Tidbits

Hey all--
I haven't done as much with this blog as I'd like to. I'll try to get it a bit more updated. Ideally it can be a place where we can share stuff to flesh out our world when we're not together as a group. One thing that is usually fun to do is to write up your character's backstory and post it up for everyone to read. I know TJ is hard at work on his. For a bit of information, I thought I would link the profiles of a few famous characters within the world. I've done quite a bit of writing and it's fun to share a bit.  I intended that these characters would be famous figures in the world, and your characters will definitely have heard of them (they are also fully fleshed out npcs that we actually playtested--it could be a fun option for a side mission sometime if you want to play them). Anyway, enjoy--and if you're inspired--great! (By the way, there are a few links interspersed in the text--they shouldn't work for you.  I've got to keep some secrets!)

Murran Murtogh

Murran Murtogh is the daughter of the famed Dwarven craftsman Finn Murtogh of the Dunward Clan, who make their home in the southern Stormcloud Peaks mountain range. Though gunsmithing has been a closely held dwarven secret since the late Temian age, it was her father who has developed the practice into an art form. While most extant guns make use of the basic arquebus design, Murtogh muskets are elegant in design and function, able to be quickly loaded and easily fired. They are also  much more powerful, being able to pierce armor thinner than heavy. 
As Finn's daughter, Murran has grown up using these guns and has become a master-- perhaps the best gunslinger in the world. 

When she was just barely an adult, a horde of demons from the Desolation was descending on the Dunward homeland. The dwarven army stood against them, though it was Murran and her father who were the true heroes. With Finn loading and Murran firing, it is said she killed more than 100. 

Following this event, Murran became famous throughout the dwarven world. She became a lawkeeper and guardian of her people's lands. Most recently, Murran traveled to the Sovhi Desert tracking a thief who had stolen some of her father's schematics. She had to kill him in the end, but she recovered the schematics and protected the family secret. 

Being so far from home, she has decided to extend the journey to learn more about the world, intending to travel all the way around the Desolation, seeing the Trineveld and Panteau, before returning home. 

What she did not expect was how difficult coming upon supplies would be. Food and drink were no problem of course, but gunslinging was expensive, as she would have to take care of any resupplying herself. She had taken for granted that incredibly rare materials were, for her father, easily come by. Now she is broke and needs important supplies. 

Grendowe Nikaula

Grendowe had lived a privileged life in Temia. Not only was he a respected researcher in his own right, but because of the technological breakthroughs of his brother, Tezlowe, his family became wealthy and honored above all other gnomes in the empire. Far from being a practical engineer, Grendowe left the hardware to his brother while seeking answers to the nature of godstone in theoretical metaphysics. 

The great irony of his life-- so he likes to tell himself-- is that he was the loudest voice warning against the direct use of magic on the godstones. But of course, his brother refuted him and the emperor disregarded him-- which of course lead to the destruction of civilization as they had known it. 

And thus it was that Grendowe, once one of the greatest gnomes in the world, became a slave to the Pantovians, forced to lay aside his research to advance the technology of the dominant power in the post-cataclysmic world. With his wife and daughter held somewhere in the kingdom, he was forced to work night and day, only seeing them once a year--a means of incentive. 

That was, until the Vanir explorer, Faryk the Bold, rescued them all. Sending the wife and daughter with his crew back to the Vanirlands and safety, Faryk exacted a promise of an airship in return for this rescue. That promise, Grendowe will keep. 

Anders Tesscobble

Born in Hopesdale, from a young age, Anders had a knack for people, for reading their expectations, desires, biases, and for giving them what they want. Described as "a delight" by everyone in the village, he grew in his abilities to please others, juggling, tumbling, playing music, telling stories and jokes--anything to bring a laugh or a tear to the eye.

Upon reaching adulthood, he moved to the big city to seek his fortune. New Temia had grown exponentially in the decades since the cataclysm, and was now a sprawling metropolis filled with magic and a truly diverse population. Quickly gaining prestige within the tavern circuit, he was invited to join the theater. Within the year he became a household name, renowned for his acting, music, and stories, beloved of both the commoners and the nobles.

Though he loved the famed--and even more the smiles he could invoke--Anders never felt more relaxed than sitting quietly alone, deep in some musty library, nose jammed in a book. It was in the libraries of New Temia that he read of the great bards of old, chiefly Dustin the Dashing, savior of the realm, paramour of the Empress, with a voice to charm even the elder dragons. Anders had long felt a magic inherent in the beauty of artistic expression, but never had he dreamed there might be power held within it.  Through his connections throughout the city, he sought out those who could help him learn--and learn fast he did.

Just as Hopesdale had been too small for Anders the Entertainer, so too had New Temia become for Anders the Bard. So it was that he set out to see with his own eyes all there is to know in the world, and to then share it with all who would listen.

Faryk the Bold

Well-known throughout Vanirland, Faryk first made a name for himself as a warrior, killing the chief of a rival clan at just 13 years of age. His fame grew as an explorer, sailing his ship around Lost Lemuria, and then south all the way to New Temia. The dragontooth was destroyed by a Kraken shortly after, but undaunted, Faryk purchased a southern ship, crewed it with cutthroats and pirates from around the world, and sailed it west, then north, and all the way back his homeland, becoming the first known Vanirman to sail the breadth of the continent.

Quick to laugh, quick to fight, quick to flirt, Faryk lives life to the fullest, never wanting to lose a moment. But more than any of this, the spirit of adventure dominates his soul. His desire is to discover every unknown land and unravel its secrets.

Most recently, Faryk discovered the dirigibles of Pantu and has become obsessed with harnessing this technology for himself. However, the Pantu jealously guard both their technological secrets and their limited amount of godstone.

Solomon Dhee

Born to a young farmgirl on the borderlands of the Desolation, Solomon knew from an early age that he was different, but no one would tell him why. Raised as a human, it wasn’t until he reached puberty that he first became subject to his blood fever, and thus came to know of his cursed heritage.

One day on his grandfather's farm, a farmhand severed his arm in the sawmill. At the sight of the arterial blood spurting from the wound, Solomon was overcome with a rush to the head, a heat, a lust—the next thing he knew, he was being grappled from behind by two or three men, while his victim screamed, desperately trying to pull his injured arm away from the youth.

Living at edge of the wastelands, the oppressive loom of danger had always pervaded the farmlands—but it was never discussed, except in whispers. Particularly in the home of Rhemus Dhee, Solomon’s pious grandfather, any mention of the evil residing in the wastelands was greeting with a glower and a stern, barking “silence!” Solomon’s mother, Wynona, was always affectionate, but was sullen and distant, and rarely spoke.

Solomon’s first ‘blooding’ changed all of this. The boy was dragged to the main hall and sat down on a lonely stool placed by itself in the center of the large room. His grandfather entered, paced around him three full times before finally stopping directly in front of him. He looked down on the boy, his brow furrowed, jaw clenched, nostrils flared. Solomon waited, feeling abashed, not understanding what he had done, or why, dreading the heavy-handed punishment he knew would come from his strict grandfather. Finally, with a deep sigh, Rhemus broke the silence:

“We always worried this day might come. We prayed, and we hoped. We tried to believe the son of our beloved daughter would be fine. But here you are, and it seems our fears are true: you take after your father. You will have to leave Solomon. We love you. But you are evil—and dangerous. You may say your goodbyes. You leave in the morning.”

That night, Solomon's mother killed herself.  When she was just a girl, a mere three years after the cataclysm, she had been seduced and raped by the vampire Semael. Solomon was the result. Believing her son to be a vampire, she lost the little reason she had left to live. At that time, Dhampir were entirely unknown, and most were seen as vampires and shunned. 

With nowhere to go, Solomon traveled west through the Borderlands, eventually running afoul of blood slavers. Captured and chained to two other victims, he was being herded deeper into the Desolation when Sir Galladar and his paladins charged from ambush, striking down the slavers and freeing the prisoners. 

From that day, Solomon pledged his life to the destruction of both vampires, and the kingdom they created in the Desolation. Becoming a paladin of Trithereon, he first trained under Sir Galladar, and then set out into the wastes of the Desolation to bring retribution on the undead scourge. 

Tezlowe Nikaula 

Tezlowe Nikaula is perhaps the greatest engineer Sensun has ever known. Not only was he instrumental in the development of steam engines, but it was he who first cracked the secret of godstone and learned to harness the power they contain.

Though he is the most famous gnome in the world, he is often accused of being a cat, down to his 9th life. Having burned, cut, exploded, and gassed himself at various points in the name of his research, on the day of the Cataclysm, Tezlowe was meant to be with the emperor at the sight of the Heart of the World. Fortunately for him and the world, he had been obsessively working on the designs for the steam locomotive and completely forgot.
So it was that he found himself in Panteau, alive, but as an 'honored guest' in the years following the disaster. At first, the details of his predicament eluded him: the only thing that mattered was his work, and to that end, the king was more than happy to provide him anything he needed in his research. That is until they began to take his plans from him and capitalize off of his discoveries.

For twenty years he lived this way until one day he realized the plight of his people: the lives of human Pantovians had benefited greatly from his work, while the gnomes became glorified slaves. He began plotting not only his escape, but the salvation of his people. Secretly equipping one of the prototype dirigibles with technology he had managed to keep secret, he loaded with as many gnomes and sympathetic humans as it could hold, and they sailed away from the city, blowing up his workshop and destroying decades of advancement in the process.

Tezlowe and his crew flew west, across the Gendraphi Mountains and into plains region known as 'the Vaek,' the home of orcs, hobgoblins, and all other manner of uncivilized races. Paying no mind, Tezlowe settled into a secret vale in the foothills surrounding Mt. Ren'Tavaro. There, the founded a new city, Vista, which in the decades that followed, has, by all accounts, become a technological wonder that far eclipses Panteau.