The Sheltered Hand: Character 5
Arohata
Level 5 Variant Human Monk, Way of the Astral Self. About 5'3", 120 lbs; shrimpy but wiry. Maybe 40? He's got grey in his hair but his face is linelessly smooth. Characteristic Delisse complexion. Hair and beard are shaven when he remembers to do so, but he often neglects it, so he usually has some scruff. "Astral Self" has no obvious visual characteristics, but conveys a cognitive or emotive impression of strength or influence beyond his unremarkable physique.
Str 8 (-1)
Dex 16 (+3) [+1 from Variant Human, already counted]
Con 14 (+2) [+1 campaign bonus point, already counted]
Int 12 (+1)
Wis 18 (+4) [+1 from VH, +1 from Skill Expertise, +2 at level 4, already counted]
Cha 10 (0)
AL: NG
HP: 48
AC: 17
Prof bonus: +3
Attacks: Barehanded or staff +6/1d6+3; Empowered +7/1d6+4
Proficiencies:
--Armor: None.
--Save: Str, Dex.
--Skill: Acrobatics (+6), Athletics (+2/+7), Insight (+7), Nature (+4), Perception (+10), Stealth (+6), Survival (+7).
--Tool: Cook's utensils, land vehicles, musical instrument (samisen/cigar-box guitar).
--Weapon: Simple weapons, shortswords.
Feats: Skill Expertise: Perception; Tough.
Background: Folk Hero/Outsider/Hermit hybrid
--Defining event: I stood up to a tyrant's agents.
--Personality trait: If someone is in trouble, I'm always ready to lend help.
--Ideal: Respect. People deserve to be treated with dignity and respect.
--Bond: I'm still seeking the enlightenment I pursued in my seclusion, and it still eludes me.
--Flaw: I have a weakness for the vices of the city, especially strong drink.
--Feature: Rustic Hospitality. Since you come from the ranks of the common folk, you fit in among them with ease. You can find a place to hide, rest, or recuperate among other commoners, unless you have shown yourself to be a danger to them. They will shield you from the law or anyone else searching for you, though they will not risk their lives for you.
Equipment: Necklace of Adaptation; Staff of Flowers; Heward's Handy Spice Pouch; 10 darts; cook's utensils; shovel; iron pot; common clothes; musical instrument (cigar-box guitar/dulcimer/samisen hybrid that sounds like a musical saw or theremin and whose hollow body can be used for percussion); explorer's pack (includes backpack, bedroll, mess kit, tinderbox, 10 torches, 10 days of rations, waterskin, 50 feet of hempen rope); pouch with 10 gp.
Prose:
Arohata, The Flag Laid Waste -- the name was given to him in a monastery, and it's the only one he uses any more -- is an itinerant philosopher and do-gooder. It didn't start that way; he grew up as just another Delisse swamp farmer. Oh, sure, nobles killed his parents, but it wasn't personal or even unusual; they just died because they were poor and malnourished and they got worked to death. It happened to everybody's parents, really.
The child who would become Arohata wasn't having it; he didn't have it in him to work the paddies, or anything else, day in and day out. The day when he didn't want to hoe his row and a jumped-up squire told him, with the end of a bronze-mailed fist, that he didn't have a choice in the matter, was the day he left that village. Although, admittedly, not without leaving behind a lot of teeth and blood.
He wandered out into the swamp and made his own way with an ease nobody had ever told him was impossible. Or maybe they had told him and he just hadn't listened; hard to say, because he wasn't listening. He needed food and he figured out foraging and cooking; he needed entertainment and he figured out music. Sometimes he needed to defend himself, and he figured out how to punch things. The latter part got a lot easier when he found his first martial monastery; he proved to be adept at the fighting techniques he was taught, but he was never able to sit comfortably with the philosophical teachings. He left that monastery, thinking that maybe the answers were outside after all.
Arohata made his way for years acting as an itinerant tavern cook and musician, or just living off the land. He'd get bored of the wilderness and head to the city, where he'd drink his profits every night; he'd get into a fight with the wrong people or just start missing trees, and he'd head back to the country. He'd take up with a new monastery, advance through the ranks, and leave or get kicked out, the calls of the world and the spirit alternating in their urgency for him. Along the way, several chief abbots recognized his gifts, or possibly thought that he was so deficient he needed magical guidance; he was given a necklace of prayer beads that once belonged to an ascetic whose tapasya was so pure, she had learned to exist without breathing, and a staff formerly used by a holy fool whose gift of manifesting celestial flowers brought joy to all he encountered. On the road, he fried his last couple of eggs for an old witch, who gave him a magical spice bag in return. "Needs more pepper, boy," she said.
Along the way he realized that he just hated it when people with power lorded it over people without; he became an admirer of Carran, who had the revelation that the gods had all of the power. (More than one abbot has told him that Carran wasn't this antagonistic toward the gods, but Arohata has always been very committed to making his own mistakes.) He was never a "rob from the rich" kind of guy, because that demanded a little too much advance planning, but he was definitely a "punch the city guardsman shaking down the kids from the poor section of town" kind of guy. Word spread, and pretty soon Arohata's face was known to the downtrodden, even as the local gendarmerie never really seemed to get a good description from witnesses.
