Revised and vastly added to background. Should work on the mechanicals a little bit later to flesh them out since the company that was supposed to show up tonight bailed on me.
Nelson Luttin
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Background
Seawell has been home to generations of Luttins, and it is most surely the home of Nelson Luttin. Of unknown origin and ethnicity, the Luttins have in varying degrees enlightened and disgraced the landscape of Seawell for decades. Some say that Luttins have distinctive features, dark eyes, a particular chin, a certain bearing - but the truth is that though you can sort of tell a Luttin by looking at them the simple fact of the matter is that Luttins are bad news, and they wear that bad news in everything they do. There a Luttin drunks, gamblers, ladies of ill-repute, a couple of cousins a little too close for conventional society - and there are also even darker Luttins, like Janias Luttin and the Luttin Gang, who preyed upon travelers and village-folk alike with a strangely consistent Luttin sense of matter-of-fact'ness that seems to hover on the tongue of even the youngest Luttin like a dirty word in church. Luttins have many detractors and opponents, people that the Luttin 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. It can't change the fact that “Luttins are what slicks the mud that moves the wagons in Seawell" though, as the Luttin saying goes. If the Luttins left Seawell then it wouldn't be much of a town for their leaving. While many "newcomers" to Seawell have only lived in the town for a few decades, some say the Luttins lived in Q'Barra long before Newthrone was even founded, eking out an existence trading with the native lizard folk and passing pirates for whiskey and sniff, barely on the smiling side of civilized.
All through Seawell you can see the Luttin lip, the Luttin jaw, have your purse stolen by mischievous young Luttin cousins, or be propositioned by not so young Luttin patriarchs. You can visit Janias Luttin 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 he met the love of his life, or the town pardoned him, or he killed his damned ol' daddy Nikree Luttin who made him evil mad his whole life. You can have you washing and cleaning done by a score or more of Luttin 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 Luttin husbands. If you find the Luttin husbands you'll find farmers, moon shiners, fishermen, cooks, and the heart of Seawell 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 Q'Barra laid out like a roadmap of long-term Luttin connections, and some of the most loyal, cutthroat, and bloodthirsty friends you shall ever find.
Luttins, or so the stories go, were refugees from Cyre, or Breland, or Xen’drik where they were jewelers, mercenaries, pirates, prostitutes, or the lost heirs of Galifar. Some dark whispers even suggest that Luttins have rather more Elvish blood in them than any suspect, and that the Luttins represent some sort of "lost" dragonmarked House stripped of its place and ranks through dragon and giant magics best left to dark sorcery and moonless nights. In any case, Luttins can clearly trace their hand in each and every building in the entire town of Seawell and most of the bloodlines, through marriage or not, making the Luttins of Seawell nothing if not famous, or infamous, in their tiny corner of the world. Some even say that Luttins brought the famous Seawell green ale recipe to Seawell from a hidden laboratory in Karnnath, and it is true that Old Arnel Luttin was a bit wilier than the average Luttin and worked at the brewery - before he fell asleep at the furnace and burnt that building down. Nelson Luttin isn't the most distinguished Luttin, even in his own age group; at least since his cousin Arven accomplished the remarkable feat of becoming a father to three separate sets of twins last winter by three different embarrassed women, including his mum's best friend, after a particularly bad blow came in from the Dragonreach.
Nelson Luttin 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, Nelson's large, luminous eyes and fine (for a Luttin) 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 townsperson in the past that have based their judgments on appearances. Nelson's Pa, "Big" Myck Luttin, runs Seawell's one and only taxidermy service, acts as a guide to unwary travelers into the jungle, repairs all manner of buildings and sea craft, holds Seawell's 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 Tebick's "farm" for a share of that business as well. As well as being a busy, hard-working honest Luttin, he has instilled upright Luttin values in all of his children. Two of Nelson's older brothers are in prison in Sharn 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 Nelson's sisters, well except for little Marlee, are all fat and round, married off to luckless dupes to raise Luttin heirs and kinsmen. Nelson 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. Nelson is his Pa's constant strain and agony.
Unwilling to "settle" for being a proud Luttin scion, do his Pa's will in collecting payments from villagers in Seawell who've run behind, go off with his brothers to enjoy the salty life of the Luttin "navy", or otherwise engage directly and completely in the Luttin penchants for larceny and clannishness it seems, Nelson Luttin might be the most uncommon sort of Luttin of all - his own man. No, that's not to say that Nelson can't twist a noose, bribe the mayor, put on the pegs and ravage the sea if he'd just wanted to but Nelson - or at least Nelson's Pa thinks so - Nelson's got some strange nut growing in his head that just seems to pace him apart and distance himself somewhat from many of the other Luttins. Now that doesn't mean that Nelson isn't family, Luttins are true to each other as pus n' plague forever, but unlike his cousin Arven (or even Dern) Nelson Luttin sometimes strikes worried conversations with elder Luttins sitting on the porches of their shacks at night about that most nebulous of Luttin concepts - his future.
Nelson speaks with the peculiar and slightly adaptive drawl and slang of the entire Luttin 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. Opposed to his elder's concerns, most outsiders agree that Nelson is a prototypical Luttin. He smokes, drinks, rolls the dice when he wants to, and has been caught with his cousins stealing pies and young girl's innocence enough times to fit into every common villager's perceptions of the Luttin clan entirely. Even his "tricks" as he calls them - snail hollers and Kyb' whispers - seem to only confirm rumors and fears about the Luttins in some people's minds, though he's been remarkably obtuse about where he learned them.
"They's jus' ticks and whistles all 'round you, “he’ll say, "can't you hear?" Most townsfolk agree that Nelson must have learned them from some of his more consternatious relatives living deep in the jungle, even though they can't rightly say when he'd have had time to run off and do that sort of learning. Some whisper that Nelson's powers are from a hidden dragonmark, though those with more sense roll their eyes at such fancies. He makes a rather random living, sometimes to be found at his Pa's house or hanging out with a female admirer or one of his cousins, and sometimes he earns his keep at one of the local inns and taverns displaying a suspicious-looking smile in his eyes at odds with his almost angelic appearance.
Nelson is a bard, but a bard because that's really the only class that represents the overall verisimilitude in his every endeavor. He's a half-nick pinch in a fight, knows more about more things than almost anyone has any right to at his age, can whistle and click out a wildly varied assortment of spells, and "figures it out" with almost frightening clarity compared to most of his peers. He's not often thought of as the first person that any given townsperson will run to to fix a problem at his age, but he's often the second - because even when his fellows agree that he's not the best choice for the job he's often thought of as the person best able to make certain everyone else accomplishes the job. Some people accuse Nelson of being lazy even (including his Pa), but Nelson simply smiles and shrugs it off. He can't help it if everyone else was cut out for workin' more than he, but he's not worried. Somewhere in the back of his head he's simply Luttin-certain that he's right and the rest of the world is wrong.
Nelson Luttin often appears around town looking like the very essence of a Luttin 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 Luttin 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 would smile in a morgue opening to show a most remarkably white and straight (for a Luttin) set of perfect teeth. Though his accusers’ notions of slackery are often warranted, Nelson's hands belie that fact and show the hard usage of any other Luttin. 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 Riedran poetry, or Zilargran romance novels.
Tourists, foreigners and strangers are things that Nelson finds interesting and compelling.
They speak with ridiculous notions about the jungle and Q'Barran life and spend coin as if it were running out of style on the most useless of things. He often follows them and watches them, delighting in their discomfort and bizarre personal habits. Usually if confronted he just shrugs and smiles, because what does it matter if he upsets some poor fool bound to go off with his head up his cloaca into the jungle and die soon? If they're pleasant, or pretty, or seem likely to have some easily recovered coin in the purses after the night imps finish sucking the juices out of their brains though, he often will attach himself to them further. Nelson appreciates people that think with their feet outside the mud sometimes, since he's known for that as well, and if their fool notions still get them killed, well then that doesn't make them any less interesting.
Equally amusing to Nelson is the subject of religion. Why anyone should worship something as bizarre as a person they don't know, that tells them how to act and whom to associate with and how, is something that Nelson can't fathom. This has led to dire pronouncements about his fate from the South Wall Luttins, who run the Traveler's Church in Seawall and who are well known for their being "church Luttins" as they are disparagingly called by the rest of the family. It seems that there wouldn't be much problem with a Luttin-ran church within the family if it were only a way to collect tithes from the rest of town, but the South Wall Luttins seem to have actually been seduced by all the "teachin's and the prayin'". Or, as his Nelson's great grandpa Nikree was said to have often said, "A man that's got to have someone else's reasonin' to string someone up an' feed 'em to the devils ain't go no reason teachin' to those more practical." Other Luttins are more pragmatic than Nelson and attend church occasionally, and a pretty face can draw him through a door no matter what might be in the room entire, but mostly they're a sacrilegious bunch of heathens that have as much need for religion as they do church-day finery.
Character sheet
Male (Q'Barra) Human Bard 1
CN Medium Humanoid
Init: +0 Senses: Spot +2 Listen +2
AC 10, touch 10, flat-footed 10
HP 8
Fort +2 Ref +5 Will +4
Spd 30 ft
S 10 (+0) D 10 (+0) C 10 (+0) I 16 (+3) W 14 (+2) C 14 (+2)
Feats: Bard Weapon Proficiency, Light Armor Proficiency, Shield Proficiency, Obscure Lore, Insightful Reflexes
Abilities: Bard Spells (4 0 Lvl/day), Bardic Knowledge +8, Bardic Music 1/day
Skills: Bluff +4 (2), Decipher Script +5 (2), Perform +3 (1), Spellcraft +5 (2), Use Magic Device +6 (4), Survival +4 (2), Swim +2 (2), Use Rope +2 (2), Profession: Sailor +6 (4), Craft: Architect & Engineering +7 (4), Intimidate +5 (3), Knowledge: Local +7 (4), Knowledge: Geography +5 (2), Gather Information +4 (2)
Languages: Common, Draconic, Riedran, Giant
I'm sort of stressing out on how to roll Nelson out with feats a bit, and whether or not I should flip his Int and Charisma scores to reflect what an utterly endearing Luttin he really is.