Munin, Magician and Prophet Extraordinaire, Pilgrim, and Part-time Beggar [Archive] - Wizards Community

Munin, Magician and Prophet Extraordinaire, Pilgrim, and Part-time Beggar [Archive] - Wizards Community

Post/Author/DateTime Post
Mostly_Ghostly
02-15-08, 07:15 PM This is the background and description of a character I am creating for an upcoming game, a phony con-man magician who spontaneously develops real power. I'm creating it without a knowledge of the other characters or the nature of the campaign world, so it's possible I may have to change things around a bit. This is a long post, but please bear with it, as I would love to hear what people think. :)

Munin: Magician and Prophet Extraordinaire, Pilgrim, and Part-time Beggar

As the rope tightened around Munin’s neck, a memory came to him of the day he learned his name. When he was a boy his lived and worked with a traveling circus. The children with the circus had no parents as such, but were raised by the whole circus. So, for the first years of his life, its brightly colored caravans were his home, and its misfits and mysteries were his family. Among the caravan-folk, children had no particular names, instead being usually referred to as “Hey, you!” or “Come help clean the big tent”.

One night, when he was young, he had snuck into the caravan of Mama Zi, the fortune teller. Smelling of cinammon and dust, it had been a dim and shadowy place even in the light of midday, and then, in the dead of night, it had been enveloped with a velvety darkness, broken only by the flickering light of candles throwing shadows against the walls. He had crept cautiously across the threshold, carefully closing the door behind him. Halfway across the room he had stopped to listen for Mama Zi, knowing that if she caught him, she would beat him soundly. But it was worth the risk, for she kept wonders on her wall, marvels of magic and metal. They glinted and glittered even in the dim light, alive with mysteries, beckoning him to look.

He had tiptoed over and had just begun to pore over the first strange object, a beautiful clockwork raven that fluttered its wings and cocked its head curiously to look at him with steel eyes, when he felt the gnarled hand of Mama Zi on his shoulder. He had flinched, and prepared himself for the first blow, but it did not come. Instead, the old woman had spoken in a voice that was as dry as dead leaves and yet deep and resonant, old as hills. “So. You have come to see my secret treasures. They are beautiful, no? I do not blame you. When I am sad, I have only to listen to Munin, my sweet bird, and I smile again.” She had smiled then, a quiet smile, full of secrets and the hidden pains of age “Perhaps some day I will show you the other treasures. Perhaps not. But tonight, I will tell your fortune.”

He had been a bit confused, but also glad she wasn’t beating him, so he had sat down obediently at the table where she pointed. She had taken a pack of cards with colored pictures and words on them from the folds of her old red robes and shuffled them with one hand, staring at the boy the whole while. Her face had been as brown and wrinkled as an old walnut, but her eyes were alive and firey, and he had felt that her gaze was burning straight through his own eyes and into his soul.

He had sat there, transfixed, until she began to turn the cards, dealing five in a row. She had looked hard at the cards and then back up at the boy. “This is your life, as far as I can see. The future is not clockwork like Munin, and after here” she had said, pointing at the final card “things are not certain. But like him, the cards have many secrets to tell.” So she had told him his future, and he had gone back home, snuck into his own caravan past his family, picked his way around their sleeping bodies and into his bed. After that day, she had always called him by the name of the bird, and so the others in the caravan called him the same, and it stuck. He soon forgot what she had said that night. But now he remembered, as he stood upon the gallows, and thought on his life.

VI. The Lovers
When he was older, Munin had fallen head over heels in love with Maggie Allen, one of the girls who travelled with the caravan. As luck would have it, she did not love him back, and what is more, though she was very beautiful, she was a hard, cruel sort of person, always looking to her own gain at whatever cost. When he revealed his love for her, she laughed at him and sent him away. Love makes us foolish, and Munin was no exception. Seeking to win her love, he snuck back into Mama Zi’s caravan one night and stole the clockwork raven. When he presented it to her, she was overjoyed and said she would marry him at once, though she planned to do no such thing. Late one night, she stole into his caravan with a knife and took the raven, then crept over to his bed and raised the knife. But he had heard her enter, and he grabbed her hand. They wrestled around the room, and in the fight she gave him scars that he bears to this day, and, though he eventually wrested the knife from her, she escaped with the clockwork bird.

IX. The Hermit
After that night, he left the circus in the small hours of the morning, realizing now what a terrible thing he had done in stealing Mama Zi’s treasured bird, not able to show his face to his fellows at the circus. He wandered the country, surviving on the skills he had learned from the carnival. Cobbling together a stall and some colorful, if useless, “magical implements of power”, he went from town to town, selling charms and fortunes to the gullable, stealing and begging when there were no customers. He had always loved to watch the puppet shows at the circus, and so he performed a strange little show of his own devising wherever he went, with odd, hand-carved puppets. He searched constantly for Maggie, though he didn’t quite know what he would do if he ever found her.

While traveling, he found a pedlar named Arthur in a ditch. He had accidentally returned to a town he had sold faulty goods to and been badly beaten. He nursed him back to health and they became good friends. They travelled together for awhile but parted ways when Arthur got news of a treasure hoard buried in the ruins of some building or another and left to seek it. Munin likes to think that he found it and is now a rich man, however unlikely such a fate is.

I. The Magician
One night, sleeping under his stall on a hilltop, a storm came. It came fast and hard, dark clouds whipping through the night sky and jagged lighting splitting the air. The wind kicked up and blew Munin’s stall off him and down the hill. Rain lashed him and thunder rumbled as if the very mountains were crashing down. But he slept on, though he dreamt of the storm. In his dream, the storm spoke to him, and he could understand its speech. Words were written in the branches of the trees and the rocks of the hills, and he could read them. In the dream, he knew the secret names of the clouds and the secrets that rats whisper to each other in the darkness. And then, in his dream, lightning struck the tree under which he slept, and burning leaves danced around him, and in their dance was all the power in the world.

XII. The Hanged Man
Munin awoke, but the dream stayed with him. He felt a power in his veins, dark juice running through him from head to toe. He walked again, though he had lost his stall in the storm, and as he walked he listened to the wind in the trees, and felt a great, deep loss, for he thought he was on the edge of understanding them, but could not. He reached a village that night and found a place that was dry and out of the wind to sleep. That night, he dreamed of fire. He dreamed he was in the company of dragons, beasts of gold and red that swirled and danced above the town and burned it to the ground with their breath. He awoke floating several feet off the ground, in the middle of a sentence in a tongue he did not know, a situation that ended abruptly and painfully when he saw the faces of the fearful, angry villagers standing in a circle around him, brandishing nasty-looking clubs and even nastier-looking pitchforks.

X. The Wheel of Fortune
He stands on the gallows now, at the point of uncertainty. His life from this point has no cards to guide it, but fortune has lead a group of travelers, called “adventurers” by some, by others merely “stupid” to pass by the town on the day of his execution...

Munin
Human Rogue 1/Sorcerer 1

Description:Munin is a man with the prematurely old and worn look of someone who doesn’t eat much and has spent too many nights outdoors. He is very tall, 6’4’’ easily, with a shock of red hair and a pale, dirty face. An ugly scar runs down his face and curls his lip, and several more are partially visible. He wears a patched and ragged long coat, and is draped in torn and dirty cloths of red and yellow, which he thinks lend him a more magical air. He speaks in a commanding voice and commands a burning stare, traits which have helped him con more than one fool.

Equipment: Though his stall was swept away by the storm that awakened his sorcery, he still carries a few possessions on his person, including the dagger Maggie tried to kill him with, a bowl for begging, and a stout walking stick which, being made of darkish wood, doubled as a “wizard’s shadowy staff of dark and unspeakable power” for his customers.

----------------------

Thoughts?
Mysteria
02-16-08, 09:58 AM I like it, but try to put some paragraphs into the first part of the background. ;) Right now, it's a wall of text and you'll probably get more comments if people aren't put off by a huge block of text right at the beginning.

What I didn't expect was for Munin to be a grizzled man already. I put him rather in his late twenties/early thirties.
Mostly_Ghostly
02-16-08, 11:10 AM Good point, thanks :) . I thought I did have it in paragraphs. Maybe they don't translate over when pasting from a word processor?

Some more specific questions:
I like the charlatan/con-man aspect of the character. Do you think it comes across strongly enough?
Also, thoughts on the development of sorcery? Is it tacked-on, or does it work?
I realize that this is playing off stereotypes of carnival people. Is this a problem?
Mysteria
02-16-08, 12:41 PM Afaik, you have to put double 'enter' signs for paragraphs to work when you copy-paste from word. Looks good now. :)

- Charlatan/con-man: Yes, I definitely got that aspect of his character so I think it's strong enoug. :)

- Sorcery: It's not really subtle, but it works. Maybe you could drop some hints about budding sorcery a bit earlier in the background so it's a bit less of a surprise? :)

- Stereotypes: I don't really care if it's stereotypical or not as long as it makes for a good story. :)

Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Mostly_Ghostly 02-15-08, 07:15 PM	This is the background and description of a character I am creating for an upcoming game, a phony con-man magician who spontaneously develops real power. I'm creating it without a knowledge of the other characters or the nature of the campaign world, so it's possible I may have to change things around a bit. This is a long post, but please bear with it, as I would love to hear what people think. :) Munin: Magician and Prophet Extraordinaire, Pilgrim, and Part-time Beggar As the rope tightened around Munin’s neck, a memory came to him of the day he learned his name. When he was a boy his lived and worked with a traveling circus. The children with the circus had no parents as such, but were raised by the whole circus. So, for the first years of his life, its brightly colored caravans were his home, and its misfits and mysteries were his family. Among the caravan-folk, children had no particular names, instead being usually referred to as “Hey, you!” or “Come help clean the big tent”. One night, when he was young, he had snuck into the caravan of Mama Zi, the fortune teller. Smelling of cinammon and dust, it had been a dim and shadowy place even in the light of midday, and then, in the dead of night, it had been enveloped with a velvety darkness, broken only by the flickering light of candles throwing shadows against the walls. He had crept cautiously across the threshold, carefully closing the door behind him. Halfway across the room he had stopped to listen for Mama Zi, knowing that if she caught him, she would beat him soundly. But it was worth the risk, for she kept wonders on her wall, marvels of magic and metal. They glinted and glittered even in the dim light, alive with mysteries, beckoning him to look. He had tiptoed over and had just begun to pore over the first strange object, a beautiful clockwork raven that fluttered its wings and cocked its head curiously to look at him with steel eyes, when he felt the gnarled hand of Mama Zi on his shoulder. He had flinched, and prepared himself for the first blow, but it did not come. Instead, the old woman had spoken in a voice that was as dry as dead leaves and yet deep and resonant, old as hills. “So. You have come to see my secret treasures. They are beautiful, no? I do not blame you. When I am sad, I have only to listen to Munin, my sweet bird, and I smile again.” She had smiled then, a quiet smile, full of secrets and the hidden pains of age “Perhaps some day I will show you the other treasures. Perhaps not. But tonight, I will tell your fortune.” He had been a bit confused, but also glad she wasn’t beating him, so he had sat down obediently at the table where she pointed. She had taken a pack of cards with colored pictures and words on them from the folds of her old red robes and shuffled them with one hand, staring at the boy the whole while. Her face had been as brown and wrinkled as an old walnut, but her eyes were alive and firey, and he had felt that her gaze was burning straight through his own eyes and into his soul. He had sat there, transfixed, until she began to turn the cards, dealing five in a row. She had looked hard at the cards and then back up at the boy. “This is your life, as far as I can see. The future is not clockwork like Munin, and after here” she had said, pointing at the final card “things are not certain. But like him, the cards have many secrets to tell.” So she had told him his future, and he had gone back home, snuck into his own caravan past his family, picked his way around their sleeping bodies and into his bed. After that day, she had always called him by the name of the bird, and so the others in the caravan called him the same, and it stuck. He soon forgot what she had said that night. But now he remembered, as he stood upon the gallows, and thought on his life. VI. The Lovers When he was older, Munin had fallen head over heels in love with Maggie Allen, one of the girls who travelled with the caravan. As luck would have it, she did not love him back, and what is more, though she was very beautiful, she was a hard, cruel sort of person, always looking to her own gain at whatever cost. When he revealed his love for her, she laughed at him and sent him away. Love makes us foolish, and Munin was no exception. Seeking to win her love, he snuck back into Mama Zi’s caravan one night and stole the clockwork raven. When he presented it to her, she was overjoyed and said she would marry him at once, though she planned to do no such thing. Late one night, she stole into his caravan with a knife and took the raven, then crept over to his bed and raised the knife. But he had heard her enter, and he grabbed her hand. They wrestled around the room, and in the fight she gave him scars that he bears to this day, and, though he eventually wrested the knife from her, she escaped with the clockwork bird. IX. The Hermit After that night, he left the circus in the small hours of the morning, realizing now what a terrible thing he had done in stealing Mama Zi’s treasured bird, not able to show his face to his fellows at the circus. He wandered the country, surviving on the skills he had learned from the carnival. Cobbling together a stall and some colorful, if useless, “magical implements of power”, he went from town to town, selling charms and fortunes to the gullable, stealing and begging when there were no customers. He had always loved to watch the puppet shows at the circus, and so he performed a strange little show of his own devising wherever he went, with odd, hand-carved puppets. He searched constantly for Maggie, though he didn’t quite know what he would do if he ever found her. While traveling, he found a pedlar named Arthur in a ditch. He had accidentally returned to a town he had sold faulty goods to and been badly beaten. He nursed him back to health and they became good friends. They travelled together for awhile but parted ways when Arthur got news of a treasure hoard buried in the ruins of some building or another and left to seek it. Munin likes to think that he found it and is now a rich man, however unlikely such a fate is. I. The Magician One night, sleeping under his stall on a hilltop, a storm came. It came fast and hard, dark clouds whipping through the night sky and jagged lighting splitting the air. The wind kicked up and blew Munin’s stall off him and down the hill. Rain lashed him and thunder rumbled as if the very mountains were crashing down. But he slept on, though he dreamt of the storm. In his dream, the storm spoke to him, and he could understand its speech. Words were written in the branches of the trees and the rocks of the hills, and he could read them. In the dream, he knew the secret names of the clouds and the secrets that rats whisper to each other in the darkness. And then, in his dream, lightning struck the tree under which he slept, and burning leaves danced around him, and in their dance was all the power in the world. XII. The Hanged Man Munin awoke, but the dream stayed with him. He felt a power in his veins, dark juice running through him from head to toe. He walked again, though he had lost his stall in the storm, and as he walked he listened to the wind in the trees, and felt a great, deep loss, for he thought he was on the edge of understanding them, but could not. He reached a village that night and found a place that was dry and out of the wind to sleep. That night, he dreamed of fire. He dreamed he was in the company of dragons, beasts of gold and red that swirled and danced above the town and burned it to the ground with their breath. He awoke floating several feet off the ground, in the middle of a sentence in a tongue he did not know, a situation that ended abruptly and painfully when he saw the faces of the fearful, angry villagers standing in a circle around him, brandishing nasty-looking clubs and even nastier-looking pitchforks. X. The Wheel of Fortune He stands on the gallows now, at the point of uncertainty. His life from this point has no cards to guide it, but fortune has lead a group of travelers, called “adventurers” by some, by others merely “stupid” to pass by the town on the day of his execution... Munin Human Rogue 1/Sorcerer 1 Description:Munin is a man with the prematurely old and worn look of someone who doesn’t eat much and has spent too many nights outdoors. He is very tall, 6’4’’ easily, with a shock of red hair and a pale, dirty face. An ugly scar runs down his face and curls his lip, and several more are partially visible. He wears a patched and ragged long coat, and is draped in torn and dirty cloths of red and yellow, which he thinks lend him a more magical air. He speaks in a commanding voice and commands a burning stare, traits which have helped him con more than one fool. Equipment: Though his stall was swept away by the storm that awakened his sorcery, he still carries a few possessions on his person, including the dagger Maggie tried to kill him with, a bowl for begging, and a stout walking stick which, being made of darkish wood, doubled as a “wizard’s shadowy staff of dark and unspeakable power” for his customers. ---------------------- Thoughts?
Mysteria 02-16-08, 09:58 AM	I like it, but try to put some paragraphs into the first part of the background. ;) Right now, it's a wall of text and you'll probably get more comments if people aren't put off by a huge block of text right at the beginning. What I didn't expect was for Munin to be a grizzled man already. I put him rather in his late twenties/early thirties.
Mostly_Ghostly 02-16-08, 11:10 AM	Good point, thanks :) . I thought I did have it in paragraphs. Maybe they don't translate over when pasting from a word processor? Some more specific questions: I like the charlatan/con-man aspect of the character. Do you think it comes across strongly enough? Also, thoughts on the development of sorcery? Is it tacked-on, or does it work? I realize that this is playing off stereotypes of carnival people. Is this a problem?
Mysteria 02-16-08, 12:41 PM	Afaik, you have to put double 'enter' signs for paragraphs to work when you copy-paste from word. Looks good now. :) - Charlatan/con-man: Yes, I definitely got that aspect of his character so I think it's strong enoug. :) - Sorcery: It's not really subtle, but it works. Maybe you could drop some hints about budding sorcery a bit earlier in the background so it's a bit less of a surprise? :) - Stereotypes: I don't really care if it's stereotypical or not as long as it makes for a good story. :)