Tourmaline Riviére

Tourmaline Riviére (a.k.a. Tour)

Tourmaline is an unconventional Cleric for Preacher, the God of the pursuit of knowledge. He serves as Preacher's personal companion and servant, often running errands for him outside of the Grand Library. He has an air of being overworked and can come across a little intimidating, but he is good-hearted and gentle and does what he can to help people out. He just makes sure they know that they're being an idiot while he's at it.

Physical Description

General Physical Condition

Tourmaline is 5'2" of concentrated aggravation. Will crush you with his thicc thighs.

Facial Features

Gracefully pointed ears. Metallic Gold eyes.

Identifying Characteristics

Elaborate tattoo across his back & wrapping around his right shoulder of a floofy, fiery phoenix, done in shades of purple, its tail trailing purple light. It has highlights in metallic gold.
Elaborate tattoo covering most of his left hip & thigh of a mandala & flowers.

Apparel & Accessories

Tends to wear a lot of gold jewelry and gold makeup. Wears fairly simple clothing in neutral creams, browns, and black. Likes loose, gauzy flowy thing over simple tunic and breeches. Wears a utility belt with bags of holding to carry his tools, and a chatelain at his waist with the Library Keys on it.

Mental characteristics

Personal history

As a child, Tourmaline was known by the name Wren. He was one of the middle children in a very large, very mixed family from Coverberry - a magical, steampunk-esque city by the sea, part of the Talwick Alliance. His father Erevan was a High Elf (specifically a Sun Elf), with bronze skin, black hair, and gold eyes. Erevan was rather stoic and serious, but was always deeply interested in the world around him, and very much loved Tourmaline's mother Azalea. She was a creative, spontaneous free spirit, and she thrived on color and music and family. They had two children ahead of Wren - his sister Lael (adult name - Taegan) was two years older than him, while their eldest sibling was Kassan, whom his mother had before she met Erevan. After Tourmaline came two more children, Faen (adult name - Abrielle), 3 years younger, and Mella (adult name - Vachel), 4 years younger.
When Tourmaline was only a small child, some bullshit went down with the gods, and several worlds were smashed together into one by the goddess Celeste. The Provinces, Flagfall, Silberheim, Aqura, The Isles, and Marionelle all got jammed up against the Talwick Alliance, where his birthplace was. Tourmaline doesn't remember a lot of what it was like before, but he grew up in a world made up of several others, suddenly thrust together and struggling to learn how to coexist.
Even though Kassan was twelve when Tourmaline was born, Tour was closest with his oldest brother, who was his only fully human sibling. Kassan always called him by his childhood name, Wren, up until the day he died. In adulthood, Kassan and Tourmaline ran a moderately successful bookbinding business together for several decades. While he knew the craft and helped with larger and rush orders, Tourmaline's main role was running the shop and keeping the books, and as something of a niche market, he often had downtime. This was fine by Tourmaline, because it allowed him to indulge in his real passion - learning and knowledge.
He would frequently have books on a variety of subjects stacked up around the front counter, and when he wasn't working, he was reading or writing. He wanted to know more about the world, and frequently would take time off to travel to some of the neighboring realms through the fog-barriers and explore. He liked roaming around cities as an observer, studying more than interacting, and kept extensive journals. He would recount snippets of conversations, or write down in intricate detail a description of some very particular thing or place, like a particular corner booth of a pub. He made an ongoing personal study of the effects of location and surrounding objects on ambient magical fields, and the differences between realms. He would sometimes talk with Kassan about this; though most of it went over Kassan's head, he was smart and talking with him helped Tour work out his ideas.
For several decades, this was the routine of Tourmaline's life - working the shop with his brother, traveling, and studying the worlds. During this time, they had two regular customers that would come in from time to time - a human woman and an earth genasi. While they didn't reveal themselves, these two were the goddess Aicel and her son, the god Preacher. Preacher took notice of Tourmaline in particular, because of Tourmaline's genuine love of learning. Tourmaline took equal notice of Preacher; he could tell this was no ordinary genasi, that something was different about him.
Tourmaline also focused hard on his magical research. He'd dabbled in magic and the study of the Gods since childhood, and over time, he came to suspect that his favorite customer was in fact the God of Knowledge, Preacher. Incidentally, Preacher was the god that Tourmaline felt the closest to, the one he paid the most attention to when he was observing religious rites. He tested this theory, talking about it with him, which Preacher tried to play off.
Preacher at one point invited Tourmaline to come to his home, and showed him to an apartment within the Grand Library, which caught Tourmaline off guard at first, but only heightened his suspicions. When he finally prayed directly to Preacher, wanting to commit himself as a Cleric to him, Preacher appeared in his phoenix form in Tourmaline's lap, surprising him, then turned into his Earth Genasi form (still in Tourmaline's lap) all smiles, and said "Of course!" Tourmaline was a little shocked by the experience - he had his suspicions yes, but it's another thing entirely to have them confirmed so suddenly.
Preacher wasn't just named after a god, like he'd claimed - he was the god Preacher, the god of knowledge and learning. After committing himself to Preacher, Tourmaline focused for on developing his skills as a cleric, though he still assisted with Kassan's business.
As a half-elf, Tourmaline's aging had slowed once he reached maturity, and though there was only twelve years distance between them, he watched Kassan grow older and older, until eventually Tourmaline had to take over the business fulltime while caring for his brother. Their mother died in her late 80s, and Kassan followed within the decade. Tourmaline was in his 60s at the time, and still looking like he was only in his late 20s.
For a while, Tourmaline continued to run the bookbinding shop, though it was more Kassan's business than his - it was his baby, his pride and joy, and Tourmaline couldn't bear to close it down. He did, however, eventually hire other people to do the work, while maintaining ownership of the shop. Tourmaline traveled a lot during this time, finding it hard to be at the shop without Kassan.
Eventually, Preacher offered to bring him to his home, the Grand Library, to stay. Being an extension of the Gods' Library, the physics of are a little warped. The physical library where mortals can visit can exist anywhere and is currently accessible from The Isles - A floating collection of isles above Aqura. This serves as place on earth that Preacher takes care of, while the restricted section of the Library leads to a pocket dimension where Aicel works and Preacher tends to stay. Tourmaline would serve as Preacher's companion and assistant, and would have access to the most extensive library in the realms. Genuinely liking Preacher's company, and seeing this as an opportunity for a fresh start, Tourmaline agreed, and he's been with Preacher ever since.
Tourmaline isn't sure how his job became being Preacher's personal customer service manager, but hey, he's had worse jobs. As a god's personal vassal and favorite, he often completes errands and tasks given to him by Preacher, including sometimes serving as Preacher's messenger and answering requests that Preacher's followers make of him. As with most customer service jobs, he finds the supplicants invariably rude and self-centered, especially once they realized Preacher has sent his errandboy to help them out rather than coming himself. But it's for Preacher, so Tourmaline doesn't mind so much acting as a buffer for the gentle god. He also sometimes ends up having to hide Preacher from other gods that he doesn't want to talk to. But for the most part, he is free to do as he pleases, he just also has a hyper-curious god at his elbow asking him if he thinks pigeons have feelings - of course they have feelings, why wouldn't they have feelings?
While Tourmaline and his family have worked through the grief of losing Azalea and Kassan, it of course never truly goes away. He and his other siblings of course still grieve their loss. Their father also grieves, and while he is still loving towards them, they all feel he is growing distant as he realizes he’s going to outlive his children. To Tourmaline & his half-elf siblings dismay, Erevan has started a new family - with another elf this time. It’s not that they dislike or resent his new wife and infant - the siblings don’t want to deny their father some solace or happiness. He and his half-elf siblings are now the ones who will grow old and die while their baby half-sister watches them do it - they know that grief and worry about it.
Meanwhile, at the Library, Tourmaline also got to know Noah Rhodes, who stayed at the Library off and on for years, looking for a way to save Tristan. They get along fairly well. Both of them ended up working to help the God's Hope, a group of adventurers that were chosen by the Gods to save them from destruction.  Preacher has taken an interest in them and so recently, being Preacher's messenger has meant traveling to keep an eye on them and help them out when needed.

He could use a cup of coffee and like, one person that knows what they're doing.

Current Location

The Grand Library - The Isles

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Alignment

Neutral Good

Age

96

Date of Birth

December 21

Gender

Genderfluid

Eyes

Gold

Hair

Long and black, styled in multiple long braids

Skin Tone/Pigmentation

Rich Brown

Height

5' 2"