The Omnivorous Geek

We're starting a new campaign tonight. Here's my new character's (somewhat skeletal) backstory. I dunno why I decided to go crackish this time, but there it is. I'm looking forward to playing a bard again.

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Valenya Cherbatasky was born in a small village near the border of Novagast and Earnan. Her father was a human, Ivan the woodcutter, and her mother was an elf, Marisuva, who dressed the hair of various important ladies in their village and the surrounding area. On big feast days she also curled the hair of the mayor's prized dogs.

Valenya's father was known for being just a little unbalanced. Because he spent of a lot of time in the forest, he seemed to have accidentally wandered into the Feywild one too many times. He had a strange fondness for the color pink and often declared that someone's face was "sparkly" and they should back off or he would hit them in the forehead with his axe.

Valenya also had three older brothers, Vanya, Vi-Chan, and Chad. When each lad turned twenty-one, they were sent off on a quest to make their way in the world, because Ivan insisted on it. Each one was given only a piece of bread, a hunk of cheese, and a hand-carved comb from their mother. This was meant to be character-building, and it mostly worked. Chad married a princess and Vi-Chan ended up a prosperous merchant in a wealthy city. Vanya, unfortunately, was eaten by a porpoise before he got very far in his journey.

Being always surrounded by such strange folk, and constantly fed fairy-tales and sad stories by her various relations (grandmas, grandpas, aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces and nephews not-yet-born), Valenya grew up with a great love for the odd, the misfit, the forgotten. Even as a wee tiny girl, she was bold and outgoing, reaching up to tug on the tunic of a passing villager and motioning them to bend down so she could talk to them.

"Come, listen now," she would say. "I tell you a story. It make you sad, but when it finish, you vill be stronger."

Hilariously enough, she was always right. The villager would go on his or her way feeling much better and happier about their life, even though Valenya's tragic tales usually had them breaking down into tears before she was ten minutes in. (And mind you, these tales often lasted an hour or more. They are tales of Novagast, after all, and we all know how that goes.)

By the time Valenya was twenty-one, her parents had recognized that she was destined be a great bard. And so she set out into the world with her piece of bread, hunk of cheese, and hand-carved comb, a sad story on her lips and magic in her heart.

Pretty soon she figured out that she should also get a sword and some armor. I never said Valenya was stupid.

And thus her tale begins.

It's time for more D&D! This is the first chapter of Tikaani's back story, my new character in Josh Hornbarger's campaign. More stories will come--since we started at level four this time, my paladin has had some time to do some stuff. But this is the beginning.

For my Christian friends who read this blog, I'm sorry that this is so utterly pagan. But that's just the way the D&D world works--it has a pantheon and everything, and several classes are tied to the deity the characters choose. If it makes you feel any better, I thought about Moses and the burning bush when I was writing this. It's the same sort of story, really. I know that God is in me, even if He's not in this particular bit of writing. Not by the right name, anyway.

( The Call of the Wolf )

Two entries in a day! Pure craziness, eh? Well, this is for Jill, but other people can read it too, I guess.

1200 words! Didn't quite expect that. I meant to just sort of sum things up, but once I get started writing, stuff just occurs to me, like rare fish and red dye. And Viara's first use of spontaneous magic. And what kind of childhood she had to have to become who she is today. All very important character bits, and I'm glad I wrote them.

(Scia is pronounced See-uh. Everything else is pretty much how it looks.)

The end, of course, leads up to our first RPG session, so it's a bit abrupt.

( Viara Clovenoak )