Rain Scrimshaw's page

The Scrimshaws raised a veritable brood; Seven children raised by Luba Scrimshaw whilst their father, Aman, sweated in his smithy to feed the family and keep each and every wolf from the door. Then, one fine summer morning, a tiger strolled across the threshold.

Abendigo Meer had been raised a mean, low-down son-of-a-b%@&# in a family of frauds, chancers and cut-throats but he put them all in the shade. In one season of madness and death Abendigo killed 24 people; men, women, young, old, elf, dwarf and human, mostly human. Edgy, tense and cold from too much {crystal meth} and drifting across the countryside away from his earlier crimes Abendigo had pitched up in the small village of (?????) late at night and curled up in the forge; shivering out his cold junkie sweats and fevered sleep next to the hot coals. Early in the morning he sucked on his last pipe of {meth} and strode proprietorially into the Scrimshaw home, looking for {meth}, money to buy {meth} and food. He found poor people with little and at some point he started killing; first the parents and then the young ones, he killed them cold, mutilated the
corpses and fed on their flesh (after this point some started saying their was a little demon blood in Abendigo Meer, maybe more than a little...) All except for one child, the youngest; Buchephalas.

No-one knows for sure why Abendigo took the boy, kicking and crying, tucked under one arm, and nobody stopped to ask. An elven ranger passed through the village just a few hours later and hunted down the killer; a posse of villagers hot on his heels. That ranger put three arrows through Abendigo before he even knew what was going on and nobody could say for sure whether the first, second or third actually killed the man. The posse hanged Abendigo's corpse from the nearest tree, just for good measure, the Ranger moved on, and the villagers buried the Scrimshaw family. All the while carefully avoiding the boy who hadn't had the dignity to die with his kin and now sat sad, perplexed and real whilst his family swiftly devolved into glorious, mawkish examples of simple nobility; stripped of the messy humanity that plagues us all in life.

Buchephalas was soon put up for orphaning; advertised as a quick, bright boy who learns fast and causes no trouble. Few locals were interested, the contamination of Abendigo's crimes hung around the child, and the boy was nearly passed off to a weird looking dunikin-diver from the next village when fate finally handed the boy an even-break.

Shan-Lou was the first Head of Twelve Dragon Monastery to rise to that position from the position of Ki Trainer. Calm and focused as any monk, Shan-Lou had a broader outlook than most and it was he who invited ninjas to teach at the school; without him the Path of the Ghost Dragon would never have been born. Two ninjas from a broken, defeated clan had come to Twelve Dragon Monastery seeking a temporary refuge, but as they shared their explorations of focused Ki energy with the more inquisitive monks and proved their decent character Shan-Lou increasingly appreciated the potential of Bai-Mo and Sway, eventually recruiting them to teach a small number of pupils. First helping with Ki focus, but later expanding to house a small ninja school within the monastery; the ninjas filling roles that the more direct monks could not but with a complimentary appreciation of Ki, light movement, and precise training.

Recruitment, however, was always a problem. Parents brought their children to the monastery to become monks, strong, vigorous lads with Ki potential were identified by village elders who had learnt the signs by rote from the elders before them. Nobody wanted a ninja child. But Twelve Dragon Monastery had a history of taking in waifs and strays, of disciplining street urchins and giving orphans a new life. When Shan-Lou saw of Buchephalas he recognised the boy's strange potential, his latent divine gifts that were just beginning to manifest, and took the boy to the monastery. After identifying his potential the child joined the fourth group of ninjas trained under the Path of the Ghost Dragon; he was four years old.

Buchephalas' weaknesses; his youth, his inability to act, his defeat, his failure, his family's death, were left beyond the monastery's doors and as Buchephalas was put to one side a new man stepped forth in the same body; Rain.

Rain learnt fast, quick-limbed and swift thinking, but without the sinewy strength of his monk friends, he enjoyed monastery life and progressed well as a Ghost Dragon. But voices in the monastery ever rumbled against the ninja; outsiders without discipline, and without a place in the monastery's tradition. Even Shan-lou was unsure whether his experiment would succeed and when he died, aged 112, internal machinations soon drove Bai-Mo and Sway from the school and then the monastery. They took the older student ninjas, those ready for the road, and headed west. Rain was the oldest they left behind. First the monks tried to coax Rain's skills toward the monk's path, then they pushed, then they forced - it never worked. Rain grew frustrated and angry, acting out as he was increasingly singled out, his strange eyes and nails accentuating his otherness, and eventually he ran away - slinking through the shadows and two days distant before they even realised he was gone; ninja style, a true Ghost Dragon.

Like a thousand lost souls before him Rain pitched up in Ptolus; 15 years old but hard from too many knocks and determined to live a new life in Ptolus as a man. He avoided the workhouse and the cotton mill, landing a job as a brewers mate. With a quick eye for bad mash and good judge of balance, quantity and flavour; a simple, not-unpleasant future rolled out before him in which his clothes would always smell slightly of hops and barley mash.

Yet Rain had not entirely embraced this life - he lived in Narred with the centaurs and other hardy fey folk and every day he went through his training routines, every morning began with meditation and breathing exercises, every night ended with a quiet slink across the city. He loved to sit quiet in the dark places, watching the night unfold; he had found a better drug than Abendigo.

Rain has a few friends, his brewery colleagues rub along with him well enough; he plays chess with Caswen, the centaur baker in the flat downstairs; and he has developed a love for centaur music - the winding notes and weird chanting always intriguing and satisfying - through which he has a troupe of like-minded folk who sit together as the elf, gnome, dwarf and human minority when centaur performers play, always to their own kind.

Rain has a dislike of faff. He likes good food but he'd rather eat a simple, well-reared, well-cooked steak in a bring-your-own-booze place than be waited on, use silver cutlery and have elaborate sauces (he thinks that anyway, he's obviously never tried the grand meal). He'd rather see a bard in the back room of a pub than at the opera house, chooses beer over wine, and rum over both, and wants a nice house in Narred with a good local girl who'll feed him stew and let him get happy and fat; he's not dreaming of a princess as so many adventurers might. He's a member of the church of St.?????, part of the church of Lothian that celebrates freedom and hope and a certain carpe diem quality. The saint's final words before he was martyred were "You cannot lock me up; I am eternally free!" and Rain has 'Eternally Free' tattooed across his back in gothic letters - it looks like a gang tattoo from far off, as does his his ghost dragon tattoo; the faint silvery-grey dragons crawling up each bicep to his shoulders.

So why turn to delving and adventure? Well... They've been talking about laying people off at the brewery and he doesn't know how far the rumours go but his job doesn't feel too secure - and - a few weeks ago as he slunk through the city night he saved a young couple from being mugged and the elation and adrenaline shot through him like a bolt - and – he keeps on seeing all these out-of-towners swanking around with shiny armour, plenty of coin, and no smarts and thinking "I could do that" - and - he looks at Gravelle, his boss, and sees that the position he might aspire to is hard work, long hours and not so brilliant pay; all of which is rather unforgiving to a man as he grows old - and - he's got a sensitive nose after his experiences; he can feel the wind shift and thinks that maybe now might be the time to have ready cash, magic items and some strong-armed friends, rather than a steady living and no way to keep himself and his friends safe...