Ben Fisher
11-06-11, 01:36 AM
Name: Ben Fisher
Age: 46
Race: Human
Hair Color: Thinning
Eye Color: Brown
Height: 5’11”
Weight: 185 lbs
Occupation: Apothecarist
Personality: Ben is hard working and curious. He thinks of himself as ambitious, though his successes would give little indication of it. He is devoted to his wife and son, but he sometimes feels very guilty: What if he doesn't really love them? What if he only knows he’s supposed to? He thinks that he drinks too much and too frequently, and too often at home when he son is around, but what can you do.
Appearance: Something about his smile or his jaw suggests that he might have been handsome once, but time has not been a friend of Ben Fisher.
Skills:
Ben is an adequate seaman. He can navigate small and medium sized boats in open water.
Ben has moderate knowledge of herbs, toxins, animal fats and chemicals. He is skilled in the manufacture of certain potions and tinctures.
Abilities:
Poisons: Ben can identify the ingredients for and mix simple poisons and toxins. Their effects will vary depending on the amount of exposure and size of the exposed person, but he does not currently have any specialized knowledge that is likely to prove fatal to a warrior.
For the purposes of a battle, Ben can mix a toxin that, if exposed to a wound (say, through application on a weapon tip), can cause sluggishness. Within five minutes, a man may have his movement speed reduced by as much as ten percent.
Balms: Ben can identify the ingredients for and mix simple balms. Unfortunately, it is easier to harm someone than it is to heal them, and his remedies all take several hours to restore health to even the most minor wounds.
For the purposes of a battle, Ben can mix a potion that dulls the pain of minor wounds, and slowly begins to regenerate tissue. Fermented root is a main ingredient, and the potion therefore causes some dizziness and loss or coordination.
Equipment:
A small collection of simple herbs, animal fats and chemicals, including: minor poisons and balms, flash powder. He has easy access to ingredients through his work at the Apocethary, but rarely carries many on his person.
A slim volume of herbological and toxicological recipes.
History:
The Fishers, as the name suggests, are fishing people--or were. For generations they worked the ocean off the coast of Yarborough, passing down the region’s secrets to sons and grandsons, working long difficult seasons in uncompromising weather and, through their work, enjoying a lifestyle of relative abundance.
But flourishing Coronian economies and the expansion of trading inspired growing interest in the coast and its market, and competition grew. Larger and more efficient operations moved in, working longer seasons and setting bigger nets. The Fishers struggled, but held fast to their slice of the sea, and though the size of their lands and contents of their pantries shrank, they were able to continue in their tradition for several decades more.
Sometime when Ben was a child, he remembered his father talking to his grandfather about a new innovation: magic. Some of the larger ships had started employing magicians. On dark nights they gathered at the railing of a vessel and conjured just above the surface of the water an enormous milky disc. The manufactured moon could be seen from shore, and Ben would sometimes sit and stare out at the distant ball of light from his window. Neither his father nor his grandfather knew why, but the gesture summoned fish, it summoned them by the tens of thousands, lapping wildly above the water and into nets.
Ben’s grandfather was worried, his father was not. “Sleight of hand will never match hard work,” he opined from his chair by the fire.
He was, of course, wrong. By the time Ben was eleven, the Fishers could no long compete commercially. They sold most of their land, all but one of their ships. Ben lived with his father, subsistence fishing, well into his late twenties, unsure how else to spend his time. Ben’s father died bitter, angry. He did not treat his son well, and though Ben would never have wished it, loving his father completely, his father’s death allowed Ben to step out of his shadow. He moved to Radasanth, and he apprenticed at an Apocethary. He had no love of the subject, but Rothas Cooper was master there, and he was willing to train Ben despite his advanced age.
Ben worked hard, studied. He was lonely and lost and confused and so he worked and did little else. What else did one do? The shop did well, grew. Adventurers came and went: priests, rangers, mages, warriors, knights. Men and women with strange names, with impressive titles. Ben served them well and did not envy them. Life was short and hard, and over the years he came to find an affection for the routine of his work.
He married, not for love but for loneliness. He married to have a witness to his days. And then he fathered a son to have an heir to his story. They are a good family, but he often finds them unknowable, and he wonders how his son thinks of him.
This was life.
Age: 46
Race: Human
Hair Color: Thinning
Eye Color: Brown
Height: 5’11”
Weight: 185 lbs
Occupation: Apothecarist
Personality: Ben is hard working and curious. He thinks of himself as ambitious, though his successes would give little indication of it. He is devoted to his wife and son, but he sometimes feels very guilty: What if he doesn't really love them? What if he only knows he’s supposed to? He thinks that he drinks too much and too frequently, and too often at home when he son is around, but what can you do.
Appearance: Something about his smile or his jaw suggests that he might have been handsome once, but time has not been a friend of Ben Fisher.
Skills:
Ben is an adequate seaman. He can navigate small and medium sized boats in open water.
Ben has moderate knowledge of herbs, toxins, animal fats and chemicals. He is skilled in the manufacture of certain potions and tinctures.
Abilities:
Poisons: Ben can identify the ingredients for and mix simple poisons and toxins. Their effects will vary depending on the amount of exposure and size of the exposed person, but he does not currently have any specialized knowledge that is likely to prove fatal to a warrior.
For the purposes of a battle, Ben can mix a toxin that, if exposed to a wound (say, through application on a weapon tip), can cause sluggishness. Within five minutes, a man may have his movement speed reduced by as much as ten percent.
Balms: Ben can identify the ingredients for and mix simple balms. Unfortunately, it is easier to harm someone than it is to heal them, and his remedies all take several hours to restore health to even the most minor wounds.
For the purposes of a battle, Ben can mix a potion that dulls the pain of minor wounds, and slowly begins to regenerate tissue. Fermented root is a main ingredient, and the potion therefore causes some dizziness and loss or coordination.
Equipment:
A small collection of simple herbs, animal fats and chemicals, including: minor poisons and balms, flash powder. He has easy access to ingredients through his work at the Apocethary, but rarely carries many on his person.
A slim volume of herbological and toxicological recipes.
History:
The Fishers, as the name suggests, are fishing people--or were. For generations they worked the ocean off the coast of Yarborough, passing down the region’s secrets to sons and grandsons, working long difficult seasons in uncompromising weather and, through their work, enjoying a lifestyle of relative abundance.
But flourishing Coronian economies and the expansion of trading inspired growing interest in the coast and its market, and competition grew. Larger and more efficient operations moved in, working longer seasons and setting bigger nets. The Fishers struggled, but held fast to their slice of the sea, and though the size of their lands and contents of their pantries shrank, they were able to continue in their tradition for several decades more.
Sometime when Ben was a child, he remembered his father talking to his grandfather about a new innovation: magic. Some of the larger ships had started employing magicians. On dark nights they gathered at the railing of a vessel and conjured just above the surface of the water an enormous milky disc. The manufactured moon could be seen from shore, and Ben would sometimes sit and stare out at the distant ball of light from his window. Neither his father nor his grandfather knew why, but the gesture summoned fish, it summoned them by the tens of thousands, lapping wildly above the water and into nets.
Ben’s grandfather was worried, his father was not. “Sleight of hand will never match hard work,” he opined from his chair by the fire.
He was, of course, wrong. By the time Ben was eleven, the Fishers could no long compete commercially. They sold most of their land, all but one of their ships. Ben lived with his father, subsistence fishing, well into his late twenties, unsure how else to spend his time. Ben’s father died bitter, angry. He did not treat his son well, and though Ben would never have wished it, loving his father completely, his father’s death allowed Ben to step out of his shadow. He moved to Radasanth, and he apprenticed at an Apocethary. He had no love of the subject, but Rothas Cooper was master there, and he was willing to train Ben despite his advanced age.
Ben worked hard, studied. He was lonely and lost and confused and so he worked and did little else. What else did one do? The shop did well, grew. Adventurers came and went: priests, rangers, mages, warriors, knights. Men and women with strange names, with impressive titles. Ben served them well and did not envy them. Life was short and hard, and over the years he came to find an affection for the routine of his work.
He married, not for love but for loneliness. He married to have a witness to his days. And then he fathered a son to have an heir to his story. They are a good family, but he often finds them unknowable, and he wonders how his son thinks of him.
This was life.