Barkley Bayle

portrait by Rachel

## Relations

### Family

Jethro Bayle (father), Maria Crowlantern (mother, deceased), Carrie Crowlantern (grandmother), Dale Crowlantern (uncle)

### Other

Luca her magic dog of mystery, and her owl familiar Lyra

## Game Statistics

### Stats

STR 7 / DEX 17 / CON 16 / INT 13 / WIS 17 / CHA 12

Barkley is a player character in Dexter Fawkes's *Heroes of Legend*campaign in the setting of Teshol. Along with Olivia, she first appeared in the brig of The Lady's Vengeance in Episode 1. She has since appeared in every episode.

## Appearance

Barkley stands to a height of three feet five inches, average for a gnome. Most of her small and skinny form is points and angles, excepting her round face. Her skin is fair with undertones of yellow and green, and her ears are pointed in the usual gnomish fashion. Her eyes are a bright yellowish green, and she habitually keeps her shoulder-length brown hair pulled back in a short ponytail. Constantly finding reasons to smile, Barkley sports a wide grin that always reaches her eyes.

Her preferred fashion consists of flowing garments and soft, drapey fabrics. Beneath her layers of armor she often sports pastel colors and embroidery; currently she wears a light, sleeveless tunic and a pair of poofy pants. Over her armor, she often dons cloaks or ponchos, frequently securing the latter with a belt for sleight-of-hand work.

Her armor is worn in two layers. The under layer is a black gambeson, fastened up the front and covering her down to her upper thigh. The collar flairs around her neck, and the garment ends over her shoulders, leaving her arms bare. The over layer is her weathered steal and leather armor. The breastplate is two large pieces covering her front and back and fastened at her sides with leather straps. Both the front and the back are heavily dented in a half-moon pattern, the work of a giant shark bite. The spaulders attach to the breastplate with adjustable straps, and the bracers sit comfortably over a layer of cloth on her forearms. The greaves fit over the top of her boots and stretch all the way to her knees, where the back of them end while the front rises up over the knee in a round bulls-eye.

## Personality

Barkley, in general, has good instincts. She has a talent for reading people, an eye for danger and dangerous situations, and a penchant for creative solutions. Her intuition is strong enough to make up for what is sometimes a willful obliviousness to the reality of the world around her, and it has frequently been the force that helps her out of whatever trouble she gets herself into. Her gut feelings are usually right.

Barkley began her journey an impulsive disaster of the "wise cleric" archetype. She approached life with a reckless abandon more befitting of someone with a much higher constitution or at least better reflexes, and walked away from each encounter with a sense of, "Well, that could have gone better." She was a cat that started out with nine lives, and somewhere along the way stopped trying to count how many she had left. Caution was for other people. She survived on luck and intuition, and perhaps whatever divine favor she had won from her devotion.

This journey has tempered that impulsiveness greatly. Nowadays she is careful and hesitant, often the single voice for caution in a party fueled by reckless abandon.

In stark contrast with how one might expect a cleric of Bahamut to behave, Barkley is also fairly destructive. Several times she has voiced a desire to burn down buildings and even the entire city of Grindwall, and sighed wistfully over each unsuccessful attempt at arson. Numerous times has she attempted to stab an opponent in the butt, succeeding several times, and pantsing her at least one other opponent upon failure. Wise enough to know better, her habit of divorcing her actions from their consequences comes from denial rather than ignorance or naivete. She doesn't *want* to be responsible, so she grants herself the freedom to be careless without consequence.

For someone professed to be "always down for arson" and also theft, Barkley is weirdly preoccupied with the acquisition and repayment of debt. She believes the party owes Wyssa for the thoughtfulness of the potion against petrification, and also for getting them out of Bannar's Landing. She believes the party owes Mysa'aor for the multiple favors he's done for them, and has expressed interest in repaying him somehow. She was very single-minded about retrieving Tara's seeds from the Quarantine District and returning them to her in return for the healer's kit Tara provided, even when fellow party members expressed doubt that they had enough time for the extra trip. Barkley becomes uncharacteristically serious when making deals, as with Vahlka's proposal that they split her pay for every Umbravall escapee they successfully track down and also Barkley's condition that Allegreyana may only accompany the party into the mines if she and Deacon agree to start teaching Barkley their high elf sign language. This facet of lawfulness is at odds with her otherwise chaotic nature, but it does not appear to be something she casts onto others; she seems content to deal with her debt herself and let others decide for themselves what they owe.

It also seems incongruent that someone as characteristically sneaky and prone to theft as Barkley would care about boundaries, but Barkley's selective seriousness towards respecting others' personal boundaries without regards to legally protected boundaries (such as those around the theft of property) has come up several times during the campaign. Sneaking into Deacon's room at the Lighthouse Inn was no big deal, but going through his stuff and reading his personal letters was wrong, according to Barkley. Pretending to have read Olivia's journal was all fun and games, but actually sneaking a peak at her private thoughts is crossing a line. If it seems unclear where the line is between boundaries Barkley is willing to cross and boundaries she is not, that's because it is; her personal moral code is fraught with inconsistencies and hypocrisies, and unlike her personal rules about debt, her moral code surrounding boundaries *is* something she attempts to impose on others.

This has generated no small amount of strife between her and Olivia, who has no problem whatsoever invading someone's personal space, personal belongings, or private thoughts. Olivia, who views most objects and property as more communal than personal, believes that journals are meant to be read, needed objects are meant to be "borrowed," and people are meant to be charmed. In response, Barkley has attempted to assert that others' personal boundaries ought to be respected, arguing that disrespecting those boundaries causes emotional harm. These exchanges have opened a rift between the two friends, with Olivia calling Barkley out on her hypocrisy and Barkley at a loss to explain why exactly she feels the way she does.

## History

Not much is known about Barkley's history. She has shared very little, preferring to remain a mystery to her companions. What she has chosen to disclose thus far is this:

She completed her cleric training at a temple to Bahamut in Elchezar, and some point picked up her more roguish skillset. Barkley shared with the group one night in Grindwall's quarantine district that she had in fact exchanged a brass sextant for lockpicking lessons from a human monk who spoke only Draconic. She carries in her backpack a black and red poncho sized for a medium individual, which she says belongs to "a colleague." Upon reading a newspaper article on the theft of the green dragon mask from Elchezar, she made the comment, "I bet Mother Helen is PISSED! Glad I'm not at the temple right now." When Olivia asked her if she had any siblings, Barkley shrugged and avoided answering the question entirely.

In a moment of insecurity regarding her relationship with Vahlka, Barkley did share with Olivia,

Barkley has also on multiple occasions alluded to what it was like for her at her temple, once drunkenly stating that she didn't fit in and was different from everyone else there. Seemingly, it impacted not only her ability to make friends at her temple and within Elchezar, but also the way she interacts with people even now.

In a conversation with Vahlka, Barkley allowed herself to be slightly more open than usual. She said of why she became a cleric in the first place,

In Tamvrien, she let slip a something about her mother before immediately clamming up again.

## Relationships

### Olivia Rousseau

Barkley adores Olivia. She loves Olivia's optimism, her unrivaled faith in people, and her willingness to walk boldly into trouble. She's continuously amazed and entertained by Olivia's ability to wrap people around her finger, even as Barkley is aware that she herself is also in the half-elf's thrall. She doesn't care. Together they are partners in crime, and though Olivia will deny that breaking into someone's room to go through their stuff and read their mail is a crime, Barkley knows better. Olivia may be the group's moral compass, ever an obstacle between Barkley and her dream of one day committing arson, but she's a bard and trickster by trade. Barkley knows a kindred soul when she sees one, and Olivia is as kindred as they come.

### Vahlka Shadowbane

Barkley's admiration for Vahlka is, she suspects, ill-informed. She doesn't care. Vahlka is the coolest person she has ever met. She's snarky, smart, badass, focused in a way Barkley secretly envies, and devoted. So what if she worships a spider demon? Spiders are great! Lolth is terrible, but hey, we don't get to pick where we come from. We all do the best with what we've got, and as far as Barkley is concerned, Vahlka has done that. Is doing that. Both. Barkley lives for Vahlka's minute signs of affection and appreciation, and takes every minuscule piece of evidence of Vahlka's favor as a small victory over the paladin's heart. She senses that the closer they get to Andrith, the more harrowing Vahlka's personal journey will become, and Barkley suspects that it may one day come to Vahlka having to choose between her sister and everything she has ever known as a drow of Umbravall.

### Kakara

Barkley is fond of Kakara. She loved Kakara's outsider's perspective on everything they encountered, and enjoyed her birdlike reactions and behaviors. She also thought Kakara looked very majestic on the battlefield with her bow. Though she didn't get a chance to bond with her the way she has with Olivia and Vahlka, she was nonetheless distraught when Kakara left the group. They had been through so much together, and Barkley had quickly become attached to her bird friend. She hopes that Kakara rejoins them someday, and that if she still needs help getting her wings back from Baba Yaga, Barkley can be there.

### Godfrey Connor

Barkley was immediately fond of Godfrey when he said he was down for anarchy, and he was certainly an asset as they fought their way through Grindwall's quarantine district. She also thinks he's a little strange. She doesn't know much about warlocks, or about Mysa'aor, and between the two of them she's beginning to forget what it's like to get a straight answer. But, he seems like a romantic, similar to Olivia, if a little eccentric, and she's looking forward to seeing where his quest for knowledge leads.

### Deacon Rothford

Barkley thinks Deacon is a butthead, but she's fond of him anyway.