Name: Cipher

Caravan: Green (Proposed name: The Mad One's March)

Race: Dredge

Class: Cleric (Arcana domain)

Alignment: Chaotic Good



Personality: Cipher is arguably the most talkative dredge the world has ever known, but that's purely because she's learned to communicate with non-dredge in the first place. Considering the amount of effort required to speak, Cipher still comes out the other end the stoic sort to any but other dredge. The truth of her is an intense curiosity and love of the world in which she lives, leading her to dive head-first into whatever mysteries she might come across. This is where she came across the radical idea of worship, an idea generally unknown to the dredge. She venerates the Sundr as gods and believes they can grant her the strength to fight the darkness that threatens to overtake the world.



Ideal: Cooperation and the sharing of knowledge is the key to victory!

Bond: The Mad Stonesinger is my mentor and my friend. No harm must come to him or we may all be doomed.

Flaw: I often forget how sanguine and unpredictable the flesh races can be, leading me to trust them overmuch to be rational and principled.



Brief history of your character: Cipher was never a specimen of physical ideals or really someone who would be noticed as anything but a mouth to feed and a caretaker for the children up until the Mad Stonesinger passed through, virtually hemorrhaging strange ideas and practices. Cipher, by chance, happened to be rather adept at applying the healing arts taught by the Mad one in his strange words and gestures. This not only meant a new skill worth applying on the front lines of whatever war the dredge were waging at the time, it also meant a significant rise in status from a nobody to a weirdo acolyte.



From this point, Cipher continued to rise through the ranks of the Mad One's cultish entourage, to the point where she had the opportunity to express her own ideas, a major point of which was a call for cooperation with the other races of the world. It was in this interest that Cipher rigged up the strange mechanism of tuning-fork-like apparatuses that protrude from her lower jaw-- a bizarre, but effective mechanism that allows her to crudely effect a monotone human voice through the use of (relatively) simple prestidigitation. It was in bridging this barrier that earned her her name, and it was the Mad One's directive to severely limit how much she told outsiders about the ways of the dredge that made it make even more sense. Nowadays, Cipher stands as the leader of her little group, taking up the negotiations and mundane tasks of leadership that the Mad One isn't suited to.



Roleplay Sample



Cipher crouched over the human child cowering in the snowbank, her speaking apparatus protruding toward the creature like so many frightening barbs promising imminent pain. The blank, glowing orbs of yellow that passed for eyes with the dredge stared, expressionless, for a time. Then, Cipher made a small gesture with her hand and the forks began to vibrate with an awful cacophony of buzzing and the sounds of metal scratching on metal that gradually resolved into a voice that was made stranger than it even needed to be thanks to an amateurish attempt to replicate the human inflection of concern in an otherwise monotone and abrasive voice.



"CHILD. Do you possess an injury? Where have gone your families?"



The questions just seemed to frighten the child even more, so Cipher went to scoop up the frightened thing so that the group could get moving again and maybe find the rightful caretakers in time. Just as she started to lean in, a rock thumped off the back of her head, prompting a much more dredge-like squealing shriek of surprise as she shot upright and turned to face the source.



It was a human male. Several of them.



Not understanding the intricacies of human gestures, Cipher doesn't think to point when she "speaks."



"Does this thing belong to you, men?"



One of the humans, the one who seemed to have thrown the rock, advanced with a lumber axe. The others seemed to have farming implements.



"There is no need for violence, peasant friends. I am come to help. It seems your child to be broken somehow. Please to be taking it away."



Cipher stepped back to give the men room to take the child, but the infuriated leader of the men toon this as a show of weakness and an opportunity, so he charged.



Cipher took shame in running, not because it was cowardly--after all, there was no need for the violence that would have ensued--but because she was thinking that one of the tenets that the Sundr would probably get behind was that of dignity and poise, so running was perhaps sacrilegious? She would have to think about that...right after she used the Mad One's lessons to heal up the gouges in her back. CipherGreen (Proposed name: The Mad One's March)DredgeCleric (Arcana domain)Chaotic GoodCipher is arguably the most talkative dredge the world has ever known, but that's purely because she's learned to communicate with non-dredge in the first place. Considering the amount of effort required to speak, Cipher still comes out the other end the stoic sort to any but other dredge. The truth of her is an intense curiosity and love of the world in which she lives, leading her to dive head-first into whatever mysteries she might come across. This is where she came across the radical idea of worship, an idea generally unknown to the dredge. She venerates the Sundr as gods and believes they can grant her the strength to fight the darkness that threatens to overtake the world.Cooperation and the sharing of knowledge is the key to victory!The Mad Stonesinger is my mentor and my friend. No harm must come to him or we may all be doomed.I often forget how sanguine and unpredictable the flesh races can be, leading me to trust them overmuch to be rational and principled.Cipher was never a specimen of physical ideals or really someone who would be noticed as anything but a mouth to feed and a caretaker for the children up until the Mad Stonesinger passed through, virtually hemorrhaging strange ideas and practices. Cipher, by chance, happened to be rather adept at applying the healing arts taught by the Mad one in his strange words and gestures. This not only meant a new skill worth applying on the front lines of whatever war the dredge were waging at the time, it also meant a significant rise in status from a nobody to a weirdo acolyte.From this point, Cipher continued to rise through the ranks of the Mad One's cultish entourage, to the point where she had the opportunity to express her own ideas, a major point of which was a call for cooperation with the other races of the world. It was in this interest that Cipher rigged up the strange mechanism of tuning-fork-like apparatuses that protrude from her lower jaw-- a bizarre, but effective mechanism that allows her to crudely effect a monotone human voice through the use of (relatively) simple prestidigitation. It was in bridging this barrier that earned her her name, and it was the Mad One's directive to severely limit how much she told outsiders about the ways of the dredge that made it make even more sense. Nowadays, Cipher stands as the leader of her little group, taking up the negotiations and mundane tasks of leadership that the Mad One isn't suited to.Cipher crouched over the human child cowering in the snowbank, her speaking apparatus protruding toward the creature like so many frightening barbs promising imminent pain. The blank, glowing orbs of yellow that passed for eyes with the dredge stared, expressionless, for a time. Then, Cipher made a small gesture with her hand and the forks began to vibrate with an awful cacophony of buzzing and the sounds of metal scratching on metal that gradually resolved into a voice that was made stranger than it even needed to be thanks to an amateurish attempt to replicate the human inflection of concern in an otherwise monotone and abrasive voice.The questions just seemed to frighten the child even more, so Cipher went to scoop up the frightened thing so that the group could get moving again and maybe find the rightful caretakers in time. Just as she started to lean in, a rock thumped off the back of her head, prompting a much more dredge-like squealing shriek of surprise as she shot upright and turned to face the source.It was a human male. Several of them.Not understanding the intricacies of human gestures, Cipher doesn't think to point when she "speaks."One of the humans, the one who seemed to have thrown the rock, advanced with a lumber axe. The others seemed to have farming implements.Cipher stepped back to give the men room to take the child, but the infuriated leader of the men toon this as a show of weakness and an opportunity, so he charged.Cipher took shame in running, not because it was cowardly--after all, there was no need for the violence that would have ensued--but because she was thinking that one of the tenets that the Sundr would probably get behind was that of dignity and poise, so running was perhaps sacrilegious? She would have to think about that...right after she used the Mad One's lessons to heal up the gouges in her back.