to always be around, well, someday maybe her eyes would wander to him. He's different than the others, he feels, because having lived most all his life at the tavern after the the group of adventurers had taken him on Ronus' wagon route north to stay after being abandoned by his mother and then frightened off the courthouse he was throwing stinkbombs from by a shifted tiefling druid...he feels he understands her better.

After all...she has had many men, and almost all of them seek to have some kind of claim on her. They all either get jealous and angry, or she breaks their hearts, or something else that inevitably occurs. And Toby is not a jealous man... there are plenty of women in and out of the Arms to occupy him, and if he watches the gypsy over the head of one in his arms, what of it? He knows if he had her, she'd leave eventually, but a moment would be worth it for those emerald eyes...never green mind you, that is too plain for her. He himself is inconstant, flirty, and often perhaps a scoundrel in general, but for the gypsy he would be an anchor - even the wanderingest wanderers need something to come back to, and Toby has remained in Leringard so that when she returns, he will be the first to see her, so that one day home and 'Toby' may be the same.

Acacea had not been surprised, though she had warned him. After young Toby was all settled and Kali was making herself a presence at the tavern, when the halfling took her first leave from Leringard leaving Toby to his whims, she gave him several parting tips - take food from the kitchen if he's hungry, and tell Derrick when he curses that Lil Miss is good for it; don't sample the expensive stock unless he wants Derrick to make him short a hand; don't practice the skills the halfling taught him on the customers unless he wants to know the real meaning of trouble; and for the love of anything sacred and good to drink, don't fall in love with the gypsy!

Ah well. We're none of us perfect.

Besides, he had a bit of a rebellious streak left from a troubled young childhood, and having Acacea as a sort of eccentric aunt always flitting in and out of his life only encouraged it and brought it to the foreground. Wasn't it inevitable that the one thing she truly tried to warn him off of, he went and did anyway?

He'd had an odd life for a child, it was true, once he got used to the place. Sailors, adventurers, oddities of all kinds - the Arms was open to anyone who could pay with something and didn't seem like to burn the place down. Acacea taught him how to handle the drinks (he was already familiar with other tavern chores from his hungry days in Mariner's Hold waiting on his cold mother to finish servicing whatever men would pay), but said if he got caught bartending while he still needed a stool to see over the bar, the people that had helped take Toby there might change their minds, especially people like Jennara, and even the swashbuckling Lin, who had been extremely upset when she learned Acacea and Derrick served drinks to creatures from the Pits.

Gods know what she would have said if she'd overheard the much later conversation between Acacea and Kali that illustrated their philosophy on things - the halfling had volunteered to get a priest to lay a positive energy ward on their door to match the others in Leringard, unnoticed to normal people, but the vampires in town would find knocking had a rather deadly result. Kali had responded with her playful, mischievous grin and said, "But what if I need to do business with a vampire?" and the halfling had only laughed; the door was left unwarded.

For the same reason, much of the other things she taught him was a secret, too; how to cut a purse, or bump into someone and come away with every trinket on their person in an eyeblink, how to throw the balanced daggers he'd been given, among other things (like the time she had chided young Toby for not unstringing his harp before using it as a grappling hook...she praised the ingenuity but mourned the unnecessary snapping of musical strings). They may have loved the colorful halfling, but watching an adopted orphan child still being taught to cheat, lie, and steal, was another matter entirely - that was the very life they had sought to save him from. But even this, in her own way, was a mark of care; she was only teaching him what she knew, after all, and every struggle in the world, regardless of tactics boils down to two simple things - trying to get something someone doesn't want you to have, or to keep something someone wants to take. The world is made up of cheaters, liars, and thieves, and sometimes to do the right thing without a mess, you need to out-cheat, out-lie, and out-steal.

For this, she taught him code phrases and hidden gestures of many places, including Leringard itself, so that when abroad he could be protected as a child of the underground and not made a mark himself. It was the least she could do.

She taught him music, as well; he has a passing fair voice for song, and learned the harp from the first day she put it in his hands, but the spark was not there in him; he could hear the difference between them, the magic in her fingers and in her voice, and it made him more of an indifferent student than he might have made otherwise, as she did make a compelling case for music. It was, to hear her tell, the universal language, something that all people understand and practice, and there is great magic in that, no matter if they ever learn to change things directly with it. Despite that more of the Shadonite had rubbed off on him than the Lucindite, finding that he had no innate gift for magic of any kind was one of his secret disappointments in life that he never shared. He turned his attention from that with more lessons from others in arms and combat, the better to serve as a threat-eliminator in a pinch for the Arms - Freldo (who always made Toby laugh while still hoping some of the 'sailor' status would rub off for his reputation with the ladies) was a help with the rapier when he wasn't sailing off for long periods of time. Jharl's weapons tended more towards heavier things, and weren't really Toby's style.

Mostly, the harp and song remains for him as something to pass the time and accompany a story...and an excellent way to charm a woman, something Acacea had only lightly advised him on, as she cared little for who he had on his arm so long as he understood that it was the most emptyheaded ones that were the easiest to get there, and if he said the wrong thing someday he might get saddled with a pretty face whose head was filled with lint.

It was strange, growing up as a human child there. Both Acacea and Kali, the primary women in his life, seemed to remain largely the same. Oh sure, they had their changing experiences, and Acacea had come back at times with new scars, sometimes brooding, sometimes sad, but for the both of them they'd always bounce back again; the elf remained...an elf, however human her tastes ran, young and long lived with all her grace and mystery, and the halfling... when he grew older, he felt older than she at times, as though she had adopted him young, and stayed that age forever as he became an adult, always playing games and enjoying life, no matter the hardships of others. It wasn't that she didn't notice them, he was sure; she had always been kind to him, and he knew she had a tendency to take in strays and that some couldn't help confiding in her; it was just that nothing ever seemed to mark her for long, as though she would learn grave, dark lessons of life...and then forget them in a week's time, back to cartwheeling through life. And unlike Kali, Acacea never took a lover to his knowledge, as constant in that one regard as Kali's inconstancy was in the other.

The sense of aging through timelessness broke after the last Night of Tales held there. It had been a busy time - many were the hungry that had heard the rumor of sunless food - but it was after all the tales had been told, and his gypsy and his halfling had stayed talking to one another at the table, that he had heard Kali say she was with child. The glass he had been washing slipped from his hand and shattered on the floor, along with any pretense he could have made of not overhearing. None of Kali's other lovers had ever given her a child.

He'd never thought he'd end up playing the nanny to another man's child, but when Kali returned from the tribal grounds (he'd been only a few times, himself; while he is fond of Acacea and halflings in general, there is such a thing as too much of a good thing - and besides, every visit risks coming home with another dog) looking exhausted and frazzled, but past the danger and with a healthy babe...well, he'd found himself doing just that, when Lily wasn't around to help. It had seemed petty not to help where he could after seeing Kali's tired face and the distinct lack of a father for a few months. And besides, he secretly enjoyed it, though he'd never admit that the lad having Kali's eyes was a compelling reason.

Maybe there is to be more to his life than moving crates, bargaining for ingredients at the docks, listening to tales of heroes and villains, trading drinks for lessons in arms (as Acacea favored throwing daggers and the short sword, and few of her friends among fighting men favored lighter weapons like the rapier common to port travelers), bouncing another man's child and risking with every day being put forever in the friend-only zone, while being Kali's accomplice in confusing and frazzling the aforementioned man, but well, who knows? Neither Kali nor Acacea has ever read Toby's cards for him; he never asked. But for now, there is the Arms. Later...who can say?

Languages:

Halfling: Though he never lacked for mentors in any particular work he might have desired to take up, Acacea was, ironically, not very skilled in the halfling tongue at the time of his adoption by the Arms. She had been an orphan taken in by humans, and had only a vague, childish grasp on the language that improved as she made more friends among her people - as did his understanding. More than just as a token of friendship though, like all things learning to understand the language served a dual purpose: many followers of the Hound were halflings, he had learned, as well as various less devout guilds. Acacea, he suspected, was on closer terms with Branderback's followers than she advertised, but she pressed on him that it was a good idea to learn the language and pretend ignorance, an endeavor that Triba was very helpful for later in his life. He has less practice in speech than understanding, but his few visits to the tribal grounds were useful in practicing his ear without giving away that he understood, just as Acacea's association with many halflings greatly improved her grasp on her native tongue.

Elven: The more difficult of the two, he still struggles with the infinite nuances of elven, though the flowing sound of it would likely win him some smiles, he has only been taught privately, and saves his lessons for one person in particular. While at first Acacea had been teaching him the phrases he desired to learn, and from there the structure of the language that elvenkind had had centuries to develop (at times this understanding caused him to discontinue his lessons and make him feel foolish - what human can possibly outwait an elf?), but when the motivation of his learning was discovered, she was replaced by Triba.

Acacea, it was explained by the ambassador to Voltrex, was now far more fluent than most non-elves, with a very good grasp of the shades of elven - but accents tend to reflect how one has been taught. So while Acacea's was very elven, it was MANY elvens, as she was taught by wood elves, voltrexian elves, dregarian elves, sun elves, all sorts of people that were all recognizable in subtle tones of speech or dialect with some words (though the differences between them were not even close to being as drastic as the short lived humans, to an elf's ear it was enough). And if he wanted to learn it for this, then it was the caravan wanderers of Dregar he needed to pronounce certain things like... and she could help with that. Acacea was as interested as ever to learn to pronounce the particular sounds and dialects as she always was about anything like that, but where she added it to her repertoire, it was the only one Toby wanted to learn. This too, he feigns ignorance of until a time of his choosing, for greatest impact.

Notes:

Toby is primarily an RP character for helping out around the Arms. There is no "and then he left for Hempstead" business because he didn't. I think Acacea is the only character still around that was staffing at the first opening of the Arms, and she wanders in and out while rarely gathering and doesn't cook. She and the others brought Toby there a looong time ago, so I figure there is a good opportunity to finally play him outside of emotes and DMs that possess without knowing who the NPC is. Regarding the NPC, he remains a fairly constant present at the Arms - the few times he is being played to get out of the constant silent presence of "here to help but never actually contributing anything" I'd probably just shove him into the side room and avoid the doppelganger effect. I might just request that he be taken out the next time the module is open if it's not a big deal, and if it is it's not really a big deal to leave him there, either, as my main character is still around - just trapped under a mountain. It's sort of like playing your PC's kid. He's just adopted. There were many other people in his life at the Arms, I just didn't want to write them in without permission...and its bloody long enough already!

[Rowana]

Your character has been approved.

Server address is west.layonara.com
Password is layoplayer

Some final notes on character creation:

• Please note that racial adjustments for players with subraces are skin based and thus get applied after getting in game.
• Only two ability scores can be less than 10 and only one can be less than 8 after racial adjustments
• Brownies, when selecting a head, the head you choose on the halfling selection will correspond to that numbered head for elves (for example, clicking right 6 times on the head selection during character creation will take the 6th head when clicking right on the elf creation)
• Half-giants and ogres, please ask for a GM (type /dm Anyone here?) if you would like to change to a custom skin.

A delight to read as always. Both ears granted as well.


~row

[Acacea]

Character: Toby Jenkins
Age: 28
Gender: Male
Classes: Rogue/Cleric
Race: Human
Alignment: Chaotic Good
Deity: Mist
Domains: Air Destruction

Reason for resubmission.

Summary:

Toby has had a dramatic path-changing personal-ish experience.

He was babysitting when the assassins came for Brandean. He prevented it about as well as an ant prevents an avalanche, sparing him even the conscience-soothing knowledge of 'putting up a fight.' It doesn't matter that he lives again, the gypsy's son still died while under his care and he was completely, totally helpless. Knowing that it was a priestess of Mist that brought him back didn't help, because regardless of what mortal servants mouth, Toby was fairly sure that such cases always resulted in a payback down the road, making him envision a strapping, just-wed Brandean losing his wife to a shipwreck from a storm out of the blue. Or his future son (he could adopt, after all) being taken. Or his mother, who had many an elven year left to her if Mist didn't see to have her fun along with whatever the priestess demanded.

He spent a lot of time drinking, and too much time thinking, and the thought of all that made him a bit sick. He rowed out to Mist's little island there north of Leringard and begged (and demanded, and harangued, and requested) that whatever She had in mind for the someday man or his family, she take out of Toby, instead. Though it appeared to outsiders (such as the resident priestess) that he was a bit mad, or at least overly dramatic, he is in reality from far stupid and had no intention of throwing his life away in death or servitude for the flair of a performance. After what can only be called a failure to Kali there are really only two things that he could think of to even partially alleviate the bitter taste of it - one, somehow ensure that he would never be so useless again (however he would manage that), and two, see that at least no further suffering occurred because of that initial failure, by taking on any divine debt.

One of his promises he made in exchange was his eternal service.

Naturally she didn't exactly come up and voice her acceptance - the closest thing to a sign he had was one of Her priestesses coming over for a chat with him and then leaving him to it, but she was a halfling and no sane man wants to have a sign delivered by a halfling. Instead, he stood there trying to fight with the storm for a very long time, without sleep, food, or water save for the rain and seawater he swallowed, until he was nearly passing out from exhaustion and beginning to hallucinate. Inevitably whatever he saw would make him lean or reach forward towards it, then he would wake up again and catch himself before falling. Til he didn't catch himself, and he drowned, only half conscious and envisioning as he asphyxiated the image of Mist's appreciation for rebellion. Entire religions are founded on the consumption of moldy bread, smoking funny herbs, and spending too much time in the desert without water.

This founded Toby's, and seemed pretty clear...is it the cause or effect that matters in terms of faith?

He'd returned the next day, and climbed out all the way in front of one of Her statues to sit once more waiting out the storm, passing some of the time with music drifting out over the ocean from the pipes he'd gotten from the gypsy. There was no knocking over, that time, though some of the playful taunts had re-emerged, and a few strikes of lightning were uncomfortably close. Perhaps ironically, perhaps appropriately, the statue at his back that he was leaning against rather irreverently served as a shelter from the winds coming from behind him.

He sought out the halfling priestess he'd spoken with before and began the figuring out of how to serve... starting with binding his soul to the isle. Though his explanation of what had occurred got another snicker of "three sheets to the wind," it was not a whim, or something he was at all joking about. He hadn't been joking a whole lot since Brandean died.

Strangely enough, he was content, back to the easygoing, flirtatious manner he had possessed before... this was all he could do, and now he was doing it, and if it wasn't enough, well, it was all he could. Who knows what other people would think when they found out he was joining the clergy of storms, what Kali would think, or the mist worshipping father of her child. Maybe that he was crazy, or thankful for the raising of the kid. Funny to think that it was the opposite, but the result was the same in the end. He will remain in Leringard for some time in training, but he does possess a certain aptitude for certain elements, especially on the isle. There it is easier to see the violence of nature, the catalyst of change, and remember the feeling of defiance trying to stand against it. Somehow, the latter seemed just as important as the former when he tried to call out to anything, especially considering what he believed a sign of Mist's approval of that very thing.

Acknowledgments:

1. I have read and understand the dogma and expectations of Mist and intend to follow them.

2. Toby's former and current-encroaching-on-future interpretation of Mist's dogma is curious. Despite his heated one-sided (sort of - he did drown in the end after all) argument with her, he never particularly hated her or anything. Rather, gods were just sort of out there - if they didn't have any servants in the world then they wouldn't really have anything, and with few exceptions the world would just continue on its merry way. Living in Leringard, one does grow to appreciate a good storm, but at the same time, one doesn't ever wish to have one's ship sunk.

What happened at the isle was very different. It almost didn't matter if he fell in the end or not - what mattered was the struggle. It mattered that he tried, that he appreciated this violent phenomenon of nature, was awed by it even... and still went down biting and kicking against it. You can't become a cleric solely through the paperwork (though he has a bit to go, regardless). The ideals of it all are still represented in him, even when they seem to conflict... which is why he makes a curious mess compared to some other followers. He's heard a couple times a cleric stating that someone should give into the storm, because all would face it eventually, and such things - which even now he would call a load of something not forum friendly.

It is not a force that should be bowed to, or praised on one's knees. It's what makes people sharp, the challenge, the whetstone, what keeps men from dying fat and sleepy...and the reckless thrill akin to gambling when you never know when it's going to be taken out of your hands. To simply "give in" and let it toss you about doesn't even begin to give justice to one's own life, nor really respect the force against it. And so as a cleric he would be both bringer of storms and defiance against them... the former being his promise, the latter being what got him there in the first (or second) place.

The other personal element of chaos that will always be in his faith is even more what got him in the first place - love, which while at first to outsiders may seem highly conflicting (if one asked him to go against the other, would he do it? Would he? Would he?), it somehow remains (bitterly?) appropriate, as Ilsare is Mist's ally, and reinforces his other reasons for devotion. OOC I've no idea what may happen if they ever come into conflict, and I wager no paladin that's ever fallen from grace knew ahead of time that the obstacles to faith would ever get so large. Since he feels that his service in a way protects that love from future wrath, it is more than likely that he would continue on that path even in the face of losses, unless it was a life or death situation.

He will continue personal training in his cemented devotion and aid in representation on both land and sea.

3. Toby will not have to make too much of a change to wear Mist's clothing - he will not be a land-oriented battle priest and so has no need of full plate. Being a rogue and a scoundrel already, the ship-friendly light leathers in Mist's colors will suit just fine, though sky blue is not exactly the most flattering shade for him... he has no training with the morningstar, and in any case does not exactly have the arm to put any force behind such a weapon, having been a finesse fighter with throwing daggers, short swords, and rapiers. They will, however, be enchanted with ice and lightning where appropriate, and he will of course wear Mist's holy symbol. For reason why he would have a great deal of trouble using one, see the first submission. I would have to remake him as a single class STR cleric to make any sense with the weapon, and the reversal of that would be a bit silly As it is he'll only have something like 14 wisdom because of split stats.

More notes:

I'm just going to remake Toby with a slightly different name (a space or something), not that 'starting over' really means much with a level one character. It would be silly to discard all his 'training' up to the point of the murder, though, so he will remain a finesse rogue... he will still have the intelligence to support his 2 languages (halfling and elven - see original submission), and he can't very well lose all his charisma. Split stat sadness!

He hadn't even taken any fighter levels yet, either - essentially he will just be replacing those 'potential' fighter levels with 'potential' cleric levels in his service to Mist. Let me know if you need anything else from me.

Edit - not positive on the class split as I'm not sure he'll even get to level 5, let alone 20, heh. I think he will likely alternate rogue/cleric levels with some lean towards cleric. By 20 it would probably end up as 7/13 or something.

[osxmallard]

Approved.