Oswald Turrill's page

Spitting image of his father,
His mother whispered to the night,
An observation his sire gave little bother,
As from her eyes’ soon fled the world’s light.

The first tragedy of poor Oswald,
A day old at his mother’s wake,
To lose her to the netherworld,
Her soul the Lady of Graves’ to take.

Under his father’s heavy hand,
Little Oswald worked to be fed,
Tending stones growing from the land,
A home shared with the newly dead.

The years flowed by as up Oswald grew,
From tender of graves to learned physician,
The joys of a wife and children he soon knew,
A life built and set on a course for demolition.

The second tragedy of Oswald Turrill,
The fever that no priest of Mitra could cure,
Took his son soon after the daughter grew still,
His wife was last leaving him alone premature.

Beset by grief and righteous anger at the gods,
Oswald’s brain broke under the strain of it all,
His mindscape and reality became at odds,
Until his family could have never heard death’s call.

A tender of graves once more was his fate,
So Oswald could dig them up from the cold ground,
To dress them and tend them and line them up straight,
Cavorting with dark powers and his soul to them bound.

The third tragedy of Oswald Turrill was the worst still,
His madness made manifest in profaning of the shrines,
The Shining Lord’s host called for Oswald’s blood to spill,
His remaining days to be in Branderscar Prison’s confines.

1) Oswald Turrill was once a doctor before his world came crashing down. Born the only son of a mortician in Ghastenhall, Oswald’s mother died shortly after giving birth to him from complications during the labor. He was raised by his cold and distant father where he had to earn his meals by tending the grass and tombstones of the Old Barcan Cemetery. A perfectionist, Oswald’s father pushed his son hard to succeed, going so far to direct him into medical school to continue the family profession in a way. A bright young man, Oswald excelled in learning the skills of a doctor and after a few years, he graduated with honors amongst his peers at the University of Fairchester.

2) Oswald met his wife, Penelope, by introduction through his best friend, Nicholas. Though it began as an awkward courtship, Oswald soon won the admiration of his fair Penelope and within the year, they had wed. Their first child, a son they called Tomas, was born 13 months later. A daughter followed soon after, a raven haired beauty named Rosaline. His practice running strong and a family blossoming like a flower in the sun, Oswald was content with life.

3) A few months after his son’s sixth birthday celebration, Rosaline came down with a fierce fever. It was like the very fires of Hell burned under her pale skin as her health rapidly deteriorated. Oswald tried every medicine and trick of his craft to cure little Rosa to no avail but when her condition worsened and the sickness spread to Tomas and Penelope in turn, Oswald turned to the Shining Lord to help his family. Never a deeply religious man, Oswald had rarely attended any ceremonies at Mitra’s holy temples, an absence that was not unnoticed by Mitra’s faithful. His plea for divine assistance to the priests of Mitra was slowly shifted up the ranks, almost torturously so, until it rested in the hands of Brother Adonius L’Trass. Unimpressed with the depths of Oswald’s piety, Adonius gave the sickness but the most cursory examinations and prayers to Mitra for an ounce of charity for those afflicted with such a ‘terrible’ ailment. When there was no change in the condition of Oswald’s wife and children, Adonius told him there was nothing more that could be done and it was in Mitra’s hands now. Three days later, Rosaline passed away in Oswald’s arms, her body racked by seizures at the end. That night, Tomas followed his sister into the afterlife. It was another two days before Penelope, her eyes glazed over and delirious with pain, finally took her last breath in this world. The three most precious things in his life now buried six feet beneath the cold ground was enough to break the last of poor Oswald’s mind. He descended into a deep madness. Reason for the Wisdom of 8.

4) Unable to continue in his practice as a doctor, Oswald reverted to something from his youth that his broken mind could comprehend, digging new graves and tending to the Old Barcan Cemetery once more. In his delusions, his family hadn’t truly died so when he dug up their bodies and secreted them back to a small house he now lived in, it wasn’t digging up the dead; Oswald was returning his family to their home from a long stay at a treatment facility to overcome their sickness. Oswald’s fractured mind dove deeper into his new reality, so far that his friends could not even pull him back to the real world. Soon he became known as the strange gravedigger whom talked to himself. Oswald began to go without bathing or trimming his hair to a point where the only people that dared approach him were those of an equally disreputable disposition. He made acquaintances with a few smugglers and petty thieves, who gave Oswald baubles and cheap, counterfeit jewelry for his wife and daughter in exchange for help storing or moving illegal objects through the cemetery. When a recent shipment of banned heretical books passed through his cemetery, three in particular drew Oswald’s attention. While his smuggler ‘friend’ was off securing a buyer for them, Oswald stole the three and took them back to his shack. As he read the strange words scribed in the books, they began to make more and more sense as he scanned their lines. They spoke of rituals were the spirits of those lost beyond the veil of death could be called back forth to once more walk the land of the living. Giddy with thoughts of giving more life to his oddly listless family, Oswald performed the dark rites from the books. The voices began to speak in his head, telling him of what must be done if he wished to have his wife, Penelope, his daughter, Rosaline, and his son, Tomas, once more walk beside him. The seductive promises they offered were more than what Oswald could stand. Trait: Unhinged Mentality

5) Under the guidance of the dark voices in his head, Oswald gathered disgusting ingredients for another vile ritual. In the dead of night, during the Witching hour, Oswald stole into a shrine of Mitra and defiled the entirety of it. When the priests came to tend the shrine the next day, they found arcane runes defacing all symbols of Mitra, the floor awash in fresh offal and animal blood, and the Mitra’s golden statue beheaded, its wayward head set atop of mound of crudely removed dog hearts before the feet of the statue. When the authorities hunted down Oswald at the small two room shack he lived just off the cemetery grounds, they discovered the man carrying on around the dinner table with the patched together corpses of his dead wife and children. Obviously, a madman guilty of the crimes he stood accused; Oswald was quickly shackled and escorted off to Branderscar Prison. Trait: Desecration

Two goals important to Oswald Turrill:

1) Oswald wishes to see his wife and children returned to some sibilance of life, be it as intelligent undead or truly raised from the dead as living beings once more.

2) Oswald wishes to see the Church of Mitra dismantled and the faithful of the hypocritical god driven into the cold seas surrounding Talingarde.

Two secrets about Oswald, one that he knows, and one that he is not yet aware:

1) Oswald’s powers are a gift from a malevolent group of dark spirits that call themselves the ‘Exanimus’. He made contact with them through forbidden rituals in banned books buried in the Talingarde cemetery and bound his soul to them in a profane pact that required the desecration of holy shrines to Mitra.

2) In actuality, the Exanimus are the disembodied souls of a group of powerful aboleth spellcasters that dueled with Aroden, during his mortal days, for control of the Starstone. They were close to ascending into godhood as horrible deities of madness and corruption before finally being bested by the Last Azlanti. Their physical bodies destroyed, the souls of the Exanimus were exiled into the depths of the Dark Tapestry by Aroden as one of his first acts as a god. Since the death of the god of humanity, the wards banning the Exanimus have decayed, allowing the spirits to return to Golarion. They have begun plots to regain their physical forms and more with Oswald being just another piece in the game they play against the successors of Aroden.

Four people that are tied to Oswald, three are friends and one is an enemy:

1) Reginald Turrill (58) – Oswald’s father and a mortician for the Old Barcan Cemetery in Ghastenhall. He owns and operates the Shining Memorial funeral home whose primary clientele are the lower classes or those otherwise unable to afford a Mitra-sanctified crypt. Reginald has a strained relationship with his son that traces its roots back to the fact that Reginald lays blame for his wife’s death in childbirth on his son’s shoulders. They rarely speak or see one another beyond a shared dinner once a month. Reginald is currently unaware of his son’s recent incarceration under charges of desecration.

2) Nicholas Bennett (32) – A friend and colleague to Oswald from his days as a doctor. Nicholas is a skilled surgeon in the non-magical circles of professional medicine. He and Oswald attended school together at the University of Fairchester and became fast friends from the very start. Nicholas was the one who first introduced Oswald to Penelope and stood as his best man during the wedding ceremony a year later. He was devastated for his friend when Penelope and their two little ones passed from the fever and since has attempted several times unsuccessfully to bring Oswald out of his delusional madness. He has heard of Oswald’s recent crimes and is as of yet unsure how to process the allegations against his old friend.

3) ‘Double Down’ Finn Ditcher (25) – A man of unscrupulous morals that is a member in good standing with the local thieves’ guild. A friend of Oswald when it is mutually beneficial, Finn makes use of several bolt holes and stashes around the cemetery that Oswald has shown him. In return, Finn supplies Oswald with various curios and information that the gravedigger might ask of him. Finn’s recent activity includes smuggling in a cache of banned books through an abandoned crypt, a few books of which have made their way into Oswald’s possession.

4) Brother Adonius L’Trass (48) – A senior priest of Mitra, arrogant and well connected, that was ‘unable’ to offer relief to the wife and children of Oswald Turrill when they were dying of a mysterious fever. Oswald blames Adonius personally for the death of his family and has been arrested several times for minor offenses against the priest such as flinging manure at his robes in the street, writing graphic slurs about Adonius on building walls, and other various misdemeanors. It was Adonius whom recognized Oswald’s handiwork in the desecration of a shrine sacred to Mitra and called for his arrest.

Three memories, mannerisms or quirks Oswald possesses:

1) Oswald keeps a small doll that was once his daughter’s on his person. As the doll has fallen into disrepair, Oswald has started to replace the fabric of the doll with slices of his daughter’s desiccated flesh and re-thatched its scalp with strands of hair from his daughter, son, and wife. He talks to the doll constantly as if it were alive.

2) Other than being caught in the occasional torrential downpour, Oswald hasn’t made a habit of tending to his personal grooming for well over two years. His hair is long and unkempt, his beard become an unruly cascade of tangled fibers, and the smell that wafts off his dirt-smeared flesh enough to curl the paint off the sides of buildings.

3) While he is as mad as a cuckoo, Oswald retains his sharp wit and intellect from better by-gone days.

The effects of multiple strikes from a Surgeons Scalpel on a single target do not stack.

CONSTRUCTION
Requirements Craft Magic Arms and Armor, disfiguring touch; Cost 375 gp