About Hoosible Drybriar/HOOZ-ible DRY-briar/ Advancement Choices:
1 - feat: Extra Revelation, revelation: Undead Servitude, Misfortune, fcb: hp Hoosible Drybriar
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His dress is eclectic, having selected various things along his recent journey out of the Bandu Hills and into society. He wears a long brown leather coat over kikko armor, and a black felted tricorne hat that has dried flowers, lavender, bones, and dried bird feet tucked into the brim. --------------------
Like most colonial children, Hoosible has plenty of time to himself. He spent much of it venturing into the Bandu foothills. He would follow and befriend small animals, and he went through a long series of obsessive phases collecting found objects -- first colorful stones, then long seed pods, then dried scat from various animals -- but his lasting obsessions turned out to be collecting dried flowers...and the dried corpses of animals he'd find in the woods. Hoosible would sit staring at his treasures for hours, arranging them in new ways, and then starting again. Even amongst gnomish parents the latter raised a few eyebrows when it endured beyond a passing fancy. While Jez and Dopplebye hoped his interest in corpses would wane, instead it deepened. He moved his collection down into an unused root cellar (away from annoying questions) and moved on from arranging the corpses to stitching them together in new, even more beautiful ways. Meanwhile Tern's seven year old daughter, Sarra, who Hoosible often played with, took ill and died. The morning after she was buried, the small community awakened in horror to find that her grave had been disturbed and her body was missing. When word reached them at their workbenches, Mr. and Mrs. Drybriar glanced nervously at one another and crept home to knock on the door to Hoosible's cellar. There was Sarra's body...or at least most of it, stitched together in new ways with dried parts of a orangutan and an ibex, and wreathed in dried flowers. And there was Hoosible, beaming with joy at the new creation he'd brought into the world, and arranging the dried flowers to get them just right. Dopplebye said they needed to keep this a secret -- say nothing -- but Jez was firm. She dragged a confused Hoosible to Calavast Tern to apologize and beg forgiveness. Outraged and aghast but not wanting to lose the Drybriars’ labor, Tern declared the parents could be forgiven only if Hoosible (a gnomish “pre-teen” at the time) was banished. It was likely a death sentence...but if they refused then the entire family would be banished...and honestly the Drybriars felt a thread of relief when Tern freed them of the son who was growing to horrify them. Packing Hoosible a knife, a bedroll, and some rations, they sent him off into the hills. Exile and Apprenticeship: Adolescence amongst the Wendo
The ashen Bekyar man towered menacingly over the young gnome, but Hoosible was too far gone to care. Over the next few weeks the hermit (who introduced himself as Gej but otherwise said little) nursed him back to health. With the aid of some strange and foul tasting concoctions (mixing black blood with local barks and roots), a dried bird claw fetish, and what Hoosible eventually learned were Wendifa Words of Power, Gej brought Hoosible back from the edge of death. Gej also explained that Hoosible’s draw to the dead was because he was Wendo-touched. For the next 21 years, Gej taught the gnome the ways of the Wendifa, including how to speak the Words of Power by which the Wendo could be called to aid him. While Hoosible recovered and grew, he was...different, his flesh growing more corpselike with each passing year. Gej also taught him to use Wendo spirits to control the undead. Gej hoped to train Hoosible to the point that Hoosible could reanimate Gej as a juju zombie when he passed...but alas, human lives are brief and gnomish childhoods are long. Gej died in Hoosible’s 45th year. Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man: Venturing out, and dealing with the Devil
At the same time, Hoosible began to get restless to experience more of the world. When his mentor was alive, Hoosible was content to study and learn from him, but when his master died it was clear to Hoosible that he had no place (or interest) in joining Sargavan tribal life. Neither was there any way he could he return to the mining town his parents lived in; that door had closed long ago. Where was his place then? With Gej’s death he was done with the Bandu hills and thirsty to reenter the world of his childhood, and beyond. Skirting the town of his birth and the parents who’d abandoned him, he made his way across Sargava, eventually arriving in Eleder. Quickly on his journey he discovered that his appearance disturbed most, and that (like so many artists) his art was misunderstood by the throng. There were some, though, that appreciated his unique artistic vision. In Eleder he came across Urix, a cultist of Tar-Baphon, who told him that the Whispering Tyrant had room for his skills and...hobbies. Seeing that options to pursue his art would be scarce at best, Hoosible readily agreed to join the Whispering Way...and with nervous excitement stepped through the portal and getting opportunities to entertain his art. |
