If you see Luke referred to at any time as “Jake” please let me know. My brain decided to start calling him something different mid-sheet and I tried to correct every time I did it.
Name: Luke Feng and Yang Tou
Age: 44 (comparative to mid twenties in human years) and five (with the mindset of someone much older), respectively
Gender: male. Yang Tou is genderless, but if it had a gender it would be male
Species: Gnome and golem, respectively
Kingdom of Origin: Ostracus
Physical appearance: Let’s start with Luke, as he looks less weird. Luke is of slightly below-average height, being 2’10” and weighing something like 80 lbs. His skin is coppery in complexion, reminiscent of the people of Mongolia. He has a stocky build, slightly chubby around the midsection, with thick arms, solid-looking legs, and stubby fingers. He stands generally with his feet spread apart and his arms across his chest, like he’s ready to spring into action at any moment. He has narrow shoulders and a short neck upon which sits his head, which is somewhat elliptical in shape, with a large cranium and a high forehead. Luke keeps his head shaved, a sign of wealth in Ostracus. Luke has somewhat babyfaced features, with plump cheeks and a rounded chin that make him look considerably younger. He has large ears and a mongoloid nose, wide and flat. Luke’s mouth is rather small and his teeth somewhat crooked. He has thin arching eyebrows set low above his eyes and eyes which are large and somewhat slanted. His eyes are dark brown in pigmentation.
He is somewhat based off of
This picture but he looks a little younger.
Yang Tou, however is a different story. Yang Tou is an enormous being, eight feet tall and weighing several tons. Being a golem, Yang Tou is made entirely out of rock which, in its case, is copper ore. Most of Yang Tou’s body is brown rock mixed with sparkling brown ore, but chunks missing from the torso and shoulders reveal that under the rock and brown ore is a layer of beautiful green oxidized copper. It is humanoid in shape, which a wide, muscular-looking body made of rounded chunks of ore. Each segment of Yang Tou’s body is a different individual piece of rock, with the torso divided into five rocks; two shoulders, two pecs, and a stomach. Yang Tou’s shoulders are notably enormous, and it has four-fingered hands on the end of its long arms. Its legs aren’t as thick as its arms (though still quite strong) and end in a foot piece continuous with the shin which has no toes. Its head sits on an almost nonexistent neck and is a squatty, oblong shape. It has asymmetrical eyes which glow copper green and a large mouth which appears to be made from a large crevice in the rock. Despite having no ears, Yang Tou is capable of hearing.
Attire: Luke wears a Shenyi, a special kind of silk robe which citizens of Ostracus wear. Different social classes wear different colors (because I love me some Brave New World). Luke is a Gongunin, an artisan class. Luke wears an earth-toned shenyi due to this, which is a forest green with an earthy brown trim. On his feet, Luke wears a pair of simple leather sandals. Around his waist, Luke wears a belt on which his sword is sheathed. The belt is brown, and blends in with the trim of the robe. He wears on his head a green-and-brown
Mandarin hat.
Yang Tou wears no clothing, but between his shoulders is a wooden chair of sorts on which Luke sits when they travel. The chair is strapped to Yang Tou’s back with a harness. Under the chair, attached to the same harness, is Luke’s travelling supplies. Hanging from the chair’s left arm is a twine sack of clementine-sized oranges, which Luke has charmed to keep the oranges inside from rotting.
Personality: Luke is a generally amiable fellow with a taste for exploration. Unlike most of the stuffy, xenophobic gnomes of Ostracus, Luke is very extroverted and explorative. He loves travelling to new lands and seeing new faces, and is generally cordial to all. He’s very good natured and, while he lacks some in the mental facilities department, is usually a cool guy to be around. He loves telling stories of adventures which may or may not have happened to him while on his adventures. Basically, he’s a great guy to be around at a campfire. While Luke may be kind and polite, he’s also incredibly naive and rather lacking in the common sense department. Luke does some really stupid stuff from time to time (like try to walk up to a sleeping dragon) and his tendency to see the best in people often gets him into trouble. Morally, Luke is more of a deontological kind of guy, with strict rules that he does not break. He tries not to exploit people and often feels the need to give something to people who help him. A big character trait of Luke is his resilience. It’s not easy being a gnome outside of Ostracus, but even though he is often insulted or denied service at more conservative places, Luke never seems to be bothered by this. He is run by an idea that one day he will show the Eastern World just how great gnomes can be if you don’t run a them with a torch in one hand and a battleaxe in the other.
With that in mind, Yang Tou presents an excellent foil to Luke. Yang Tou, being a living rock, isn’t exactly what you’d call “smart”. But, while Yang Tou doesn’t have much book smarts, he is somewhat wise; he’s much more pragmatic than Luke, knowing when to fight and when to run, though he’d totally bomb a math test. Yang Tou is quiet and serious, very rarely speaking. He only speaks Gnomish, unlike Jake who learned the usual english through centaur traders, and so most other people find him to be completely unintelligible. Yang Tou is extremely protective of Luke, and has an almost fatherly affection towards him, often getting angry with him for doing foolish things but never abandoning him. Yang Tou is also somewhat xenophobic, often acting irritated and brash when exposed to new faces.
Hobbies/interests: Luke’s yearning in life is to explore and travel. He loves seeing new cultures and learning new languages and cuisines. He loves to paint and cook, often trying out ways to bridge Gnomish and Eastern styles in both art and cooking. Luke eats a ton, and, though he has a very low alcohol tolerance, will occasionally frequent pubs to chat with the other citizens. Luke’s favorite thing to do is sit in the middle of a Nephari tavern or Talborian pub and chat with travellers while sipping at some classic Gnomish herbal tea, trading stories and learning new experiences. Luke’s favorite snack is an orange, and he keeps a bag of them hanging from his chair on Yang Tou’s back. He has a fascination with the stars and stargazing, and knows the names of every constellation by heart.
Yang Tou doesn’t get to go to pubs. Yang Tou spends most of his days walking around with Jake on his back and seeing nature. While he doesn’t seem like the type for it, Yang Tou has come to enjoy looking at nature, and has become very appreciative of its beauty. He often spends time looking up at the sunset or the blooming starts in the night sky while Luke explores, waiting for the poor little fool to piss someone off so he can come smashing through to save him. Again.
Skills: Well Luke probably wouldn’t be a cartographer if he weren’t a good navigator. Luke spent years studying the stars and learned from centaur traders how to find his location using them. Luke is artistically gifted as well, possessing enough skill at least to draw a good map. He’s a decent cook, though his “hybrid” creations often fall flat (nothing says “home-cooked-meal” like chimera-fried rice with Doraki curry on it).
Yang Tou’s skills consist of walking, smashing things, carrying stuff, and smashing more things. He also kills it on the tambourine.
Backstory: Luke was born in the small Ostracan town of Shanling, the son of an enchanter. Being artisans (enchanters magically fortify armor and building materials), Luke was born into the Gongunin caste, the fourth-highest caste under priests, soldiers, and royal officials. Luke was the fourth of seven children, two of which died very young (the family’s seventh child died in childbirth and the child right after Jake died of smallpox). Luke’s childhood is fairly...unexciting. His family was fairly rich, as his father had a good, high-paying job and his two eldest brothers took home a military paycheck. But life got kinda...boring for Luke after a while. His father occasionally took trips with him to other parts of Ostracus, but Luke found it all to be pretty boring, as all of Ostracus pretty much looked the same to him. What really interested Luke was the environment outside of Ostracus, but the wars were raging between Nepharie and his homeworld, and so he was not permitted to travel outside of the country. When Centaur traders or Dorak merchants came to town, Luke was the first one to run off towards them. He learned a good bit of english (illegally) through the centaur traders, and on several occasions attempted to smuggle away in their things so he could see the outside world.
When Luke turned twenty, he was sent to the Academy to study astronomy. While Luke found the stars to be interesting (and astronomers were noble members of society in Ostracus), but at the same time studying to sit in a dusty observatory all day and never see the outside world. He graduated after a few years and decided that he was going to travel some and see where he could find more interesting work. He got a job in the south of Ostracus as a cartographer’s apprentice, mapping towns and roads. The specific cartographer who he worked for was attempting to make a map of all of Ostracus, but he hadn’t travelled to some of the areas farther North. So, he sent Luke north to explore and sketch maps of the roads and towns. He travelled to all of the towns in the north of Ostracus and even got a chance to travel into some of the Wilderness colonies past the border (though shortly after he left them the Nepharie army took them over). On his way back, though Luke took a detour into the eroded mountains of northwestern Ostracus, where he found a large cave and, out of curiosity, entered it.
Inside of the cave was a massive beast, a fifteen-foot-tall grotesque humanoid made of what appeared to be green jade. It had four arms and a bald, ugly head on which were two tusks which jutted from the corners of its mouth. It sat in a meditating pose in front of a lake of molten copper, as if asleep. When it sensed Luke’s presence, the creature turned angry and rose from its meditation, suddenly sprouting a massive pair of dragonlike wings. Just as it was about to attack him, Luke conjured a golem from the copper in the walls of the cave and defended the attack. Yang Tou was born. The newly-made sentient golem and the monster battled for several minutes before Jake was able to escape with the golem and get out of the cave.
Luke returned to the cartographer a new man with a new passion; he was going to be an explorer. He worked with the cartographer to get some money and help with the map and, after it was all over, decided that he was going to make a map of all of Tithe. He announced this to the new emperor, who decided to grant him permission to leave Ostracus (this was shortly after the wall was built) and make a map of Tithe. Ever since, Luke and his trusty golem sidekick have travelled Tithe, attempting to draw an accurate map and meet as many new people as they can.
Family:
Farin Feng: Father -114
Mara Feng: Mother - 108
Zanshi Feng: Brother - 56
Shou Feng: Brother - 56
Meia Feng: Sister - 48
Xuan Feng: Brother (deceased) - would be 41
Dashi Feng: Sister - 41
Hella cousins, uncles, and aunts.
Relationships:
Weaponry: Luke is able to use magic (which I will talk about later) and carries with him a steel scimitar about a foot long. He carries no other weapons. Yang Tou is a weapon, so he doesn’t carry any.
Abilities: Luke, firstly, is a fairly-capable gnomish mage, able to use the four elements of light magic but not yet able to combine them past mud and dust. He knows a little bit of potion-making from university, and also is a pretty good golem-maker, able to control up to two golems at one time (not counting Yang Tou who is somewhat of an anomaly as you’ll read below). Luke isn’t a particularly skilled swordsman, but if his life absolutely depended on it he could probably figure out which end the pointy one is.
Yang Tou is an anomaly that very seldom exists in golems. Most golems are created, pop into existence for a bit, do their masters’ biddings, and then disintegrate. Yang Tou, however, is one of the few examples of a sentient golem, a golem who was created with a particularly powerful blast of magic and was then kept in existence for a while. This means that Yang Tou exists as an entity unto himself (even though his sheet is tied in with Luke’s) and can move independently without Luke’s commands. That being said, Yang Tou is the muscle of the duo. He is able to lift extremely heavy amounts of weight and punches with quite a force. Yang Tou is quite durable as well, as he is made out of rock (though his copper core isn’t as strong as his rocky outside). Yang Tou cannot use magic.
Weaknesses: Luke in himself is not a fighter. While he carries a sword, it isn’t of much use to him and he’s somewhat naive, so he can be easily tricked. While he can use magic, he can’t use it offensively as well as he can use it defensively. His naivety and greenness in combat is balanced by Yang Tou’s strength and warrior’s soul, though Yang Tou is somewhat slow mentally. Basically what I’m saying is that Luke and Yang Tou complete each other, so if you separate them they turn from one hard-to-beat team to two easy-to-conquer foes.
Companion: Luke and Yang Tou travel together. Yang Tou would qualify as Luke’s mount, but Yang Tou was cool enough to warrant his own section of the sheet.
Other: (anything I didn’t cover in this sheet.)