Tüül Oakencask Fallen

A hill dwarf raised by cloud giants, a healer, and the town's own head priest of thirty years ago. He was sealed in green jade beside a ruined forge for thirty years, and woke without aging or remembering how he got there.

Before Morning Rise

Born Karat ("Carrot") to dwarven brewers who served as emissaries in a cloud giant hold, and orphaned young. The giants' herbalist raised him, and the giants named him Tüül. He grew up learning to take up no space and to be useful in the places nobody else could reach. He tried a dwarf trade caravan, which failed. He took work in the brewery of a Lathander monastery and found that his hands could close a wound. He took orders, grew weary of doctrine and temples that ran like businesses, and quietly gave his heart to Chauntea, the Earthmother, who does not mind mud.

He healed strangers for a living, and three groups took him in and none held. One robbed graves. One nearly died. One used his healing to become cruel, so he refused it, took their weapons, and left them breathing. After that no city temple wanted him, and they sent him to the smallest chapel they had: a mining and farming town called Morning Rise. He was glad to go. He wore Lathander's sun on his robe and said Chauntea's prayers over the barley, and in five years he became a head priest, mostly because nobody else wanted the job.

The last thing he remembers

The miners found signs of gold, he went down with them, and at the end of the trail lay a giant golden egg. He sent word to the church and told the crews not to move it. The church arrived in two days, for a journey that should take a month. After that, nothing. He was a hundred and twenty-eight years old.

Now

He woke thirty years later on the floor of a green-lit room, out of a shell of jade, in front of four strangers. He had not aged a day. The first thing he did was heal the one who was bleeding. His memory is fogged and returns in pieces. He does not recognise the chamber, and says the walls were not there when he was sealed. Easter Ashwell recognised him on sight, and he remembers Alaric Vane, the official who stripped him of his authority. The name Tamsin means nothing to him. Flowers bloom in his footprints, and Roger remembers him as pompous, always fussing over herbs and flowers. He carries a hatchet as a tool first and a weapon second, and his clan's amulet: sheaves of malt and barley in an oaken cask, a hand axe and a sickle crossed over it.

In Session 11 he saw what had changed at the Last Lantern: the mounted head was not there in his day, and the bowls were pottery. He used to play cards with Mehmet Vance. He remembers two or three weeks helping people in the church after the disaster, and going into the mine after Mehmet was gone, and then nothing. He cannot remember Ilara or Jasmine Vance, though he feels he should. Inside the church as it was, a priestess at the altar knew him on sight: "The bell should have taken you." He reaches fifth level before the next session.

Faithful in the field

In Session 12 Lavius found a thirty-year-old gravestone behind the church: "Here rests Tüül Oakencask. Keeper of the sun's office, faithful in the field." Tüül read it ("There's nothing fuzzy about that. That's my name.") and, against Aelion's warning and Tamsin's, dug. In the coffin lay his own body, grey-bearded, holding a sprig of barley. He drew one slow breath, let go, and came apart into petals and green leaves, and the church hill turned green wherever they landed. The GM revealed that he had served at Lathander's church but was sent by Chauntea, the Earth Mother, to keep the peace. Aelion reburied him by hand, and Owlin laid a pressed flower on his grave. His last wish was to bless the bell.