Tom Tiddles

**Tom** is a human wizard member of the Anti-Raid Patrol. He is played by Player 1.

## **Intro**

Tom has always prepared for the worst. Ever since he had plague as a young boy Tom has felt weak. It was not until he was bitten on the shoulder by a plague doctor and healed did he feel real power.

Tom's parents agreed to send Tom and his brother Tim to apprentice under the plague doctor. So the plague doctor Frank Ween became Tom's teacher in the necromantic arts. Frank's healing of he boys was unnatural. It stunted the brothers at the age they were healed and gave them a hunger for sentient flesh.

After 11 years of tutelage Tom is ready to make his mark on the world. He is preparing to banish the plague from the Loss forest quarantine and reclaim his ancestral home.

## **Description**

### **Appearance**

Tom is stuck in the body of a 9 year-old and tries to hide that fact. He wears a black hooded water-retardant cloak that is customary of plague doctors in the region. The cloak is roughly self-tailored to fit a child and somewhat diminishes Tom’s air of doctoral authority. Tom wears a traditional plague doctor’s mask which he stuffs with dried lavender or carnations from his herb garden. Tom’s mask has a hermetically sealed mouth opening because he refuses to remove the mask when eating and risks revealing his childish appearance. Tom’s voice has a slight dehydrated rasp because he doesn't open the mask unless an area has tested negative for disease.

Tom is 4 feet tall and weighs 55 lbs. He has hazel eyes and chestnut hair. His face is pale as it is untouched by the sun and his cheeks blush a deep red when embarrassed. Trapped in the body of a 9 year-old Tom has the build of a child, his fingers still have some baby fat which he hides under thick gloves. Tom has a permanent imprint of a child's bite on his right shoulder. This is the bite that saved his life and trapped him as a half-ghoul.

### **Personality**

Tom is a planner. If actions are taken without a plan in mind he is annoyed. He keeps a book of goals for the next decade and strategies to have them succeed. Tom is also a follower and tends to put his plans on the back burner when with a group.

Tom is bookish and awkward, and he mumbles through conversations. But Tom is proud of his plague doctoring work and will talk about subjects like epidemiology for hours.

## Biography

### Background

Tom was raised in the hamlet of Loss. His family had to leave their hut in the forest of Loss due to a plague quarantine around the forest. The Tiddes family was one of the founding families of Loss. Coming from a background of wood-work and hunting, Tom's parents struggled with subsistence farming.

Tragedy struck the family when both children Tom and Tim caught the plague. Nothing was to be done but put the kids in a tool shed outside of town and hope they recover. On the evening of the second day a diminutive plague doctor arrived in Loss and the hamlet begged him to save the children. After examining the boys’ symptoms, doctor Frank gave his assessment. Tom and Tim were to join him in his trade as Frank’s cure would leave them hobbled and they would need to be able to treat themselves. An agreement was made and Frank locked himself into the shed with the boys.

The ritual began by biting the boys’ shoulders to start the ghoul rot. See Frank was mostly a ghoul due to his experiments with necromancy at a young age. The ghoul rot attacked the boys’ cells, but before death could set in, Frank twisted the infection into a reproduction of his own infernal condition. After the deed was done Frank took his payment and quickly left with Tom and Tim.

Raised by Frank, Tom enthusiastically took up the trade of necromantic medicine. While a quick study, Tom struggled with networking and still worked with his brother after becoming a journeyman. Wanting to collect research on the plague, Tom decided to join the Anti-Raid Patrol and go into the quarantine zone, as Tim continued doctoring for the both of them.

### Campaign 0

#### Arc 1: Ambush the Bandits

The Anti-Raid Patrol was set up by Loss to track down and eliminate a raiding party coming out of the quarantine zone in the forest of Loss to harass the local hamlets. Tom joined up with the party to journey into the quarantine and discreetly collect samples from corpses for his research. Some preliminary scouting was done and the bandit's path of egress was determined.

The party went into the forest looking for this path and came across a downed tree. While inspecting if it was possible to move the tree for the next travelers, a whoop sounded out. And then everything descended into chaos. Tom was able to run into the bushes and hide as arrows and an orange pellet flew at the party still on the road. From his hiding spot in the bushes Tom fired his light crossbow at one of the bandits flanking the rouge. The shot went wide and bandits began hopping out of the trees to follow the arrow’s trajectory back to the source. Just then the orange pellet exploded into a Delayed Blast Fireball.

Knowing that the day was lost, Tom tried to sneak away not knowing that he had been seen. As two bandits closed in, Tom used his most powerful spell Cause Fear to even the odds targeting the larger of the two. The bandit laughed at the spell because there was no way he could be scared of a 4 ft. tall human. Very desperate, knowing that his stumpy legs couldn't outrun these bandits, Tom drew his father’s hunting knife. Closing the 10 ft. separating them, Tom made a mad lunge at the scrawner of the two bandits. The knife glaced off of the bandit’s leather armor. The larger bandit used the lack of attention to step behind Tom and grapple him. Tom struggled pitifully as he was gutted by the smaller bandit.

Miraculously able to stabilize, Tom made a mental note of how his gut seems to be rotting at an accelerated rate when exposed to the air. This was his last lucid thought as Tom's shallow rasping breaths were heard by the bandit dealing with the bodies and his throat was slit.

## **Relationships**

### Tim Tiddles

Close brothers that became closer after being plague-struck together. During the day-and-a-half Tim and Tom were dying of plague they confessed wrong-doings and swore to be better to each other. They were just nine and seven at the time, but their oath of loyalty stuck. After being healed by necromantic doctoring performed by Frank Ween, the brothers became his apprentices. Tim was the chatterbox while Tom was the one taking notes. As journeymen they always worked together, so when Tom joined the Anti-Raid Patrol Tim was unsure of his ability to work alone. After his brother's death, Tim would join the Anti-Raid party to hopefully recover the body from the forest of Loss.

### Frank Ween

The cursed doctor who passed on his curse to Tim and Tom Tiddles in a bid to save their lives. After cursing the boys to live as ghoulish half-living abominations of nature, the least Frank felt he could do is raise them. He taught them to take a flesh tax by eating just a mouthful of the people they tried to save. Tom and Tim devised a corpse disposal method that saved them having to take a bite of the living. Frank warned the boys if they didn’t eat the flesh of an intelligent creature once a week they would die. Frank was a hard teacher drilling the kids endlessly on proper medical procedures. Despite his gruff interactions with the boys, Frank saw himself as their father and tried to raise them right. After letting them go off on their own Frank kept in contact with his adopted sons through letters passed around the communities surrounding Loss forest. When the death of Tom reached Frank, he packed up his practice and journeyed to Tom’s hometown to pay his respects. Upon arriving at the hamlet of Loss, Frank learned of Tim’s death and signed up with the Anti-Raid Patrol to seek retribution.

### The Anti-Raid Patrol

Tom had only a few days of interaction with the other anti-raid Patrol members. On the first day out, Tom explained to the party that he would need to eat some of the humans they kill or else he will die in five days. Horrified and disgusted by Tom’s casual admittance of cannibalism, the party shunned him. On the second day, while mortally-wounded Tom looked for help from the cleric Dzeigh, but saw him running from the bandit fight. While dying Tom wondered to himself that if he had kept quiet about his condition he may have lived another four days.

## Character information

### Quests

Tom is on a never ending quest to acquire medical expertise and mix it with his necromantic practices to defeat death inherent to all people.

### Notable items

* Crossbow, light
* Father’s dagger
* Doctor’s notebook
* Spellbook
* Healing Kit

### Abilities

As a Wizard specializing in Necromancy, Tom uses debuffs with high DCs to greatly weaken enemies, thus giving his allies a massive advantage on the battlefield.

#### Human abilities

* 1 extra feat at 1st level.
* 4 extra skill points at 1st level and 1 extra skill point at each additional level.

#### Feats

* A Feast Unknown
* Child Necromancer
* Scribe Scroll

#### Skills (ranks)

Heal (4)

Class Skills: Concentration (4), Craft (0), Decipher Script (0), Knowledge (arcana) (4), Knowledge (history) (1), Knowledge (local) (3), Knowledge (nature) (4), Knowledge (religion) (3), Profession (1), Spellcraft (4)

#### Wizard abilities

##### Class features

* Spells
* Summon familiar
* Specialization (Necromancy)

#### Wizard spells

##### 0-level

Wizards gain all 0-level wizard spells at level 1.

##### 1st-level

* Cause Fear
* Protection from Good
* Protection from Evil
* Grease
* Wall of Smoke
* Nerveskitter
* Silent Image

## Appearances and mentions

* Campaign 0: Appears in Arc 1 and is mentioned in all other arcs, first by Tim Tiddles, then Frank Ween.

## Quotations

“I have to eat the flesh of sentient beings at least once a week or I will die.”

## Trivia

Tom is the first in a set of three necromantic doctors played by Player 1.

Tom has one of the lowest strength scores out of all the campaigns.