Tollán Softpaw
A small and frail Shulei, with a talent for the magic of the Mind. He is eager to make friends, but his drive to impress may lead him to take risks others might avoid. Will he meet his goals before Chaos consumes him?
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An Eyeful of Magic
Tollán brings you to his room and motions for you to stand by while he finishes his preparations. The room is a mess of papers, spread over the bed, tables, and even the floor. The only clearing is some sort of arcane diagram, roughly five feet in diameter, gently glowing on the ground. As you watch, shades of red, yellow and blue slowly fade around the diagram, but Tollán pays it no mind. He pulls out Gleam, his calligraphy brush, and stands in front of the mirror. A few awkward moments pass in silence before he turns around, and you see he has drawn an identical, though smaller, diagram on his face, encircling his right eye. Suddenly, to your surprise, he reaches up and digs his tiny clawed fingers into his eye, levering and gouging until, to your horror, the eye pops out into the palm of his hand, leaving a gaping hole in the middle of the diagram. It is remarkably bloodless and clean, and when Tollán sees your shocked expression, he laughs heartily and holds the eye up for you to inspect. With a closer look, you realize it is made of glass. "An accident last year" he says, pointing to the socket. "But today, I'm hoping to do something about it. I just wanted someone around in case..." he pauses for the briefest of moments, clearly searching for the right words "something weird happens? That sometimes happens to me, but " and here he fixes you firmly with a one-eyed stare "I do promise you, on my honour, no harm of any kind will come to you for doing this."
Once you are satisfied, he hands you his glass eye for safekeeping, and while you are awkwardly trying to figure out whether to hold it in your fist, or an open palm, or set it down on something soft, he stands in the centre of his floor diagram, extends his right arm, and holds his hand palm upwards, staring intently at it with great concentration. Time passes, and he shakes out his arm and readjusts once or twice without speaking. Then, all in a moment, you are snapped back to attention by what looks like a twitch of something springing from the palm of his hand. He lets out a triumphant cry, and slams his hand up to his face, palm over socket, and stays that way, breathing hard. Without taking his hand down, he stumbles backward, out of the circle, and leans back against his tiny bed. "Ooooh, ok, that went well!" he says, and slowly brings his hand down.
Swirls of red, yellow, and blue dance in the hollow where his eye once was. As you watch, they begin to slide past each other to reveal something. You watch, and wait, but the revelation never quite seems to come: but nevertheless you feel like you have learned something by watching them. You have seen inside of Tollán, heard whispers of his sway over the Minds of others, and his capacities to manipulate the minds of those at War. Tollán excitedly tells you that he can see out of both eyes at last, but when he sees the state of his "eye" in the mirror, he simply shrugs and turns back to his papers, whistling happily. "Oh right" he says, after a moment, and reaches up for his glass eye. "I'll want that back. I can probably get a couple pieces of silver for that, it's nice work!"
This is Tollán's Witchmark, which reveals his magical nature and that he uses the War and Mind spheres. He also needs to make eye contact with this eye to charm people.
Recollection of the Prologue: Revelations in a Dark Basement
Tollán begins to tell you the story, drawing you in with his animated gestures and phrasing. It is enrapturing, you feel like you are participating in the story, riding along on the emotional journey. You recognize that this tiny, frail little mouse is truly a master storyteller.
He tells you of his quest to perform the Shulei custom of proving himself, taking time upon reaching adulthood to prove his worth to his family and bring honour to their name. This task is no burden, Tollán speaks of his Father with great pride and respect, and the story begins with Tollán Softpaw sitting in a train at the station, setting off to further the family brewery business as part of his proving. When he describes the ominous pair of Ongoles who came to take him off the train, his description is so vivid you can almost see their looming shadows and hear their deep breath above you. Always ready for anything, Tollán tells you how he agreed to disembark with them, but as the train began pulling away and the ongole reached out to grab him as they stood on the station, Tollán tells you, with an obvious and deep sense of shame, how his resolve broke, and he tried to run away rather than courageously facing whatever situation he was about to find himself in. His tiny legs were no match for the hulking assailants, he felt a sudden searing pain on his back as they struck him, and everything faded into darkness.
He awoke, bound and alone, in a dark basement, where he was kept for days with little food or water. By the smells, he could tell this was some sort of brewery. The conditions were horrible, but he refuses to allow you to pity him for that time. It was, he says, a time of transformation for him, a time when he learned a crucial lesson: being afraid will get you no-where. Only those who are willing to face what others will not can accomplish what others will not. Locked in that dark room, he had nothing to do but pour his efforts into the magical skills he had developed while peeking through the windows of the magical academy next door to his childhood home. His strength had always been with magic of the mind, but the fear that welled up inside him every time one of his gigantic captors came to bring him the occasional crust of bread clouded his mind and closed his mind off from theirs before he could accomplish anything. So he waited in the dark, trying to push his mind into the insects that skittered past him. He drew diagrams in the dust, meditating and searching for any mind large enough to help him escape, until one day, with a clear mind and the latest modification to his diagram that had come to him in what was either a dream or a hallucination, he reached out and found… something. At this point his story begins to derail. He tries to describe to you a magical theory that is based on emotion and instinct, that draws power from something that he cannot explain, and only after he sees confusion and boredom in your eyes does he relent and get back to the story of what brought him here.
For he was not doomed to sit in that darkened room forever. One day, an unexpected visitor arrived, the Otter Sylas. Tollán sadly tells you that Silas is a Nameless Shulei, cast out from his family and denied the honour of a family name. It is a shameful state, but beggars can’t be choosers, and people tied up in basements can’t choose their rescuers, so together with this Nameless one, Tollán crept from his cell and made good his escape. With his new source of power, his fear of his captors evaporated, and he tells with pride how easy it felt to bring down the first Ongole they came across, putting him to sleep where he stood and watching this creature nearly a hundred times heavier than himself crash to the ground.
With his newfound courage, he tells you how he convinced Silas to help him sabotage their casks and implicate yet another competitor. With these two rivals now certain to be at each other’s throats, the Tollán family’s company, Brownbelly Brewing, is certain to find new opportunities and prestige.
So whatever comes, Tollán is ready to face it. He tells you with contagious enthusiasm that he will never be too afraid to try something new, that now, he will accomplish amazing things and raise his family’s name to be known and respected by everyone. His excitement and yours continues to rise as his enthusiasm pours forth, and he is only stopped by a sudden coughing fit that wracks his tiny body and forces him to sit down and regain both his calm and his breath while someone else takes a turn speaking.
First Impressions of Tollán
09/03/4197
Tollán (Tohl-ahn) is a small Shulei, standing barely a foot tall. He is so small and frail that you have the feeling one well-placed kick would be the end of him.
He meets your eye readily, and reaches out with confidence to shake your hand, stretching his tiny arm up as high as he can. You notice with a start that his arms, from the elbows down to his fingers, are covered in a bizarrely random assortment of deep and twisted scars, in places revealing barely healed musculature. Some terrible accident obviously befell him in years gone by. The handshake he gives you is soft, but despite how gently you touch his wounded hand, he still winces slightly at the contact with your rough skin (or scales).
On the back of his right hand is a small diagram, inexpertly tattooed (visible on his journal entry on Roll20).
To those who know such things, it marks him as a magician of the mind. This sigil seeks to bind him to that pursuit, but he would be the first to tell you that for those who are willing to risk a little when the time is right, rules can indeed be bent. He tells you that in magic, as in business, the greatest rewards come to those who aren't afraid to experiment. If you pursue this line of discussion, he happily shares with you his research, although it is not much use for studying; Tollán's techniques rely too much on emotional states and internal concentration to be easily conveyed in books.
You do notice another sigil scribbled in his notes, one he has clearly been working on designing himself (visible on his journal entry on Roll20).
His day job is working as a Therapist for the wealthy, and his unassuming stature and nonthreatening demeanor allow him to visit his clients in their homes. His natural charm and willingness to listen make speaking to him easy, and if you engage him in conversation for very long, you can feel your worries melt away, leaving in their place a sense of contentment and new resolve. In fact, you can hardly remember what it was in your life that had you so stressed in the first place. The very memory of your worries have melted away.
If you were not so engrossed in your conversation, you might notice Tollán’s quick, darting eyes taking stock of the treasures in the room. Plans are being set in place, a later mission for a forgettable shadow that stands barely a foot tall. It will slip in while everyone is deep, deep asleep and gather the choicest of treasures with an appraising eye. In the morning, there is no trace of the shadow or the treasures, but no alarm is raised, for mysteriously, none even notice or remember that anything is missing.
First Encounters with Magic
21/09/4185
I always knew I was going to have to work hard if I wanted recognition. Even when I was just a pup, I could tell my litterkin were bigger, faster, and stronger than I was. I know it took me longer to walk just on my hind paws than any of them, longer to talk, longer to wean... So my siblings mostly ignored me, much happier to play games with each other than trying to slow down for me. I got used to it, I guess. Sometimes I'd try to push my way in, you know? To show them that I *could* do it, that I *could* keep up with them, that I was a valuable member of the team... THAT never worked out. So I spent a lot of time on my own. I climbed a fair bit. It was nice to look down at people for once. My favorite place to climb was an old Labernum tree at the academy next door. If no-one was watching, I could sneak in and get all the way to the top without falling. Most of the students there were Sahali, so they never bothered looking for anyone hanging onto the branches way up at the top. There was one spot where I could sit and lean back against the trunk and have a pretty good view into one of the classrooms. I'll never forget the first day I saw them actually attempt to do magic. The professor had a little ball up at the front of the classroom, and they were supposed to use their magic to copy it, or at least, copy what it looked like. I'm not really telling this part well, though, there was a lot of build up and warnings about how daaangerous magic can be and how this wasn't just a game and would require your complete concentration... Anyway, after all that, all these students were just sitting there, waving their hands around over their desks and talking to themselves, and none of them were able to make the ball, at least, not at first. Finally, though, I saw the professor clap and point at someone I couldn't quite see, and he went over to inspect. Then he brought her up to the front of the classroom, and you know what? She was a Sahali girl who only had one arm. One arm! And she was the best mage in the whole class! Magic's like that, you know? You might think you know what it takes to be a great mage: the strength, the heritage, the raw talent... but the truth is, anyone can get lucky. Anyone might have powerful magic at their fingertips and not even know it. I got to thinking, maybe that was my chance. There was no way I was getting sent to that academy, we didn't have the money, at least, not for me. Besides, I had my work to do for the family, washing out the mash tuns and sparge pots with all the little spigots that I was the best at cleaning. But that didn't stop me from trying every blessed thing I learned when I was sitting in that tree. Nothing happened, of course, not at first. But then one day, something did happen. A couple of my brothers decided they wanted to play something a little rough with me. You know how brothers are. Anyway, I could tell that I was going to be coming out of this game with more bruises than I wanted to, and I told them to stop, that I didn't want to play, and they just kind of laughed it off and said stuff like "Aw, come on Softpaw, you're always begging us to play and now you don't want to?" and I just looked at him and I felt this weird kind of... intense calm? And I said "Stop bothering me", and, they did. Not a word, they all just turned around and walked away like (*snap*) that and didn't seem to think anything about it. That was the moment I knew that I had it. I was going to surpass every last one of them. I was going to be Magnificent.
