Taowhiri

Taowhiri (a.k.a. Haunted One)

Backstory

Taowhiri was born on Bygone Isles" href="/w/ilarium-Hardiman12/a/motu-article">Motu in the Bygone Isles Taowhiri was raised as the champion, the “Protector”, of the island, the town always telling him that he would be Protect them and that his sacrifice would save them. Taowhiri was chosen at a young age for his height and because they could recognise the fire/power within. When he was 13 he was ritualistically tattooed on the left shoulder and right breast and let into the sanctum of the church where he was shown the axe symbol of their god that was said to bestow the power onto the village. After the destruction of Motu, Fondrin of the Flintstrike Clan, took Taowhiri under his wing and raised him aboard his ship, the Fractured Cog.
Tao saved money in haste to get his own boat – to avoid bringing misfortune to his brethren and landed at the port of Dwellen in the winter of T.A. 281, in the Month of Darkest Night when Carric Liadon, Senlin and Torinn appeared in need of passage to Icarna.
Tao's Totem Animal is the Bear.

Romances

Lestra

Woman aboard the Flying Griffin on Tao's 17th nameday. Attractive and scholarly. Was not impressed by Tao's advances.

Allies

Private Gilus

Crewmate onboard the Fractured Cog.
C2/S0: Cut badly in the fight against Seaman Berrick in the brawl in Kusad. A third seamate, Trast, was killed in the brawl.

Rivals

The Emissary, Death Knight of Neskull

C2/Session 0: Killed Tao's family, friends, and destroyed Motu on Taowhiri's 17th nameday. Kidnapped Taowhiri's sister, Mela.

Seaman Berrick

C2/S0: Tao gambled against Berrick aboard the Flying Griffin the day before his 17th nameday, lost all his money, then lost his handaxe in a retaliatory arm-wrestle. Several years later, ran into him in the port town of Kusad and Tao and Fractired Cog crewmates lost a brawled in an alley to Berrick and his crew.

Campaign Ideas

The Cadaver Lord of The Emissary is sent to retrieve the Lifedrinker Greataxe for his Master, who believes he can unlock its power. A shadow will accompany the Cadaver Lord and attempt to drain Tao of Strength in order to make this easier.

Tattoos

Tao believes his tattoos can guide him.
A tattoo on his chest becomes shaped like Mount Ghakis. A dark star is depicted at its base. Use this as an extra hook to go to the Amber Temple.

Barovian Dream Sequence

You fly across a wide expanse. Frozen snowy lands swallow a road beneath them. The mountain face looms closer and closer until doors at its base burst open...
Your pace slows just a beat as you fly down stone steps into an ancient hall, skirt over a balcony and glide toward a vastly tall, cowled statue...
The dull stone runs closer and you slide into the shadows of its long robes as darkness takes your vision.
A moment later your vision spins round and focussed as you float, slowly now, toward a shadowed arch...
The glossy walls glint warmly as you drift under its curved boughs and, weightless, curve around into a great wide hallway. Your heart tugs and lungs catch as you spy a doorway at the extremity of the hall...
A breeze pushes you forward and your form, incorporeal, tingles in anticipation as you stretch forward, only to find yourself sliding to the left, toward a sparkling smooth doorway...
As you approach, heightened nerves rushing through your ears, your mind opens to touch the door hanging ajar. The surface falls away to reveal the room, low ceilinged, with a floor of shining blue marble...
Three alcoves open up in front and to your sides. Your vision drifts forward, lower, toward a low stone sarcophagus, and rotates to face downward as you float forward over the feet... the legs... the waist...
The torso lays swaddled under a flowing stone cloth which bleeds into the sides of the sarcophagus, and you drift even over this until a wide chin comes into focus. Following, a wide mouth with protruding canines, a thick nose, closed eyes under a heavy brow. The familiarity of the giant’s face warms the edge of your memory... (the familiarity of the giant’s face warms the edge of your memory...)
as its mouth opens and invites you in. The maw stretches wider as you enter into the gullet of the sarcophagus, and your mind is wrapped in a gentle embrace. Your consciousness expands, a new part of you opened as if with a long-forgotten key, and a rush of warmth stretches out behind your form as a powerful transformation engages your spine and a half-formed answer to a burning question, hidden, flickers at the edge of your mind. In the midst of your discovery, the stones darken around you and melt like tar...

Physical Description

General Physical Condition

Barbarian

Body Features

Tanned skin

Identifying Characteristics

Ritualistic Tattoos: left shoulder and right breast
Other Tattoos: all over

Apparel & Accessories

Wears a white crew-neck shirt with a buttoned up front. Long sleeves are rolled up, displaying his forearms which the edges of some tattoos peer out from underneath.

Mental characteristics

Personal history

Backstory

Taowhiri was born on Motu in the Bygone Isles, inhabited by a mix of persons understood to be relations to beings from the Mistlands and locals sailors, from whom islands got their name - sailors say the islands have a feeling of being stuck in the past. Everything about the islands seems happy, healthy and a bit too sanitised. However, these islands have a dark secret, which Taowhiri does not know about.
Taowhiri was raised as the champion, the “Protector”, of the island, the town always telling him that he would be Protect them and that his sacrifice would save them. Although he knows and has good relations with his family, he was taken away from his parents and raised as the “Protector”, trained physically by the lead warrior of the island, Mokete, and pampered by the priests and townspeople. The people of Motu believe the island was created by a giant named Neskull that would protect them as long as they sacrificed the most physically perfect specimen once a generation. Taowhiri was chosen at a young age for his height and because they could recognise the fire/power within. When he was 13 he was ritualistically tattooed on the left shoulder and right breast, he was also let into the sanctum of the church where he was shown the axe symbol of their god that was said to bestow the power onto the village. Taowhiri was told that he had a few years but soon he would receive the axe which would deliver his destiny to protect the islands - unknown to him, this was the sacred axe they were going to sacrifice him with.
The afternoon before his 17th nameday, Taowhiri decided to celebrate. He wandered to the docks, met with his father and found his sister Mela in the spirit house. There, he got drunk with the traders in port for the day and joined the crew and one of their travellers, a young elf scholar named Lestra, whom he tried to impress by telling the stories his heroic feat of clearing Jarren's barn of large rats, on their trade ship. Lestra rebuffed his amateur advances. During the evening, the ship departed for a days sail to the main island of Hoa Noho. When Taowhiri woke with his hangover, Tao reasoned that his destiny could wait for him to turn up at Motu the next evening.
Taowhiri found a ship captained by some seafaring dwarves and arrived back on Motu the day after his 17th birthday. From afar he saw the glow of fires lighting the underside of the clouds, and once ashore he found the town covered in the massacred bodies of his neighbours and friends. His father and Mokete were both slain, black marks hammered into their bodies and scorch marks which has formed notches in Mokete's sword. Tao thought he heard a sound from the temple and, fueled by desperate hope, rushed there. As the rafters cracked he whipped the ceremonial axe from the wall before a fireball flew into the sanctum and brought down the roof. Hearing a haunting nazgul-like shriek behind him, he sees a horseman riding a skeletal horse fully covered in thick black plate armour. The Death Knight (Emissary) of Neskull lets out a whispered hiss over his shoulder;
“you were denied from me, so I take what is owed. You, are you not the great protector? You couldn’t even protect your family; I think I will enjoy making you little Mela scream.”
Taowhiri launches forward but is hit by a second flaming orb catching him in the shoulder. The flames burn into his shoulder, warping his tattoo and branding it into his skin with the smell of burning flesh as the knight melts into the night.
The shadows fire did not rend his skin but instead dragged the ink of the tattoos around as if they were claw marks - later he learned that this would cause any other tattoo to animate and move around on his body always reminding him of this night.
He remembers little of what happened next all he has figured out is that his eyes seemed to go from brown with grey flecks to all grey and he flew into a rage for the first time. He was rescued from the island by the dwarven captain of the ship that bore him home, Fondrin of the Flintstrike Clan, who saw the human in front of him as only a child and swore to take him under his wing and raise him right aboard his ship, the Fractured Cog.
Tao recovers, work hard, and Fondrin pays him well. Tao comes to follow their tradition of getting more tattoos but whenever he gets one it seems to take a life of its own - the only ones that stay the same are his old ritual tattoos. The other tattoos, although they slither around his body, seem to avoid these so he is constantly reminded of that night. Tao trains with the crew and is useful in lifting, moving and selling cargo, but feels a certain restlessness. Even as the crew laughs with him, sometimes something seems to flicker within Taowhiri's eyes and the laughter catches in their throats. Children in the ports see him and clutch their mother’s skirts, and traders pay extra to move him on just the quicker. He feels… dangerous. Not in a way where he could kill people, but that people may be in danger just by being with him. Taowhiri feels haunted, and oftentimes his eyes swell with sleep as night after night his dreams are rocked by the Knight on the Horse, and his promises to take his payment. But those memories don’t break him. Instead, they give Tao a determination to become the Protector he failed to be on his last night on Motu - to achieve his power and use that ritual axe to kill the Emissary.
Whilst on serving on the Fractured Cog, the ship stopped into the port town of Kusad. After unloading and selling the goods, Tao and a few colleagues went drinking in the port. After drinks they stumble out and Tao spots, of all people, Seaman Berrick. Tao and his friends confronts him in an alley a number of Berrick's crew follow. A brutal fight ensues: Gilus gets cut badly and another one of Tao's colleagues, Trast, gets stabbed and dies. Tao rages for the first time since the skeletal horseman killed his town, kills a number of his enemies (Berrick escapes with a few remaining men) and carries Gilus back to ship. As they sail away, Tao isn't on the ship: he believes he is bad luck.
Tao winds up in Polperro, a small fishing village, working in a bar. He is happy: he feels at home. As the night wears down following the annual Festival of Bounty, he closes up the bar, putting the fire out and snuffing out all the candles, bar one. Closing up he finds his lady and retires. Unfortunately, the bar catches a fire, and it spreads. Escaping the building, Tao blames himself for yet more misfortune.
Tao saved money in haste to get his own boat – to avoid bringing misfortune to his brethren. Every time a dark night fills the seas and the waves rip up, he feared for their safety, and when an inexperienced lad got pulled away by the waves, he wondered if it was not instead the clutching claws of the shadow, taking its payment. Does Tao live only at the loss of others?
Tao landed at the port of Dwellen in the winter of T.A. 281, in the Month of Darkest Night. His is the only ship coming in, as Tao is the only sailor brave enough to ride the seas over the winter months. Other sailors will wait another three weeks before daring to make the trip around the peninsula, but Tao has seen the worst the seas has to throw at you and fears not the shores of Kollerdorf like others. The shadows of the haunted forest there cause superstitious sailors to cross themselves and constantly pray to Gnor for deliverance and to make it home to their ports safely, but Taowhiri's haunted eyes see the forest as no more horrific than any other situation, whether that be web-strapped woods or harbour towns awash with the dregs of humanity. Danger lurks in every crevice, his steps are dogged by the shadow of the past, and a measly wind isn’t going to make living life any harder than it already is. Though, even being the only seaman willing to sail at this time of year, the dead stare of Tao's eyes normally puts most off coming with you. Until the appearance of Carric Liadon, Senlin and Torinn appeared in need of passage to Icarna.
In the Month of Darkest Night, the three travellers boarded Taowhiri's ship. On the trip to Icarna, the company was ambushed by genasi of Zendíron. Taowhiri's ship was pulled by mists onto the rocks and the party washed up on the shores of Kollerdörf. In the night, they were pulled by the mists into the lands of Barovia.

Education

Skills training, through training with Mokete:
Athletics
Perception
Survival
all weapon proficiencies

Employment

birth-17: Bygone Isles" href="/w/ilarium-Hardiman12/a/motu-article">Motu's Protector-in-Waiting, trained by Mokete
17-25: Sailor aboard the Fractured Cog under Fondrin
25 onwards: Adventurer

Mental Trauma

Home island was massacred and his sister taken from him by a Death Knight of Neskull.
Sister in the guise of Ireena Kolyana was taken by Strahd.
Blames Torinn's turn toward evil and subsequent defeats on himself as he is strong and should have saved him. Should have moved faster, defended better, saved him instead of letting him fall like all those before him.

Intellectual Characteristics

Charismatic.

Morality & Philosophy

Alignment: Chaotic Good
I am the mighty hero: I don't run from danger, I make it run from me.
The only way to know someone/thing is to fight it
If you say violence isn't the answer you aren't hitting hard enough

Personality Characteristics

Motivation

Victory through strength of arms ("thats why I work out")
I will find that Beast and this time i will be strong
I will protect those I care for: I will not let "that" happen again.
C2S8: His primary desire is to be stronger - Torrin's turn he blames on himself as it is his job to bear the burden so Torrin shouldn't have fallen (1st for strahd and then to Senlin). 2nd motivation maybe to investigate vallaki find out why or how they keep Strahd away with celebrations (still a little annoyed the party isn't for him). Also he will be asking about any shadowy mounted figures that may have happened to be around of late.

Personality Quirks

Superstitions and beliefs:

Fondrin told me that “those who live by the sword also die by the sword!” That’s why I use an Axe. Tao isn’t stupid: no sword for me.
We must BURN the dead as it is the only way to set their souls free so they can join the Sky and watch over us, anything other than this traps their soul why would you do that! Its Icky!!
The Gods often use the Birds as messengers they can often foretell good or bad things; I keep an eye out for them in case I need to be careful or charge ahead.
Elves evolved from Bats, they have the ability to Echolocate and this explains why they have such large pointy ears, as such we must be careful as you are never sure when they are listening in on you.
Animals
Ravens - messengers of the god of death/help the dead return to the circle of life as they eat the dead. Tao respects them and normally acknowledges them with a nod or salute from one god chosen to another.
Cats - Tao likes cats as they are almost as confident in their looks and abilities as himself. He believes they can foretell things so he can be wary of them and is liable to interpret their movements to see if they are foretelling something big.
He is not scared of snakes at all and has been know to either befriend them or call them a jumped up skipping rope.
Terrified of sky spiders (not sure if they exist or if sailors tale).
Turtles - turtle specifically dragon turtle (solitary powerful and hard to hurt) which Tao has heard about in legends and may even believe they are a lesser god for protecting part of the island. So he has a reverence for all turtles as they could all go on to be a dragon turtle - they only need to take the time and willpower to grow so big.

Social

Religious Views

My Axe is a relic of my divine lineage
My tattoos sometimes guide me

Hobbies & Pets

He had a black cat named Morai on his boat for a few years. His boat got struck lighting after Morai refused a new bed by the mast Tao had bought him, feeding into his superstition about cats.

Wealth & Financial state

Explorer's pack
Monster Hunter's Pack

Species

Human

Ethnicity

Islander (Bygone Isles)

Birthplace

Bygone Isles" href="/w/ilarium-Hardiman12/a/motu-article">Motu

Gender

Male

Eyes

Grey (before being haunted, brown-flecked-grey)

Hair

Brown hair

Height

6'5"

Weight

105kg

Known Languages

Common, Celestial, Primordial

Born: T.A. 256

• Father: Tuhinga (killed)
• Sister: Mela (missing)
• Trainer: Mokete (killed)