Yobu

### Name

Yobu, The Last Guardian of the All Mother, Aspect of Decay, acting incarnate of the 1st grotto

## Traits

### Faith

The All Mother

*"*I always prefer my god, one I can see constantly around me, that is in every squirrel, every centipede, all the mushrooms. It is easy to have faith when you can see your deity at work day in and out.*"*

## Appearance

Yobu is currently a rather large, 6 foot 6 inch tortle weighing about 300 pounds. His skin is an incredibly light shade of green, and his shell is a rather dark brown. His face is worn with age, and his body contains many old scars of battles fought long ago. His eyes seem particularly old, even for a tortle of his age. His shell is a hard, sturdy construct, despite blocking more blows than most people will ever see, and is covered in a vast assortment of mosses, lichens, molds, mushrooms, yeast, and just about every other decomposer. He is never seen without his trusty walking stick, an ancient piece of oak wood that seems even older than he is, and carries almost as much fungi.

In battle, it is rare to see Yobu outside his fungal form, in which he is completely enveloped by the fungi that reside on his shell, allowing him to take far more hits than normal, and also increasing the potency of his attacks. Additionally, upon use of shillelagh, his walking stick is also covered in fungi.

## Personality

Yobu has a wide variety of wisdom collected over the course of his long existence, and frequently spouts it to others, wanted or otherwise. Such wisdom usually revolves around the cycles of nature, in which destruction or hardship leads to decay, but emphasizes that such decay gives way for new growth and eventual tranquility in the form of valuable experiences and lessons learned. His mentality is best summarized as growth through failure.

Despite his large amounts of acquired wisdom and old age, Yobu still has tendencies to act before fully analyzing, instead tending to rush in, make things happen, succeed or fail, and learn from the outcome either way. This sometimes manifests in poor tactical decisions in combat, an over eagerness to engage the unknown despite risk, or lacking patience as he wishes to be an active force in the world, whether that be for better or for worse.

Yobu is incredibly protective, both over his friends and his deity's domain; acting as a fierce defender for both. He often charges headlong into combat in order to protect the former, and fights with a particularity acute ferocity when facing fiends, undead, or aberrations, who he sees as despoilers of the latter. In combat he maintains this by taking a defensive, tanking role, while also healing his team mates. (With the occasional battlefield control attempt.).

Through all of it though, Yobu has retained a silly side and a sense of humor, finding that often a tea spoon of lightheartedness helps the medicine go down.

## History

### Backstory

Long ago, in the streets of Neverwinter, there was a small orphan child. Homeless, food-less, and with nowhere to go, he was "kindly" taken off the streets by a then just starting order, known as the Guardians of the All Mother. In exchange for food and shelter, the child was brought in to this order, taught it religion, integrated into its rank. The order taught him of a goddess that was present in all natural things, from the smallest mushroom to the largest oak tree. Known as the All Mother, she was taught to be the foundation of all life, and composed of four aspects. Growth, representing the creation and growing of new life. Tranquility, displaying the serenity and peace of unspoiled nature. Destruction, showing the wrath and rage of nature's forest fires, vicious storms, and devastating earthquakes. And Decay, depicting the inevitability of all life to die, decay, and make way for the restarting of the cycle of these four aspects all over again.

The child would quickly acclimate to this order, and become one of its guardians, warriors trained to go out, seek those that wished to disrupt and despoil this cycle, and vanquish them. In time the training and real combat experiences the no longer child but now guardian would represent made the guardian a skilled warrior, fighting valiantly to protect the All Mother. As the Guardian continued to rise through the order's hierarchy, he became an Aspect, a special rank awarded to only 4 guardians, one for each of the All Mother's Aspects. Having risen to being the Aspect of Decay, the guardian learned the order's deepest secrets. Among them, was that the order's elders violated their own rules, bringing themselves back from the dead with the power of reincarnation in order to live countless lifetimes. While they hunted and persecuted others that sought immortality, they themselves did the same in order to preserve their natural cycle.

Instead of rejecting this hypocritical philosophy, the Aspect of Decay embraced it, serving for centuries as the aspect of decay, inhabiting body after body with one persistent spirit. Eventually, the Aspect of Decay reincarnated into the form of a tortle, and took the name Yobu.

One day, a traitor in the order's ranks gave up the location of the order's grotto sanctuary, allowing a powerful enemy to assault it, wiping out seemingly all of the guardians. But a few survivors escaped with their lives, among them Yobu. A few months of hard wandering on his own later, piecing himself together, he arrived at the guild.

### AG History

Yobu didn't even have time to sit down at the guild before being called upon for a job. In the process of wiping out undead experiments in the nearby woods, Yobu met a few key friends, but most notably Chari Song and Axel. After somehow being convinced into allowing spooky the wright to inhabit his newly carved out home in an old rotted tree, Yobu became solid friends with both Chari and Axel. Additionally, he made good friends with the bard Maple and the wizard Vera while helping a marid from within giant crab shaped machines. One day, while brewing a potion, Yobu accidentally messed up the requirements, and enlisted the help of several guild members (notably Chari and Jaylin) to keep the potion under control. From Vera and Axel he also became friends with Oaken and Kyrisis, and in a rare moment of peace in the guild, Axel, Vera, Oaken, Kyrisis, and Yobu enjoyed an evening meal in Waterdeep.

While at Love's first party, Yobu was introduced to the mighty warrior Shin Hatashi, and latter became better friends with him over the course of a job involving wood woads and a demonic dog. After Shin's kerfuffle with Chari, Yobu, Chari, and Shin all answered a wandering master's call to help clear out his old monastery. In the process, Yobu encouraged Shin to apologized to Chari (with limited effect) and damaged his friendship with Chari in an overzealous attempt to protect her. Eventually though, all parties were able to make up and come out stronger.

While Chari dealt with the temple of Ioune attempting to retake her, Yobu was unfortunately unable to phsyically help, but provided moral support for her throughout. However, one day, when Chari was expressing concern over joining the wall, Yobu extended an offer for her to join him in immortality through reincarnation. This caused a massive falling out between the two, and Yobu's true obsession with finding another guardian to serve with him became better known.

## Relationships

### Sample Name

Sample Name is a friend/enemy/ally/acquaintance of yourcharacter

### Unlinked Sample Name

Unlinked Sample Name is a friend/enemy/ally/acquiantance of yourcharacter

## Magic Items

#### Attuned:

Those three special items that make your build purr

#### Unattuned:

Do we... even have room for all this stuff in our backpacks? How deep those pockets go?

## Trivia/Facts/Whatever Else You Want

* You can put bullet points here
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* Look at how much info you can have

## Art

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