Noland Eustace Embeth-Tanner

"Seek to master one thing. Then one more. Life is not a marathon."

## Background

Noland was born under rather impressive circumstances, and his father often joked that he was an angel from the moment he was born; not a hard claim to espouse when your child is an aasimar, and not an easy reputation to live up to. His mother began the birthing while negotiating the sale of a crate of furs made by his own father to a clan of wandering barbarians that had stopped by Corovon to resupply. Their leader had been so impressed by her tenacity and endurance in continuing to haggle over the price of the goods, and the time to deliver them in, even going so far as to invite the chieftain into the room with the midwife as they continued the negotiations without pause.

His parents always treated him kindly, with none of the usual horrors or worries that one heard about from bards' tales of nobles. They were pleasant, respectable folk, both determined to make their name in Corovon by their hard work and the merits of their own actions, rather than their "pedigree" or status or anything of the like. It was for this reason that his family, the Tanners-so named because they were one of the only families in the city interested in supplying people with affordable and long-lasting leather outfits-found themselves on the outs with most of the ruling class. There were no shortages of jokes about the smell of their home or their workshops, or about their brazen decision to perform the acts in the heart of Corovon, rather than the outskirts. They felt there was no shame in working hard at a job no one else wanted to do.

Noland was trained in the family business from the time he turned 8, but he found himself too squeamish when it came time to begin butchering the animals. He would cry over their bodies for ten or fifteen minutes, insisting his parents let him recite some prayer or wash the body one last time before they began the process of separating the hide. Yet another shame for the family: within less than a year, stories were floating around the town of the son who couldn't follow in his father's footsteps. The Tanner who couldn't tan, the child who didn't resemble either parent. Stories began to abound of him being a bastard, and at the age of 12 he entered a massive confrontation with his parents, demanding they allow him to have a pet. A concession normally all too easy to allow, the other noble families saw it as yet another blow to the Tanner family's reputation. Rather than wearing furs, young Noland let the furs wear him.

### Abroad

He ran off from his family home in the middle of the night, to apprentice with anyone who would have him. It took him many months before he found someone who hadn't heard the Tanner name. A wandering monk, practiced in the art of acupuncture and medicine, and disinterested in the extreme about any matters of state. The man welcomed Noland's company, and began to teach him the nuance of the human body, and anatomy. It was a time that really drove home for Noland how woefully bad he was in any form of traditional education. He simply couldn't remember the names of the bones, or the humours, or which organ went where. He had a remarkable bedside manner, better even than his master, and he was often good at noticing the small tells of when a person's wounds weren't 'bloody incompetence' as some husbands would proclaim, but he could never tell what had led to a person's death, or how long.

His frustrations mounted, as he grew older and older, and realized that the art of acupuncture was more suited to him than modern medicine; more an artform than a real science, there was far more room for guesswork and instinct, allowing him to offer people the meager comforts of human presence, and a release from the back pain or urinary tract issues that had plagued them for months without any concern for explaining the exact methods. It was a happy time for the boy, but like many of the sort it was not long to last.

He began to notice a rising trend of corpses showing up in the woods around the cities his master had frequented, and began to worry that there was something he was missing. He sought to find out as much as he could about his master's past, his time before he had become a wanderer, to track his habits at night after he slept. He began to enlist the aid of a few of the locals, asking them to help him find whatever tracks his master had left the day before, or to perform autopsies on any freshly slaughtered deer or sheep he found that day. The results were often grisly, painful to behold, and reminded him far too much of his days back at home.

After nearly seven months of time studying his master, he confronted him one night in secret, as they set up camp in the wild. He began to list out the many suspicions he had, and the evidence he'd compiled for his claims. The master grew paler and paler with every passing word, until he finally struck Noland to silence him. The boy, so distraught by having a man he had trusted until that moment lash out at him, ran into town, screaming at them all that he had proof of the wandering doctor being a werewolf, or some similarly hideous creature.

When he returned, with a band of angry villagers ready for a fight, he saw something he hadn't expected: his master's eviscerated corpse, next to a holy symbol of Lamashtu. He had just enough time to embrace the dying man, and hear his heartfelt confession: the monk had been tracking a werewolf for years, hoping to cure it of its condition. His attempts to heal and protect the townsfolk had been to find anyone in the vicinity capable of breaking such a powerful curse, and the werewolf had struck when it had spotted his master alone and distraught, unable to properly defend himself.

Broken and at wits' end, Noland returned to Corovon after fifteen years, ready to see his parents again, and suffer whatever punishment they saw fit to lay upon him. It couldn't trump the pain he'd caused himself.

#### Return

Noland turned out to be wrong, however, when he returned to find his family home condemned. His father, in his absence, had been working hard enough for two people, to make up for the rising demand every new year for clothing and armor for the growing population of the city. His mother, so torn over her son's departure, had begun to try everything in her power to conceive another child. She ultimately succeeded, with a mysterious traveller who had joined his father's workshop and aided him in his time of need.

The man had moved in, becoming like a brother to them, and growing closer day after day. While his father came home exhausted, too tired to even embrace his wife, this newcomer only seemed to grow stronger and more vital every day he spent in the city. It was a hard decision, but five years before Noland returned home, his mother divorced his father, citing his inability to sire another child as the reason. This was the final blow needed to besmirch the name of the Tanners, and led to his father holing himself up in his workshop for two months straight, seeking to create his magnum opus, something so great it would save his family name. It was hardly a surprise to anyone when he ended up dead, a workbench having toppled over on top of him from a stress-induced heart attack.

Noland's mother, on the other hand, suffered even worse. Her new husband had grew more demanding, keeping her away from the public eye, and insisting that she sever ties with all of her outside contacts. When Noland finally returned, it was to pained news: his mother had died giving birth to another child only a week prior, and her body was to be interred at the next spring, when the ground thawed. The child, born with red skin and fangs that made everyone in town think of devils, had been whisked away by his father-in-law, who had disappeared before anyone in town could so much as inform him of her passing.

## Appearance

Noland looks very close to human in most aspects, save his eyes. They are a brilliantly distinct shade of greenish-gold, that bring to mind someone who mixed a lemon and a lime in the perfect ratios. His skin is a healthy tanned color, and his proportions seem to bring to mind a well-trained athlete more than a woodcutter or a butcher. He hardly has any of the mucle mass or presence that people expect from real combatants, or adventurers. He remains clean shaven, moreso because he doesn't grow facial hair than any effort on his part. He walks without much sense of purpose, almost always taking in the entire area around him before he moves or acts, causing a lot of people to assume he's a bit 'touched in the head'.

His voice is pleasant and warm, but always seems to carry with it a sense of weariness and distance, as if he's being woken from a nap to answer a question, or as if he's under the effects of some drug or another. He doesn't speak frequently, typically preferring to just listen and let a nice smile and comfort in the presence of silence lead others to fill in the gaps with whatever information they feel most relevant.

## Personality

Noland is a very friendly person, and when he talks he almost always has a lilting tone, like he's singing. He takes a very long time to say very little when he does talk, frequently pausing without any real cause or purpose that others can tell. He's typically got a smile on his face whenever in public, which melts into a pensive expression when he's alone. He always looks as if he's on the verge of crying, or jumping to his feat and shouting some grand epiphany he's learned. While he's often the subject of jokes and jabs due to his difficulty in answering many questions, and his general lack of knowledge, he seems to consider it a perfectly reasonable state of affairs, and kindly brushes away most attempts to teach him.

Noland has a habit of frequently tapping at his lips, using just about any object besides his fingers. If he's eating a bowl of soup and suddenly finds himself distracted by a job request, he'll begin to tap the spoon against his lips over and over, wordlessly. When preparing to sleep, he'll often draw out a toothpick or similarly small piece of wood and just let it roll between his teeth, and over his lips, frequently. While he never seems to have an issue with having his mouth empty, his lips seem to be a great focus of comfort for him, and any time he finds himself unable to relax he'll immediately default to chewing them, or otherwise doing anything he can to keep them stimulated.