#hendrich

Hendrich “Hen” Longmoor is notorious in a number of towns and cities across the country he resides in, though not usually under that name. It’s a rural name, for rural folk; like many halflings, he grew up in the countryside, living in a well-maintained and comfortable hole in the ground with a half-dozen siblings and not a few cousins to boot. He’ll admit that he was happy there, when he can bring himself to think back that far; it wasn’t even Hendrich who wanted to leave home in the first place. But his little brother Mauric and his cousin Nettie had gotten it in their head that they wanted to go off and see the big city, and as the dutiful elder brother and a Certified Adult of nearly forty, Hendrich was persuaded to go along and look after them.

The way Hendrich tells the story now, edited down for childrens’ consumption, what happened next wasn’t his fault--he was just a simple country boy, dazzled by the glitz and glamor of the capital, and he was taken in and sheared like a sheep before he knew what happened to him. But in truth, he wasn’t that innocent. Hendrich had played Three-Dragon Ante before, and had learned back home to cheat at it, in harmless games played with pebbles and unwanted chores. He was a good player when he wasn’t cheating, and a great player when he was... back home, in the countryside. In the city, by the time he knew he was being fleeced, he was already in too deep to get out. He tried to bolt, but his opponents snatched Mauric and Nettie, and things might have gone poorly for all three of them if the Silver Weasel hadn’t stepped in.

The Silver Weasel paid off the card sharks, but it wasn’t out of the kindness of their weasel-y heart. Hendrich had some potential, they said, that they’d like to invest in developing into talken. Hendrich edits this part for the children, too, tells them about how he felt indebted and compelled and a little afraid, leaves out the part where he was eager and fascinated and foolhardy. How he jumped at the offer, instead of hanging back; how he said “yes” without a second thought, apprenticed himself as a burglar and never looked back. The Silver Weasel had a network of connections across the country, and over the next several years, Hendrich was given every opportunity to grow into an excellent second-story man. He became most well-known as “Thrush,” for reasons that he absolutely refuses to explain. (He is small, brown, and plump, which is likely not unrelated, but he doesn’t take well to the suggestion.)

The Silver Weasel traded heavily in favors, and Thrush got to travel widely, seeing many famous sites and glorious cities as he plied his trade. For most of these jobs, his partner was a bright-eyed, leggy, quick-fingered gnome called “Piper,” which in her case might well have been her real name--though given the wide variety of nicknames she’d acquired, in the gnomish style, Thrush was never quite sure. At any rate, she was as quick with words as she was with her fingers, and her sunny good temper and wild enthusiasm were both charming to Hendrich, who thought of her as another sister (though he was aware that her feelings on the subject were a little more... romantic). They worked together for decades, big, flashy heists separated by long periods of smaller jobs and recreation. Separately, they were good; together, they were great. Or at least, that’s how they felt about it.

But in the grand scheme of things, they weren’t that good. Or maybe they just got too ambitious, too greedy, too careless about covering their tracks. Thrush was, at least. On the way home from a job the Silver Weasel had sent them on, they ran afoul of a rude and haughty nobleman, who wore enough jewels to feed a small town for a year and bragged about his household security within earshot. Still high on the excitement of their last burglary, Thrush immediately decided they had to put some holes in this windbag’s pride. Piper was uncertain, but Thrush leaned on her until she gave in Unfortunately, the man’s security was just as good as he’d claimed, and for the first time, Thrush and Piper found themselves caught in a net they couldn’t get out of.

The nobleman, they discovered, wasn’t just rich and well-guarded; he was the local lord, and thus the local law. Their trial barely deserved the name: they were dragged in front of him and sentenced to twenty years in his very secure dungeons, then thrown down and left to rot. Their only saving grace was that his guards were more indifferent than cruel, and they were fed, though irregularly, and rarely tormented by their jailers. It was a long time to molder in a dungeon, though, and hardly a good place for anyone’s health. Piper had always been prone to a bit of a cough in the damp, and it got worse, year by year, until it was so bad that the guards were finally forced to take note. By then she was coughing up blood, and shook like a leaf whenever she coughed, and was thin and light as a feather the few times that Thrush was allowed to touch her--for a friendship could easily sour over such a long time, when there was no privacy and no comfort and one of the pair was most definitely more responsible for their plight.

By the time the guards took Piper away, she couldn’t even stand, and Thrush wasn’t surprised when he was told a week later, without a trace of pity or compassion, that he wouldn’t see her again.

He had a few more years to contemplate the grief he’d led her to before his own sentence was finally up. By now, the once-plump Thrush was barely a shadow of himself, and with all his skills atrophied and his physique ravaged by disuse and hunger, he had no idea how he was going to pull himself back up. He made his reappearance known to the Silver Weasel, though the complete lack of rescue over the past two decades hadn’t exactly raised his hopes, and received about the dismissive response he’d expected: he still owed the mysterious figure a few debts (with accumulated interest now), though the Weasel would be gracious enough to let him repay them on his own schedule given the adverse circumstances, and he should wait until he was in a position to start repaying before he made contact again.

It was hunger that drew him to the courtyard of a temple that was serving a surprisingly elaborate and delicious meal to the poor, and desperation that made him sit through the evening services in exchange for a bed. And perhaps it was a simple desire for companionship that made him stay, the next morning, when he was invited to morning services and breakfast, and introduce himself to his tablemates not as Thrush but as Hendrich Longmoor, like he was a simple rustic once again. The other halfling who sat down next to him was certainly friendly enough, and was able to explain more about the services that he’d sat through, and been a bit baffled by. This wasn’t a temple to any one god, as most temples were; this was a temple to the divine warmth of the hearth, and honored several gods and goddesses in their most-related aspects. Chief among them in this particular temple were Yondalla and Berronar Truesilver, given the large number of dwarves and halflings in the congregation, but all who gave light or warmth or safe harbor touched this fellowship with their divine light.

And Hendrich must have been hungry for companionship indeed, for within a matter of months, he’d taken the simple robes of a novice of the Order of the Heavenly Hearth. Now that he’d endured hunger, true and long-lasting hunger, Hendrich found himself drawn more and more to the kitchens, where he was taught the craft of cooking by the Order’s many master chefs. But he also remained a close friend and eager student of the halfling priest he’d first met, Perriot Greengage--and when Perriot announced his intention to leave this congregation, where he’d been studying for a higher clerical rank, and return to his home temple, Hendrich somehow found himself trailing along.

When they arrived in Perriot’s hometown, Hendrich discovered that the Order’s temple there, led by a dwarven abbess named Ingrid Brighthammer, wasn’t just a place of worship. It was an orphanage, too, sheltering children of any race that had nowhere else to go. Abbess Brighthammer wasted no time in putting Hendrich to work in the orphanage’s kitchens, where he had to juggle children along with food. But she also seemed to see some other kind of promise in Hendrich, and he soon found himself shanghaied into private training sessions in which the Abbess taught him clerical magics, which he took to with surprising talent.

It was all a positive situation for Hendrich, who slowly found his grief and despair softened and his heart lightened by the presence of friends and children all around. This was his new calling, and he’d found a place in the world where he could both contribute and be protected. Sometimes he felt the urge sweep over him to pick a lock or pocket an item, just to see if he still had his touch, but he could always resist it. He was convinced that he’d never need to call upon his old skills or his old contacts again.

...And then he got a note from the Silver Weasel, commenting that, while he clearly would be no good any longer at his old second-story work, he certainly had built up the skillset again to earn some money and start once again paying the Weasel back. Go out adventuring, earn some coin, and his debt would be paid off in meantime. And if he didn’t, well, wouldn’t it just be a shame if anything happened to any of those kindly priests, or any of those desperate younglings he was tending?

Hendrich told Abbess Brighthammer that he felt a powerful urge, perhaps even a calling, to go out in the world and try to pay back some of his misdeeds with positive action. He could send supplies and money back to the orphanage while he was at it, for they were always in need of those, and maybe he would find some other unfortunates who also needed the light of the Heavenly Hearth in their lives. It was clear that the Abbess was suspicious of his sudden desire to leave, but she seemed to be more concerned about him reverting to his criminal ways of his own accord (which hurt more than he’d expected) than actually suspicious of the truth. And in the end, she let him go, though she wasn’t happy about it.

For his own part, Hendrich’s only goal is to pay off his debts and come back home to the Order just as soon as he can manage. In the meantime, he’s going to try to resist his itchy fingers and stay on the right side of the law, so that Perriot and Ingrid can be proud of him.

Race: Halfling (Lightfoot)

Ability Score Increase: Dexterity +2, Charisma +1

Age: A halfling reaches adulthood at 20 and lives to about 250. Hendrich is 135.

Size: Small. Hendrich stands at 2′8″ and weighs about 48 pounds.

Speed: 25 feet.

Lucky: When you roll a 1 for an attack roll, ability check, or saving throw, you can reroll and must use the new roll.

Brave: You have advantage on saving throws against being frightened.

Halfling Nimbleness: You can move through the space of any creature that is of a size larger than yours.

Naturally Stealthy: You can attempt to hide even when you are obscured only by a creature that is at least one size larger than you.

Languages: Common, Halfling.

Alignment: Hendrich is Lawful Neutral (working slowly towards Lawful Good). 

Class: Cleric (Forge Domain)

Temple: Your temple is a peaceful, humble place, filled with vegetable gardens and simple priests.

Keepsake: A cookpot said to have belonged to the first abbot of the temple.

Secret: Even though you can work divine magic, you have never truly felt the presence of a divine essence within yourself.

Armor proficiencies: light armor, medium armor, heavy armor, shields

Weapon proficiencies: simple weapons

Tool proficiencies: cook’s utensils (subbed for smith’s tools, given the bent of his Order)

Saving throw proficiencies: Wisdom, Charisma

Skill proficiencies: Insight, Persuasion

Background: Criminal

Criminal Specialty: Burglar

Skill proficiencies: Deceception, Stealth

Tool proficiencies: playing cards (Three-Dragon Ante), thieves’ tools

Feature: Criminal Contact (the Silver Weasel and their local agents, who will hook Hendrich into the network so long as he continues to work on paying off his debt)

Personality Traits:

The first thing I do in a new place is note the locations of everything valuable--or where such things could be hidden.

I would rather make a new friend than a new enemy.

I am tolerant of other faiths and respect the worship of other gods and principles. (from Acolyte) 

I’m a born gambler who can’t resist taking a risk for a potential payoff. (from Charlatan)

Flattery is my preferred trick for getting what I want. (from Charlatan)

I work hard so that I can play hard when the work is done. (from Sailor)

Ideals:

Honor: I don’t steal from others in the trade.

Redemption: There’s a spark of good in everyone.

Friendship: Material goods come and go. Bonds of friendship last forever. (from Charlatan)

Bonds:

I’m trying to pay off an old debt I owe to a generous benefactor.

Someone I loved (probably) died because of a mistake I made. That will never happen again.

I will do anything to protect the temple where I served. (from Acolyte)

Flaws:

When I see something valuable, I can’t think of anything but how to steal it.

I have a “tell” that reveals when I’m lying.

My piety sometimes leads me to blindly trust those who profess faith in my principles. (from Acolyte)

I’m too greedy for my own good. I can’t resist taking a risk if there’s money involved. (from Charlatan)

Now that I’ve returned to the world, I enjoy its delights a little too much. (from Hermit)