Ludovico "Ludo" Di Giacomo

Ludo was born and raised in Réga. From a young age he was fascinated in the arcane texts that could sometimes be found passing through the trading city and he collected as many as he could find. After devoting much of his time to studying them, he eventually managed to teach himself some basic cantrips to complement his fighting style. Being raised by a wealthy family, Ludo tends to be clueless about how to actually save money and spend sensibly. He is entirely devoted to studying unusual events around him and is overconfident in his ability to do so, often overlooking obvious answers.

## History

### 30/04/2016

Ludo helped take down the rhino at the Badger and Rabbit, mostly by distracting it with badly conjured firebolts while Hawkin took it down with ranged attacks. Ludo memorably held a kobold by the name of George hostage and threw him into a cupboard containing a giant wolf spider that immediately killed him. Ludo was later hunted down by George who came back from the dead. George exacted his revenge, punching deep holes into Ludo's abdomen. Sadly for George, Ludo was saved from death's door by the magic of Elreon. Ludo later experimented with a dark altar and inadvertently summoned a demonic-looking woman who vanished into the world of Nova. He also managed to harvest some green slime that he stored in a potion bottle.

### 01/05/2016

After finding a magical necromantic incense burner in the Trunery Hills Shallaian Ruins, Ludo went back to Penelope Mestindon in the hopes of selling the artifact for a substantial amount of gold. However, she was not interested due to the lack of evidence. He later also offered it to Hurg, but quickly realised that he had no interest in it. After revising his offer, he finally managed to secure a deal for two pieces of splint mail for himself and Elreon for a reduced price in exchange for returning Hurg's missing armour shipment. During the journey away from Oilan in the hopes of finding the missing people along with the missing armour, the party was ambushed by a significant group of goblins. Ludo knew what he had to do and swiftly wiped out three goblins in just a few seconds, enabling the party to quickly turn the tide of battle. In the abandoned dwarven fortification the remaining goblin was tracked back to, Ludo identified a trap the party could then avoid, and later managed to lure the ogre onto it, dealing massive damage. He also tumbled under a slightly opened portcullis and started slaying the goblins opening it. Hobgoblins appeared briefly after this and came back after apparently drinking some potions, but were now clearly much stronger. After they swiftly took down Elreon, Ludo bravely absorbed a few hits before being critically wounded, including his left hand being completely taken off. Elreon and Zenyth attempted to magically fix the hand back on, but it proved to be futile. Ludo kept hold of his hand and attempted to light the incense burner he found in the Shallaian Ruins to keep it from rotting, but found that it could not be lit. Driven mad by his lost hand and the scroll found by Hawkin, Ludo demanded he hand it over and even stabbed him after he refused. He eventually resorted to knocking Hawkin unconscious and stealing it from him. After defeating Segundil, Ludo discovered a book on magical grafting of various creature body parts onto other creatures. He was eager to begin experimenting, but realised it would take much more time and effort to give it a true shot.

Later finding a goblin already strapped into torture equipment gave Ludo an opportunity to interrogate him easily, although Elreon worked at keeping it more civilised. The fight with the basilisk almost saw Ludo also turn to stone, but he managed to resist the transformation and helped slay the beast. When the goblin king, Ruhg Kuhn, attempt to escape, Ludo cut the worg's leg, causing the goblin to tumble off and lose all hope of escaping. He agreed with Elreon's plan to take him as a prisoner to the farmers in Paletteville to face his crimes as they seemed to be the people most persecuted by these goblins.

### 02/05/2016

Once they arrived in Paletteville, things quickly began to get out of hand after Magnus noticed something strange about the villagers' shadows. Ludo was quick to suspect the residents of some evil-doing and tackled the innkeeper, Mardir, to the ground (him being the first person's shadow they noticed to be strange). After just about avoiding being kicked out of the town, they finally managed to get the soldiers to also see what was wrong and encouraged them to get reinforcements from Fort Rattage, taking Ruhg Kuhn back to their dungeon at the same time. Ludo was then eager to study Grafting Rituals, a book he found earlier, so rented a room at the inn with Magnus and Zenyth, while Hawkin and Elreon scouted the south. Ludo seemed to understand a procedure that might fix his hand back onto his arm and thought he would be able to perform this operation with the help of Magnus and Zenyth. Everything was going smoothly expect for Hawkin pestering them, going on about some "undead army" and "we need to run" etc. They continued with the procedure despite this and the screams from downstairs until a shadow seeped under the door and into their room. They decided to escape out of the window and set fire to the inn. Somehow, Ludo managed to keep his partially re-attached hand safe while fighting back the shadows with firebolts so that the party could make their escape. The party chose to camp in a nearby forest so that they could stay off the roads for the night.

### 03/05/2016

The party then returned to Oilan and went to Penelope's house. Ludo was eager to continue with the grafting ritual and he, Magnus and Zenyth finally managed to get his hand working again just as Ludo was ready to give up after a number of failed attempts lasting the whole day. However, not everything went so smoothly. Although his reattached hand felt incredibly study following the excellent handiwork by Zenyth, perhaps the spell wasn't cast as intended or perhaps the number of failed attempts damaged the hand, or perhaps even the amount the hand had rotted while it had been separated from his body seemed to have a lasting impact. Noticeable, this hand shakes rather uncontrollably when Ludo is angry or frustrated. It also became very restless when Ludo was attempting to sleep, significantly disrupting his sleep for the night. This appears to be a recurring problem.

### 04/05/2016

Now that his had is reattached and functional again, Ludo decided that it would be best to hide the clearly rotting state of it. He visited Tina Tailor but was shocked by the high prices, so he bought a glove from a random market seller. He then visited Crumplekins Apothecary and bought some embalming fluid that masks the stench of decay. Now that it was hidden, he went with the party to Badger and Rabbit, bought an empty tankard and visited The Leaky Keg to try and infiltrate the secret meetings they had been told about. Fahrner, the owner, didn't really react to the empty tankards like they thought he might and Ludo attempted to appear as some kind of superior or hired by their superiors to keep an eye on these meetings, convincing Elreon to appear as his bodyguard. Fahrner didn't seem to buy this and kicked them, along with Magnus, out of the tavern. Ludo continually threatened Fahrner and briefly seemed to make some progress, but then lost it again. Giving up with this approach, Ludo went around to the back of the tavern and climbed to a window, hoping to find Loedin after the party briefly spoke to him, confirming that he was upstairs. Loedin looked out of his window to see what the noise was, seeing Ludo scaling the wall. Ludo quickly grappled him and quickly followed him into the room after losing his grip on Loedin. Ludo repeatedly attempted to get answers from Loedin as to his motive and what he was doing, intimidating him with threats of violence. Loedin grabbed a dagger that appeared to spontaneously coat itself with a thick poison and attempted to stab Ludo, but couldn't find a gap in his armour. Ludo punched him, but Loedin retrieved a potion from this chest, quickly drank it and became invisible. A black book on a table in this room vanished (presumably picked up by the invisible Loedin) and Ludo attempted to charge at him, thinking he knew where Loedin was. Either he was wrong or Loedin dodged out of the way., sending Ludo crashing out of the window. Guards arrived and arrested Ludo as well as Magnus. Once they were in their cell, they got little attention from the guards and had been locked in with some unsavoury individuals. Following Magnus' scream to get the attention of the guard, Ludo convinced him to move them to their own cell by threatening him with the suggestion that he had powerful political connections.

### 05/05/2016

After attempting to negotiate his fines down, the guard finally accepted a slightly lower payment along with a gemstone to get this business over with. Ludo was charged 80gp for property damage, harassment, trespassing and assault. The party then visited Granny Smiths to silver some weapons, and then Crumplekins who suggested a herb that could be used for the illness that had spread in Westriver, but was infested by gnolls. Zenyth led the party to the area and they began a fight with a group of gnolls. Ludo successfully tanked a number of hits and did serious damage to the terrifying looking gnoll with red fur. He then tripped into a net trap, but quickly escaped and helped chase down the remaining gnolls.