northeast sun

My sibling was trying to remember a character they met in the dnd campaign I ran for them and it was Charon "The Rat Bastard" "The Ambassador of Rats" Lascaux and I went and dredged up this old drawing of him for them and now i have to repost it because.

-Belongs to a large and close-knit family and community. His parents were corsairs in the service of the crown, but were scapegoated over some bullshit and accused of treason + stripped of their commission, and upon escaping with their ship they were branded pirates. Reasonably miffed about the situation, they put on their pirate hats and said "Well if you insist"

-Charon is the result of a short but passionate relationship between his mother, Simona Lascaux, and a fisherman in some tiny port. They parted amicably... and then Simona found out she was pregnant and ended up giving birth to Charon at sea. So he spent a lot of his childhood on a pirate ship being raised by his mother Simona and her brother Elysander (for whom Charon gets his middle name: Charon Elysander Lascaux)

-In the world of Oehnstratos, some people are born with inherent magical quirks, but not the ability to actually perform magic. They'll just be gifted or cursed with one very specific ability. In Charon's case, he was born with an innate ability to understand and be understood by rats. His closest friends growing up were the rats in his mother's ship's hold; they didn't need a mouser to keep the population down, they had Charon negotiate with them on the crew's behalf.

-Due to having had this ability his entire remembered life, Charon doesn't just understand rats literally but culturally. He gets to know who's who in the neighborhood rat population as he travels, he pays obeisance to the local fat rats, he understands their values and worldview. Charon Gets rat culture.

-This is why in life he was called the Rat Bastard as a loving nickname (on account of him also literally being a bastard). He retains this ability when he later becomes a demigod.

-He has a lifelong fascination with death. He saw a lot of it at sea, and has come by some interesting wisdoms about it from rats.

-The entire Lascaux family are devout adherents to a faith called Emanide, which is the cult of the goddess Mama Emani, "The Holy Mother of Revolt", a once-mortal liberator who led a successful revolution against imperial powers and was eventually apotheosized by the love and faith of her followers. The Emanide faith emphasizes pooling resources and distributing them fluidly among the community, not holding onto more material wealth than you need and can use in your life, shunning hoarders of wealth, respecting the inviolate free will and right to liberty of all people, flouting unjust laws, and contributing to a group project of harrying and tearing down unjust authorities. Emanites tend to form extremely well-organized co-op communities that clash with and push out the enforcers of wealthy authorities and police their own neighborhoods.

-The most devout Emanites - such as Charon - can be sworn into an ascetic order called the Sisterhood of Bearers. As a member of the Sisterhood, Charon has taken oaths forswearing accumulating material wealth and obliging him to disrupt the actions of oppressive authorities. He never carries much more on him than the clothes on his back, his weapons, his two golden obols, and whatever he needs to get through the day. (in Oehnstratos, obols are a vital burial tradition and it's a tragedy to die while possessing none to take with you. obols are the only gold that Sister Bearers are allowed to hang onto somewhat indefinitely, since they are obligated to shed any excess wealth throughout the day and end the day with as little in their pockets as possible. but they are sworn to also give away their obol if they come across a dying pauper who doesn't have one, and for this reason and some other symbolic ones, they carry two, usually visibly hanging on their person somewhere to identify themselves as Sister bearers)

-If you are poor, Charon will quite literally give you the shirt off his back. If you're rich, he'll happily give you a swift kick in the groin, and that's if you're lucky. He was once arrested for slaying a nobleman who was beating his servants in the street, and subsequently executed, though a massive riot broke out at the gallows when angry Emanites demanding justice rushed the guards. In the chaos Charon was nonetheless killed. He was later returned to life when his friend and later wife, Laurent Geistman, went on a lone pilgrimage on foot into the land of the dead and carried his soul back out to revive him.

-Charon eventually ended up killing the god of Death, Savinikos, as well as his own patron goddess Maman Emani, though that one was by her own request - she charged him as a faithful Sister Bearer to end her life as a religious quest, which rather tied his hands. In the aftermath of this event, Charon was forced to take on the mantle of both Savinikos and Emani, apotheosizing him as a psychopomp and the demi/god of Death, Undeath, and Revolt.