[OOC] Caravan: An Episodic Fantasy with Worldbuilding! [Always Accepting]

[Tortoise]

For those wondering, yes, dwarves of all genders and sexes have beards. At least the Dinnin kind.

@Enigmatik

I like to imagine they're born with stubble.

[Crusader Lord]

<Snipped quote by Enigmatik>

I like to imagine they're born with stubble.

@Tortoise

What this all brought to mind for me, suddenly and without warning:

Dwarven Wife: "Oi, deah', look at' is' un'! She's got yer' Pa's stiff n' rugged chin, eh?"

Dwarven Father: "Aye dear, she does ave' it! And yer color air' ta' boot. Look at is' lil' beard alreadeh' comin' in, ancestors bless er'! Can't be aneh' less proud ah' tha' wee' boy than ah' can beh' right now....brings tears to me eyes to see ah' bit ah've my Pa' again too, it does. Been many ah' year since e' was walkin' round n' still breathin'. My Ma'll be crying to once she sees er' fer' erself'!"

Dwarven Wife: "Let em' tears flow out fee ta'day, dear, cause' man's gotta' beh' proud bout' is' first child bein' born an' all! But weh' can save tha' celebratin' fer' tha' bar later, ah'm thinkin'. The rest ah' tha' clan waitin' outside's gotta be antsy waitin' fer' tha' news now. Let em' get smashed fer' now, and we'll join em' later fer' some more rounds.

Ow's that sound?"

Dwarven Father: "Yer remindin' me every day why ah' love ya' an' married ya', dear, and yer advice in on-point! Me' brothers n' yer da'll need ta get some drink in after waitin' fer' tha' news of tha' birth, they will! Though not even Pa' woulda' crossed this midwife of ah' mother ya' got ere' as well, mah' love."

Midwife/Dwarven Wife's Mother, from the corner where she's stnading with crossed arms and chewing something: "Oi! You two gonna' tell em', or I gotta' do it meself fer' the day gets' passin' along too far ta' get ta' tha' tavern fer' drinkin' hour?"

Dwarven Wife: "Right. Eh, yeah go tell em' dear. Before me mum gets fed up."

Dwarven Father: "Aye, aye, I'll go, I'll go. Me' ma'll be barging in ta' boot ah' figure."

[Enigmatik]

@Tortoise

It's nice and downy when they're babes. Probably a proverb about it 😉.

@Crusader Lord

They're Arabic! Not Scottish!

[Crusader Lord]

@Tortoise

It's nice and downy when they're babes. Probably a proverb about it 😉.

@Crusader Lord

They're Arabic! Not Scottish!

@Enigmatik

B-But I can't write Arabic-accented English. (T_T)

And noted! Curious what their society would look like as well, but regardless you've got some cool ideas!

[Enigmatik]

@Crusader Lord

The Dinnin are a crossover event with another one of Tort's RPs (technically two since there's a fantasy and sci-fi version of them) with three seperate sub-societies all grouped under the 'Dinnin' banner. Excited to get into them if I get the chance!

[Expendable]

For those wondering, yes, dwarves of all genders and sexes have beards. At least the Dinnin kind.

@Enigmatik

Did a dwarf once who had alopecia areata - they couldn't grow a beard, it ran in the father's family. Their mom made them a false beard that made their face itch. When it was discovered, rumors began up that she wasn't an actual dwarf.

I'd like to assure you that it does take two dwarves to make a dwarf, ignore that half-dwarf DnD is trying to add. The hard part of any dwarf courtship is figuring out which gender your proposed spouse is.

[Enigmatik]

@Expendable

That's a really fun idea! I once did a dwarf raised by humans who gasp shaved his beard! For practical reasons! Horrifying!

Within the Dinnin it's easy though - the three genders all have different ways of braiding their beards and cuts of clothing that identify them.

[Tortoise]

@Crusader Lord

The Dinnin are a crossover event with another one of Tort's RPs (technically two since there's a fantasy and sci-fi version of them) with three seperate sub-societies all grouped under the 'Dinnin' banner. Excited to get into them if I get the chance!

@Enigmatik

Yeah at this point I just assume that every RP I make is gonna connect to the Dinnin, one way or another. They're turning into the extended universe of my games.

I'mma make a horror survival RP some day and you'll find a way to have a character who follows the Dinnin's faith wandering around the abandoned insane asylum somehow.

[Enigmatik]

@Tortoise

To be fair, a lunatic screeching about THE LIGHT AND THE FLAME* with scrawled snakes all over their wall in questionable fluids does sound pretty survival horror.

[Tortoise]

@Tortoise

To be fair, a lunatic screeching about THE SUN AND THE LIGHT with scrawled snakes all over their wall in questionable fluids does sound pretty survival horror.

@Enigmatik

I KNEW IT.

[Enigmatik]

@Tortoise

it's a fair cop

[Expendable]

I too have a scifi race I play a lot - the Valkyrii, a female clone race with small wings on their backs. They're also telepathic among themselves. Only a few are decanted with the ability to telepathically connect to alien races, and typically only by touch. Other telepaths get headaches. They work primarily as mercenaries and zero-g construction workers.

Really, the only way I could bring one in for this game would be as an escort or two for a extraterrestrial diplomat who used an inflatable lifepod. Sounds distracting.

[Lugubrious]

Ok, here you go. I'm happy with how it turned out but amenable to suggestions.

If I had any friends, they would call me…Gru

Gruyere Emmentaler Caerphilly Yarg

Race, Age, Time in the Caravan:
Human (Supposedly), 34, 2 years 8 months and 1 day

Appearance:
Though ostensibly human, Gru possesses an odd assortment of shapes and proportions that make him seem less like a real person and more like a caricature come to life. Standing on the shorter side at a mere 5’7”, Gru possesses a somewhat unimpressive, heavyset physique, with thin arms and legs, a rotund middle, and not much neck, which his hunched posture certainly doesn’t help. His eyes are small, sunken, and a beady black. He bears a very prominent hooked nose, a strong chin made even stronger by his pointed goatee, and what might be termed a triple mustache with three tapered lengths extending to either side. It’s wenge, a dark drab brown, like his somewhat greasy hair, which is worn slicked back with a long, thin ponytail. Large, scruffy eyebrows and sideburns complete the look. His skin is quite pale, though it gets quite pink around his nose, ears, chin, et cetera

History:
For centuries, if anyone were to go searching around the world for a place they could call ‘paradise’, they might have very well ended up at Arcadia, the Valley of Plenty. Its famous black soil, rich with minerals and impossibly fertile, can be traced back to the activity of volcanoes that arose long ago thanks to the region’s fault line. Exactly when settlers first arrived to farm the valley is up for debate, but eventually people of all shapes and sizes would flock to the region in an unprecedented gold rush not for metal, but for grain. For a time budding nations fought over the Valley of Plenty, but after almost destroying the area’s natural beauty and abundance forever, wiser heads prevailed in the nick of time to strike a truce. The paradise became Arcadia, a no-man’s land and a shared blessing to all, governed by a council with representatives from various nations and hailed by many as the agricultural capital of the world. It would remain that way for an age, so valuable to surrounding nations that any threat to it would result in action from all the rest, keeping the Valley of Plenty in peace.

During that time, many mercantile guilds would come and go, managing trade both within Arcadia and with foreign countries. With so many competing interests, its economy was in a state of constant flux, but a few guilds endured. One was the Chemists’ Guild. It specialized in investment, repayment, research, and development, with fingers in countless given pies at any one moment despite the rather tight-knit, clandestine nature with which it operated. The Chemists provided miraculous fertilizers and other products that enriched their clients with harvests of unprecedented bounty even for Arcadia, with vegetables and livestock larger than usual, as well as cultivation of crops not typically climate with the region. Other suppliers just couldn’t compete. Despite the whispers about unconventional, even occult methods, official investigators found nothing amiss, and the Chemists became rich. Of course, they new this couldn’t last. In their underground laboratories they pursued ever more ambitious means to combat soil depletion and ensure that the perennial bumper crop never wavered. One day, things went wrong.

That night, there was no massive explosion. No destruction or indication of any calamity whatsoever. Yet in the morning, with no fanfare, the Chemists quietly packed their bags and left. Those who saw them thought nothing of it, for the Chemists often traveled to secure the rare and exotic materials for their craft, but in the weeks afterward things began to change. It began with the soil, as it became slightly discolored, adopting an odd, fuzzy texture. The crops planted at the time began to experience accelerated growth, initially celebrated by the farmers as the Chemists’ latest innovation made free to all in as a mark of respect for the age-old, often-forgotten tradition of Arcadian generosity. But as large as they grew, the crops weren’t quite right. They came out with strange colors and textures, tasting terrible. Livestock experienced madness and premature death. Soon, the people began to curse the Chemists for unleashing a plague upon them. Those with the means began to leave, but the rest did what they could to purge the disease and try again for the better. Instead, things continued to worsen. Strange, fuzzy growths appeared all over the ground. Animals began to experience grotesque deformities, dying or rampaging in large numbers. The people who remained were in denial, eventually to a delusional extent, and evidencing signs of infection themselves. Attempts at stopping the infection failed, and soon the whole valley was under quarantine.

Within months, fungal mold had infested all of Arcadia, taking over and eventually consuming everything that had ever eaten infected food. Few witnesses ever risked going into what would come to be known as Mycelia, the Valley of Blight, but disturbing rumors got out about what happened deep inside. They say that the mold eventually replaced everything that it killed. Mold birds singing in mold trees that bore mold fruits. Mold predators roaming mold woods hunting mold beasts that nibbled mold grass. Mold farmers tilling mold fields and selling mold grains. Mold men worshiping mold gods and dreaming mold dreams about a land of perfect peace and happiness with neither grief, nor disparity, nor greed.

Well before the point that the ruin of Arcadia became known far and wide, a man who called himself Gruyere E.C. Yarg, known to his friends as Gru (if only he had any, as he often jokes), joined the Pilgrim’s Caravan with a small carriage run by rats. Styling himself as a self-made merchant, he used his travels with them to run a small-scale cheese-making operation. Rather than horde money, he put most of his earnings back into his business, either improving his ever-evolving Chuck Wagon or purchasing milk, feed, rennet, grapes, salt, and cheese-making tips from the various farms he visited during his travels. Gradually he’d build up a reputation as a sleazy-looking but reliable itinerant merchant, his quality products (if not his attitude) earning him a good reputation. Like many members of the Caravan, he doesn’t talk about his past much, and if asked only ever mentions a boring and humble beginning in the small village of Stilton, never bothering to mention where it was. The past, as Gru says, is behind him. He wants nothing more than to practice his beloved craft, care for his beloved rats, and live a comfortable, quiet life.

Personality:
To most, Gruyere would appear to be the archetypal unsavory businessman or snake oil salesman. He’s greedy, cunning, jocular, and capricious, bitingly sarcastic one moment and an obsequious lickspittle the next. Whatever it takes to make the sale. In fact, his manner sometimes undermines the fact that his products are actually very high quality, made to his exacting standards. In terms of his business dealings, he’s actually pretty honest. He’s just not very nice. Highly secretive and private, both about his trade skills and life, he isn’t very social and minds his own business as much as possible. While he doesn’t like conflict, he’s competitive and vindictive, never forgetting a slight. He cares a lot about his rats, both for their own sake and for the joy they bring him, and he gives them all the love that withholds from his fellow man. A perennial miser, he never does anything for free, and he expects anyone he deals with to honor their word

Motivation: To continue building up his business and ‘family’ in pursuit of a comfortable life

Skills, Strengths and Weaknesses, and Tools:

• + Cheesemonger: Gru’s trade skill. He’s cultivated almost encyclopedic knowledge of how to make cheeses, from the chemistry of their creation to the tools needed to produce them. The cheeses he makes are of very high quality and nutritional value, and he prides himself on their appearances and flavors across a whole host of different styles. This is how he makes his money while in the Caravan; taking and orders while on the road, selling pre-made cheeses or taking orders for clients, then aging the cheeses he makes until the Caravan visits them again and he can fulfill those orders. Somewhat more recently he’s also tried diversifying into wine, a trade that demands even more patience but pairs well with his main craft. He makes these foodstuffs with a speed and efficiency few can match
• + Friend of Animals: Gru is much better with animals than he is with people. This extends to most (domesticated) animals, so whether it’s cows, goats, sheep, or even camels and yaks, they feel comfortable and affectionate around him, and he around them. This means he can often get top yield from whatever animals he encounters, and he’s a surprisingly good companion on hunts
• + Rat Authority - His natural bond with one animal completely transcends all the rest: rats. For whatever reason, he’s so completely in-tune with rats that they lack any fear of or hostility toward him, even in huge numbers. He knows how to take good care of rats, and ‘his’ rats listen to him almost unconditionally, obeying his orders like trained dogs and exhibiting unusual intelligence, strength, and dexterity. This goes double for his four favorite rats: Pepper Jack, Rick Otta, Wensley Dale, and Reggie Ano. If Gru is the general, they are the captains. Working as hordes under his command, his rats are capable of astonishing feats, so much so that one can’t help but wonder if this bond is supernatural
• + The Chuck Wagon: Named after his father Charles, Gru’s personal method of transportation is possibly the most impressive thing about him. It’s one of the largest wagons in the Pilgrim’s Caravan by far, and isn’t just a living space, but a mobile cheese factory that he’s put huge amounts of money into perfecting. It’s divided into ‘wet’ and ‘dry’ halves, each with their own doors on the right side. The wet half is essentially a laboratory, with multiple vats and tanks for liquid storage, milk coagulation, curd separation, brining, and so forth, all watertight and able to be locked down during travel. There’s even vat for the crushing and fermentation of grapes The dry half has shelves for drying and aging cheese (and also wine), and is where Gru lives. The top floor of the Chuck Wagon, about a foot in height and known as the ‘attic’, is a compartment reserved exclusively for his rats. They have little houses in there with straw bedding, food stores, etc, and on good days Gru can open up the top of the wagon to make the little village open to the air. On the left side of the wagon are two large silos, one filled with water and the other with rat food, including grains, seeds, and nuts. Perhaps most interesting is how the wagon moves; instead of being drawn by horses or other beasts of burden, it has eight enormous wheels, four in the front and four in the back. These are hollow and function as giant hamster wheels, making the Chuck Wagon entirely rat-powered. The rats work the wheels (and, under Gru’s supervision, the kitchen) in shifts and go up into the attic to rest
• - Noncombatant: Gru isn’t really a fighter. He doesn’t have the constitution for it, nor the interest. He prefers to get others -people or otherwise- to do his fighting for him, especially if there’s serious risk and/or publicity involved
• - Something Irreplaceable: Although Gru’s greatest strength, the Chuck Wagon is also his greatest weakness. It’s very important to him, and he’s extremely averse to any damage to it. Losing it is practically out of the question, and there’s very little he wouldn’t do to keep it safe. After all, it’s not just the source of his livelihood; it’s everything he owns, and without it, he’d be almost nothing. The same goes for his rats. While losing them isn’t the end of the world, they’re all his friends, and not just tools for him
• - Unlikeable: In contrast to animals, people generally don’t like him, and he doesn’t like them. His generally acerbic attitude makes it difficult for genuine relationships to form, and he prefers businesslike arrangements of give and take where expectations are clear and no strings are attached

Hidden Depths

Mycomancy
Gru isn’t just a businessman. He’s also a practitioner of a dark school of magic that manipulates fungi, especially mold–a fact he’s gone to great lengths to hide. He only ever practices it in the privacy of the Chuck Wagon’s interior, and even then in very small scale, manipulating mold to make cheese and the yeast that ferments wine to speed up the processes. In his time with the Caravan to date, he’s never needed to resort to using it for combat in front of the others, instead relying on his rats for self-defense. However, it’s possible for him to infest living things with mold that corrupt and weaken them from within, reducing their speed and defense so much that even he can kill them easily, let alone his rats. This mold can also be used to break down and dispose of dead organic matter, and create mold creatures under his control

Gru also owns four cheese-making tools that he keeps in his Chuck Wagon which happen to be usable as weapons. This includes:

• Two cheese knives the size of scimitars, curved and with double-pointed tips
• A cheese fork with a shaft so long it functions as a bident
• A spico, a kind of curd-cutting tool about the size and shape of a large mace, but with a head shaped like a round cage of blades
• A curd harp, essentially a shovel where the head is a square array of cutting blades

He could try fighting with these if he wanted, but they're mostly wielded by his favorite rats when they become Rat Kings. This is when Gru commands them to use swarms of their fellow rats to create large, bear-shaped rat masses that Pepper, Rick, Wensley, and Reggie 'pilot'. These Rat Kings are very strong, but since at least a few rats die whenever the Rat Kings take a hit, they'll typically fall back to regroup if threatened with serious losses

Extra Details

Greatest Desire: To never face the consequences of his actions

Alignment: Lawful Evil

Three Likes: His rats, his cheese, and his trade

Three Dislikes: Nosy people, unreasonable people, unmanageable people

Driving Organ: After seeing where his mind got him, Gru decided to follow his heart

Worst Fear: His secret getting out

Favorite Color: Wine red

Most Like The Animal: It’s hard to say

Favorite Time of Day: Dinnertime

Style of Dress: Gru dresses in the style of early industrialists, like the archetypal oil baron, with a rough, outdoorsy sort of formal wear. He’s given to large, heavy, long coats, expensive but still highly functional, worn over a pinstriped suit vest and pants with accompanying tie, ascot, or bow tie (his favorite). He prefers dark, desaturated colors, including black, brown, gray, and red. Most often he wears gray, accentuated by wine red. He’s seldom seen without gloves or boots, a mix of function and (perhaps questionable) fashion that nevertheless form a iconic aesthetic. Most iconic of all are his very small dark spectacles and his 'mad hatter' top hat. That hat's brim has upward-turned side flaps that are much larger and rounder than usual which together with its pink underside give the impression of big, floppy ears. One other thing to note is that all of his coats seemingly have a big gray fur collar. On closer inspection, this collar is actually a mass of live rats, so he literally has rats on him at all times (when possible, anyway). He also keeps one of his four favorite rats under his hat at all times, which itself wears a hat while doing so

Favorite Season: Spring, the best season for farm animals to feed on fresh growth, and thus the best season for cheese

Beliefs: That everybody deserves a second chance

[Crusader Lord]

Ok, here you go. I'm happy with how it turned out but amenable to suggestions.

If I had any friends, they would call me…Gru

Gruyere Emmentaler Caerphilly Yarg

Race, Age, Time in the Caravan:
Human (Supposedly), 34, 2 years 8 months and 1 day

Appearance:
Though ostensibly human, Gru possesses an odd assortment of shapes and proportions that make him seem less like a real person and more like a caricature come to life. Standing on the shorter side at a mere 5’7”, Gru possesses a somewhat unimpressive, heavyset physique, with thin arms and legs, a rotund middle, and not much neck, which his hunched posture certainly doesn’t help. His eyes are small, sunken, and a beady black. He bears a very prominent hooked nose, a strong chin made even stronger by his pointed goatee, and what might be termed a triple mustache with three tapered lengths extending to either side. It’s wenge, a dark drab brown, like his somewhat greasy hair, which is worn slicked back with a long, thin ponytail. Large, scruffy eyebrows and sideburns complete the look. His skin is quite pale, though it gets quite pink around his nose, ears, chin, et cetera

History:
For centuries, if anyone were to go searching around the world for a place they could call ‘paradise’, they might have very well ended up at Arcadia, the Valley of Plenty. Its famous black soil, rich with minerals and impossibly fertile, can be traced back to the activity of volcanoes that arose long ago thanks to the region’s fault line. Exactly when settlers first arrived to farm the valley is up for debate, but eventually people of all shapes and sizes would flock to the region in an unprecedented gold rush not for metal, but for grain. For a time budding nations fought over the Valley of Plenty, but after almost destroying the area’s natural beauty and abundance forever, wiser heads prevailed in the nick of time to strike a truce. The paradise became Arcadia, a no-man’s land and a shared blessing to all, governed by a council with representatives from various nations and hailed by many as the agricultural capital of the world. It would remain that way for an age, so valuable to surrounding nations that any threat to it would result in action from all the rest, keeping the Valley of Plenty in peace.

During that time, many mercantile guilds would come and go, managing trade both within Arcadia and with foreign countries. With so many competing interests, its economy was in a state of constant flux, but a few guilds endured. One was the Chemists’ Guild. It specialized in investment, repayment, research, and development, with fingers in countless given pies at any one moment despite the rather tight-knit, clandestine nature with which it operated. The Chemists provided miraculous fertilizers and other products that enriched their clients with harvests of unprecedented bounty even for Arcadia, with vegetables and livestock larger than usual, as well as cultivation of crops not typically climate with the region. Other suppliers just couldn’t compete. Despite the whispers about unconventional, even occult methods, official investigators found nothing amiss, and the Chemists became rich. Of course, they new this couldn’t last. In their underground laboratories they pursued ever more ambitious means to combat soil depletion and ensure that the perennial bumper crop never wavered. One day, things went wrong.

That night, there was no massive explosion. No destruction or indication of any calamity whatsoever. Yet in the morning, with no fanfare, the Chemists quietly packed their bags and left. Those who saw them thought nothing of it, for the Chemists often traveled to secure the rare and exotic materials for their craft, but in the weeks afterward things began to change. It began with the soil, as it became slightly discolored, adopting an odd, fuzzy texture. The crops planted at the time began to experience accelerated growth, initially celebrated by the farmers as the Chemists’ latest innovation made free to all in as a mark of respect for the age-old, often-forgotten tradition of Arcadian generosity. But as large as they grew, the crops weren’t quite right. They came out with strange colors and textures, tasting terrible. Livestock experienced madness and premature death. Soon, the people began to curse the Chemists for unleashing a plague upon them. Those with the means began to leave, but the rest did what they could to purge the disease and try again for the better. Instead, things continued to worsen. Strange, fuzzy growths appeared all over the ground. Animals began to experience grotesque deformities, dying or rampaging in large numbers. The people who remained were in denial, eventually to a delusional extent, and evidencing signs of infection themselves. Attempts at stopping the infection failed, and soon the whole valley was under quarantine.

Within months, fungal mold had infested all of Arcadia, taking over and eventually consuming everything that had ever eaten infected food. Few witnesses ever risked going into what would come to be known as Mycelia, the Valley of Blight, but disturbing rumors got out about what happened deep inside. They say that the mold eventually replaced everything that it killed. Mold birds singing in mold trees that bore mold fruits. Mold predators roaming mold woods hunting mold beasts that nibbled mold grass. Mold farmers tilling mold fields and selling mold grains. Mold men worshiping mold gods and dreaming mold dreams about a land of perfect peace and happiness with neither grief, nor disparity, nor greed.

Well before the point that the ruin of Arcadia became known far and wide, a man who called himself Gruyere E.C. Yarg, known to his friends as Gru (if only he had any, as he often jokes), joined the Pilgrim’s Caravan with a small carriage run by rats. Styling himself as a self-made merchant, he used his travels with them to run a small-scale cheese-making operation. Rather than horde money, he put most of his earnings back into his business, either improving his ever-evolving Chuck Wagon or purchasing milk, feed, rennet, grapes, salt, and cheese-making tips from the various farms he visited during his travels. Gradually he’d build up a reputation as a sleazy-looking but reliable itinerant merchant, his quality products (if not his attitude) earning him a good reputation. Like many members of the Caravan, he doesn’t talk about his past much, and if asked only ever mentions a boring and humble beginning in the small village of Stilton, never bothering to mention where it was. The past, as Gru says, is behind him. He wants nothing more than to practice his beloved craft, care for his beloved rats, and live a comfortable, quiet life.

Personality:
To most, Gruyere would appear to be the archetypal unsavory businessman or snake oil salesman. He’s greedy, cunning, jocular, and capricious, bitingly sarcastic one moment and an obsequious lickspittle the next. Whatever it takes to make the sale. In fact, his manner sometimes undermines the fact that his products are actually very high quality, made to his exacting standards. In terms of his business dealings, he’s actually pretty honest. He’s just not very nice. Highly secretive and private, both about his trade skills and life, he isn’t very social and minds his own business as much as possible. While he doesn’t like conflict, he’s competitive and vindictive, never forgetting a slight. He cares a lot about his rats, both for their own sake and for the joy they bring him, and he gives them all the love that withholds from his fellow man. A perennial miser, he never does anything for free, and he expects anyone he deals with to honor their word

Motivation: To continue building up his business and ‘family’ in pursuit of a comfortable life

Skills, Strengths and Weaknesses, and Tools:

• + Cheesemonger: Gru’s trade skill. He’s cultivated almost encyclopedic knowledge of how to make cheeses, from the chemistry of their creation to the tools needed to produce them. The cheeses he makes are of very high quality and nutritional value, and he prides himself on their appearances and flavors across a whole host of different styles. This is how he makes his money while in the Caravan; taking and orders while on the road, selling pre-made cheeses or taking orders for clients, then aging the cheeses he makes until the Caravan visits them again and he can fulfill those orders. Somewhat more recently he’s also tried diversifying into wine, a trade that demands even more patience but pairs well with his main craft. He makes these foodstuffs with a speed and efficiency few can match
• + Friend of Animals: Gru is much better with animals than he is with people. This extends to most (domesticated) animals, so whether it’s cows, goats, sheep, or even camels and yaks, they feel comfortable and affectionate around him, and he around them. This means he can often get top yield from whatever animals he encounters, and he’s a surprisingly good companion on hunts
• + Rat Authority - His natural bond with one animal completely transcends all the rest: rats. For whatever reason, he’s so completely in-tune with rats that they lack any fear of or hostility toward him, even in huge numbers. He knows how to take good care of rats, and ‘his’ rats listen to him almost unconditionally, obeying his orders like trained dogs and exhibiting unusual intelligence, strength, and dexterity. This goes double for his four favorite rats: Pepper Jack, Rick Otta, Wensley Dale, and Reggie Ano. If Gru is the general, they are the captains. Working as hordes under his command, his rats are capable of astonishing feats, so much so that one can’t help but wonder if this bond is supernatural
• + The Chuck Wagon: Named after his father Charles, Gru’s personal method of transportation is possibly the most impressive thing about him. It’s the largest wagon in the Pilgrim’s Caravan by far, and isn’t just a living space, but a mobile cheese factory that he’s put huge amounts of money into perfecting. It’s divided into ‘wet’ and ‘dry’ halves, each with their own doors on the right side. The wet half is essentially a laboratory, with multiple vats and tanks for liquid storage, milk coagulation, curd separation, brining, and so forth, all watertight and able to be locked down during travel. There’s even vat for the crushing and fermentation of grapes The dry half has shelves for drying and aging cheese (and also wine), and is where Gru lives. The top floor of the Chuck Wagon, about a foot in height and known as the ‘attic’, is a compartment reserved exclusively for his rats. They have little houses in there with straw bedding, food stores, etc, and on good days Gru can open up the top of the wagon to make the little village open to the air. On the left side of the wagon are two large silos, one filled with water and the other with rat food, including grains, seeds, and nuts. Perhaps most interesting is how the wagon moves; instead of being drawn by horses or other beasts of burden, it has eight enormous wheels, four in the front and four in the back. These are hollow and function as giant hamster wheels, making the Chuck Wagon entirely rat-powered. The rats work the wheels (and, under Gru’s supervision, the kitchen) in shifts and go up into the attic to rest
• - Noncombatant: Gru isn’t really a fighter. He doesn’t have the constitution for it, nor the interest. He prefers to get others -people or otherwise- to do his fighting for him, especially if there’s serious risk and/or publicity involved
• - Something Irreplaceable: Although Gru’s greatest strength, the Chuck Wagon is also his greatest weakness. It’s very important to him, and he’s extremely averse to any damage to it. Losing it is practically out of the question, and there’s very little he wouldn’t do to keep it safe. After all, it’s not just the source of his livelihood; it’s everything he owns, and without it, he’d be almost nothing. The same goes for his rats. While losing them isn’t the end of the world, they’re all his friends, and not just tools for him
• - Unlikeable: In contrast to animals, people generally don’t like him, and he doesn’t like them. His generally acerbic attitude makes it difficult for genuine relationships to form, and he prefers businesslike arrangements of give and take where expectations are clear and no strings are attached

Hidden Depths

Mycomancy
Gru isn’t just a businessman. He’s also a practitioner of a dark school of magic that manipulates fungi, especially mold–a fact he’s gone to great lengths to hide. He only ever practices it in the privacy of the Chuck Wagon’s interior, and even then in very small scale, manipulating mold to make cheese and the yeast that ferments wine to speed up the processes. In his time with the Caravan to date, he’s never needed to resort to using it for combat in front of the others, instead relying on his rats for self-defense. However, it’s possible for him to infest living things with mold that corrupt and weaken them from within, reducing their speed and defense so much that even he can kill them easily, let alone his rats. This mold can also be used to break down and dispose of dead organic matter, and create mold creatures under his control

Gru also owns four cheese-making tools that he keeps in his Chuck Wagon which happen to be usable as weapons. This includes:

• Two cheese knives the size of scimitars, curved and with double-pointed tips
• A cheese fork with a shaft so long it functions as a bident
• A spico, a kind of curd-cutting tool about the size and shape of a large mace, but with a head shaped like a round cage of blades
• A curd harp, essentially a shovel where the head is a square array of cutting blades

He could try fighting with these if he wanted, but they're mostly wielded by his favorite rats when they become Rat Kings. This is when Gru commands them to use swarms of their fellow rats to create large, bear-shaped rat masses that Pepper, Rick, Wensley, and Reggie 'pilot'. These Rat Kings are very strong, but since at least a few rats die whenever the Rat Kings take a hit, they'll typically fall back to regroup if threatened with serious losses

Extra Details

Greatest Desire: To never face the consequences of his actions

Alignment: Lawful Evil

Three Likes: His rats, his cheese, and his trade

Three Dislikes: Nosy people, unreasonable people, unmanageable people

Driving Organ: After seeing where his mind got him, Gru decided to follow his heart

Worst Fear: His secret getting out

Favorite Color: Wine red

Most Like The Animal: It’s hard to say

Favorite Time of Day: Dinnertime

Style of Dress: Gru dresses in the style of early industrialists, like the archetypal oil baron, with a rough, outdoorsy sort of formal wear. He’s given to large, heavy, long coats, expensive but still highly functional, worn over a pinstriped suit vest and pants with accompanying tie, ascot, or bow tie (his favorite). He prefers dark, desaturated colors, including black, brown, gray, and red. Most often he wears gray, accentuated by wine red. He’s seldom seen without gloves or boots, a mix of function and (perhaps questionable) fashion that nevertheless form a iconic aesthetic. Most iconic of all are his very small dark spectacles and his tricorn hat. That hat’s side flaps are much larger and rounder than the forward one, which together with its pink underside give the impression of big, floppy ears. One other thing to note is that all of his coats seemingly have a big gray fur collar. On closer inspection, this collar is actually a mass of live rats, so he literally has rats on him at all times (when possible, anyway). He also keeps one of his four favorite rats under his hat at all times, which itself wears a hat while doing so

Favorite Season: Spring, the best season for farm animals to feed on fresh growth, and thus the best season for cheese

Beliefs: That everybody deserves a second chance

@Lugubrious

One very important question, which I'm asking right now real quick at the end of my break at work this evening:

.......Is the rat hiding under his hat also wearing it's own tiny tricorn hat? You mentioned it does wear a hat, but not the kind of hat. Yes. Hat-ception

[Tortoise]

Ok, here you go. I'm happy with how it turned out but amenable to suggestions.

If I had any friends, they would call me…Gru

Gruyere Emmentaler Caerphilly Yarg

Race, Age, Time in the Caravan:
Human (Supposedly), 34, 2 years 8 months and 1 day

Appearance:
Though ostensibly human, Gru possesses an odd assortment of shapes and proportions that make him seem less like a real person and more like a caricature come to life. Standing on the shorter side at a mere 5’7”, Gru possesses a somewhat unimpressive, heavyset physique, with thin arms and legs, a rotund middle, and not much neck, which his hunched posture certainly doesn’t help. His eyes are small, sunken, and a beady black. He bears a very prominent hooked nose, a strong chin made even stronger by his pointed goatee, and what might be termed a triple mustache with three tapered lengths extending to either side. It’s wenge, a dark drab brown, like his somewhat greasy hair, which is worn slicked back with a long, thin ponytail. Large, scruffy eyebrows and sideburns complete the look. His skin is quite pale, though it gets quite pink around his nose, ears, chin, et cetera

History:
For centuries, if anyone were to go searching around the world for a place they could call ‘paradise’, they might have very well ended up at Arcadia, the Valley of Plenty. Its famous black soil, rich with minerals and impossibly fertile, can be traced back to the activity of volcanoes that arose long ago thanks to the region’s fault line. Exactly when settlers first arrived to farm the valley is up for debate, but eventually people of all shapes and sizes would flock to the region in an unprecedented gold rush not for metal, but for grain. For a time budding nations fought over the Valley of Plenty, but after almost destroying the area’s natural beauty and abundance forever, wiser heads prevailed in the nick of time to strike a truce. The paradise became Arcadia, a no-man’s land and a shared blessing to all, governed by a council with representatives from various nations and hailed by many as the agricultural capital of the world. It would remain that way for an age, so valuable to surrounding nations that any threat to it would result in action from all the rest, keeping the Valley of Plenty in peace.

During that time, many mercantile guilds would come and go, managing trade both within Arcadia and with foreign countries. With so many competing interests, its economy was in a state of constant flux, but a few guilds endured. One was the Chemists’ Guild. It specialized in investment, repayment, research, and development, with fingers in countless given pies at any one moment despite the rather tight-knit, clandestine nature with which it operated. The Chemists provided miraculous fertilizers and other products that enriched their clients with harvests of unprecedented bounty even for Arcadia, with vegetables and livestock larger than usual, as well as cultivation of crops not typically climate with the region. Other suppliers just couldn’t compete. Despite the whispers about unconventional, even occult methods, official investigators found nothing amiss, and the Chemists became rich. Of course, they new this couldn’t last. In their underground laboratories they pursued ever more ambitious means to combat soil depletion and ensure that the perennial bumper crop never wavered. One day, things went wrong.

That night, there was no massive explosion. No destruction or indication of any calamity whatsoever. Yet in the morning, with no fanfare, the Chemists quietly packed their bags and left. Those who saw them thought nothing of it, for the Chemists often traveled to secure the rare and exotic materials for their craft, but in the weeks afterward things began to change. It began with the soil, as it became slightly discolored, adopting an odd, fuzzy texture. The crops planted at the time began to experience accelerated growth, initially celebrated by the farmers as the Chemists’ latest innovation made free to all in as a mark of respect for the age-old, often-forgotten tradition of Arcadian generosity. But as large as they grew, the crops weren’t quite right. They came out with strange colors and textures, tasting terrible. Livestock experienced madness and premature death. Soon, the people began to curse the Chemists for unleashing a plague upon them. Those with the means began to leave, but the rest did what they could to purge the disease and try again for the better. Instead, things continued to worsen. Strange, fuzzy growths appeared all over the ground. Animals began to experience grotesque deformities, dying or rampaging in large numbers. The people who remained were in denial, eventually to a delusional extent, and evidencing signs of infection themselves. Attempts at stopping the infection failed, and soon the whole valley was under quarantine.

Within months, fungal mold had infested all of Arcadia, taking over and eventually consuming everything that had ever eaten infected food. Few witnesses ever risked going into what would come to be known as Mycelia, the Valley of Blight, but disturbing rumors got out about what happened deep inside. They say that the mold eventually replaced everything that it killed. Mold birds singing in mold trees that bore mold fruits. Mold predators roaming mold woods hunting mold beasts that nibbled mold grass. Mold farmers tilling mold fields and selling mold grains. Mold men worshiping mold gods and dreaming mold dreams about a land of perfect peace and happiness with neither grief, nor disparity, nor greed.

Well before the point that the ruin of Arcadia became known far and wide, a man who called himself Gruyere E.C. Yarg, known to his friends as Gru (if only he had any, as he often jokes), joined the Pilgrim’s Caravan with a small carriage run by rats. Styling himself as a self-made merchant, he used his travels with them to run a small-scale cheese-making operation. Rather than horde money, he put most of his earnings back into his business, either improving his ever-evolving Chuck Wagon or purchasing milk, feed, rennet, grapes, salt, and cheese-making tips from the various farms he visited during his travels. Gradually he’d build up a reputation as a sleazy-looking but reliable itinerant merchant, his quality products (if not his attitude) earning him a good reputation. Like many members of the Caravan, he doesn’t talk about his past much, and if asked only ever mentions a boring and humble beginning in the small village of Stilton, never bothering to mention where it was. The past, as Gru says, is behind him. He wants nothing more than to practice his beloved craft, care for his beloved rats, and live a comfortable, quiet life.

Personality:
To most, Gruyere would appear to be the archetypal unsavory businessman or snake oil salesman. He’s greedy, cunning, jocular, and capricious, bitingly sarcastic one moment and an obsequious lickspittle the next. Whatever it takes to make the sale. In fact, his manner sometimes undermines the fact that his products are actually very high quality, made to his exacting standards. In terms of his business dealings, he’s actually pretty honest. He’s just not very nice. Highly secretive and private, both about his trade skills and life, he isn’t very social and minds his own business as much as possible. While he doesn’t like conflict, he’s competitive and vindictive, never forgetting a slight. He cares a lot about his rats, both for their own sake and for the joy they bring him, and he gives them all the love that withholds from his fellow man. A perennial miser, he never does anything for free, and he expects anyone he deals with to honor their word

Motivation: To continue building up his business and ‘family’ in pursuit of a comfortable life

Skills, Strengths and Weaknesses, and Tools:

• + Cheesemonger: Gru’s trade skill. He’s cultivated almost encyclopedic knowledge of how to make cheeses, from the chemistry of their creation to the tools needed to produce them. The cheeses he makes are of very high quality and nutritional value, and he prides himself on their appearances and flavors across a whole host of different styles. This is how he makes his money while in the Caravan; taking and orders while on the road, selling pre-made cheeses or taking orders for clients, then aging the cheeses he makes until the Caravan visits them again and he can fulfill those orders. Somewhat more recently he’s also tried diversifying into wine, a trade that demands even more patience but pairs well with his main craft. He makes these foodstuffs with a speed and efficiency few can match
• + Friend of Animals: Gru is much better with animals than he is with people. This extends to most (domesticated) animals, so whether it’s cows, goats, sheep, or even camels and yaks, they feel comfortable and affectionate around him, and he around them. This means he can often get top yield from whatever animals he encounters, and he’s a surprisingly good companion on hunts
• + Rat Authority - His natural bond with one animal completely transcends all the rest: rats. For whatever reason, he’s so completely in-tune with rats that they lack any fear of or hostility toward him, even in huge numbers. He knows how to take good care of rats, and ‘his’ rats listen to him almost unconditionally, obeying his orders like trained dogs and exhibiting unusual intelligence, strength, and dexterity. This goes double for his four favorite rats: Pepper Jack, Rick Otta, Wensley Dale, and Reggie Ano. If Gru is the general, they are the captains. Working as hordes under his command, his rats are capable of astonishing feats, so much so that one can’t help but wonder if this bond is supernatural
• + The Chuck Wagon: Named after his father Charles, Gru’s personal method of transportation is possibly the most impressive thing about him. It’s the largest wagon in the Pilgrim’s Caravan by far, and isn’t just a living space, but a mobile cheese factory that he’s put huge amounts of money into perfecting. It’s divided into ‘wet’ and ‘dry’ halves, each with their own doors on the right side. The wet half is essentially a laboratory, with multiple vats and tanks for liquid storage, milk coagulation, curd separation, brining, and so forth, all watertight and able to be locked down during travel. There’s even vat for the crushing and fermentation of grapes The dry half has shelves for drying and aging cheese (and also wine), and is where Gru lives. The top floor of the Chuck Wagon, about a foot in height and known as the ‘attic’, is a compartment reserved exclusively for his rats. They have little houses in there with straw bedding, food stores, etc, and on good days Gru can open up the top of the wagon to make the little village open to the air. On the left side of the wagon are two large silos, one filled with water and the other with rat food, including grains, seeds, and nuts. Perhaps most interesting is how the wagon moves; instead of being drawn by horses or other beasts of burden, it has eight enormous wheels, four in the front and four in the back. These are hollow and function as giant hamster wheels, making the Chuck Wagon entirely rat-powered. The rats work the wheels (and, under Gru’s supervision, the kitchen) in shifts and go up into the attic to rest
• - Noncombatant: Gru isn’t really a fighter. He doesn’t have the constitution for it, nor the interest. He prefers to get others -people or otherwise- to do his fighting for him, especially if there’s serious risk and/or publicity involved
• - Something Irreplaceable: Although Gru’s greatest strength, the Chuck Wagon is also his greatest weakness. It’s very important to him, and he’s extremely averse to any damage to it. Losing it is practically out of the question, and there’s very little he wouldn’t do to keep it safe. After all, it’s not just the source of his livelihood; it’s everything he owns, and without it, he’d be almost nothing. The same goes for his rats. While losing them isn’t the end of the world, they’re all his friends, and not just tools for him
• - Unlikeable: In contrast to animals, people generally don’t like him, and he doesn’t like them. His generally acerbic attitude makes it difficult for genuine relationships to form, and he prefers businesslike arrangements of give and take where expectations are clear and no strings are attached

Hidden Depths

Mycomancy
Gru isn’t just a businessman. He’s also a practitioner of a dark school of magic that manipulates fungi, especially mold–a fact he’s gone to great lengths to hide. He only ever practices it in the privacy of the Chuck Wagon’s interior, and even then in very small scale, manipulating mold to make cheese and the yeast that ferments wine to speed up the processes. In his time with the Caravan to date, he’s never needed to resort to using it for combat in front of the others, instead relying on his rats for self-defense. However, it’s possible for him to infest living things with mold that corrupt and weaken them from within, reducing their speed and defense so much that even he can kill them easily, let alone his rats. This mold can also be used to break down and dispose of dead organic matter, and create mold creatures under his control

Gru also owns four cheese-making tools that he keeps in his Chuck Wagon which happen to be usable as weapons. This includes:

• Two cheese knives the size of scimitars, curved and with double-pointed tips
• A cheese fork with a shaft so long it functions as a bident
• A spico, a kind of curd-cutting tool about the size and shape of a large mace, but with a head shaped like a round cage of blades
• A curd harp, essentially a shovel where the head is a square array of cutting blades

He could try fighting with these if he wanted, but they're mostly wielded by his favorite rats when they become Rat Kings. This is when Gru commands them to use swarms of their fellow rats to create large, bear-shaped rat masses that Pepper, Rick, Wensley, and Reggie 'pilot'. These Rat Kings are very strong, but since at least a few rats die whenever the Rat Kings take a hit, they'll typically fall back to regroup if threatened with serious losses

Extra Details

Greatest Desire: To never face the consequences of his actions

Alignment: Lawful Evil

Three Likes: His rats, his cheese, and his trade

Three Dislikes: Nosy people, unreasonable people, unmanageable people

Driving Organ: After seeing where his mind got him, Gru decided to follow his heart

Worst Fear: His secret getting out

Favorite Color: Wine red

Most Like The Animal: It’s hard to say

Favorite Time of Day: Dinnertime

Style of Dress: Gru dresses in the style of early industrialists, like the archetypal oil baron, with a rough, outdoorsy sort of formal wear. He’s given to large, heavy, long coats, expensive but still highly functional, worn over a pinstriped suit vest and pants with accompanying tie, ascot, or bow tie (his favorite). He prefers dark, desaturated colors, including black, brown, gray, and red. Most often he wears gray, accentuated by wine red. He’s seldom seen without gloves or boots, a mix of function and (perhaps questionable) fashion that nevertheless form a iconic aesthetic. Most iconic of all are his very small dark spectacles and his tricorn hat. That hat’s side flaps are much larger and rounder than the forward one, which together with its pink underside give the impression of big, floppy ears. One other thing to note is that all of his coats seemingly have a big gray fur collar. On closer inspection, this collar is actually a mass of live rats, so he literally has rats on him at all times (when possible, anyway). He also keeps one of his four favorite rats under his hat at all times, which itself wears a hat while doing so

Favorite Season: Spring, the best season for farm animals to feed on fresh growth, and thus the best season for cheese

Beliefs: That everybody deserves a second chance

@Lugubrious

Oh.

...wow.

This is the best sheet I've seen thus far. It has a character mixed with revulsion, mystery and humor, and at the same time adds to the Lore of Alwyne beautifully. The Fall of Arcadia's part of our history now. And, furthermore- I can't help but wonder if we'll visit the Valley of Blight on our travels? Mayhaps you'll pick it as our Destination, when it's your turn? I got some The Colour Out of Space vibes when I was reading what happened to it.

Regardless, Gru is double-extra approved. My only request is that you change the part where it says that his caravan is "the largest" in the group to saying that it's simply "one of the largest," so that other players don't feel limited in how big they can go.

P.S.

He also keeps one of his four favorite rats under his hat at all times, which itself wears a hat while doing so

Adorable.

[Lugubrious]

I'm glad you guys like it. I was thinking of changing the hat to a top hat so it makes more sense that a rat could be beneath it, and yeah, the rat in question would naturally also be wearing a top hat. I made the requested edit. The Valley of Blight would be an interesting place to go and I'd be inclined to pick it, but we'd need a really good reason to go there IC, lol. Not to mention a way to preserve our food to prevent mold spores from getting into it (or someone who can manipulate mold to keep the food clean proactively). I'll admit that I did shamelessly crib from Color Out of Space for that one. It's a pretty good story.

[Overlord Thraka]

Oh fuck uh... Okay I'll give it a whirl again why not?

Edit: Ahh dammit I deleted my CS from the old one... I'll try and do a re-write up this weekend unless I have it saved somewhere else. Thanks Tortoise, glad you're doing better!

[Tortoise]

Note: Being the GM, I have nobody to ask approval from when I update my CS. Nonetheless I feel that I should tell the rest of y'all that I changed Athulwin's attributes a little bit. I removed everything about him knowing martial combat (I didn't feel it fit his character) and all forms of physical fighting from the character, and instead expanded more on his fire and wind powers. He's much more of a pyromancer now, and since he's cursed to be very weak, he's also a bit of a glass cannon.

The Strengths and Weaknesses section especially has been fixed up. It feels more consistent; before, I think I was trying to do too many different things, and now it should hopefully be one solid idea.

[Crusader Lord]

I was thinking of changing the hat to a top hat so it makes more sense that a rat could be beneath it, and yeah, the rat in question would naturally also be wearing a top hat.

@Lugubrious

Because I Was Already Imagining The Rat In A Tophat Before You Decided On This, And I Am A Silly Person Sometimes

The rat wearing its own little tophat is now canon. Best timeline.

[Tortoise]

Alright y'all- is there anyone currently working on a WIP sheet? I'm trying to get a good general idea for when to kick off IC.