Regarding Velendo's backstory:
Before he joined the Defenders, Velendo served as the local priest of Calphas the Wallbuilder in the tiny fishing village of Hunnerstide. He did very little work, preferring to sit in his small office, drinking slowly throughout the day until he fell asleep at his desk in the evening. Nothing ever happened in Hunnerstide, and Velendo was basically a lazy, crotchety, semi-devout drunkard.
All of that changed one day when Calphas spoke to him. Spoke to him! In his head! It was the most terrifying moment of his life, to realize that the Wallbuilder was paying even passing attention to him. The Voice told him that a ship would becoming to Hunnerstide within hours, further bound for a great city, and that he should be on that ship. No longer will you waste your life, the voice told him. In that city you will do good and tend to the flocks and get off your lazy ass.
He was 49 years old at the time, though he looked older.
Velendo packed his bags and was on that ship, but it never made it to the city. Instead, it was captured by minotaur pirates, and Velendo was spared only because the minotaurs were nervous about killing a priest. Their ship landed on some strange shore, and Velendo was marched down the gangplank and down a road, until he and his captors reached an old building of some sort. Though they didn’t speak his language, they made it clear that they expected him to go clean out the basement of that building. They gave him a broom.
Puzzled at Calphas’ strange design, Velendo took the broom, went down into the cellar, and started sweeping the dust out of old storerooms. It went smoothly for an hour or so, until the giant ants attacked. He swung his broom ineffectually at them and retreated, until they had backed him into a corner. It was unfair, he thought to himself, that Calphas’ will should be that he get eaten by giant vermin. “What kind of stupid plan is this, anyway?” he shouted at the heavens through the ceiling.
Then he backed into a hidden teleporter, and found himself in another cellar a thousand miles away, where the Defenders were just finishing up one of their early adventures.
The Plan has made a lot more sense since then.
In his first adventure, the party killed a small group of orcs. When one of the Defenders was injured, they all looked at Velendo expectantly. He stared back. “What?”
They suggested that he might be able cast a healing spell, a thing which had never occurred to Velendo. He tried it, and was shocked to discover that it worked! He could cast spells! Holy Concrete!
He didn’t really understand how they worked, though. In his next battle, he cast protection from evil on himself, and the visual effect was that a golden nimbus of tiny bricks surrounding him. “Hey, great,” Velendo thought. “Invulnerability!” That, as much as bravery, was why he simply interposed his body between an attacker and one of his comrades. He expected the bricks would stop the entire attack. Whoops. A short while later he desperately cast his second healing spell.
-Sagiro
