The Scarred Lands are cruel, even to those blessed by good fortune, and utterly merciless to those cursed by its opposite. Born deaf as stone, Nurthan happened to fall into the latter category. He was abandoned by his parents before he was old enough to remember them, left on the steps of an orphanage in Meliad, the capital of Darakeene, and grew up isolated and alone from even the other orphans by the lack of sound to connect them. The priests and priestesses of Madriel who ran the orphanage tried their best to care for the silent boy and even educate him – despite his deafness, he was a keen learner – but in the end, destined only for begging on the streets. He begged for years, living off occasional coins and charity meals from Madriel’s temples, but the thought of joining the First Angel of Mercy’s clergy.
Instead, he learned from and ‘listened’ to a new regular visitor to his street corner, one of the much-maligned Redeemers of Golthain. The preacher of the Faceless Titan was old, friendly, and very persistent, reciting his tales of the maimed titan lord’s mercies and kindnesses to anyone who passed by. From his lips, the still-young Nurthan discovered a story in opposition to the vague tales taught in the orphanage. There, it had been only ‘The Titans’; he knew their names, but only as a near-inviolate mass of evil beings rightfully torn down and destroyed. The story of Golthain, tormented by his siblings for his softhearted nature and cut down without crimes at the hands of the gods, resonated with him. Nurthan, too, had been cursed and crippled by the gods for no fault of his own, and it was not long before his name joined those on the Redeemer’s List of the Gracious. And when the old man was cut down for his pocket change by a band of marauding street thugs, it was Nurthan who took up the List in his stead. Eventually, he left Meliad and began his travels across Ghelspad, seeking out those harmed or injured by the predations of titanspawn and titanic cults, applying the lessons of mercy and forgiveness taught to him by the acolytes of Madriel towards earning the forgiveness of his adopted patron.
That was close to thirty years ago. Thirty years of travelling, of constant labor and work to ease the pain and suffering of the unfortunate. Thirty Lists of the Gracious, delivered to temples to be burned or thrown away unread and mocked or denigrated. But it has also been thirty years of purpose, of meaning – Golthain gave Nurthan a reason to live when before he had nothing, and for that the voiceless oracle will champion the Faceless another thirty years, and thirty after that if need be.
http://plothook.net/RPG/profiler/view.php?id=8805 - unspent cash pending PM.
Description:
Tall and thin, Nurthan is a great distance from what one might imagine as the typical insane street preacher, though nor does he look like a crazed and malevolent titan cultist. Used to travelling in the darker places of the world and fending off marauding bandits or the occasional titanspawn, he forgoes flowing robes and tunics for practical armor and a stout, heavy shield, functional and bare of any symbology or decorations. His face is lined with his years, and his dark hair is beginning to thin, but his eyes are bright and exceptionally keen, easily focusing on small details that others would miss. Around his neck, a pendant stylized to resemble a shield with a ring of small gems around the rim is the only visible piece of jewelry or finery that he wears - his translator and 'companion' Hermenos, a blunt, talkative, and somewhat insufferably pacifistic intelligent amulet with a penchant for languages.
