Background: Sage (Lorekeeper)
Personality Traits: I'm convinced others are trying to pry away my secrets. I can be uncaring and insensitive towards others at times.
Ideal: Nothing should fetter the power inherent in Nature.
Bond: I sold my soul for forbidden knowledge. I hope to do great deeds to win it back.
Flaw: Unlocking an ancient mystery is worth the price of civilization.
As the lorekeeper of his tribe, Roakkard was charged with keeping the scrolls of the deeds of the ancestors and preserving them from harm. While he did this willingly, he found himself tracing more than just the ancient tales of the ancestors, but much of the magic they faced as well. The runes on the scrolls told more than could be recalled by the oral traditions, and this is what captivated him the most, he began to search more diligently for the mysteries that haunted the Storval Plateau. Many of the elders suggested that Roakkard pursue his questions in a spirit quest, though to say there was resistance to that idea in the community would be an understatement. Too many had gone that way never to return, or to bring back more dangerous and destructive knowledge. With the incense given him by the elders, he went out on his own and began a spirit vision quest. It was during such a vision that the Voice spoke to him, promising him much in exchange for his soul's effort.
Roakkard is still uncertain what the Voice belongs to. It appears to him in visions as a fiery serpent or salamander sometimes with red-feathered wings blazing with golden flame. It claims to be an ancient spirit of the Shoanti tribes, and it is true that there are some ancient paintings that resemble the creature, but whether it is telling Roakkard the truth is another matter.
He returned a changed man, infused by the Voice that spoke in his head more often. At times, it seems as though he is more a person possessed by a spirit than in communication with one. He began to search elsewhere for tools of power, under the guidance of the Voice. It was on one such excursion into Korvosa for knowledge from the University or the Academae that he discovered the staff that seemed to glow with a red light of its own accord when caught in direct sunlight. When he grasped it, the red crystal at its focus twinkled at him.
It was during this same excursion that he found himself captured by Korvosan guards, as a suspect for murder. A Murder, he eventually discovered, he did not commit. The Voice had assured him of that from the beginning, but he had begun to suffer lapses in memory, and neither fully trusted the Voice nor his own reconnaissance. Although he was eventually cleared of the charges against him, his image in Society (both Korvosan and Shoanti) had been tarnished. He no longer was accepted by his tribe, until he had saved 7 lives to pay for the one he had "taken". Such was the way of the People.
Roakkard returned to the slums of Korvosa, eventually discovering who it was that had tarnished his reputation so foully. Gaedren Lamm. The Voice offered a solution, relatively simple, and while Roakkard sometimes questioned its moral decisions, he completely agreed with it this time: Kill Him.
Roakkard Red-Feather is a mostly secretive and quiet man, but he seems wise and knowledgeable of many things. He rarely travels with weapons, but instead carries a fragile staff of cherry wood, a gleaming red jewel at its head; red feathers and runes added to the staff as Roakkard's own memories of a life he cannot return to. He has dark eyes but has shaved his head from remorse, revealing the tattoos on his scalp. He wears a necklace of red feathers that match the ones on his staff.
