Tolbric Storm

"Perplexity is the beginning of knowledge." - Kahlil Gibran (1883 - 1931), The Voice of the Master

Bastard born into the House Dondarrion, Tolbric Storm lived within the walls of Blackhaven until he was shipped to Old Town to undergo training to become a Maester. He may have been allowed to remain in Blackhaven if not for the fact that he had ignored advice & threats to stay away from one of the lords of House Tarth's daughter. It all ended in tears (hers), injury (his, having been tossed down a flight of stairs), a prescription of maiden's tea to prevent any chance of further shameful bastards and his being shipped off to Oldtown in order to prevent him from further injury & loss of anatomy at the hands of a very angry Tarth lord. The young heartbroken man quickly exchanged his love for a little blond girl for his love for knowledge. He took to his studies with an obsessive eagerness. Once his chain was forged he took his oaths, gave up his bastard surname, his connections to House Dondarrion and was accepted as a Maester. He was soon assigned to House Wisent in the North at which point he packed his bags and began the long trek north. Maester Tobric seeks to serve his House as well as he possibly can. Where his personal goals may be mastery over several fields of study, he is often motivated by fear of failure; failing his teachers, his House, even his birth family, though they would likely never know anything else of him. They never wrote. Not once since he left home. It was better he let them forget him as seemed their wish and focus on his new House - who needed him and his skills a great deal more than House Dondarrion did. Tolbric is an honest man, both by choice and due to the fact that he is a pathetic liar, which has caused him som serious discomfort and misfortune in his years. It has been noted during his time in Oldtown, that his inability to tell a convincing lie nearly bordered on supernatural in magnitude. In addition to these traits, Tolbric is obsessive and tends to neglect his personal surroundings when he finds something intriguing to engage his mind with - mysteries and anomalies that contradict his knowledge being chief amongst these things. Also in this vein, his foolishness tends to manifest in his tendency to always think he is safe, regardless of the information surrounding him to the contrary. He has been forced to flee from bandits on more than one occasion for wandering into the wilderness looking for rare breeds of honey bees and black berries.

Maester Tolbric of House Wisent

Abilities

Agility - 2 Animal - 4; Charm 1b, Train 1b Athletics - 2 Awareness - 3 Cunning - 5; Memory 1b Deception - 2 Endurance - 2 Fighting - 1 Healing - 4; Diagnosis 1b, Treat Injury 1b Language - 3

Knowledge - 4; Education 1b Marksmanship - 2 Persuasion - 3 Status - 4; Stewardship 1b Stealth - 2 Survival - 2 Thievery - 2 Warfare - 2 Will - 4; Coordinate 1b

Intrigue & Combat

• Intrigue Defense: 12 (Awareness+Cunning+Status)
• Composure: 12 (Will Ranks x3)
• Combat Defense: 7 (Agility+Athletics+Awareness+Defensive Bonus-Armor Penalty)
• Health: 6 (Endurance Ranks x3)
• Armor: robes (1)
• Armor Rating: 1
• Armor Penalty: 0
• Weapons
  • Dagger: Test 1, Damage 1, Keywords: Defensive+1, Offhand+1
  • Light Crossbow: Test 3, Damage 3, Keywords: Long range, Reload (lesser), Slow

Qualities

• Maester: You are a maester of the Citadel. You are now immune to the household fortunes of your birth house, but you suffer the effects of the household fortunes of the house to which you are assigned. In addition, you may add your Cunning rank to all Knowledge and Will test results. You must have the Narrator’s permission to select this quality. Taking this quality results in the loss of any Fate qualities tied to your birth house, although you regain invested Destiny Points for lost qualities.
• Knowledge Focus (geography): Select one of the following areas of expertise—alchemy, architecture, astronomy, geography, heraldry, history and legends, magic, nature, religion, or underworld. When testing Knowledge in the chosen area(s), convert your Education bonus dice into test dice. You may select this quality multiple times. Each time, select a new area of expertise.
• Knowledge Focus (history & legend): When testing Knowledge in this chosen area of knowledge, convert your Education bonus dice into test dice.
• Master of Ravens: You may dispatch ravens to bear your messages. The Narrator makes a secret Routine (6) Animal Handling test on your behalf (the Charm specialty applies). Success means the raven delivers the message to the appointed destination while failure means the message (and possibly the raven) goes astray. Additional degrees of success may allow you to coax some extra speed or distance out of your birds, at the Narrator’s discretion, or get a message through dangerous or difficult weather or the like.
• Gifted Teacher: You can impart your knowledge onto other characters. A successful Persuasion test allows you to grant that character bonus dice on Knowledge tests your student makes related to the topic of instruction. Thus, if you succeeded on Persuasion test to instruct another character about architecture, that character would gain bonus dice on his own Knowledge test related to architecture. You may not instruct characters who have a greater rank than you do in Knowledge. The Difficulty of the test depends on the size of the bonus you wish to confer. A failed test indicates the subject matter was too lofty for the student to absorb.

Difficulty Routine (6) Challenging (9) Formidable (12) Hard (15) Very Hard (18) Heroic (21)

Bonus Dice 1B 2B 3B 4B 5B 6B

Once you have successfully instructed the student, that student may at any time make a Challenging (9) Cunning test (Memory applies) to recall your teachings. A success grants the character +1B per degree, drawn from the bonus dice you conferred. Once the student exhausts the pool of bonus dice, the student may not draw further on your teachings.

• Head for Numbers: Whenever you roll for household events, you may add your Cunning rank to your Status test result. In addition, when testing Status to generate Coin, for personal funds or for your household, you may re-roll a number of 1s equal to the number of bonus dice in Stewardship.

Drawbacks & Flaws

• Bastard Born: As a bastard, you take –1D on all Persuasion tests when interacting with characters with a higher Status. You do not take your family’s name. Instead, you gain a surname based on the lands of your birth.
• Honor Bound: Whenever you test Deception, you must re-roll any die result of a 6 and take the second roll.
• Honest (Deception flaw); Disregard the lowest test die result on Deception rolls.
• Unsubtle (Thievery flaw; Disregard the lowest test die result on Thievery rolls.

Possessions

Possessions: 4 gold dragons, 128 silver stags, backback, ink, greycap ingested poison (10 doses), maester's kit, roundsie horse, dagger, light crossbow, maester's chain, maester's robes, sturdy boots & north garb,

Harold & Mutt

In addition to the household's ravens and other animals that he tends to, Tolbric came to the North with two well trained house pets in tow that live with him in his quarters.