local teen makes too many characters

[image description: three versions of a traditional drawing of a teenage girl at varying levels of coloration. she has long, messy brown hair (uncolored in the first image) and shes wearing a sweater with thin rainbow stripes and a large arched rainbow on the chest with bright pink heart-shaped sunglasses. (both the sweater and the sunglasses are colored in all versions of the image.) in the third image, an orangey blush is drawn onto her cheeks, ears, and lips. shes smiling lightly. end description]

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so, clayborne is a gnome bard. he plays trombone (full sized), makes dumb jokes to alleviate tension, and is generally just A Fun Dude. youll find him breaking up bar fights and sending an inordinate amount of letters to his hometown, which he… doesnt seem to talk about. see, the village he comes from was isolated and happy– homes were built into the sides of a valley with a small creek running through it, children ran and laughed and feared no evil, craftspeople filled the market with homemade wares and homegrown crops, and all was good.

clayborne had two spouses there (a common trait in their village), a wife, who named herself hardigan, and a husband, who hardigan named fulbright. (hardigan named clayborne “belden,” a name that she said felt like the stones he took from the creek for his altar. he doesnt use that name anymore.) hardigan wrote, thus the names she gave everybody– she recorded the village history, copied down folktales, and wrote her own novels– long, beautiful, handbound by fulbright and illustrated by herself. she and clayborne loved to bake together, while fulbright embroidered (his favorite hobby) on the couch. (when he pricked himself, he always asked them to kiss it better. they played rock paper scissors for the privilege.) fulbright loved pottery, too, and he and clayborne often stayed up late in the village studio molding pots, not having to speak, but feeling the bond between them grow. they were a happy trio.

but one day, the creek flooded. theyd seen the creek flood before, but never this high, and never this fast. their homes that theyd built high into the sides of the mountains werent spared by this flood like they had been for centuries before, and clayborne was the one to sound the alarm. he was just a potter with an affinity for music and baking, but he singlehandedly carried half the town to safety. however, when he realized his home was beginning to flood, he also heard a small child call out. he was torn, but he chose to rescue the child.

his wife and husband were in the house. they drowned peacefully, still asleep. (theyd been planning to start a family soon. clayborne always did love children.)

she spent the first few years of her life living with her elven dad in an elf commune, but she kept getting into trouble, so when a handful of gnomes came through recruiting for their monastery, her dad thought, “oh, a place where our kid will learn self control, awesome, take her,” and sovelia actually got her name from the gnome who escorted her to the monastery! (she decided to ditch her old name, lorelai, when she realized her parents were Not Great and sovelia had a better mouthfeel)

anyway, sovelia immediately fell in love with the monastery’s library and started devouring every book she could get her hands on and trading chores with other students so she could organize and copy books with the librarians. the monastery was multi-disciplinary, but sovelia decided to learn the way of the four elements, and became Way too good at avatar-style waterbending for comfort. she got good with a quarterstaff, learned how to look like she wasnt starting trouble (even though she often was), and learned a lot of respect for other living creatures and the natural cycle of life.

around the age of thirty, the monastery decided she was mature and capable enough to leave the monastery, so she pledged herself to preserving the natural balance of the universe and struck out on her own in search of a good adventuring party, a story to preserve and spread, a new recruit, or a cool pet, whichever comes first. and im proud of her!!!!

oh my GOD jamie i love you so much for giving me this chance alright okay so. first up. aesthetics. theyre modeled on the horned lizard. this was just an artistic choice at first, but then i learned that horned lizards can shoot blood from their eyes as a defense mechanism and then convinced multiple dms to let me say “instead of breathing out a plume of poison keelan shoots some fucking blood from their eyes whats up losers” and it is so fucking fun. also, theyre this broad, horned, threatening silhouette with badass leather gloves (one has an embedded crystal that serves as a spellcasting focus) and magic powers, and they wear these floral sundresses along with their sweet leather armor and cool tool belt and gloves because they think people trust them more that way. (again, +3 to intelligence, but a -3 to wisdom.) also, they like knitting, but hate how other (smaller) humanoids make fun of them for it, so they dont knit in public, but they have a vast array of scarves and hats for every outfit.

second of all is keelans backstory. so. keelan grew up in a kind of out of the way clan where fighting was the main entertainment- think wrestling, but less flash and more punch. also, theres weapons. its totally unscripted but youre 100% expected to be a dramatic mofo in the ring. not everyone goes into the fighting, of course, but its like football there. anyways, keelan is super into it from a very young age. they learn to use a quarterstaff like a pro, and make two close friends, aeric, who fights with two intricately decorated handaxes and a pretty smile, and sorrel, who fought with a club and got in trouble constantly. the three of them were the best in their age group, but sorrel was bad at the “no concussions no maiming” rule. anyways, these three were ride or die, until aeric actually did die due to an accident in the ring. sorrel and keelan were each given one of his handaxes, as his closest friends. sorrel started getting more violent in the ring, because she had never really been taught how to cope with these things, but keelan went the opposite direction. they remembered this book theyd read with a similar story, but in that book, theyd used necromancy and brought their friend back.

keelan kept fighting in the ring, but became distant and reclusive, always sneaking into restricted parts of the library and prying the elders for information about magic. after a few months, they were absolutely certain theyd found The Spell that would Bring Aeric Back. they had some of his blood and scales (a tradition in their clan was to keep scales the way we might keep hair, but keelan had to collect the blood from the morgue shortly after all this occurred to them) for the genetic material, and they set up in the arena to bring him back in the middle of the night, but they just werent powerful enough. the spell backfired, and they were arrested, only managing to palm one of aerics scales before being taken to trial. the elders sentenced them on counts of unauthorized magical training, unauthorized use of private property, and disturbance of the natural order of life. they were exiled, and theyve spent every day after that wandering around with groups of adventurers and searching for a way to bring aeric back, no matter what it takes.