Wednesday, October 6, 2010

A life in the year of Olly Sykes

Here's a thing I wrote about Olly. Why don't you make one too? About your character though, not mine.
_____
Oliver Wendell Sykes was born in the bustling town of Trope some sixty-odd years back. His parents owned a tailor and haberdashery, and as such, young Olly spent a great deal of time in the market sector. There he was exposed to a great number of sights, sounds, people, and experiences. Olly took to this environment, being able to recall the stories, names, and events just as well as the people he heard them from. But he didn’t like everything he saw. In particular, Olly took a keen dislike to how fat, snooty, rich folk stayed fat, snooty, and rich while the poor and hardworking were humble shopkeepers, their employees, the average customer… pretty much everybody else. It didn’t seem fair.

Olly used his innate magic, general sneakiness, and the power of words to wage his own private, quiet class warfare. A noble’s outfit would turn neon pink when he made his big entrance at the ball. The merchant who mistreated his workers would suddenly find their goods missing, soiled, or falling apart. Public officials’ indiscretions frequently made the morning gossip rounds. But as expected, Olly eventually crossed the wrong person. One day Mather Gorram, a visiting bishop of St. Cuthbert, arrived with a procession too pompous to ignore. A conspicuous bulge in the lower half of the bishop’s robe earned much laugher, but Olly’s involvement was quickly discovered. The bishop personally dragged Olly outside the walls of the town and placed a Mark of Justice upon him, saying “Thou shalt not set foot in this town again!”

Banished, alone, and, to be honest, pretty much on his own outside the city for the first time, Olly was at a loss. He wandered to the nearby town of Image to drown his sorrows in an out-of-the-way tavern. There he heard a dwarven bard play a most peculiar form of music. It was all about feeling bad, but hearing it somehow made you feel good. Olly asked the dwarf, Blind Muddy Mortars, just what this magical music was. "Ach, aye, sonny. Tha's nae thin' but the blues." And those somehow both Scottish and Southern words changed Olly's life. Olly apprenticed with Mortars, learning soulful songs and even how to make a fellow tear up hearing them. The work took much of the wind out of Olly's precocious sails. While he still felt a grudge against the rich (and now the clergy), he found pranks unproductive and unsatisfying. Simply living life and learning was enough; magic and music were as much an art as a craft. It was in this apprenticeship that Olly earned his first nickname. Mortars actually was blind, and Olly earned the nickname Thingfinder for always being able to find things for him. After a year of service Olly was sent out on his own, to learn the meaning of the blues and spread its joyful sorrow. On this occasion Mortars made him an honorary Blind, giving him his second nickname.

It is on this journey that Olly came to Twist, and we know how that ended up.

Olly briefly remained in the area, learning a little from the elves and playing a bit at Saucy Dan's. But as bards do, he eventually resumed his wandering lifestyle. He moved from town to town, playing songs, exchanging stories, and making connections. He would sing of the events in Twist sometimes. Not the grand world saving, but the little tragedies: a mother exiled for saving her daughter, a town ravaged by an unexplained curse, a pompous noble brought down by his greed getting him into more than he could handle, and a working man vomitted on by a mysterious elf. Olly made his way playing shows and the occasional quest. When you've saved the world, what's a dungeon or two? Olly grew in power and skill, even learning to blend his magic and music. He paid to have the Mark of Justice dispelled, but did not return to Trope. He didn't feel the time was right, for him or the town. Ever guided by fate, magic, and music, Olly stumbles blindly into the future...

No comments:

Post a Comment