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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Graf" data-source="post: 4193137" data-attributes="member: 3087">Additional comments on Karothen. As mentioned elsewhere in the thread, there is no economy, dazed people don't understand money and take only what they need themselves (or for their children or other dependents).Generally everything is brought to the market (marked on the map) and laid out on blankets.Think of it as a benevolent anarchy .[sblock=Completely bizarre aside]I remember hearing a possibly apocryphal story about a the Japanese anarchist Kotoku. He was driven out of Japan after the turn of the century and traveled to San Francisco arriving the day after the quake of 1906. For two weeks he wandered the streets, everywhere he saw people helping each other, making what they could and sharing what they could without recourse to money. To his mind it was paradise, proof that anarchy could work.He thought they were utterly mad to give it up and go back to "normal" as the city recovered from the quake.Obviously, I'm not saying that anarchy is a great political system or anything; the situation in the town is perpetuated by a magical effect.Just food for thought.[/sblock]Karothen, being a bit more with it, could have a shop nearby, insofar as he has a building that he keeps tools and things he's working on in (see suggestion below).As a rule, people don't bring broken things to him. It would be too much of a change from the way "life has been in the past". However children can and will. When there's nothing better going on, Karothen receives daily (sometimes hourly) deliveries from children bringing him all manner of things.Of course when there is a good game of catch-the-demon going on then he receives nothing.Combined with the massive collection of stuff in the storehouse above (see below) Karothen has the raw materials necessary to jury rig almost anything.Karothen also sometimes fixes objects he finds discarded and puts them out on the blanket in the market. Inevitably their former user zeros in and reclaims it.Your father was probably more of a scavenger. You're the only person in the town who can really repair anything. I'm happy to have someone named Old Hook around. Obviously the whole 'working for' doesn't really work.[sblock=Suggestion for Old Hook and other things]You don't remember your father, but from what little you can tell he was a maniacal collector and organizer. He horded things, and sorted things and kept everything in the massive second story of the building that your shop is in now.Your mother moved out after he died, partially to avoid Old Gran. While he was gone he was replaced by Old Hook. Old Hook a bit of a character, he's deeply deeply dazed and his behavior rivals Old Gran's for weirdness. He also collects things, but unlike your father has no penchant at all for organization. Instead the wrinkled leathery little man (he's quite small, with livid purple scars across his skin) discards things in the vast hall as soon as he finds them.And find them he does. He's a fantastic climber and can be seen clambering all over the city. Massive piles of stuff just accumulate on the second floor, to the point that the ceiling over Karothen's head has begun to creak in an unnerving way.And once or twice a year the old man crawls up to the roof of the building and draws paintings. He seems to have a knack for making his own paints and finding usable scraps of paper. The landscapes are strange, occasionally fantastic. (also see below)[/sblock]This is a good character goal. At the start of the game nobody can read. You'll be able to read once you exalt and your character can pick up languages with impossible rapidity but at the start of the game everyone is still dazed and dazed = can't read.You've worked on puzzling out what the books mean of course, and you may even have a favorite book that you like to look at but you can't read read.[sblock=Old Hook's paitings]Old Hook is very private about the painting process. He crawls up onto the top of the building and paints there. There are never any figures, though looking closely at the painting it looks like there may have been figures earlier, but they are always painted over. This gives the landscapes a haunted effect.Old Hook doesn't paint often, he tends to be manic in the weeks leading up to the painting and depressed, almost sullen in the weeks afterward.once he's painted a painting he generally ignores in completely. Karothen has had to rescue more than a few pictures,and repair at least one when it was negligently toppled over Several of the better pictures include:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">a small village</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">a great city full of Gothic imposing architecture, horned figures feature prominently</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">a "white world", the ground is white like it's covered in snow and the walls sparkle</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">there is at least painting that Old Hook drew and destroyed, Karothen found a few shreds lying in the gutter (they had apparently fallen from the roof) -- Old Hook painted nothing after this painting for a long time, to the point that Karothen had begun to fear he would stop making paintings at all</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">(anybody feel free to add a few more)</li> </ul>[/sblock]This is the sort of thing I'd like to roleplay out once the game begins.I don't mind Karothen starting off with some minor magical ability to repair stuff (either expressed in the form of a mending cantrip, some sort of mechanical bonus to repair (+10?) or just "story fluff").You -can- introduce a book. [sblock=Suggested book introduction]We can say that one day he went to pick up Old Gran (someone who lives near the stained-glass-building said she was "unwell") and found her enthusiastically pushing dirt into the crevices of a stone block.As soon as she heard him enter she immediately laid down and pretended to be asleep. Karothen took her to get her soup, she was abnormally agreeable. Later he contrived, in some fashion, to get at the block when she was away and found inside a thick, black book.Unfortunately he hasn't been able to open it. It hasn't lock, or clasp or anything else but for the life of him Karothen can't seem to get it open. There is a cold grey symbol on the front, and Karothen feels mighty uneasy when he touches it; like something cold is lying on his heart, and he's eaten something sour and curdled.[/sblock][sblock=The girl/Eldan's cousin]This is a riff, you and redclaw can work out the details.There are very few people who come to Karothen's "shop", but until recently only one adult came regularly.A young girl with intense eyes. You know she's related to Enric, who watches the river, she has the distinct slender build of that family.Like many of the people around Karothen she's odd. Most of the women (and many of the men) cut their hair in the town only when it becomes a problem for them to do their jobs. She cuts her hair much more frequently, it's often irregularly chopped and rarely touches her shoulders.Karothen saw her frequently in the building-with-colored-glass-windows  when he was tending Old Gran (if he hadn't known her earlier?). He's not sure exactly how she found his shop but came frequently, initially with children guiding her then by herself.From the short conversation (really a handful of words) she shared he understood that she wanted him to fix something.But she never brought anything.Karothen offered to go with her, and she took his arm and pulled him intensely about the city  for hours, this way and that such that Karothen couldn't help but think of leading Old Gran about the city as a child.Eventually, crying in frustration she gave up and left him.She came a few weeks later, and, with what apparently was some great exertion place a little broken statue on his desk. "Fix" she said, pointing half authoritarianly, half pleadingly at the statue.Karothen labored for weeks, inbetween his regular duties on the statue. It was quite complex for him, the statue didn't do anything. As a decoration it didn't have some function that Karothen could restore to it.It was a picture of a winged man, or the top half of a man with wings, for it had no legs (and Karothen couldn't for the life of him, figure out where the legs were supposed to be attached). But he fixed the broken wing as best he could, using pretty silver metal from the storehouse above.Since it was supposed to be art he even went so far as to consult Old Hook, who gamely produced some silver paint and painted the remaining stone wing silver to match.Her reaction was not what Karothen had hoped for. Upon being shown the finished statue her expectant smile melted into tears, she threw the statue on the ground (scaring Old Hook so much that he fled from the room), weaping openly she scatted things around his shop in a fit before exiting at a run.Karothen hasn't seen her since.[/sblock]OK. You have a lot going on, already actually.If you want we can say you never sought out Big Green Eyes. Very soon after, you found your glowing pebble Old Gran came upon you, startling you badly and your pebble was lost.</blockquote>

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