Alas Poor Tamawold.

My plan for this post was to introduce and present another of my D&D characters back stories, however when I opened Tamawold Stormchild's back story this morning I found that it was missing. The file was in it's place but when I opened the file up over two thirds of the story had vanished. It must have fallen through the cracks during a hard drive crash I had a few years ago. I had a moment of silence for Tamawold.

Tamawold was my favorite character to date. As far as stats go he was a shifter warden from 4.0 (which I have mixed emotions about) based mostly on Con and Str, but he was much more than that. Tamawold was my first attempt at a very serious character and my best attempt at creating a fully fleshed out personality. I try to build character personalities out of a kerrnel of emotion and set of values that I can strongly empathize with or at least understand strongly. Dalin from my previous post was based on a very simple set of ideas: youth and naivety, "I just want to sing" and the idea of a reluctant adventurer. Tamawold was a heavier character he was a shield barer to the world,  refused to give in to anything and would eventually become a force of nature.



Here is the part of the back story that managed to survive.

Tamawold was born during the fiercest storm in the history of Adirlor. His mother had wandered into a village of the Galoroth people obviously well into her pregnancy; the clan would not turn away a fellow shifter and took her in. The day after Tamawold’s mother entered the village the storm started. It started as any other storm in the jungles of Adirlor, steamy rain came through the heavy canopy. Two days later the rain still came down and Tamawold’s mother went into labor. The third day of the storm came and with it the rain became torrential and lightning streaked the sky. The birth was long though not complicated, Tamawold was born late in the evening on the ninety-third day in the year of the great storm. The storm continued for another four days after Tamawold was born. On the last day of the storm Tamawold’s mother left Tamawold in the care of the village and returned to the jungle. Many explanations of this strange behavior where offered to Tamawold by the villagers, some so fantastic to suggest that his mother was one of the great spirits such as Whisper or Blood Cousin other more believable explanations suggested that his mother was one who protected against the darkness and felt that she must return to her duty. Tamawold was instructed in the spirit way and learned quickly that he had a unique connection to those spirits. This connection was first revealed when he was twelve. The Witchfire Tree had always intrigued Tamawold, it was a spirit place, its blackened withered limbs reached high above the canopy of the jungle and, though it had been dead for longer than anyone could remember, at night glowing spheres would gather around the tree and drift through its branches.

The rest of Tamawold's backstory involved meeting a great spirit and being gifted a branch from the Witchfire tree that served as Tamawold's weapon for the campaign. Tamawold's village was eventually attacked and he was drawn into the campaign while tracking down the attackers. I decided he had a Russian accent, that I butchered on several occasions, which was another factor of why the character stands out to me as my favorite so far. The accent made me mentally divide the character from my normal voice and helped develop his personality. Finally My favorite part of Tamawold was that he was and would continue to develop as a force of nature. I have for years been fascinated by storms, there is a primal element to them that excites my soul to a degree that I have trouble explaining. I associate Tamawold with that concept and he was exhilarating  to play because of it.I miss playing Tamawold frequently, that campaign only lasted about two semesters. 

Hopefully I haven't bored anyone with all this nostalgia and maybe someone has even enjoyed reading it.

Thanks to everyone reading, Tseb