Paladin [Twig]

[Nara-pyon]

Name: “Twig” Paladin
Race: Mostly Dark Elven (Garnelia), some Japanese (Gaian – his maternal grandfather)
Homeland: Dekra, Garnelia, and surrounding towns and forests
Gender: Male
Born: 29 047 (112 4A)
Height: 4’0”
Weight: 35 lbs
Build: Unhealthily scrawny
Predominant Features: Scrawniness, messy, unkempt hair, seeming insanity
Abilities: Can see/speak with ghosts as if they are regular people
Appearance: Dusky skin; black hair; brown eyes; slightly rounded elven ears; very small for his age; very thin – malnourished; vaguely Asian features – round-faced rather than thin and angular, with slightly differently-shaped eyes.
History: Father is General Quileth Durnen, former usurper of the Garnelian throne. His mother, Ava, was the daughter of Koizumi Daijiro, a Japanese Gaian who fell through a tear between the worlds, and Shalandra, a young Dark Elven woman who found Daijiro in the forest alone and without supplies. Despite the language barrier, they found ways to communicate, and soon enough, they were married. The General discovered the foreigner’s presence in the city and had him “invited” to the castle, and the following day, Daijiro’s body was found in the woods outside the city. It was only weeks after his death that Shalandra discovered that she was pregnant. Ava never knew her father, and never came to know much about him. While she was still young, her mother, on her way to starvation, sold Ava as a serving girl to the General. Ava worked hard, and while not the most beautiful of women, she had a very pleasant disposition and a warm smile for everyone – even the General. She was promoted from kitchen duty to serving in the dining hall to administering personally to the General – and it was at that point that the General forced her to spend a night with him. After that, her smiles were gone, and she was demoted back to kitchen staff – until the General learned that she was pregnant with his child, and she was thrown out of the castle completely.

For weeks, she did what she had to do to survive: she begged, she scavenged, she stole, and as she grew more and more pregnant, it became more and more difficult. At last she knocked on the door of the apothecary, Tsara, who took her in and gave her temporary shelter. But even the city’s only apothecary could not afford to feed them all, so once Ava had recovered from childbirth (a boy, whom she named Paladin in the hopes that he would someday pay the General back for what he had done not only to her, but to all the people) she left again to find work. She was able to perform odd jobs – cleaning, some cooking, anything she could – but even so, by the time Paladin was five, Ava had starved to death, leaving her tiny, malnourished son alone in the world.

Young, unskilled, sallow-skinned and sunken-cheeked, Paladin was abused by those from whom he sought help and food, and ridiculed, tagged with the nickname of “Twig”, which became the only name by which he was known. His only aid came from two sources that almost never left his side: his dead mother and grandfather, who – to him – were as alive and real as anyone else around him, though it seemed they could do nothing but speak to him, and though no one else could see them. He has no idea that they are even dead. Still, they offer him comfort and support, guiding him to food and shelter so that he could survive. His grandfather, even in death, spoke (almost) uniquely his native tongue, and so Twig learned it, too; and whenever Twig had the strength – which was not often – Daijiro would teach his grandson Tai Chi, the martial art of which he himself had been a master back in his own home.

Because he was often observed speaking to empty spaces, using words that no one could understand, and moving in ways that no one had ever seen before – like clumsy dancing without music – Twig was chased out of most of the communities he tried to live in. No one wanted a madman – even one as young as Twig – anywhere near them or their families.