Information

Hope
Legacy Name: Lydell

The

Arid Neela
Owner:

Possum

Age: 5 years, 11 months, 1 day

Born: May 18th, 2018

Adopted: 5 years, 11 months, 1 day ago

Adopted: May 18th, 2018

Statistics

Level: 1
Strength: 11
Defense: 11
Speed: 11
Health: 11
HP: 10/11
Intelligence: 49
Books Read: 49
Food Eaten: 0
Job: Unemployed

A devil of a priest...

"Hope... he has his father's eyes..." Those were Lianne Sinclair's last words as her life faded away after birthing her first - and now, only - child. The midwife hastily scribbled 'Hope' down on the paper that would serve as a Notice of Birth for the kingdom.

He most certainly did not have his father's eyes.

The child was small, thin, and a strange shade of pink, even for a newborn. It would not be evident at first that there was something definitely weird about Hope.

That would be more evident in the weeks to come. His eyes, it would come to be shown, were red as blood, lacking any obvious distinction between iris, pupil, or even sclera. His hair, once it began to grow in, was white as freshly-fallen snow. The weird growth on his back, which the midwife dismissed as a birthmark, grew along with him, becoming decidedly more tail-like.

The child also appeared to have two small bumps forming on his head. The bumps, like the growth on his back, grew alongside the child.

"Tiefling. Devil-spawn. A curse. Should have never been born."

Hope faced fear and hatred from just about everyone he met, child and adult alike. At home, things weren't much better. Realizing what his child was, Thomas Sinclair blamed Hope for the death of his wife and viewed the child as some form of divine punishment. He beat the boy on a daily basis.

After several years of abuse, the boy prayed to any god who would listen. Any at all. Just let this all end.

A small voice in the back of his mind chimed in. "Your father keeps his crossbow under his bed. He's passed out drunk in the kitchen. He'd never see it coming..."

The young boy flew to his father's room and found the weapon. It was heavy, and a little unwieldy. If he didn't make the shot, he'd surely face major punishment.

He attempted to load the bow, but his trembling hands foiled his every move. Instead, he opted for a less subtle approach:

He bludgeoned his father with the heavy armament. Somehow, he could swear his hands were being guided by something - someone - as he rained blow after blow on his father's skull.

And so he ran away.

The tiefling boy took to the road, ending up in a new village where nobody knew his face or name. He slept on the streets, scrounging for food, sleeping under hastily-constructed shelters. In time he found some other children who didn't seem to care that he was cursed, and they became his friends. They showed him the best places to beg for food, and how to pick locks and steal whatever he needed to survive.

Hope grew to be fairly tall in his teens, an impressive 6'5" without factoring in his horns - but the years of living off the rare kindness from strangers left him underfed and scrawny, giving him a bony face and a thin silhouette. He topped the scales at 170 pounds. A beanpole.
In his late teens, he came across a temple dedicated to The Trickster. The little voice in the back of his head, dormant for so long, now spoke once more, beckoning him inside.

Hope is going to be my new character for my D&D group's 5e run of Curse of Strahd. Our DM asked if everyone was okay with restarting Strahd from the beginning since Covid-19 lockdowns killed our interest in the original run. However, there would be two caveats with starting over - we would skip the 'Death House', and start at 3rd level. We overwhelmingly decided to start new characters instead of "rolling back" our initial group, with the exception of Suenul's player. Hope was immediately what came to mind for me - a concept I wanted to run in another campaign setting before it was decided there would be no tieflings in that setting. I look forward to playing my Rogue/Cleric.