Full name: Zet
Age: 45 years approx
Race: Shield Dwarf
Sex: Male
Date of birth: Sometime in the early 1300’s
Place of birth: Small mining community outside of the Nashkel
Alignment: Lawful Evil
Patron deity: Clangeddin Silverbead
Profession: Warrior, Treasure Hunter, Gladiator
Classes: Fighter, Man at Arms, Dwarven Defender, Divine Champion
Primary language: Dwarven
Secondary language: Common
Physical Appearance
At 4’5’’ he is a strongly built and compact dwarf. Typically, Zet is covered from head to toe in brightly polished armor that is clearly very well maintained. He carries a round shield with a lion head forged into the center. He seems to be brimming with different dwarven war axes. Sure-footed and fluid in his motions he appears to wear his Entropium armor as though it was meant to be a natural exoskeleton. His two long beard braids are meticulously braided. Most people would describe his appearance as the typical dwarven fighter yet taken to an extreme with obvious pride in his equipment.
Demeanor and Psychological description
No one particularly likes Zet when they take the time to get to know him. He is rather off putting due to an ornery nature. He is the type of individual that becomes far less charismatic the more you get to know him. He is not arrogant or loud, just brooding, and grumpy. He never has much nice to say to anyone about anything. This negativity is pathological from his upbringing and life experiences. His drive to be recognized for his abilities comes largely from being used for his capabilities without due reward, which will be explained in his history. The psychological trauma has manifested itself in an inability to connect with anyone or to deal well with others because he feels as though he is constantly being attacked, even if it is just through verbal observation. If someone says it smells in a room that he is in he takes it as an attack believing the person is really saying he stinks when that may not be the case at all. This inability to form relationships makes him more brooding and ornerier which has developed into a negative feedback loop that continues to compound his problems psychologically. He is respected for his skills, but he can’t register that because he is focused on constantly feeling on guard and paranoid. Zet adheres to the philosophy that society needs to be rule based in order to have order and justice, a justice he feels was sorely lacking in his life.
Religious views:
Zets view of religion is very simple. Respect the Gods and follow their rules and perhaps fortune may smile upon you. He has no issue with any gods or their followers. Not even Kossuth, as his brother was insane far before the priests of Thay ever got their hands upon him. Live and let live was the only thing to do. Otherwise, you may attract their ire and life can always become more unpleasant no matter in what condition one finds themselves. ****
Biography
Family
Father : Shan
Barely successful miner and abusive father who was mediocre in ability except for being a fall down drunk with a bad temper.
Mother: Shar
Drunk part time smelter who (germbag) for extra ale when her husband was unaware due to drunkenness. An embarrassment as long as Zet can remember.
Brother: Pak
Pak is Zet’s younger brother and completely insane as far as Zet is concerned. A pyromaniac who damn near asphyxiated him several times by letting fires get out of control inside the family burrow. Zet literally had no pants for 2 years as a child after Pak burnt the box that they used as a dresser without removing the clothes. The utter embarrassment of having nothing but a pair of ragged underwear for years as a child made Zet resent Pak. At some point he noticed that his brother was gone and was thankful for it as he fully believed Pak would eventually kill him in a burrow fire. He is aware that his brother is a cleric of Kossuth and completely out of his mind with zealotry. Zet wants nothing to do with Pak and stays clear of him believing him to be a fire hazard.
History
Zet never got sick as a child. He grew strong and healthy even by Dwarven standards. This was something of a miracle given the moldy bread and dried carrion crawler jerky that seemed to be the only food he could remember eating as a child. He grew up hungry, poor, tired and cold most of the time. But Zet was a bit of an oddity, a dwarf child that refused to drink ale. Often belittled as a “girly dwarf” and a “fraidy mouse” for refusing to drink by the other children and adults in the mining community, Zet couldn’t stand the effects of drink on his parents. His father would regularly beat him in his drunken rage and his mother climbed into his bed one night thinking he was his father in her drunken stupor. But they were his parents, and like any child he thought he must love them and do as they told him to support the family. So, he toiled, day after day and night after night in the mine extracting the Lead-Zinc ore that formed a rich vein. Hoping in vain that he might strike a seam of gold bearing ore or Blue Earth embedded with diamonds.
As time passed his spartan diet and drink combined with hard work and a naturally blessed constitution molded Zet into an enviable specimen of a dwarf. That didn’t make life easier. He continued to toil and dream. He continued to be harassed for being different. But inside something was building. Slowly the knowledge that he was meant for something better was forming. That feeling combined with ever-growing resentment for his inebriated and violent parents reached a breaking point. His younger brother had already left for some place called “Thay” and he started to think that perhaps Pak was smarter than he was. Torn between a natural desire to help his parents and the unbearable conditions he finally turned his back on them. His father came home in a drunken stupor and attempted to beat Zet for some imagined slight or insult. He hit Zet straight in the mouth as hard as he could and all that happened was Zet’s head snapped back. He didn’t get knocked out or even knocked down. Zet had grown up and he had had enough. He beat his father to a pulp and left for Nashkel that very night with nothing but the clothes on his back, 3 coppers he had managed to hide, and his dwarven axe that he used to hew timbers for supports in the mine.
Things did not go exactly to plan. Mainly because he had no plans. He had often thought about leaving and wondered if he was better off finding his brother. Pak was a pain in the ass and a fire bug, but he was one of the few people Zet thought he could trust. Pak was always talking about some place he said was paradise called “Thay” where food and drink were free, dwarven women were welcoming, and life was easy. By the time Zet got to Nashkel the next day he had made up his mind to go live the good life in Thay with his brother.
Zet had no idea how far it was, but he was young and healthy and was sure it wasn’t that far. After all, how big could the world be. Zet was naive and young. He would ask for directions to Thay and would get strange looks from people who would just shrug and point off in the distance. Zet worked when he could in order to survive. He pounded fence posts, was a logger, scrubbed pots, emptied bed pans and generally took whatever work he could find. Travel wasn’t bad for Zet. He fell into a rhythm of work and travel, always heading to the land of ease. He was surprised no one talked about Thay and didn’t know why people looked at him strangely and moved away when he brought it up. Maybe it is only good for dwarves there he thought.
Eventually Zet found himself on a ship headed to Thay. He offered to scrub the bilges for passage to a bald-headed owner of a ship who had the reddest robe Zet had ever seen. It was like it glowed with a magical red color. The owner smiled and told Zet he was sure he could find something for Zet to do on the ship. The next thing Zet knew he was chained to an oar along with about 100 other slaves on a galley. He learned what slavery was and the feeling of a whip that had him longing for the beatings of his father and life back in the family mine. He would spend the next five years chained to that hateful ore. Slaves would come but none would go. They would die at their oars. But quite often that wouldn’t be the end of it. The rotting corpse would sometimes come back to life to be doomed to row until the strain pulled the arms from the torso. One man next to Zet survived three days at the oar, then two days later he continued to row as an undead zombie for another month before the shoulder ligaments gave way. They all lived at an oar sitting in their own filth, or putrid remains, until exhaustion, infection, blood loss from the whip, or simply losing the will to live ended their misery. Those who didn’t come back to row as undead were often fed to the survivors. More than once Zet found a finger bone in his thin soup.
But Zet didn’t die. Not with his constitution and burning hatred that fed him inside. Hatred for the lie of Thay. Hatred for his brother. Hatred of his own stupidity and lack of wisdom. Hatred for the task master and his cursed whip. Hatred stacked upon misery stacked upon resentment stacked upon a refusal to give up. When other slaves immediately fell asleep when the rowing stopped, Zet always got to his feet at his station and did 100 squats before sitting to sleep. He would need his legs one day to escape.
The task master and drummer came to notice the strange dwarf that wouldn’t die and did squats. He became an object of amusement for the crew. They would laugh at him and taunt him as he did his squats. They shouted things like “you will never need those legs again” and the task master would give his thighs a lash or two. Zet grit his teeth and simply survived, morning turned into night, night turned into day, season turned to season. The suffering seemed as endless as his will to survive.
He did see his brother once. Peering through his oar hole in the hull he saw his brother on a pier in Thay where they were docked. Zet was shocked by his condition. He was on his hands and knees with a dog collar around his neck. The leash being held by a priest of Kossuth. Pak was forced to crawl behind the priest. Pak’s orange robe was filthy with dirt, urine, and excrement. He was red, raw, blistered and oozing where burns had ruined his skin. His eyes were different. He was not the same Pak which Zet had known outside of Nashkel. There was insanity there, a haunted vacant and pitiful look. As much as Zet hated where he was, he knew Pak was in his own hell as well. In that moment he forgave his brother for the lies about Thay that were told in ignorance but swore that if he survived, he would never again have anything to do with Pak.
Zet’s knack for survival was his savior. He ended up being sold to a merchant that needed cheap labor after the ship was sold and was to be converted into a floating (germbag) house. The rowers were no longer needed. Zet would eventually find that task master and strangle him with his own whip, but that is a story for another time. Over the course of a few years the merchant came to give Zet training to be a guard for caravans after he proved himself in the fighting pits in Thay. He paid for his freedom from winning fights and stayed on with the caravan as a guard for some time continuing to train with weapons and armor from the head of security for the merchant named Stach Chanders. Zet held no ill will for the merchant and was glad to have a pathway to freedom and the chance to learn to fight, which would keep him from an oar in the future. In time he left employment with the merchant and headed off to Baldur’s Gate to make his own way in the world. He started to venture into the wilds looking for old mines to prospect and creatures to kill for treasure. He learned in Thay that you had better have money if you don’t want to be treated like a slave, but the psychological scars have stayed with Zet.
Future
Zet intends to amass a fortune and glory. He has never returned to see his family and never will. He has seen his brother preaching about the lord of fire to anyone that would listen but to this day and forever in his future he will not have anything to do with his insane fanatical brother. One day he will use his fortune to by an estate in Baldur’s Gate and everyone will know the tale of the former miner and slave who became wealthy.
Heirloom item or Exp reward
I would choose am Heirloom item with the following possibilities suggested:
1. A regen ring found hidden on a dead slave rower passed down from ancestors.
2. A better set of Entropium Plate with regen found buried in the family mine.
3. A tower shield with regen found buried in the family mine.
Plot hooks
-Anything dwarven, or anything that requires a tough fighter.