Staavo

**Staavo** is a retired adventurer and scholar, originally from Sadiir. He is a founding member of Ascension.

## Character

He is a rather odd fellow. One of his defining features is his brash rudeness towards everyone who doesn't hold any interest for him. He has a rather inquisitive nature and seeks to either understand how something works, or humiliate others who don't understand the matter at hand. Combative and even belligerent in discussion, he is able to grudgingly admit where he has been wrong.

He appeared to Rain like someone in his late 70s, with short white hair and a shaven face. He was wearing a plain white tunic and dark breeches. When not able to shave, his beard forms a scraggly white goatee, that he is conscious about. He doesn't openly display his wooden foot.

## History

### Background

Staavo lost his foot early in his career to a Dunch and tried to switch builds from a pure swordsman to a hybrid sword and magic build. That kind of worked but eventually he accepted that he was capped as a low-mid level bronze and not able to advance further.  Staavo has picked up many things on his travels, including basic hand code mostly in its combat application.

Sometime after losing his foot, he traveled from Guild to Guild in Bellost, including taking a ship all the way to Mensis in the hope to gain a respec accolade. Only then he realized that he could see and travel the world fine with his frankly imperfect build, and he did so quite successfully. He maxed out all his skills, and gained expert control on using Ice Bolt, shooting it more precise albeit less powerfully than even the Cold Mage Mahria.

### Retirement in Fel Sadanis

Staavo eventually retired as a rather wealthy former adventurer, living in Fel Sadanis for a long time. He has multiple scholarly interests (including dictionaries, drawing, birds, mechanical contraptions, etc.) and keeps a large library in his four-stories high private tower near the city walls. He was friends with Jamus (likely after advising the younger man on his build) and was thus introduced to Rain after Jamus had borrowed out a dictionary/encyclopedia that Staavo had written. Jamus and Staavo disagree vehemently on a regular basis on theoretical and hypothetical arguments, that others may view as childish and unproductive. For example, Staavo believed Rain on the concepts of air molecules and vacuum, where Jamus denied those things. Staavo tends to gloat when he turns out to be right, rubbing it in everyone's faces. On the other hand, he begrudgingly accepts when he was proven wrong, and then embraces the revealed truth. This happened with an argument with Tallheart at a later point, but he also eventually believed Rain's "fairytale stories" of a creature that Staavo derisively referred to as a *cat-snake* ("ferret") which he claimed that couldn't exist, while Rain pointed out that his own world didn't have lagos.

Staavo was quickly able to improvise an *electricity generator* based on the specs that Rain left him, and was very surprised to learn that it was working and producing electricity. Having built the device, Staavo snuck after Jamus to learn where Rain was hiding, thus locking himself out of the city when Citizen Sadanis took over Fel Sadanis. Rain got access to Staavo's unlocked home in that time - but the home didn't survive the eventual fall of Fel Sadanis.

Locked out of Fel Sadanis, Staavo, Jamus and Tallheart first escaped from the Empire's forces into the forest, before Ameliah reached them and advised them that the Empire had retreated. Near the barrier of Fel Sadanis, the four Awakened built a better *generator* and even crafted working *lightbulbs* to light up a tungsten wire in vacuumed glass. In that time, Rain also assigned the hand code callsign of "Books" to Staavo. Because Staavo called Tallheart a "deer" when they first met (although Staavo later apologized), Tallheart retaliated by coining his nickname of "goat".

### Ascension

All of them joined Rain's newfound company of Ascension, where Staavo became the resident "mad engineer", constantly trying to implement the imperfectly remembered knowledge from Rain's world. Most of that tinkering revolved around the electric generator, the steam engine, the Forgewagon and the lightning bulb. His workings rely a lot on having Jamus or the various crafters (Ellis, Shena, Myth and Reason, etc.) assisting him. He often monopolizes workplaces and only defers to Tallheart - the pair has a noisy and quite belligerent work relationship, with Tallheart clearly having the upper hand but Staavo persistently claiming out his points.

Eventually, Tallheart crafted Staavo a (non-enchanted) spring-steel prothesis, making Staavo quite mobile again. This led to his participation in a mission again, where he helped killing a Fire Eater.

## Build

Staavo is capped at level 10.

Known skills: Sparrow Kata, Ice Bolt, Slash, Light Cut, Ice Affinity

## References

1. ↑ Chapter 165
2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 Chapter 64
3. ↑ Chapter 103
4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 Chapter 139
5. ↑ Chapter 69

Staavo had Point of View paragraphs in the chapters: #69, #71, #103, #115, #126, before he was eventually given his single-PoV chapter #139. (This made him the only character besides Ameliah, who has been dedicated an entire chapter to since the arrival of Ascension at Vestvall.) Recently, he was given PoV paragraphs in #197. (Full list of chapters includes PoV breakdowns)