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Character Backstories: Care to share?
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<blockquote data-quote="prabe" data-source="post: 8165792" data-attributes="member: 7016699"><p>This is the first 5E character I played. He's a Kensei Monk, and the DM and I worked out the nature of where he'd trained and agreed that his first sword needed to be a gift or a trophy--that he was not allowed to purchase it. The House of Brush and Blade has since appeared in my own setting.</p><p></p><p style="text-align: center"><strong>Tengriv ul-Ammotri (Carmine)</strong></p><p></p><p>Tengriv ul-Ammotri was born the third son of at best a mid-grade noble. We're not talking in direct line of anything like a throne, here, just a family descended from at least one guy who cleared some land and charged people to come live there; nonetheless, it's a family with a fair amount of power and money.</p><p></p><p>Tengriv grew up with all the advantages that come with being from a noble family. The best tutors, the best sport, the best parties. And he enjoyed it until his mid-teens, when he had a little bit of a rebellious phase. After calling his entire family (actually, it was the entire noble class, including his family) parasites on the body and soul of the people, declaring that they were still earning money on the deeds of a many-great grandparent and really weren't worth more than a small sack of dung, he was firmly escorted to the nearest town and given a few coins and told to either grow up or stay away (where "grow up" was taken to mean "accept that the nobility are doing a good thing by taking the burden of wealth upon themselves, sparing the lower classes the trouble; and you should probably plan on marrying a serviceable breeder of an appropriate class we'll pick for you; and you shouldn't plan on ever accomplishing anything too useful, because we are after all nobles").</p><p></p><p>Tengriv's eventual solution, after a few months, was to find his way to the House of Brush and Blade, a monastery in the foothills of the Blackspikes. There, he learned about religion and meditation and how to resist the urge to punch people who were being stupid. He learned about connections between calligraphy and swordsmanship, and saw elders in the House perform feats that would have left his fencing tutors agape. Tengriv became one of the best students in the House, and was given a new name: Carmine. It's a pigment and a red, which were both signs of the promise the elders there saw in him.</p><p></p><p>Of course, being Tengriv, after a few years at the House, he was asked to leave. It was gentler, but more final, than when he was kicked out of his family's home. He'd earned it, of course; he'd been studying religion and philosophy, and history had always been one of his favorite subjects as a youngster, and he came to the conclusion that every movement toward good or evil, order or chaos, contains within itself the seeds of a countermovement. Tightly ordered governments oppress their populations until a revolution unseats them, then the resulting chaos leads to another oppressive regime. Good heroes rise to defeat the darkest of evils, and new evil arises, determined to rob them of their gains. Destruction comes from the most extreme swings of the pendulum.</p><p></p><p>Clearly, a hierarchical organization, strictly Lawful and mostly Good, wasn't going to have room for Carmine inside it, but they knew how promising a pupil he was, so they gifted him with a book of exercises that would let him teach himself the beginnings of their techniques (with the thinking that if he was as good as they thought he was, he'd probably figure out the rest). He'll have to find his sword, but he has the calligraphy tools to practice the ideograms at the heart of the House's teaching.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="prabe, post: 8165792, member: 7016699"] This is the first 5E character I played. He's a Kensei Monk, and the DM and I worked out the nature of where he'd trained and agreed that his first sword needed to be a gift or a trophy--that he was not allowed to purchase it. The House of Brush and Blade has since appeared in my own setting. [CENTER][B]Tengriv ul-Ammotri (Carmine)[/B][/CENTER] Tengriv ul-Ammotri was born the third son of at best a mid-grade noble. We're not talking in direct line of anything like a throne, here, just a family descended from at least one guy who cleared some land and charged people to come live there; nonetheless, it's a family with a fair amount of power and money. Tengriv grew up with all the advantages that come with being from a noble family. The best tutors, the best sport, the best parties. And he enjoyed it until his mid-teens, when he had a little bit of a rebellious phase. After calling his entire family (actually, it was the entire noble class, including his family) parasites on the body and soul of the people, declaring that they were still earning money on the deeds of a many-great grandparent and really weren't worth more than a small sack of dung, he was firmly escorted to the nearest town and given a few coins and told to either grow up or stay away (where "grow up" was taken to mean "accept that the nobility are doing a good thing by taking the burden of wealth upon themselves, sparing the lower classes the trouble; and you should probably plan on marrying a serviceable breeder of an appropriate class we'll pick for you; and you shouldn't plan on ever accomplishing anything too useful, because we are after all nobles"). Tengriv's eventual solution, after a few months, was to find his way to the House of Brush and Blade, a monastery in the foothills of the Blackspikes. There, he learned about religion and meditation and how to resist the urge to punch people who were being stupid. He learned about connections between calligraphy and swordsmanship, and saw elders in the House perform feats that would have left his fencing tutors agape. Tengriv became one of the best students in the House, and was given a new name: Carmine. It's a pigment and a red, which were both signs of the promise the elders there saw in him. Of course, being Tengriv, after a few years at the House, he was asked to leave. It was gentler, but more final, than when he was kicked out of his family's home. He'd earned it, of course; he'd been studying religion and philosophy, and history had always been one of his favorite subjects as a youngster, and he came to the conclusion that every movement toward good or evil, order or chaos, contains within itself the seeds of a countermovement. Tightly ordered governments oppress their populations until a revolution unseats them, then the resulting chaos leads to another oppressive regime. Good heroes rise to defeat the darkest of evils, and new evil arises, determined to rob them of their gains. Destruction comes from the most extreme swings of the pendulum. Clearly, a hierarchical organization, strictly Lawful and mostly Good, wasn't going to have room for Carmine inside it, but they knew how promising a pupil he was, so they gifted him with a book of exercises that would let him teach himself the beginnings of their techniques (with the thinking that if he was as good as they thought he was, he'd probably figure out the rest). He'll have to find his sword, but he has the calligraphy tools to practice the ideograms at the heart of the House's teaching. [/QUOTE]
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