#5e bard

👕 Appearance Is there someone your character tries to look similar to?

In-world: Cannor has his own look, but his original inspiration to be a bard was fatefully catalyzed one night in Caranacia, the City of Fortune and his adopted home. He was young—about 11 or so—and earning his keep (in various good and bad ways) at the Wandering Star tavern as a general errand-boy when the venue was graced by famed traveling bard and notorious curmudgeon Ruqirt Al-Zeem (aka “Raz the Rambler”). The venerable foreign minstrel-poet captivated our impressionable future hero. "I was in the front row, and he looked at me." Cannor has clumsily modeled his self-centered, idiosyncratic, and dubiously truthful creativity on Raz ever since.

Meta: It may be hilariously and pathetically uncool by today's standards, but I don't care because it works for him: Cannor's look was originally based on early-'90s Sting and Bono (with ego and parental issues to match), but he's long since settled into something more like Gabriel Byrne from the same period. The popped collar is the tell.

📦 Objects Is there an item your character is embarrassed they own or want?

He is embarrassed to own, but will never part with, what he calls his "Redstone Ring" (mechanically, a Ring of Protection) because it symbolizes his exile and related life lessons. The dull-red, snake-shaped sardonyx jewel originally belonging to Lady Esadora Errocamesi of House Redstone, Cannor's one-time patron/lover and daughter of Caranacia's Supreme Councillor. Cannor had been splitting his time performing and dabbling in spycraft for the Equiposium, a diplomatic academy and intelligence arm of the city's Ruling Council. It was a risky but lucrative living, and for six years he swaggered and caroused through increasingly lofty circles while informing on competing guilds, rich nobles, and official institutions.

Fate caught him after Cannor discovered Lady Esa had another paramour—Zafraia of Enancia, a fellow Equiposian agent. The resulting scandal explosively convulsed Caranacia for two days as the rival spies dueled across the city until Lord Redstone's authorities and Equiposian assassins came after them. Both escaped with help: Zaf fled east with Tramontine smugglers, and Cannor sneaked out of the city in disguise on "official Redstone business" using Lady Esa's snake ring, which she gave him for that purpose and as a placating token of favor (he was officially banished from the city). Cannor stowed away on a northbound Klasi ship, eventually landing in Saithaaven as an exile.

🤝 Community and Relationships How comfortable would your character be singing and dancing in front of others?

He's a bard, so comfortable enough. But it's not that simple, so to answer I'll steal from a previous post, "Music is a Tool." For Cannor, performance is a means to an end. "Music, songwriting, stories, poetry—those are tools," he once told Ruy, "for clawing back some control from a world that constantly wants to take it away." Cannor went on to explain that creativity was essential for sanity and stability when dealing with reality. His song arrangements were considerably simplified from their various sources and influences, but his lyrics were compelling.

He preferred to write and sing his own story “because I figured nobody else would” rather than perform traditionally popular heroic epics, romantic ballads, or other troubadour clichés. Predictably, this didn’t get him many gigs, so he had to fight "the war to make people care." His methods involved what other minstrels might dismiss as "amateur incompetence" or even “cheating," but which could also be desribed as different and more unique skills than most in his trade. Cannor happily employed simple magic to change his instrument’s octave, for example, or to make it echo and resonate within whatever space he performed.

That instrument, the Savansi bailágrima, is an oversized, teardrop-shaped ebony-and-rosewood cittern. It creates low and resonant tones emphasizing the percussive, rhythmic style of the Floodlands. Cannor eschewed extended instrumental passages—his “stone fingers” produced rudimentary plucking and strumming—but a basic accompaniment structure allowed for more improvisation and storytelling, which suited his “semi-autobiographical” lyrics much better. His own life experiences (adventure, love, loss, conflict, renown, power, glory, shame, infamy) became as engaging as any hero’s tale.