Wyrd of the Wanderer - Player 1

Character

Name: Grandmother Bracha Dawnsong, the Vulture Warden, Memory-Keeper, Vex of Spears Rank: Seasoned

Race: Human Gender Woman HT 5'3" (165cm) WT 119lbs (54kg) AGE 20 XP 20

Wyrd Adept: Bonewight

Description

Bracha is visibly, palpably a mutt. Red Basin's deep ties to the earth kissed her skin a rich, loamy brown, and left her small, altogether, for a clanswoman. But Red Basin cannot produce the thick shock of auburn curls that bounce on her thin shoulders, or the storm-cloud gray of her eyes. She has a slender enough jaw and sharp enough chin to look vaguely Pantherpath, but the thin hips and sturdy legs are nearly Third Peak. She has slender, spiderling hands better suited for tapping a flute than whatever produced those calluses. Large eyes, heavy-lidded toward the center, give her a hint of the fae-touched, especially with a wide mouth and thin, dark lips to unbalance her further. Too warm to be reptilian, too spare to be feline, with something vaguely totemic, something humanity-adjacent, in the way she carries herself as though always caught midway through skating across a light breeze.

Hindrances

Curious - There's a lot you can learn when you can reach into graves and pull up seven generations of ancestors. For instance, you can learn that by about a hundred years, what's left of most ghosts has lost all humanity and shouldn't be pulled up. On the bright side, the first four generations tend to have a lot of advice on how to keep a settlement safe from marauding faerie, or even worse things. Kind of a shame the advice isn't all accurate. Bracha's had to do a lot of her own trial and error.

Loyal - If Bracha hadn't been conferring with ghosts since infancy, perhaps she'd have developed a fear of death and an instinct for self-preservation. But if she had those, who would have tracked down little Hyram, the winter he wandered into the forest just before sundown, and brought him back home? His father had died on a hunt the summer before, and his mother would be too old for another child before her mourning was complete. End of that family, good as done. If she had those. It's a good thing that a possessed toddler is still a toddler, though: she might have gotten more than bite scars, if he'd been a few years bigger.

Vow - It's not really that surprising that Bracha won't eat meat. Oh, people ask occasionally, but it turns out that no one particularly likes the idea of eating something that's still hectoring you about how painful its death was. Bracha's hens have always been the best-tended of the whole tribe's. And after what happened the first time, nobody tries to make off with her eggs any more.

Attributes

Savagery: d4

Reflexes: d4

Grit: d6

Cunning: d8

Wyrd: d8

Derived Stats

Charisma: 2

Pace: 6 (+1d6 running)

Parry: 2

Toughness: 5

Skills

Wyrdweaving: d10 [Wyrd]

Climbing: +2

Craft (Music): d6

First Aid: d6+2

Knowledge (Family): d8+2

Knowledge (Cryptids): d8+2

Notice: d4

Persuasion: d6

Riding: +2

Survival: d4+2

Swimming: +2

Tracking: +2

Edges

Charismatic, Combat Reflexes, Connection [Great-aunt Erishel, formerly the peace chief], Healer, New Power, Scholar, Wyrd Adept [Bonewight]

Powers

Beast Friend, Burrow [Reflections], Fear, Mind Reading, Slumber, Summon Ally

Gear

Weapons

Obsidian Dagger Savg+d4

Sling Savg+d4 (4/8/16)

Armor

Nope.

Other Equipment

Backpack, Bedroll, Flint and steel, Torches (2), Waterskins (2)

Ritual supplies (tool kit), Roar stick (the instrument)

Background

"Grandmother", they called her. It was a title of respect. In truth, Bracha was barely old enough to be a mother herself, and no one was offering to sire upon her. It would be taboo. It would be freaky. It might not be safe to propose.

When Bracha was very young, her parents thought she was cursed. Her great-aunt Erishel died holding her, and young Bracha only laughed merrily. When Erishel's ghost leapt out of her memorial amulet to drive off a mad dog the next year, everyone but Bracha's parents thought she was cursed. If her father's sister had not been the village midwife, had not vowed to turn her back on every birth in a fortinyear, had not been clever enough to make up some nonsense on the spot about a connection between the beginnings and endings of life, and how they run in a family, Bracha would have made a very nice offering to the Wendigo, in exchange for another year of safety.

When Bracha was a little less young, but still young indeed, she was every meaning of "sacred". She was unwelcome at the communal feasts that welcomed each new season. She had been embraced by the shaman and forsworn by both chiefs. Her blood had come for three years, and still she was not permitted the rites of passage. It meant she could be denied the protection of tribal custom, but also its punishments. The social contract did not apply to her. Bracha became very good at negotiating her own contracts, instead.

When Bracha stood astride the line between youth and adulthood, she had matured into a power within her clan that could challenge the peace chief, defy the war chief, and even call her midwife aunt's bluff. Everyone has someone they want a last word from, and only Bracha could speak in the voice of the departed. Everyone has a weakness somewhere in their hearts, and only Bracha's servants could not be tempted by the Poludnisa. Everyone hates to confront their own mortality, and a reputation for defying the call of the sky-father, for telling the buzzards where they may feed, can be more comforting than macabre, given the right approach. It helped that she was so generous. It helped that she was approachable. It helped that she sang riddles to the stones of a cairn, instead of gruesomely cutting and stitching decayed flesh. It helped that she never ate even the flesh of animals, much less babies. It helped that her great-aunt Erishel had been the peace chief in her time. It helped that Erishel still rose up from Bracha's amulet to argue on her behalf with the new one. Red Basin had never been a community of ancestor-worshipers, but such a cult was beginning to take shape, given all the new evidence to recommend it.