Acacea Thistletongue

[Acacea]

Full Name: Acacea Thistletongue
Age: 23
Class(es): Rogue/Bard
Race: Halfling
Alignment: Chaotic Good
Deity: Shadon
Description: This dark eyed halfling's unbooted feet- apparently bored with merely walking to point B- occasionally break into a skip or prance, her belled bracelets set a-jingling as her arms swing at her sides. Her frazzled looking black hair reaches just past the shoulders, and looks to be trying to escape from her head underneath the hood it's contained by.

Bio: Acacea walks down a dusty road, away from a home that is home no longer, and to nowhere in particular. Her aged mentor has finally passed on, and will save no more street children from a life of hunger or crime possibly ending in a prison cell, and more importantly, no more fabulous sweet breads will be made in his kitchen. She stops in her tracks at the realization, and furrows her brow. Can she go on, with such a dismal truth before her? But no! She must! Thinking aloud, she says, "By the gods! A weaker sort would fall right over with such a dark fate to look forward to! I'm saving them all just by taking the burden on myself!"

Shaking her head despondently, she continues on her way, miserable for a full 30 seconds before she spies a small pothole in the road in front of her. Shocked and dismayed at the surely impassable canyon barring her way to whatever is at the end of the road, she considers turning back for an even smaller amount of time before gathering up her courage and strength, humming a tune under breath and then LEAPING the 'canyon', landing safely at the other side. She wipes sweat from her brow and resumes her arduous journey, adding 'Chasm-Jumper' to her mental list of titles, along with 'Spider-Slayer' and 'Bread-Taster'.

Such grand adventures have been many in her life, from her earliest memories, in fact. She suddenly wonders if she remembered to pack her journal, which she began at her teacher's direction as soon as he taught her to write. She begins searching through her pack for it while still walking, and ends up falling flat on her face, spilling the contents in the dirt. Her bracelets jingle as she picks up her books and basic carved flute, and she sighs as she remembers how she came to Gregor's house.

She learned quickly in her youth that a few coins from a large purse might go unnoticed, and a bit of bread or meat from the middle instead of the whole sandwich won't have people crying foul. So she fed herself and her mother, viewing herself as quite the sneaky hero in the process. The meager scraps were enough to feed her stomach and her imagination, but not enough to cure her mother of whatever ailed her. She passed when Acacea was still a young child, and so street sleeping and thieving became a full time job.

Her quick fingers landed her a new home a few years after her mother died- she had been ill for as long as Acacea could remember- by stealing back a man's purse after witnessing it being taken the first time. He seemed quite surprised to see it again, and asked her about her family, where she lived. The man laughed when she said she spend the day guarding the people and the night stealing from them, and took her home with him after he finished his business in the city.

Gregor's modest home was not empty when they returned- there were several other children to fill it, though all older and quite a bit taller than she (and as such, they received quite a few insults from her to make up for her lack of stature in comparison- it was Gregor who finally suggested her surname). At first, tales of child eating witches and the like came to mind, but were easily put to rest by Gregor's kind demeanor and candid tongue. His wife had passed away long ago, and the gods had not granted them children of their own, which somewhat explained him bringing home a scruffy orphan child. However kind he was, though, he didn't let her minor pilfering last long before thinking of a solution- although she was in such awe of his sweet bread that she rather thought he must be some sort of wizard in disguise and could turn her into a toad for stealing. This was, in fact, something of a motivation for her doing so, having always wanted to hop about the pond behind their house as a frog, at least for a little while.

Unfortunately for her, if he COULD turn her into a toad, he didn't- instead, he fastened metallic bracelets around her wrists, with tiny bells dangling from them. These shackles were actually lovely, and quite possibly magical, but still served their purpose. "Try sneaking your hand into my pocket with those on! My hearing may be going, but I daresay I can hear you coming now," he told her with a grin.

This took the fun out of her favorite pursuits, and forced her, as he'd hoped, to concentrate more on the studies he assigned her- namely history and music, as he found her dextrous fingers naturally suited towards musical instruments, and her wild imaginings equally suited to diving into old legends and lore (with the added consequence of seeing a Bloodstone or a dragon in every bush or shadow for a week after reading a good long tale about them). She also briefly immersed herself, with his blessing, in Gregor's personal research, covering his own interpretaions of more recent history, theories, and a look into the various deities of the world. Although Gregor claimed none for his own, she read into it a bit, feeling that recounts of her adventures would be far more dramatic with a god to curse at or praise, depending on the outcome, of course, and picked the one with the least effort involved,

Her newfound siblings left over time, either by two's, or singly and accompanied with a trader passing through, but she remained, learning things Gregor had not revealed to the others: minor arcane spells, more complex songs as she grew in talent, until she could enhance her own abilities, and perhaps those of her friends, with her skills. Her sharp wit and glib tongue earned her a knack for picking up languages, although her ability to talk her way out of trouble was more highly prized.

Acacea frowns again at this thought, mentally shying away from the natural death she couldn't talk away and the consequent loss of the Best Sweetbread Ever, and instead repacks her things and brushes herself off, already ascribing her fall to an earthquake set somehow into motion by Shadon's desire for less musing, more prancing. "Forward again!" she cries to her surroundings, and staunchly obeys her own command. Presented with a crossroads, she takes a coin from her meager supply, flips it, and promptly takes the opposite direction it advises out of sheer contrariness. She has a few more in her pocket, and is determined to spend it at the first tavern she comes to (hopefully not so far as Hlint), in order to wash the dust she's practically choking on already. It's getting worse by the second, she's sure of it, in fact, she can feel her lungs struggling to take in air as she thinks it. After a few moments of staggering along and wheezing, she looks around and still doesn't see a single person to appreciate it, and resumes at a normal half-skip.

//First post, first character. So long already, and I still have a few questions to ask. For instance, on multiclassing: I know you must have at least five levels in each of the classes you take, but am I right in assuming you need not take them consecutively? Ie, can Acacea alternate Rogue/Bard levels for the first ten, to show her rogue background (of whose skills she wants to keep polished even if she uses them but rarely), and the 'bardship' she was introduced to and also still practices? AND, a clarification after reading many other submissions: by "quite possibly magical," I didn't mean she may find them to have superpowers later on, just that she figures they must be, since she has not been able to take them off. I did not intend for these to grant any abilities, just add a hindrance to pickpocketing and other things, to keep her out of trouble. Sorry for the length, whoever reads!

[Acacea]

Oh. That's even longer than I thought. *embarrassed now* =X

[Reventage]

I didn’t mind the length at all, it was a good read. A nicely written bio. Approved.

And yes, you do not need to take the levels in one class consecutively you can pretty freely alternate between rogue and bard levels as long as you have the required five before level 20.


The IP for the server is 64.127.106.68 and it can also be found under Roleplay at Gamespy.

The password is layoplayer.

[Acacea]

Thank you very much =) Look forward to playing.

[Acacea]

Been meaning to do this for awhile... (Rejoice!)

Acacea has met and befriended a number of elves since she came to Hlint, so she picked up a lot of words and phrases she found interesting and parroted them back much like she does with other languages, as her natural knack for such things was improved under the studies with Gregor. A few elves went out of their way to expand her vocabulary beyond kinds of alcohol and ways to insult dwarves, and instead gave her a number of useful words and a rudimentary grasp of its grammar. The documentation on this is scarce (Another of those things I was meaning to do...), but has been roleplayed extensively in game for a few months. Acacea can speak pretty basic elven as it is (ie she started with 'ale' moved on to 'the ale good' to 'the wine is very good' to 'This ale is good, you want one?'), and had I not been able to just type out what she was saying in elven and translate it for whoever she was talking to, I would have requested the ear a long time ago.

Now that she can say a lot more than a few swear words, I'm sure everyone is as tired as me of the translating, so I'd like to formally request an Ear for Elven for Acacea. ...So that she can continue learning without me having to type her chatter several times over.

Some people that have watched her progress in it that spring to mind, are Talan, Yardislan (moreso), Ozy, Luna, Reventage, Leafsomethingorother who helped a great deal, and Telpsinda.

She's talked to a lot of elves, but those are ones I can think of who saw her stumbling around with it and know she wasn't just insta-fluent despite me knowing the letters most of the time.

14 base intelligence, and she knows no other languages aside from Halfling and Thieves' Cant.

("E laaw anira ailm em E amecc ilflaecyanaca wea!")

[Reventage]

Approved for the Ear of Elven. Ask one from a GM in game.

[IceDragonDuvessa]

ear issued

[Acacea]

Thanks, Ice.

[Acacea]

Resubmitting for Sign Language Ear.

When Acacea first met Jennara however many decades ago, the quiet halfling spoke much less than she does now. Gulnyr was very creative with his hand sign emotes, without resorting to "*signs that she just came back from a swamp*" type things you see sometimes. Being around her often got you a general understanding of what she meant most of the time, and Acacea enjoyed attempting in any case, thinking of it as a game like she does most things. She was not around Jennara nearly as much as someone like Berdin, who became sort of Jennara's translator often, but she tried.

When the ear was put into place, the learning through observation and creativity bit was traded for expedience, so after that, there were no new ones learned and without the ear, everyone kind of drops back down to zero familiarity, hehe. The ear is one of my favorites so I'm glad it's in, I'm just acknowledging that there was a change to "kind of getting familiar" in watching Jennara to "random gestures" that led to relying completely on her whispers instead of deciphering hands - Acacea just remains always in whisper range to make things easy.

It wasn't until a very young deaf child joined the family that Acacea turned to Jennara for lessons. He and those close to him quickly developed their own private ways of understanding one another, but Acacea figured, Jennara has probably taught others, why teach every child who cannot hear, a different set of signs? So she requested Jennara's aid in teaching herself, so that she could teach the kid and other kids in similar situations, to help establish something more connected.

This was several months ago, and we've managed to practice in game on several occasions, though not enough to warrant fluency despite the IG time that has passed. It does feel a little silly to think that it was learned for one kid who if forced to assume those were the only lessons (I assume there were others while we weren't playing our characters as well, have to do something with that downtime), could likely already grown and leave home in a few more RL months because time moves so much faster, so I kind of mentally pad her experience, hehe.

I've found this ear is much more difficult to roleplay a progressive understanding with than others, because while I recognize some words, they may just as easily be another word starting with the same letter, kind of like Thieves' Cant. It was a lot easier to roleplay learning elven because I could read it fine and just pick out the ones I knew Acacea was familiar with. In this case, it's pretty much just total ignorance vs total fluency, so at this point I would like to err on the side of knowing too much rather than knowing nothing.

It is different from other languages in that Acacea's ear for spoken tongues does not help her; from rare to common she can parrot words back with ease. In scriptures, her books and countless notes on extinct languages can aid her in deciphering old tongues that haven't been spoken in centuries, but hand signs alone was much like starting all over from scratch, needing to place this finger just so, or the wrist as such. Being familiar with different regional Cants helps slightly, but code words and hidden gestures are a whole different game from "hand dancing" as she sometimes puts it.

This submission is especially long because I do not have supporting CDT entries, because its backdated to a disgusting amount and it bugs me to go out of order on stuff so I never manage to include things when they happen. So I'm just giving a clear account of a few of the circumstances in which lessons occurred, and witnesses to them. Everything Acacea has learned, she has endeavored to teach the child, along with finding more percussive ways of giving music to him, for rhythm and such things.

The first lessons were on a trip with Ketilbjorn and Lalaith and company, where at campfire breaks when others were resting or quietly talking amongst themselves, Jennara showed Acacea a few signs here and there that might be most useful to impart on a child wanting to express his needs. Hungry, thirsty, sleepy, that kind of thing.

Outside of Port Hempstead near the pond, she was shown how different family members were signed. Mother, father, uncle, aunt, brother, sister, grandfather, grandmother, etc. She also asked Acacea what it would be useful to learn - there was a joke when Acacea was trying to think young and asked, "What about 'want?'" and Jennara asked, "Isn't that something children know how to express naturally?" To make his 'parents' feel better, she also asked for things like 'please' and 'thank you' and 'love' in case he should want to impress them with manners. Because Acacea often has hard time remembering things when she needs to without mixing up all the things she knows (it's that unbalanced INT/WIS thing), she is delighted whenever certain signs come with quirks that she can recall them by. "Thank you," for example, amused her to no end, as she remembers it as "the grateful thumb hug."

Another time, when Jennara asked for a 'theme' to avoid just random, disconnected words, Acacea naturally picked magic, as besides being a Lucindite herself, the young boy had shown an innate gift for the Weave and it seemed likely that they would be useful to learn. In some cases, Jennara didn't have any signs for specific magical terms, and they made new ones. They did this for the different schools of magic, for example.

It was at this time that she also learned some much needed 'between' words for constructing sentences, and that the order you put them in was always based on the common tongue's structure. A couple names for children's games were learned here, as well as things like "of, and, him, her, pillow, ear, have, and other small things. Also, she learned some signs for requested riddles.

On Harlas' Returning, they were trapped together for some time, and though we didn't manage to log into the all-too-familiar Dark Cavern between sessions for more, you kind of figure that since Jennara is always pausing to share a word related to current subject to Acacea, that there was some teaching at breaks there as well. When Jennara came through the first door that had featured a tree, for example, she paused to show Acacea words for different kinds of trees, to which Acacea laughed and responded she honestly couldn't tell most of them apart by name in Common, either.

Most recently, Acacea asked her help in rounding out the actual patterns of signing and filling in blank spots by telling a long story with Jennara, speaking while they both signed. At every new word or incorrectly performed one, Acacea would watch Jennara's hands and copy them to cement the forms in her head better. Naturally doing this in such a long story would not make her capable of repeating it all back perfectly in signs, but it aided her in filling her sentences out better, correcting some signs, and learning others.

Requesting the ear at this point - it has been a couple years shy of a decade IG since the family was expanded and I would hate for her to still be 100% ignorant mechanically by the time he gets married with kids due to speedy Layo time. :P She has 16 INT and Elven is the only other ear I have requested. I can have witnesses post if necessary.

[jrizz]

Please have feedback from Gulnyr supporting the request posted. thanks

[Acacea]

Sure. I'm sure he'll see this in the morning.

[Rowana]

As an aside I can support this with logs both PC and GM over a few months time as it had something partially due to my quest series Who dunit.

~row

[Dorganath]

I can back this up as well, based on witnessed RP with Jennara.

[jrizz]

Feedback received from Gulnyr fully supports this request. That with two GM witnesses is more then enough to approve this. So this is approved. Thank you for the clear and robust submission and the follow up on the needed support.

[Acacea]

Ear received, thanks milty. Moving this back where it goes to character approvals as it's an already approved character.