Ferrin Venax's page

Nearly a century ago, Ferrin Venax was born in Ghastenhall, into a family of craftsmen renowned for the quality and reliability of the clocks they made. While the Venax family certainly valued the beauty of what they created, they placed far greater significance on what the clocks stood for: order, precision, predictability and, of course, punctuality. They expected things to happen on a schedule, and at their proper time, and by the age of 15 or so, it was clear that Ferrin was not following a normal schedule. He had always been a bit…different, as a boy. He struggled to fit in to the ordered structure of his household and society at large, leaving his parents to hope he would outgrow his social awkwardness, even surliness at times. But a greater trouble arose - as his classmates and siblings grew and came to be young men and women, Ferrin seemed to be lagging behind, as if under some spell, or as if he were one of the longer-lived races, an elf or some such.

His family, being devout worshippers of Mitra as well as believers in the proper, natural order of things, were quite distressed by this. They took the boy to priests and wizards, hoping to understand their son’s ‘condition’, and ‘cure’ him. It soon became clear that the boy was not under a curse or a spell, but no one could provide an answer to why he did not appear to be growing and aging like a normal child. One day, however, a senior priest of Mitra came to visit the Venax household and speak to Ferrin’s parents. Ferrin had always been a curious, even sneaky, child, and knew where he could hide undetected and hear everything said in his father’s sitting room. He felt the priest had almost certainly come to discuss Ferrin’s ‘condition’ and made sure to eavesdrop, and what he heard changed his life.

The Mitran priest said that he and other learned priests had discussed Ferrin at great length, and had come to the unfortunate conclusion that he was some sort of devil-spawn. The priest had come to collect the boy, and bring him to the temple for study and perhaps exorcism, or worse, if that failed. Ferrin heard only the very first words of his father’s protests, for he knew the Mitrans would have their way in the end. The boy fled his home that moment, and fled the city by nightfall.

Since then, Ferrin has wandered from city to city in Talingarde. He stays for ten years or so in each place, finding work as a valued assistant in the best clockworks in each city, for he learned a great deal in his own family’s workshops before leaving home, and he has a natural mechanical talent that extends beyond the inner workings of clocks. After a decade in one place, though, it begins to become clear to those around him that he is not aging, and questions begin to arise. Ferrin learned painfully that he needs to leave where he is before that time – after 12 years in Daveryn, where he felt relatively comfortable and settled, he had to kill a man to protect his secret. Soon after that, he began to develop strange powers, including the ability to see in the dark and transform himself into other creatures, which have helped him keep his true nature a secret and move on. He knew from this that the Mitran priest was right, and that he was the spawn of some hell. In response, Ferrin turned to the secret worship of the Lord of Hell, and felt his powers grow still greater. With no church of Asmodeus he can visit, his worship is a lonely one, but one he feels all the more strongly as a result, and that sustains him in his wanderings. He has found that he can return to a city after he has not been there for 20 or 30 years without stirring up questions, but he has no idea how long he might live, and wonders how long this 80-year-old game of hide-and-seek will go on.

Unfortunately, the question of how long he will live has been taken out of his hands. After a few years in Matharyn, where Ferrin was working in a venerable clocksmith’s shop where he had once been employed nearly forty years earlier, disaster struck. The elderly patriarch of the family, who had been Ferrin’s employer long ago and who scarcely ever came to the shop any more, saw Ferrin and recognized him. The old man’s puzzlement about Ferrin’s age could have been explained away as senility, but he called in two younger relatives, who had known Ferrin when they were children and had not recognized him. All agreed this was the man they once knew, untouched by age. They peppered him with questions, and Ferrin grew evasive and gruff with them. They refused to let him leave the store and, though Ferrin is a big man, managed to tackle him while the old man called for the guard. Desperate not to reveal his strange powers, Ferrin drew a knife from the belt of one of his assailants and killed him, and then his younger cousin. He then made to flee out the front door, but in the wealthier districts of Matharyn, the watch is never far away. Ferrin ran out the door, battered from the fight, a bloody dagger in his hand and two bodies in the workshop behind him, with no explanation for his actions. A pair of guardsmen clubbed him into unconsciousness immediately, and he woke up in a cell in Branderscar Prison.

Ferrin looks human enough to a casual observer. His pale skin, shoulder-length black hair, and blue-green eyes are an unusual combination, but not unearthly. He is tall and broad-shouldered, yet slender – but not so slender as to appear alien. But looking closely, one begins to note differences about him. He has very large hands, marred in places by odd, bony protrusions. He often wears gloves to cover them, but this is impractical when he’s working on clocks or other delicate work. Ferrin has similar bony bumps on his feet and lower legs, usually hidden by a pair of stout boots. Surprisingly, his large hands are very skilled at fine work, and often appear to move of their own accord, the fingertips rolling across each other as if adjusting a minute screw or coiling a tiny spring.

A close look at Ferrin, or a glimpse of him without a shirt on, tells an odder tale. He has a series of bony ridges down his back, four gnarled, uneven lines running roughly parallel. These odd growths, the ridges, knobs and spurs that mark the taint in his blood, first appeared when he was a young man. In the beginning, the bone trails on his back were only two thin marks, two little cicatrices of bone between his shoulder blades. But these ridges have slowly grown over the years, getting longer, spreading wider, and becoming more knobby and contorted. His studies of the hells have suggested to him that he is Oni-blooded, but this tells him little, for the Oni are essentially shapeless, taking on whatever form whim drives them to. Thus, though Ferrin wonders what form he will ultimately grow to have, he can only wait and see. But he has lately felt a tingling, as of new bone growth, in his arms and shoulders.

[dice=Claw/Bite Attack]1d20+7[/dice]
[dice=Claw/Bite Damage]1d4+6[/dice]

[dice=Club attack, 2H]1d20+6[/dice]
[dice=Club damage, 2H (1/2 non-lethal)]1d6+7[/dice]

Polymorph Rules
Alter Self