James Heard
Explorer
Alright, here is the (somewhat adapted) teaser/background text for Hawthorne Hap. Not sure if I'm completely sold myself on the names of certain things, and I feel like I could do a lot more to ground him into Sasserine with a little bit more time. I still haven't finished reading the IC thread, for instance, and my quick read remembers something about a Taxidermists Guild that might be fairly useful to know something more about.
I'm not sure about the language. I'm just not sure I can keep it up, or worse, if I get to where I could keep it up I'm not sure if it wouldn't evolve into a "big pok'd up mess of prince's britches and keel tarts." That's to say, at some point I think I might end up "getting into it" so much that it becomes incomprehensible. Even with my limited examples I'm not sure he's not already there.
Anyways, consider the proposal in draft.
[sblock=Of the Infamous Haps of Sasserine]
Some say that Haps have distinctive features, dark eyes, a particular chin, a certain bearing - but the truth is that though you can sort of tell a Hap by looking at them the simple fact of the matter is that Haps are bad news, and they wear that bad news in everything they do.
Sasserine has been home to generations of Haps, and it is most surely the home of Hawthorne Hap. Of unknown origin and ethnicity, the Haps have in varying degrees enlightened and disgraced the landscape of Sasserine for as long as anyone can fairly remember.
There are Hap drunks, gamblers, ladies of ill-repute, a couple of cousins a little too close for conventional society - and there are also even darker Haps, like Harkness Hap and the Hap Gang, who once preyed upon travelers and village-folk alike with a strangely consistent Hap sense of matter-of-fact'ness that seems to hover on the tongue of even the youngest Hap like a dirty word in church. Then there are the church Haps, who fairly never seem to follow a normal sort of gods, they're always mixed up with Mungo the Monkey of Fair Play or some fish-headed squid cult that requires regular participation on the docks at night drunk and singing awful songs. There are even a few well-to-do Haps out there, though strangely most keep well away from their fellow Haps, even to the point of barring the employment of their cousins and kin from their manors. This has led to the Hap saying of "There's no greater love than a brother with an empty purse."
Haps have many detractors and opponents, people that the Hap clan has swindled, committed adultery upon, sired children upon, beaten up, cheated at dice with, and some people just plain offended by their very nature. This isn't to say that every abuse heaped upon a Hap was ever deserved, but most folks who are familiar with the Haps are prone to be allowing as to a Hap that's not done one person wrong has likely done something worse to another. Or, even being a saintly, non-threatening sort of Hap, they're likely just plain weird.
It can't change the fact that Haps are the "salt of Sasserine" though, as the Hap saying goes. While many "newcomers" to Sasserine have only lived in the town for a few centuries, family legends suggest that the Haps have lived in the area around Sasserine since the time of the old empires, eking out an existence trading with the passing pirates for whiskey and sniff, barely on the smiling side of civilized. This has led to many Haps growing up with a chip on their shoulder from sweeping up the floors of the high and mighty through the generations, but most people would agree that Haps, being Haps, probably would have grown up with a chip on their shoulder regardless.
All through Sasserine you can see the Hap lip, the Hap jaw, have your purse stolen by mischievous young Hap cousins, or be propositioned by not so young Hap patriarchs in bars for having bumps on your chest (or not, depending on how drunk they are). You can visit Harkness Hap up at his shack in the jungle and listen to him ramble on about all the women and gold he stole before his change of heart, or how he met the love of his life, or the town pardoned him, or he killed his damned ol' daddy Handsome Pol Hap who made him evil mad his whole life. You can have you washing and cleaning done by a score or more of Hap wives who all have something to say about each other and everyone and who need the extra coin to pay for the hordes of children beget upon them by their loutish, irresponsible, lazy Hap husbands. If you find the Hap husbands you'll find farmers, moonshiners, fishermen, cooks, and the heart of Sasserine daily life entire. You also will find your wives and daughters leered at and commented upon, yourself beaten and cheated at with dice, a friend to drink you under the table with in your darkest hours, every single vice available in Sasserine laid out like a roadmap of long-term Hap connections, and some of the most loyal, cutthroat, and bloodthirsty friends you shall ever find. This has led to the Hap saying "A more honest friend than a Hap can't be had, and a Hap will have you." This has led to another Hap saying, "There's no more honest lie than the honest truth," which gets repeated a lot but no one can explain rightly outside of the family much.
In any case, Haps can clearly trace their hand in each and every building in the entire town of Sasserine and most of the bloodlines, through marriage or not, making the Haps of Sasserine nothing if not famous, or infamous, in their tiny corner of the world - at least to other Haps. This has led to the Hap saying "A Hap has had a hand in every stone and pants in Sasserine." Various noble houses refuse to comment, except occasionally in whispers when a young child "accidentally" drowns at a young age. You can't be too careful with a Hap.
[/sblock]
[sblock=Of Hawthorne Hap, his appearance, his adventures, and his [s]women[/s] wanting to get out of town]
Hawthorne Hap is a lad with large, oversized features surrounding a slightly build and intense-looking blue eyes. Despite earning a few suspicious looks from his pa when he was born, Hawthorne's large, luminous eyes and fine (for a Hap) features have served him well over the years. Regardless of his heritage he has a singularly unsuspicious-looking face and that has vexed more than one towns person in the past that have based their judgments on appearances. Hawthorne's Pa, Big Mick Hap, runs a taxidermy service, acts as a guide to unwary travelers into the jungle, repairs all manner of buildings and sea craft, holds a monthly cockfight in the large shed erected near the beach where he does his woodworking, and collects the mushrooms and rare herbs related to his Uncle Tobbick's "farm" for a share of that business as well.
As well as being a busy, hard-working honest Hap, he instilled upright Hap values in all of his children. Two of Hawthorne's older brothers are in prison in Urnst for piracy, while the oldest slips in a few times a year with his crew to update Pa on how far they've come on springing them out. All of Hawthorne's sisters, well except for little Marlee, are all fat and round, married off to luckless dupes to raise Hap heirs and kinsmen. Hawthorne even had a twin once, or so he's told, but "he had the devils in him" and his mother drowned him before he could cause evils when he was a baby. Hawthorne is his Pa's constant strain and agony.
Hawthorne speaks with the peculiar and slightly adaptive drawl and slang of the entire Hap clan. It contains a startling number of curse words derived from all over the world, piratical and agricultural references, and sometimes seems to be something of another language entirely to outsiders.
Hawthorne Hap often appears around town looking like the very essence of a Hap in his homespun hickory cloth pants worn and torn just below the knees, often shirtless or in the wide, off-white loose shirts common among the Hap field men, wearing a beaten straw hat and shoeless. This is worn calculatingly to give the appearance of guilessness in his broad, honest-looking, sun-kept features. His over-large blue eyes peek mirthfully from beneath an enormous mop of sun bleached blonde hair. His nose is perhaps just a bit large and bent from scuffles with his cousins over the years and sits above a wide, expressive mouth that would smile at his own funeral to show a most remarkably white and straight (for a Hap) set of perfect teeth.
Though his accusers’ notions of slackery are often warranted, Hawthorne's hands belie that fact and show the hard usage of any other Hap. Often fawning young girls can be found trying to straighten his cracked and split nails or combing his hair in the common rooms of the taverns, weaving braids containing charms into his hair as he sits seemingly placidly resigned to his nigh horrible fate, complacently shuffling dice or reading texts of surprising subjects and rare origin like books of Orcish poetry, or Gnomish romance novels.
The truth be told, in fact, that once most folk get to know Hawthorne, they can't quite decide what sort of Hap he might be. That suits Hawthorne just fine, seeing as he's still not quite sure himself. Born with the "th'heart of a wounded star," Hawthorne was probably doomed from the start. Outsiders have scoffed at the young man's "search for th'deepest true" as more Hap nonsense, but in his own indifferent way he's earnest enough about it. Virtually every temple and priest in Sasserine has had to endure varying degrees of interrogation and comparison with their fellows from the mouth of Hawthorne Hap.
As the years have passed, Hawthorne's inquisitive nature has never lessened. Double parts credulous and willful, virtually no aspect of religion is left unturned no matter who strange or foul - though often he's as likely to simple ask to observe the more onerous rituals, and during long services he has a tendency to snore until the "good stuff." Hawthorne himself is either seems to regard, or at least promotes the idea that, his own powers of healing and such are merely "tricks." Most people aren't quite sure if Hawthorne means to say that the gods themselves are stupid, or if Hawthorne is more clever, or something else that probably only makes sense to Hawthorne.
Regardless of how he does it, an awful lot of common folk often benefit from it as he's varying degrees of free most of the time, unless you happen to be a pretty girl in which case his initial prices often have to be talked down from "undergarments." No one was quite sure what the prices were for the folk who can afford such things as divine healing, as Hawthorne either didn't do it or didn't talk about it until recently. Unfortunately for Hawthorne, regardless of the girl's apparently eager willingness to pay the price and participation, her father was less than amused. Perhaps it wouldn't have been so bad if the girl weren't quite so besotted with him and denounced her betrothed, or declared in public that she was keeping the baby, or pushed her mother into the canals, but that's all water in the boat now. Hawthorne's in a bind. One way or another he's got to sink or swim and he's got a clear idea of which he'd prefer. Get out of town or make himself acceptable or both, or at the very least move to someplace where every other girl around hasn't heard the story.
[/sblock]
[sblock=Upon which Hawthorne Hap's speech is spoken, for flavor and courtesy]
"Pok up fore I smack you. We be jus a'wiggle me this'n'that an pok th'healing light n'Tharizlona onner and be patch'n yer pok up net-hole nice n'tight. Ain't that th'sweet prince's whores fer you? Thought so."
"Never heard f'Tharizlona? By Mungo's hairy pokked backside man, s'na'polite ta whine while I be spellin back yer flippers n'scales t'brightness!"
"S'na my fault. Said she was safe, her Pa th'butler n'half blind. Should see her now, then. Out t'here and smugs a'prince onna throne. Got some spit ineer but no sense. I'm half afright t'ask 'round n'see if m'Pa ever worked fer her Da. Argh, a Hap opera in mucking hindsight we'd all be then."
"It was all pok'd. Pok'd from the start. I told me Pa it was pok'd and he told me t'shut me pok'n mouth. Well pok that. Y'jus can't mucking pok dis and pok dat and thank you vera much round de snobbergobs an not spect ta get pok'd back in de blowhole."
[/sblock]
[sblock=Vital statistics of the mechanical variety, illustrated in an abbreviated detail]
Str 10 Dex 8 Con 10 Int 14 Wis 15 Cha 16 (assuming 28 point buy)
CG(N backsliding) Cleric 2 Domains: Family, Oceans
Feats: undecided
[/sblock]
I'm not sure about the language. I'm just not sure I can keep it up, or worse, if I get to where I could keep it up I'm not sure if it wouldn't evolve into a "big pok'd up mess of prince's britches and keel tarts." That's to say, at some point I think I might end up "getting into it" so much that it becomes incomprehensible. Even with my limited examples I'm not sure he's not already there.
Anyways, consider the proposal in draft.
[sblock=Of the Infamous Haps of Sasserine]
Some say that Haps have distinctive features, dark eyes, a particular chin, a certain bearing - but the truth is that though you can sort of tell a Hap by looking at them the simple fact of the matter is that Haps are bad news, and they wear that bad news in everything they do.
Sasserine has been home to generations of Haps, and it is most surely the home of Hawthorne Hap. Of unknown origin and ethnicity, the Haps have in varying degrees enlightened and disgraced the landscape of Sasserine for as long as anyone can fairly remember.
There are Hap drunks, gamblers, ladies of ill-repute, a couple of cousins a little too close for conventional society - and there are also even darker Haps, like Harkness Hap and the Hap Gang, who once preyed upon travelers and village-folk alike with a strangely consistent Hap sense of matter-of-fact'ness that seems to hover on the tongue of even the youngest Hap like a dirty word in church. Then there are the church Haps, who fairly never seem to follow a normal sort of gods, they're always mixed up with Mungo the Monkey of Fair Play or some fish-headed squid cult that requires regular participation on the docks at night drunk and singing awful songs. There are even a few well-to-do Haps out there, though strangely most keep well away from their fellow Haps, even to the point of barring the employment of their cousins and kin from their manors. This has led to the Hap saying of "There's no greater love than a brother with an empty purse."
Haps have many detractors and opponents, people that the Hap clan has swindled, committed adultery upon, sired children upon, beaten up, cheated at dice with, and some people just plain offended by their very nature. This isn't to say that every abuse heaped upon a Hap was ever deserved, but most folks who are familiar with the Haps are prone to be allowing as to a Hap that's not done one person wrong has likely done something worse to another. Or, even being a saintly, non-threatening sort of Hap, they're likely just plain weird.
It can't change the fact that Haps are the "salt of Sasserine" though, as the Hap saying goes. While many "newcomers" to Sasserine have only lived in the town for a few centuries, family legends suggest that the Haps have lived in the area around Sasserine since the time of the old empires, eking out an existence trading with the passing pirates for whiskey and sniff, barely on the smiling side of civilized. This has led to many Haps growing up with a chip on their shoulder from sweeping up the floors of the high and mighty through the generations, but most people would agree that Haps, being Haps, probably would have grown up with a chip on their shoulder regardless.
All through Sasserine you can see the Hap lip, the Hap jaw, have your purse stolen by mischievous young Hap cousins, or be propositioned by not so young Hap patriarchs in bars for having bumps on your chest (or not, depending on how drunk they are). You can visit Harkness Hap up at his shack in the jungle and listen to him ramble on about all the women and gold he stole before his change of heart, or how he met the love of his life, or the town pardoned him, or he killed his damned ol' daddy Handsome Pol Hap who made him evil mad his whole life. You can have you washing and cleaning done by a score or more of Hap wives who all have something to say about each other and everyone and who need the extra coin to pay for the hordes of children beget upon them by their loutish, irresponsible, lazy Hap husbands. If you find the Hap husbands you'll find farmers, moonshiners, fishermen, cooks, and the heart of Sasserine daily life entire. You also will find your wives and daughters leered at and commented upon, yourself beaten and cheated at with dice, a friend to drink you under the table with in your darkest hours, every single vice available in Sasserine laid out like a roadmap of long-term Hap connections, and some of the most loyal, cutthroat, and bloodthirsty friends you shall ever find. This has led to the Hap saying "A more honest friend than a Hap can't be had, and a Hap will have you." This has led to another Hap saying, "There's no more honest lie than the honest truth," which gets repeated a lot but no one can explain rightly outside of the family much.
In any case, Haps can clearly trace their hand in each and every building in the entire town of Sasserine and most of the bloodlines, through marriage or not, making the Haps of Sasserine nothing if not famous, or infamous, in their tiny corner of the world - at least to other Haps. This has led to the Hap saying "A Hap has had a hand in every stone and pants in Sasserine." Various noble houses refuse to comment, except occasionally in whispers when a young child "accidentally" drowns at a young age. You can't be too careful with a Hap.
[/sblock]
[sblock=Of Hawthorne Hap, his appearance, his adventures, and his [s]women[/s] wanting to get out of town]
Hawthorne Hap is a lad with large, oversized features surrounding a slightly build and intense-looking blue eyes. Despite earning a few suspicious looks from his pa when he was born, Hawthorne's large, luminous eyes and fine (for a Hap) features have served him well over the years. Regardless of his heritage he has a singularly unsuspicious-looking face and that has vexed more than one towns person in the past that have based their judgments on appearances. Hawthorne's Pa, Big Mick Hap, runs a taxidermy service, acts as a guide to unwary travelers into the jungle, repairs all manner of buildings and sea craft, holds a monthly cockfight in the large shed erected near the beach where he does his woodworking, and collects the mushrooms and rare herbs related to his Uncle Tobbick's "farm" for a share of that business as well.
As well as being a busy, hard-working honest Hap, he instilled upright Hap values in all of his children. Two of Hawthorne's older brothers are in prison in Urnst for piracy, while the oldest slips in a few times a year with his crew to update Pa on how far they've come on springing them out. All of Hawthorne's sisters, well except for little Marlee, are all fat and round, married off to luckless dupes to raise Hap heirs and kinsmen. Hawthorne even had a twin once, or so he's told, but "he had the devils in him" and his mother drowned him before he could cause evils when he was a baby. Hawthorne is his Pa's constant strain and agony.
Hawthorne speaks with the peculiar and slightly adaptive drawl and slang of the entire Hap clan. It contains a startling number of curse words derived from all over the world, piratical and agricultural references, and sometimes seems to be something of another language entirely to outsiders.
Hawthorne Hap often appears around town looking like the very essence of a Hap in his homespun hickory cloth pants worn and torn just below the knees, often shirtless or in the wide, off-white loose shirts common among the Hap field men, wearing a beaten straw hat and shoeless. This is worn calculatingly to give the appearance of guilessness in his broad, honest-looking, sun-kept features. His over-large blue eyes peek mirthfully from beneath an enormous mop of sun bleached blonde hair. His nose is perhaps just a bit large and bent from scuffles with his cousins over the years and sits above a wide, expressive mouth that would smile at his own funeral to show a most remarkably white and straight (for a Hap) set of perfect teeth.
Though his accusers’ notions of slackery are often warranted, Hawthorne's hands belie that fact and show the hard usage of any other Hap. Often fawning young girls can be found trying to straighten his cracked and split nails or combing his hair in the common rooms of the taverns, weaving braids containing charms into his hair as he sits seemingly placidly resigned to his nigh horrible fate, complacently shuffling dice or reading texts of surprising subjects and rare origin like books of Orcish poetry, or Gnomish romance novels.
The truth be told, in fact, that once most folk get to know Hawthorne, they can't quite decide what sort of Hap he might be. That suits Hawthorne just fine, seeing as he's still not quite sure himself. Born with the "th'heart of a wounded star," Hawthorne was probably doomed from the start. Outsiders have scoffed at the young man's "search for th'deepest true" as more Hap nonsense, but in his own indifferent way he's earnest enough about it. Virtually every temple and priest in Sasserine has had to endure varying degrees of interrogation and comparison with their fellows from the mouth of Hawthorne Hap.
As the years have passed, Hawthorne's inquisitive nature has never lessened. Double parts credulous and willful, virtually no aspect of religion is left unturned no matter who strange or foul - though often he's as likely to simple ask to observe the more onerous rituals, and during long services he has a tendency to snore until the "good stuff." Hawthorne himself is either seems to regard, or at least promotes the idea that, his own powers of healing and such are merely "tricks." Most people aren't quite sure if Hawthorne means to say that the gods themselves are stupid, or if Hawthorne is more clever, or something else that probably only makes sense to Hawthorne.
Regardless of how he does it, an awful lot of common folk often benefit from it as he's varying degrees of free most of the time, unless you happen to be a pretty girl in which case his initial prices often have to be talked down from "undergarments." No one was quite sure what the prices were for the folk who can afford such things as divine healing, as Hawthorne either didn't do it or didn't talk about it until recently. Unfortunately for Hawthorne, regardless of the girl's apparently eager willingness to pay the price and participation, her father was less than amused. Perhaps it wouldn't have been so bad if the girl weren't quite so besotted with him and denounced her betrothed, or declared in public that she was keeping the baby, or pushed her mother into the canals, but that's all water in the boat now. Hawthorne's in a bind. One way or another he's got to sink or swim and he's got a clear idea of which he'd prefer. Get out of town or make himself acceptable or both, or at the very least move to someplace where every other girl around hasn't heard the story.
[/sblock]
[sblock=Upon which Hawthorne Hap's speech is spoken, for flavor and courtesy]
"Pok up fore I smack you. We be jus a'wiggle me this'n'that an pok th'healing light n'Tharizlona onner and be patch'n yer pok up net-hole nice n'tight. Ain't that th'sweet prince's whores fer you? Thought so."
"Never heard f'Tharizlona? By Mungo's hairy pokked backside man, s'na'polite ta whine while I be spellin back yer flippers n'scales t'brightness!"
"S'na my fault. Said she was safe, her Pa th'butler n'half blind. Should see her now, then. Out t'here and smugs a'prince onna throne. Got some spit ineer but no sense. I'm half afright t'ask 'round n'see if m'Pa ever worked fer her Da. Argh, a Hap opera in mucking hindsight we'd all be then."
"It was all pok'd. Pok'd from the start. I told me Pa it was pok'd and he told me t'shut me pok'n mouth. Well pok that. Y'jus can't mucking pok dis and pok dat and thank you vera much round de snobbergobs an not spect ta get pok'd back in de blowhole."
[/sblock]
[sblock=Vital statistics of the mechanical variety, illustrated in an abbreviated detail]
Str 10 Dex 8 Con 10 Int 14 Wis 15 Cha 16 (assuming 28 point buy)
CG(N backsliding) Cleric 2 Domains: Family, Oceans
Feats: undecided
[/sblock]
