“The friar took Robin on his back”, Louis Rhead, Bold Robin Hood and His Outlaw Band: Their Famous Exploits in Sherwood Forest
The following is a character sketch for a D&D campaign in which I am playing a monk. The plan is to begin with Out of the Abyss. As of writing this, the only thing I know about the adventure is that I have somehow been captured by Drow, so getting up to that point was the goal of this write-up. I am going into this campaign knowing nothing about the other characters and having not played D&D in person around an actual table for quite some time. I am very excited to see what we discover and create together. As for this character’s backstory, I have some more fun ideas that I hope to explore in the game itself, and perhaps future posts.
Tuk is a monk who has broken his vow of silence, his vow of poverty, his vow of chastity (reportedly) and many others besides, but not his Vow of Truth. Ordinarily, the breaking of a vow would mark a monk like Tuk with a certain disgrace, but our monk’s monastic tradition is anything but ordinary. Owing to the peculiarity of his monastic order, if he is so marked it is only in his own private thoughts. Nonetheless, he has flown from the monastery, the one place he has known all his life. One might ask, is there an angry abbot or abbess giving chase? Were the shun and scorn of bitter peers too much for him to take? Did he flee the monastery to escape these things? No, he did not.
What kind of monk is Tuk? Why did he leave the monastery? Where is this monastery anyway? Perhaps these questions are better answered by the circumstances of his birth. Tuk was born, naturally enough, an only child to an adoring mother. Except for a small physical deformity[1] he was quite like any other human boy. This common combination of commoner traits — his humanness and boyness together — are precisely what made him singularly distinct from those people he would call his family. From birth, Tuk was blessed with a large, large family of adoptive grannies, grandpas, aunts, uncles, and sisters (as well as some third cousins twice removed on his father’s side). In his early life, due to circumstances not unrelated to certain changes in municipal policy, the family grew quickly and constantly. Many came to visit, and once sparse living quarters were soon bustling with liveliness. Of these many visitors, few ever left, and they by one door only.
Was Tuk a prince? Maybe. Was he an orphan? Hardly. What will become of him? We know not. What we can say for certain is this: He was charmed, blessed. He was loved. He enjoyed an upbringing that was not without its privileges. In a place of strict order, his mischief was often overlooked or even encouraged. In a place of scarcity, he had plenty. In a place of longing, he had a home. He was one set apart. What else would one expect for the sole natural-born citizen of the Baldurian Detention Center for Wayward Women and Little People?
Founded in recent years, the Baldurian Detention Center for Wayward Women and Little People represents one of many dark underpinnings of new leadership’s “clean streets” campaign. In a promise to restore the districts of Baldur’s Gate to its former glory, a coalition of mayors and magistrates have rounded up jobless women and halflings, some criminals, many not, orphaning their children and gutting their communities. Detention Centers such as this create reduced scarcity among the general populace by imposing scarcity upon detainees, not to mention cheap, forced labor at the cost of only the barest food and shelter. The program has been immensely well-received by the Baldurian middle and upper classes, who know only that the price of butter has never been better. Tuk’s mother is one of the first detained, and he was born soon after.
To call Tuk’s home a prison is more a matter of fact than description, which is to say that his upbringing in Cell Block B was really rather nice. As mentioned before, he had many aunties and nannies, each one more doting than the last. In the adjoining wing, he would come to learn a sort of wisdom that is known to few, and seldom shared so openly. Educational offerings certainly could have been worse. A smattering of lectures were available daily, representing each of the city’s major religious institutions. His hands found work in the kitchens, the cleaning closets, and even the occasional community service project.
Through endlessly repetitive work — sweeping, scrubbing, scraping, mopping, brushing, pushing, placing, throwing, bending, lugging, catching, straightening — he found great familiarity and comfort in everyday objects. From this familiarity grew a certain art, in which Tuk found a physical practice of his own. As a youngster, he could even hold his own in the occasional mess hall scrap. As the adoptive son of not only the inmates, but also the Warden and guards, Tuk enjoyed a certain amount of protection from violence. Nonetheless, he was not entirely immune.
Mealtimes were the great unifying events of each day, taking place in the courtyard adjoining Blocks A and B, known colloquially as The Cloister. Meals consisted primarily of hot porridge in the morning, and notably less-hot, chewier porridge in the late afternoon. The rare donation of potatoes or vegetables from a house of worship, or the addition of salt and spice on holidays, raised spirits to near mania. Were meat on offer, it was a truly momentous occasion bordering on holy.
Gatherings in the Cloister were often joyous times of song and dance, and a folk song or cutlery-juggling act was not entirely out of place. Sometimes a bawdy joke may even have sufficient lustiness to crack the stony facade of a guard or two. These were also crowded affairs in which simmering conflicts would now and then boil over into brawls. As for the lone youth sometimes caught in the conflagration, a ready hand with a mop, feet quick to scale chairs and tables, and a few acrobatic tricks on the quadrangle balcony were often enough to scare off would-be assailants.
In their own savory way, Tuk’s living conditions were near-idyllic, so why did he set off? To find others like him, perhaps. To know what lay beyond the the courtyard, on the other side of those cell walls. Maybe all that talk of being imprisoned finally convinced him. Why does anyone leave their home behind? This is a question we may explore in future installments.
Though we do not know the precise reason for his escape, we are more or less aware of the means. Annually, on the eve of Returning Day, the Warden arranges for the release of a handful of prisoners. Under din of festival chants and glimmer of fireworks from the city ahead, the small contingent of freed people board a cart that takes the long road away from the outer prison walls. One night, Tuk conspires to join them, hiding away in the wagon and making his escape before the Warden grows wise. Imagine our sheltered young monk’s surprise when he discovers that this cart and its passengers have been purchased by slavers, and at bargain rates no less!
Far from his home, shuffled from one oppressive hand to the next, Tuk turns inward. He learns the practice of meditation, turning over thoughts, feeling their weight, pushing and pulling them like a broom, balancing them like a stack of bowls, dangling from them like the Cloister balcony. By appearances, he is a lowly man of the cloth. By behavior, a seeker of the way. By speech, one who favors truth. You may call him a friar. You may call him a fool. But of his fraternity you may say only this: There is but one.
The perceptive may notice his left hand bears a sixth finger[2], much like a duplicate ring finger. That is, he has a second fourth finger, that being the sixth, so designated for its out-of-placeness, though he has at times wondered whether the first fourth finger is actually the sixth, a thought that distracts him more often than he would care to admit. ↩︎
Which I suppose makes this footnote more of a handnote. ↩︎
Only children had a sister named the internet. We were conceived in the same apartment complex, delivered in the same hospital. Our first words were, “You’ve got mail.”
We remember her, we reams of dot matrix paper and landline telephones and magazines about solar cars.
We had Pokémon cards, and we weren’t allowed to play Magic or Dungeons and Dragons, but we did it anyway.
Listening to a Weird Al mixtape, burned on a CD downloaded from Napster in between Dexters on Cartoon Network.
Hooked on phonics in love with electronics: Gameboy printer, Minesweeper, Dad’s belt holder for a beeper, little button on the intercom speaker.
Gliding through Windows on skis, Summer chihuahuas freeze, no yetis Mouthful of veggie spaghetti When “veggie” just meant there were vegetables in it.
Board games uncovered like ancient relics A VHS of Thriller with werewolf prosthetics Roller blading the unfinished basement Opening cases of dried-up art supplies
Long fingers, long hands, stretching causality come too late, gone too soon, giving the unknown breath, and space, softening skillfully the… what? Sleeping, none the lesser, setting ships aright, sails billowing, flight. Redeem, redeem, and I cannot attend.
Whither went the Kingdom of whom Mesceret was a-fear’d? Whenever and wherever the ganging-way had clear’d Across the stony morning and awakened sundered sky For earth’s blows a-horning and raising of her eye.
Make not the bless’d gateway arise beneath her call, but send forth her children scorn’d, forever and for all. My dear, my darling Lethirwasse, of this you only know why the summer creeping or the tawny flies must go in fleeing and in flight before the foxes yonder bray before the mark of Hardholde and ‘neath the light of day.
My bonnie, o my bonnie, in binding don’t delay. Don’t delay my bonnie, for mercy’s hand please stay.
The following is an excerpt of a journal recovered from the deceased body of one of our novice Enphelomancers. He was found near the edge of an ancient burial site, face down in a shallow pool of water, seemingly drowned, though the cause of death remains unknown.
The problem with thinking symbolically is the ever-present underlying reminder of this vast and overwhelming knowledge that dwarfs the intellect. This superstructure somehow gives way to an assumption that revelations of the symbolic kind are meant to be kept quiet so as for one, not to ruin them, and for two, not to humiliate oneself by exposing the infinite extent of one’s own ignorance. The thought is that this observation now occurring to me and that I find so profound is in fact so obvious that everyone else already knows it and has already known it for as long as they’ve been conscious. If I were to spell it out in explicit terms, so doing would not only be an attempt to carve the divine with the implements of vulgarity, but also to signal that I am just now realizing this terribly obvious and elementary thing.
This is an inevitable property of the symbol. On one hand, it is the most stimulating and edifying object of intellect, deeply bound up in reality and suprareality. It exists in the overreach of consciousness and is dredged up only through experience, pure intent, and divine luck. On the other, it is such a simple thing, so deeply and intuitively known, that even a child understands it plainly, easily, and without being taught. To enter the world of symbols is to put on a serious face, don a deep-sea diving suit, attune to sophisticated equipment and apparati for this most dangerous endeavor, and then to jump into the kiddie pool amongst the floaties and colorful innertubes and lost bandages. What’s more, it’s to somehow discover, just under the surface, the vast treasures of the deep, to have the suit and apparati ripped away in a torrent, and to come up, gasping for air, clutching at your prize, face all the sterner.
And when you open your hand, what do you see? A clump of sand and broken shells? A mere memory? To show these to any self-respecting deep sea diver is at best to receive an acknowledgment that there may be some small, quantifiable benefit to the sample you’ve collected. But perhaps, to the toddler with snorkel-bound face and waist squeezed into a purple flamingo innertube, you open your hand to reveal sand and broken shells, and the eyes widen beneath the goggles, the ears pull back. The mouthpiece is bitten in a smile, radiating joy, perfect joy.
Robert, Hubert. The Finding of the Laocoön, 1773, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond.
The feel as pick first splits earth. It is in the hands, rough and thick with a hundred-thousand such strikes, each one a first, fresh and new as felt in the hands that are smooth and unworked. It is in the handle, worn, wet, and splintering, in its roughness nearer the bark of its birth, as in the lithe wood, wick and bright, of the newly hewn timber, lathed and carved, set to solid ends. It is in the axe-head, stolid and doughty iron in aged service, striking its chime in stoic praise of labor and sweat, as it is in coveted blazes of bright-metal inlays, glowing in ancient glyphs of kings and honor, of wonders and depths unseen. It is in the stone, stubborn and unyielding, as in clean sheers of slate, snapping as easily as bid. It is in the breath, ragged and course, fast and hot, of steamy must and papery ores. It is in the sweat, on the temples, lining the brow, beading the jaw and back. It is in the depths as it is in the sun. It is true, and there is not a lie in it.
Virtue is effort: Labor, time, and toil. Its products are material, visible, obvious, and tangible. The great dishonor is theft thereof. To steal a work, to steal a time, to name what is not mine. Designs are a good of their own kind, but they cannot be held. They cannot be called pure, but what is pure is proven in the making. There is no test too exacting, no trial too hard, and none so great as time. In testing is the proving.
If you are working the earth and you see a creature, you will not strike it with your axe. You will not cease your work to pick it up with your hand. If you are working the earth and you find that in your work you have struck a creature, you have done no wrong. If the creature seeks to harm you, you will kill it. If its blood feeds the earth, leave it be, and do not work that earth until it is dry. If there is no blood, and the creature is in the way of work and may be moved, remove it to the soft earth, that it may be honored.
In the Hall of Ages are inscribed the chiefs and kings as thus: THIRD KING ARDNYR, Low King of Underhome of the Dwarves in MEZKLDYR, from quarter-breadth to full-breadth. Ten Sons. Husband of one wife.
Great blocks shall be hewn and stone set upon stone, upholding a basin, submerged in earth over The Great City. The basin will draw waters from the earth, and it will be of finished stone, thick as a city gate, that its size and volume of water remain constant. Beneath the basin are channels, each to be opened in their time, and beneath the channels are set the seed of minerals, equal in size and weight but the last, reserved for the Long Age. In its time, one after another, each channel is to be opened, not before the last is finished, to let flow a uniform drip of water from the basin. This drip will grow the seed, and the growth of the seed will be used to measure the passing of time. One after another, a seed will be watered, and the next seed will not be watered until the first is finished. A seed shall grow until it forms a column, uniform and whole, and this column marks the age of the city and the era of its people.
Heft and hew Work makes new Broken and forged Stone — reborn
From the rock Build a home Cleanse with sweat Brow to bone
Ours do thrive in mountainside under vale whole and hale
Works make rest for beating breast the unseen height is our might!
Helt dug. He dug, bore and broke. Grip unwavering, forearms tensed to iron coils, he smote earth and shattered rock in a rhythm unceasing. A stonebreaker, his work was of no glory to himself but of great honor to the Hearth. He worked, tunneling far, a Dwarf of experience and years, one trusted to survey far from home, to dig on the frontier guided only by his hands, his will, and the will of earth — her hard limbs of stone, her veins of coveted metals, her organs of dirt, mud, and air. His was a work of discovery and survival. His was a work of loneliness and fortitude. Forsaking homely comforts, he dug. Forsaking mountain years of friendship, he dug. Forsaking all but duty, he dug.
Helt peeled the thick metal clasp that attached his lamp to his belt. He did so reaching behind him, eyes still fixed forward, his hands knowing the way from thousands of such movements. A deep, chunky ka-chung accompanied the clasp as he released it and it sprang closed once more. The lamp was heavy. Durability was prized in an expedition of this kind. A doughty dwarf the likes of Helt could carry his gear any distance, but he was loathe to suffer a failing implement. Materials and tools of the kind needed to repair a metalwork were scarce out here in the far tunnels, though any reasonable workman is resourceful enough in a pinch.
“Oil.” He muttered the word under his breath, a habit that was in part a best practice: Name the material as it is used, and never a two are confused. It is a child’s rhyme, the sort that never quite leaves once it is set up in the heart. In other part, the habit may not need be taught or rhymed at all, for a dwarf loves the making. The building, mending, yea — the breaking to make anew. So it is that were there no law, no code, no saying or norm, there might arise from the excitement of his heart and the longing of his throat the name of the thing beheld, and so a dwarf might do just that, say “oil” when it is oil in the flask, “ore” when ore he breaks, and “hammer” when that he clasps to do the breaking. Perhaps, then, the practice is born of this spirit ere any other purpose.
The flask, double-stoppered and bolted tightly to a modular nozzle, was near-hexagonal in shape, with several extra faces along the bottom, sprawling in some order known to its bearer. With knowledge and practice, the rate of flow could be known precisely by the particular face being orthogonal to the pull of gravity, a direction which was indicated by a set of upward-striving air-bubbles in channels inset the dwarf’s work gloves. The gloves themselves were a motley of cloth, metal, and leather, striking a balance of purpose somewhere between run-of-the-mill work, high temperature protection, and warfaring armor.
The dwarf made no use of faces or air bubbles, tilting the flask, nozzle embedded snugly within the lantern’s base. He held both, flask and lantern, steadily in front of his chest, unmoving, taking sharp draws of breath through his nose. His racing heart stoically declined to a relaxed rhythm, each systole like the beat of a large bead of water, clinging lazily to a leaf long after rainfall. The dwarf knew little of rain and less of leaves. As he pulled the nozzle from the full reservoir, it extended to a locked position. Not a drop fell astray.
