PLAYED BY: Tony Hunter
CHARACTER NAME: The Shepard
GENDER: Male
PRONOUN(S): He/Him
CLASS: Cleric
AGE: Older than he looks
RACE: Human
HAIR: Brown
EYES: Brown
OCCUPATION:
Itinerant Cleric/Healer. Former Shepherd
KNOWN SKILLS:
Healing, Preaching, Mediation, Negotiation, Marriage Counseling, Sarcasm, Occasional Banishment of Undead
BIRTHPLACE:
Southeastern corner of the May’Kar Dominion.
APPEARANCE:
Middle-aged non-descript guy. Black hat with a flower.
NOTABLE TRAITS:
Who’s asking? Did they say who was asking?
RELATIONSHIPS:
He barely managed not to get killed during the convoy runs to Grimsendir. In the aftermath, he joined up with an aspiring healer as a traveling companion.
RUMORS:
“Wasn’t there some preacher going around with some crazy ideas about all the different gods a few years ago? He had the same sort of hat I think…”
BIO / BACKGROUND HISTORY:
“Arik” breathed a sigh of relief as they passed through the lines of the Clan Shattered Spear rearguard. His tiny flock lost, his worldly possessions reduced to the clothes on his back, he staggered to the ground and caught his breath. The painful memory of the wound to the chest as the Grimward came within a hair’s breadth of ending his life. His fourth life.
Al-Raaei. His first life largely consisted of weeks spent alone in the scrub grasses at the eastern edge of the desert. The flock of his father grazing, drinking, drifting with the sun and wind and dust and, sometimes, even rain.
Al-Raaei. He’d forsworn that first life and began a second, but the first name stuck. As a mockery at first, but then as a mark of respect. There had been a lot of blood, and many wolves had met their end under his knives. Unfortunately, many lambs had been led to slaughter.
Kahinon. He’d forsworn that second life as well. There were debts to pay and redemption to be earned. He recalled his journey back to the scrublands of his youth. Not to tend sheep, but to tend to those who tended the sheep. The shrine to Illyara still stood where he remembered it, and the Western Wind granted him her divine aid in the time of his newfound flock’s need.
Kahinon. When the Undead drove through his home, his new lambs were slaughtered. He nearly was too, but the goddess – or maybe all the gods – had other plans for him. At first, their plans seemed to be mostly concerned with removing any Undead he found. But then those plans led him to a distant land, away from their unnatural touch. His new home, filled with new people, required a new name. One that felt more natural to the new flock he would tend.
Shepherd. As he traveled this new land, he taught any who would listen about the unity of the gods, and hoped people understood that this required the unity of all who worshipped. But no matter where he went, there were always those who separated and segregated. Those who guarded their ways and refused to consider that maybe no one had a monopoly on truth. Who are we to say that Sol and Solara, that the Great Wolf and the Sea Hound, that Sialig and Gaia are all different “people?” And if one of them is listening, who are we to say that no other can hear?
The Shepherd had angered the villager. His prayers included any and all gods who might listen, who might aid in cleansing the infection. Al-Khara, we beseech the Sea Hound, Lunara, and the Great Wolf, have Saint Borim bring blood and bone! But he lacked the strength. This sickness was beyond him. The villager wasn’t convinced. It seemed more likely, in the villager’s eyes, that at least one of the gods took offense at being invoked alongside all the others. The villager’s wife died in the morning. He absentmindedly massaged the scars of the wounds he received that night on the highway. Boots, sticks, the occasional rock. As he crawled away, he didn’t bother to call to the Northern Storm, the Eastern Fire, the Southern Dust, or the Western Wind for aid. He’d failed in his divine mission, and he ended his third, and longest, life.
“Arik.” The name never felt right. It was a crude amalgamation of his first two lives, but one that blended with the Ulven who were his neighbors. He returned to his first flocks, the four-legged ones who needed only the most basic of guidance. Tending the flocks of others led to a small flock of his own. He’d found an oasis of calm in the desert of strife that frequently boiled this new land. He could live out this fourth and final life, and earn his well-deserved final rest. Until the horde from the south took that fourth life away.
“Arik” had answered the call for volunteers for the supply run. He had no desire to start another life. Four was more than enough for one man, while others barely had a chance at one. He pulled a cart. He lugged crates, He spotted wounded men in the forest and enemies on approach. He warned them about the ambush site he found, and nearly died when he was caught in it. And he’d been saved by divine power and human skill.
“Arik” looked toward the setting sun and realized that he’d probably live to see another dawn. As he brushed the dust from his hat, he saw the Flower. That Flower. Still as fresh as the day he lifted it from the grass near the shrine. It had weathered the Undead, the trip across the sea, the years of wandering Mardrun. All that time, he had thought it a sign that he had the blessing of Illyara and all her brother and sister gods. After his failure, he saw it as the idle whimsy of a mighty but detached immortal. As he looked back at the gathering dusk, he felt the wind – the Western Wind – touch his face.
The Shepherd put his hat back on his sweat-damped head. As he began his fifth life, he felt the wind shift from the west to the north. A storm was coming. It would wash away the dust of the day’s struggle. Then the dawn would come, and its heat and light would drive away the damp. The circle would continue, as circles tend to do.
The Shepherd heard the approach of one of the other refugees and turned to see a bald fellow with a full red beard hold out a cup of water. He accepted it with a nod and gestured to the ground next to him. The redbeard accepted the invitation and collapsed in exhaustion. As the younger man righted himself, he spoke to the Shepherd. “Thanks for hauling me to the healers back there. Thought I was a goner.”
“Someone did the same for me earlier in the day. It felt right to return the favor.”
“Looks like a storm’s coming. We should probably find shelter.”
“So say we all.”