Taeo Oneshape's page

Taeli the Eagle's Eye was an elven ranger of great acclaim throughout the River Kingdoms. She and her band of compatriots had defeated many threats as they established and nurtured their nascent kingdom in the Stolen Lands. One of those companions was Drugal Medvyed, a human cavalier from the Order of the Sword whose bravery had won her heart, and while they worked to settle the Stolen Lands together they’d recently had a son.

Too soon, Taeli found herself readying to leave their boy Taeo for her first campaign since he’d been born. He lay swaddled and sleeping with a blissfully untroubled look on his newborn face. It is much too soon to leave you, little sprout, but our kingdom calls. With Erastil’s grace, we will defeat this threat from the First World quickly, and I’ll be back in a week or two. In the mean time you are safe in Hebetha’s care. She bent to kiss his sleeping cheek, stood watching him breathe for several aching minutes, and then was off.

<< Five weeks later | Nyrissa’s Fey Palace >>

Nyrissa sat on her throne and listened distractedly to Grottleburr, her battle imp lieutenant, reporting on recent progress. ”My liege, your mundane opponents have by now been completely defeated. In the few days since you annexed it into the First World, your realm is achieving a more fitting shape -- far more interesting than any it held in the realm of Dull Material. Nuglubs, vexgits, redcaps, and many many more are flocking to Nyrissawood for the delightful opportunities that these befuddled humans and their fascinating domiciles provide. Those few humans, elves, and halflings who’ve taken to the hills to fight are providing entertaining sport for the grimstalkers and lurkers-in-light.

”We continue combing through the plunder for objects of interest and have a number of curiosities for you to peruse. Meanwhile, as you instructed, we’ve carried off the newborn son of that warrior couple.” He gestured to a Nuglub, who holds up an infant, with moss green eyes and the slightly pointed ears of a half-elf.

Nyrissa’s eyes lit up and she smiled an unwholesome smile. ”Excellent. The infant is mine. It is to be wet-nursed by the nixies and nymphs of the Wandering River. It will be raised on mangos and hummingbee nectar by the the pixies and dryads of the Grove of Eyes. I will call for him when I’m ready.”

BACKGROUND
Carried away as an infant by gremlins, Taeo Oneshape was claimed by Nyrissa as a prize of war...and then (seemingly) forgotten. He was scuttled away from what remained of the human settlements in the Stolen Lands, and raised amongst all manner of fey. They gave him the teasing epithet “Oneshape” for his inability to take on even simple alternate forms. Despite their teasing, after suckling at the breasts of nymphs and being raised on fey fruits and nectars, he grew to be as much fey-touched as he was human or elf.

While in the Material Plane time seems to follow rigid rules, it does no such thing in the First World. Instead it flows and swirls in eddies -- sometimes rushing by and other times moving at a glacial pace. In Golarion, it has been six years since Taeo was born. For Taeo and the fey who’ve raised him on behalf of Nyrissa it’s been nine times that many years...and yet (bearing the fey’s touch) he’s barely into his adolescence despite his 54 years.

To a native of Golarion, any description of his childhood sounds like a dream narrative: Long years spent napping in groves of fruit trees, drinking hummingbee nectar and goat’s milk. Summer and Winter were destinations he visited, but no sun or stars moved in the warmly glowing sky of the First World. Taeo remembers games of hide-and-seek with phooka, pixies and gremlins that ended with him lost, alone, and hungry in a dark wood for days, until he collapsed in exhaustion, only to hear a chorus of cruel giggling behind him...and seeing that suddenly he was home again. He recalls years spent following the Witchmarket with a fey centaur tutor, who taught him letters and lore. If asked how all of that adds up to 54 years he hasn’t the faintest idea.

He experienced much cruelty growing up in the First World but also much love and warmth from the dryads and nymphs who raised him from infancy, passing him merrily from hand to hand to hand. Never did they let him forget that he wasn’t really one of them...but all of their tales of the Dull Material left him wishing that he was a real fey. While he grew up with curiosity about his human and elven kin, he was grateful to have been rescued from the Monotonous Realm that his kin came from. His keepers mostly kept him far from the portion of Nyrissawood (formerly known as the Stolen Lands) that the surviving humans still remained on, but what glimpses he’s caught of them only reinforced what he’d been taught: the denizens of the Monotonous Realm were fun to sport with, but (as they cowered from the world around them) he saw that at their hearts they are weary, embarrassing creatures.

Given that, the last few weeks have been a terrible shock: Out of nowhere, Grottleburr and a pair of Nuglubs came gruffly for him, picked him up, and carried him in a sack for what felt like days. When they untied it and took him out, everything was...wrong. The trees seemed tame and muted, the river less alive, and (most disturbingly) there was a sun bright and low in the sky. They shook the sack out, and then turned to leave. Grottleburr paused briefly to say with undisguised malice, ”Take care, little foundling. Don’t lose any fingers or toes. We’ll be back…” ...and then walked behind a tree and disappeared.

Taeo Oneshape just stood there with his jaw open for many minutes. Standing on one foot, he lifted the other and picked absentmindedly at his toes as he turned to look one way and then the other. Deciding to follow Grottleburr back he followed the imp’s step around the broad evergreen...again and again and again, to no avail. When he realized that whatever fold in space the imp and gremlins had used wasn’t open to him, he started sobbing, beating his fists against the tree trunk.

Before long the sun had set. He started walking in the dusk, at turns marveling at the stars in the sky and panicking about where he was and why they’d abandoned him. Finally, nearing exhaustion, he remembered those childhood games of hide-and-seek. That’s it, surely! A prank. Impish mischief. He tried to make himself laugh at it...but couldn’t. Instead he shrugged his cloak up around his shoulders and burrowed a bit into the forest soil and pine leaves, eventually drifting to sleep when his tired eyes couldn’t focus on the stars any longer.

He was awakened just as the sun was rising by a human voice. ”Good morning, Taeo Oneshape. I am Hokuto Ichihara, and I’ve come because you have an interesting potential. I’ve come to escort you to your school. ”

PERSONALITY
Taeo Oneshape is in many ways just awakening from a dream...and trying to make sense of the rigid, unbending world he’s been exiled into. While he often felt lonely and separate in the First World, being in the Material Plane has him scared and even lonelier. He often seems completely lost in his inner world. At the same time, when he pulls himself together he’s full of zest and joy and playful mischief and an unaffected charm. He’s suspicious of whether he wants to associate with non-fey...but craves companionship as well. As he starts to see non-fey as three-dimensional entities (and learns to tell one apart from another) he’s likely to swing quickly into encouraging his comrades to join him in his pranks and games...and urging them to teach him about the world of his birth parents.

Growing up as he did, Taeo feels like an outsider with both the fey and humanoid races. At present he identifies more with the fey. One clear division between him and the native First Worlders though was the realities of death: His fey caretakers, playmates, and tormentors couldn’t die permanently in the First World; they’d simply reform. Taeo on the other hand has the humanoid frailty normal to the material plane. This was driven home early on when some malicious gremlins tried to get him to dive off a cliff onto ragged rocks with them, “for the experience of it”. They shoved a pugwampi off and showed Taeo how it simply reformed. He was nervously ready to go along with them and barely saved in time by a faun who "spoiled the joke" and let him know that the trick wouldn’t work for him. Since then he knows that he can die -- permanently, assuming no great magical intervention -- and he thinks of it as a weakness of his, a defect of his humanoid ancestry.

APPEARANCE
Taeo Oneshape has hair and skin the color of honey, and moss green pupils in his big eyes. He has a broad mouth with a big, easy grin. He's clearly an adolescent, standing a skinny 5' 2". He wears his hair loose in the fashion of the fey who've raised him and dresses in a loose, colorful shirt and pants. He's taken to crocheting starfish, octopi and other sea creatures and stitching them onto his clothes as though they were clinging to him. It's hard to place his origin exactly. The shape of his features is characteristically half-elven, but his coloration and (perhaps even more so) his air is quite fey.

Viewed sleeping -- and Taeo has a love of napping and no shyness of slumbering in public -- he radiates peace. At all other times his face is a whir of emotion, hiding nothing: a giddy joy, unfettered rage, absolute panic, or -- often -- a sullen loneliness. His shadow occasionally seems to have a life of it’s own, starting to fiddle with things when Taeo’s deeply concentrating on something, or thumbing it’s nose at someone who Taeo is trying to impress.

HARROW CARD: THE JOKE
(chaotic good, Intelligence) shows a terror that must be overcome-but not by physical means. This monster can only be defeated by trickery or artifice. This card can represent the value of humor in finding the way past a difficult person or task. When misaligned, it often signals that the joke will be on you.

MECHANICAL NOTES

• Race: Fey-touched Half-elf (mechanically identical to Idyllkin Aasimar, with the change of type:Outsider to Fey and of Darkvision to Low-Light Vision).
  
• He will likely take either the Wild Caller or First Worlder archetypes