Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="MummyKitty" data-source="post: 2656078" data-attributes="member: 36179">Noonchuck's backstoryThanks Strahd!  Here is the outline of Noonchuck's background story, it's kind of long.  Just some notes I jotted down, needs some fleshing out and editing but if you want to read it feel free.  Comments welcome.[SBLOCK]“In the beginning two great spirit brothers lived in a world of water. They were happy hunting fish and having diving and swimming contests between them.  One day, the younger brother returned to the surface of the ocean and told his older brother about a gigantic fish he had seen below.  He said it had taken nearly an entire day to swim past him.  The older brother did not believe that he had seen such a thing.  The younger brother, insistent that he was telling the truth, said he would bring the fish to the surface.  He dived and soon the water was broiling beneath the older brother.  After many hours, the younger brother returned to the surface, pulling the gigantic fish to the surface by its tail.  “See, I was telling the truth!”  This angered the older brother, so he struck his younger brother with his fist, killing him.  The older brother was overcome by grief.  He decided he must create a monument to his younger brother so that he would never forget him.  He dove to the sea floor and raised the mud from the bottom over his dead brother, creating dry land.  He took the giant fish, a whale, and carved small figures of his brother from its teeth. As he undertook this, using only his own fingernails, he began to weep and some of the figures became misshapen. Finally he could stand no more.  He took the remains of the giant fish and went to the bottom of the ocean, never to be seen again.  The mass of land over his brother became the continents, and the figures that he had carved became men… while the misshapen ones became other things—animals, birds, and other things.  Thus are all men brothers of the whale that the old one used to bring us to life.”The grizzled shaman finished his story and the assembled tribe sat in silent respect for a few moments.  All but one.  Gr’un Tahk, the shaman’s brother, spoke out.“What was here before the spirits?” he challenged. “Where did the water come from?  The whales and fish?” His tone was mocking.The old man didn’t answer, but stood silently and slowly returned to his lodge, signifying the end of the night’s tale-telling. N’un T’Chauck of the Harpoon looked disapprovingly at Gr’un Tahk.“Must you always challenge your brother?” he called to him. “You will never take his place as leader of this tribe with your disrespectful attitude.  Even the legend tells us to be gentle to our brothers.”Gr’un Tahk scowled as he slinked away into the darkness.  He would lead this tribe someday… and he would know what had come before.  The forbidden knowledge would be his.-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------After that encounter at the tribal tale-telling, Gr’un Tahk disappeared and was not seen again by N’un T’Chauck.  Life continued in the tribe, and the time for the annual whale hunt was fast approaching.  N’un T’Chauck lived for the hunt. He was first man in the first canoe—the harpoonist who would have the honor of slaying the whale that the tribe might survive.  His three brothers would also ride in the canoe, their oars becoming powerful extensions of their arms, propelling the canoe through the waves at the speed of the wind.On the day of the hunt, the entire tribe was there to see the whale hunters cast off and head out to sea. N’un T’Chauck looked at the sky with some apprehension.  Dark clouds were marching above.  Not a good start for the hunt.  But honor and tradition demanded that the hunters at least try to start their hunt.  Once in the whale’s realm, if they saw no sign of their prey, they could return and try again tomorrow.Four canoes of warriors set out in search of whales that day.  Four large war canoes, with a dozen rowers each.  These would have been nearly sea worthy on the open ocean, as each had high gunwales, a deep draft and could be fitted with a sail to give the oarsmen an occasional rest on particularly long journeys.  A harpooned whale could not pull them under water, and they could weather a storm if necessary, though a typhoon would certainly doom them.  The clouds today, though unusual, were not the type a typhoon would accompany, N’un T’Chauck could tell that much.Nevertheless, when they were nearly out of sight of land, in the deeper water ruled by the whale and his kind, the squall struck.  Visibility was cut to nearly nothing by the heavy rain and rising waves.  N’un T’Chauck called out to his fellows, “Our brother the whale does not wish to be hunted today.  Let us return to our homes and try again tomorrow!”  The crew nodded and started to pull for shore.  They had lost sight of the other canoes, but N’un T’Chauck  thought he could hear their crews shout above the din of the rain and waves.Try though they may, however, N’un T’Chauck’s crew could not find their way.  The horizon had been reduced to a grey-green haze and the waves made it impossible to travel in a straight line for long.  There was no way to sight land in conditions like these.  “We must tie in and ride out the storm!” N’un T’Chauck shouted. “This storm is not so bad that we will sink, it will merely hinder our return home!”  The men did as N’un T’Chauck suggested… and to conserve their strength paddled only enough to keep the canoe upright and pointing into the waves.Time passed and the storm ebbed and flowed.  N’un T’Chauck knew that the cooling night air would probably reduce the intensity of the rain, and sure enough, as it got to be darker, the storm broke.  After a short time one of the keen-eyed men shouted, “look—the peaks!” All hands looked in the direction he indicated and sure enough saw the tops of the icy mountains that rose above their coastal village reflected in the setting sun.  They grabbed their oars and pulled eagerly to land, cold and wet from their ordeal.As they got closer, they realized that something was not quite right.  Where were the tribe’s beach fires?  They could see no sign of their village.  But, there was the Bear’s Claws… their homes should be near there… but the gathering darkness prevented them from making out any details of their village until they had reached the pebbled shore.  Rather than raging bonfires on the beach surrounded by celebrants of the whale festival, all was cold and dark.  Something was wrong.The canoe hit the beach and the dozen warriors sprung out of it, grabbing its sides and pulling it onto the shore.  The men then ran towards their lodges.  By now their eyes had adjusted to the darkness, but still they could see only dark silhouettes of their homes… and no light or sound coming from them.  As the swiftest of the men reached their homes and went inside, a chorus of lamentations began to be heard across the beach.  Soon they found, with horror, that their houses were empty of all living things.  There was blood, lots of it, and other things… dark seaweed, bubbly translucent foam made of slime, and a few corpses, rendered to pieces and unrecognizable.  Smeared tracks, black in the night, told of bodies dragged from the houses, in all cases apparently toward the now calm sea.Next morning, the tide had erased any of the carnage and gore that was on the beach, and in the light of the rising sun the men could search their long houses.  In all cases, the homes had been ransacked.  There were signs of struggle, but no remains that would give solid clues as to who the attackers had been.  The only obvious thing, it seemed, was that they had come from the sea, and returned there with their human trophies.N’un T’Chauck called the warriors to a council after they had made a thorough search of the ruins and carefully collected the remains of their people.  There wasn’t much to be had, but these needed to be buried as was their custom.“Brothers, our world has been torn asunder...,” He addressed his grieving friends, choking back his own grief. “I am at a loss as to what to do…. Revenge is my natural inclination…” He was briefly interrupted as the assembled warriors shouted their agreement. “But, revenge against what?  Perhaps the spirits were angry and decided to punish us for something… It doesn’t make sense.”His brother Jun’Tanawak approached. “Brother, I will not rest until I find the thing or things that did this and slay them, or am slain in the process.  Do you swear to join me?  Do you?”“It is all we can do.  We have nothing left here…”Though they waited for several weeks, the three other whale hunting crews never returned. With that the four brothers swore to go to the ends of the earth, searching for what had destroyed their lives, and exacting revenge.  The other warriors tried their best to rebuild their village, but once other tribes heard of what had happened there, no one wanted to live there, so it was abandoned and fell into ruin. Many of the survivors were absorbed into other tribes.  N’un T’Chauck and his three brothers carried on the search for the perpetrators of this disaster, a search that carried all four men to great adventure across their world.N’un T’Chauck chose to go south from his village, where he ended up finding the city of Antigrol.  He wondered if pirates from this place had destroyed his village.  Here was a hive of humanity the likes of which he had not seen before, with strange customs, languages and habits.  It would take him some years to search this place for clues.  Attracted to the city’s wharfs, N’un T’Chauck decided that a place on a ship would not only allow him to search for pirates but also possibly search for other sea borne suspects, so he signs on with Captain Ben Turion as a sailor, learning to work the rigging for which is climbing skills make him admirably suited.  The other crewmen teach N’un T’Chauck the common tongue and christen him Noonchuck.  He’s generally well-liked by the other sailors as he is a hard worker who never complains about tasks.  Of course, as a giant of a man, he can be somewhat intimidating in his primitive clothing.[/SBLOCK]</blockquote>

Verification