"The stroke of a plume, the strum of a string, the scream of a blade, the slumber of the Efertide."
P E R S O N A L I T Y
❖ Charismatic
❖ Knowledgeable
❖ Warm-hearted
❖ Pragmatic
❖ Perceptive
Kindly but reserved, Odran is a warm and gentle soul- at least as much as one can be in such a harsh world. He often appears lazy and relaxed when interacting with others, and is difficult to offend and slow to anger. Generally amicable, Odran has no problem engaging in song and story with others, and appreciates any with artistic and musical talent- trades often forgone entirely in these trying times. Stories and song hold a soft spot in Odran's heart, some of the only things Odran has kept from his old life. To him, song and story bring hope and light to an otherwise bleak world.
Odran is an old soul; ambition and lust for power supplanted by compassion and pursuit of knowledge and tempered by practicality and realism. Stricken with wanderlust, Odran is driven by the desire to seek out more knowledge and the unknown, and is loathe to stay in one place for long periods of time- though time has lost concrete definition for the man. He might stay in a single town for little more than a night, or longer than a year before picking up and moving on again. Insightful and intuitive, it is difficult to confound Odran with lies and deceit, and he often appears to know more than he lets on- whether he actually does or not. Odran can be fairly generous with what little he has, and holds a sense of compassion for the outcast and downtrodden.
A P P E A R A N C E
Broad shouldered and approximately 6 feet tall, Odran looks more like a veteran warrior than he does a travelling bard. His posture is decidedly casual, but his build is obviously of one used to travelling. Course black hair with flecks of gray are pulled into a short ponytail and his beard is the salt-and-pepper deal of a man past his prime. His skin is lightly tanned and travel-worn, and his mouth is typical worn in a wry grin. His face has a single visible scar cutting inbetween his right eyebrow. His grey eyes are devoid of visible pupils, and seem to constantly swirl with some sort of milky-foggy liquid or substance. His voice has lost its youth, bright and clean tenor tones replaced by more mature, gravelly bass.
Like many other travelers in Tempesta, Odran's frame is often covered by a thick brown hooded cloak, its bottom edges fraying and dirty from the mud, dirt, and grime of the outside. A slight clink can be heard as he walks, underneath his cloak wears a shirt of mail and leather over a thick long sleeved shirt for a modicum of protection. Thick breeches are tucked into a pair of worn leather boots and are secured in place by a wide leather belt. In a belt worn across his chest, are four sheathed daggers. He blends in well with the other tired travelers of the Tempesta, and his only notable ornament is a pendant he wears over his clothes, a silver raven's skull hanging on a dense cord.
On his back, Odran carries the entirety of his worldly belongings in a leather rucksack. His belongings few, the rucksack often appears partially deflated, as Odran often opts to hang many of his belongings off of the rucksack instead of placing them inside. A waterskin, hangs on the rucksack's back, and a sheathed sword wrapped in a bedroll are strapped to its top.
H I S T O R Y
An aging storyteller hailing from the northern regions of Tempesta. Odran was born as Braum Samson, in a small and unremarkable town in the Causeway. The second son of the family that ran the local inn and tavern. Though Braum's town was simple and poor, it was still a fairly regular stopping point, being on one of the few maintained roads between the Tempesta and Andrea's Fault. Braum spent most of his childhood helping out around the inn, carrying food and drink to weary travelers and would often listen to the travels and stories of those when came and went through the Causeway. Much of Braum's knowledge of the world outside the tavern came from the words and tales of others- be they truthful or not.
As Braum matured, he joined the town's small militia, and was trained by an aging, irksome old member of the Army of Heroes. As the Army of Heroes was the primary military force in the town, hiring only the most promising of individuals, the rest of the town's militia were little more than a group of auxillaries that defended the tiny town from the occasional monster, or rare bandit and thief when the Army of Heroes couldn't be bothered to, and typically just defended the town from rowdy drunks and inebriated travelers. As a result, even with his new profession, Braum spent much of his teen years in the inn he grew up in, doing much of the same that he did as a child. Though now that he was older, and held the status of a warrior- albiet a small time and simple one, he would often take the stories of others, and spin them off as his own to visiting travelers, and gained a knack for reciting things he had heard in a more amusing or compelling way.
After a leg injury forced Braum to temporarily take his leave from the guard, he returned to his family's inn and served as a barkeep at the age of twenty. It was sometime during the next few years that Braum met his soon to be mentor, a travelling mage and storyteller by the name of Odran. Originally just another traveler passing through the Causeway, Braum found himself drawn to the storyteller, mystified and and cautious of at the same time. Unlike other humans, Odran's eyes were entirely white, which marked him as a man of magic, and while in the tavern, very few locals outside of Braum himself interacted with the magical storyteller. This magical storyteller stood in stark contrast everything Braum knew in his life. Stability, regularity, normalcy, all of these values were swept up like a storm.
Braum occasionally tried to impress the storyteller with his own stories- tales of others he had appropriated for himself. Odran with some sort of mysterious foresight- or plain logic, easily poked out flaws and falsehoods in the young man's stories, asking how could a man that had never left his village have any stories to tell. Still, Braum pressed on, eager to impress this storyteller, show him that he was more than just a forgettable welp in a forgettable town with a forgettable name. This storyteller, this mage, had everything Braum wanted in life- the power to control what happened around him, the ability to bend reality with magic-intoned words, freedom to do what he liked and come and go wherever and whenever he damn well pleased. Eventually, Odran the storyteller left the town, and Braum followed him, his burning desire to be more than who he was surpassing the comfort and safety his life currently possessed.
Managing not to die in his first few months of travelling with Odran, the old storyteller finally took him in and began teaching him the intricacies of
Concordance, the magic of Julieta Sinqueleur, youngest of the legendary Nine Sisters. Braum found his first lessons difficult- almost impossible even. He sought the power to bend the world to his will, and here with Odran, Braum learned that the way of Concordance did naught but help, heal. He wanted to know words of power, the strength to tear down walls, yet his master would continuously chide him and his more aggressive tendencies. For the first few years of their travel, Braum reluctantly picked up the singing, along with musical lessons in various instruments from Odran, becoming a bard instead of a mage.
Though dismissive and and reluctant to adopt his mentor's teachings, believing the world to be too harsh and cruel a place for the relatively pacifistic powers of Concordance, years on the road eventually showed Odran's virtues to be more powerful than Braum's arrogance. Braum slowly learned to accept the values and teachings of his mentor, his strength and control over Concordance growing in turn. Braum became the face of their new two-man bardic duo. His younger voice and unwarped eyes more pleasant to behold than the older man's coarse gravel and unseemly eyes. The pair traveled together for close to a decade, Braum slowly shifting from a youthful singer, to a deep voiced bard in his own right.
Odran would eventually pass away, but not before teaching Braum as many of his secrets as he could. As an ode to his mentor's legacy, Braum took on the name of Odran Tarlach, casting aside his old name for the moniker of the old storyteller and bard. His eyes had become lost by that point, and significance of his old name with it.
Now Odran Tarlach, with the mantle of his mentor, took to traveling the Tempesta much like his old mentor. Odran managed to survive the war and bloodshed between the Legion and Army of Heroes by avoiding it as best he could, escaping this dark time alive, but not completely unscathed. Having honed his craft over the course of a decade, Odran now travels from town to town plying his craft and following his mentor's goals- seeking out the lost songs of Julieta Sinqueleur.
I N V E N T O R Y
❖ An aging steel sword of decent craftsmanship, its blade rusted in places but still sturdy and serviceable.
❖ A quartet of enchanted throwing daggers, formerly the property of Odran's mentor. Intricate enchantments cause them to begin slowly and gradually fading from existence after being drawn, reappearing in their sheaths a minute later.
❖ A cittern, along with a few spools of wire to replace broken strings
❖ A harmonica
❖ A Book of Concordance: spells, songs, and music written on parchment and bound by thick leather covers.
❖ A pouch of herbs and a pipe.
❖ A rucksack carrying all a traveler would need - a spare set of clothes, dried rations, a waterskin, bedroll, flint, and the like.
O T H E R
Anything that doesn’t fit in the other sections? Throw it here!
Can't think of anything else at the moment.
RPM
Guardian Angel Haruki
Antlers
Silly
NovellaAddict
Hexaflexagon
Whoami
Not a Sayan
JFK
