Last Name: N/A
Appearance:
Race: Aasimar (but does not know it)
Age: 25
Height 5' 5"
Weight: 110 lbs.
Eyes: Brown
Hair: None!
Facial Hair Style: None
Personality Profile:
General Health: Extremely healthy; she can't remember the last time she even got sick. Bright-eyed and ready to laugh; good sense of humor.
Deity: None
Initial Alignment: Lawful Good
Profession: Monk
Base Class & Proposed Development: Monk
Habits/Hobbies: Meditating, learning about other religions, traveling
Languages: Common, Han, Shou
Weapon of Choice: Unarmed
Background:
Born to poor farmers in the backwater Shou Lung province of Arakin, Tara nonetheless had a happy and carefree childhood. From the day she could walk, she watched her family tend to the fields every day. The youngest of eleven siblings, Tara did not have anyone her own age to play with, so she often had to amuse herself as a child. Having no toys, she invented mental games she could play in her own mind. These games included watching her own thoughts, or seeing how long she could watch her own breath before getting distracted. Needless to say, Tara learned to be comfortable with her own company early on.
Even as a young child, Tara understood the hard work that her parents and siblings put into the farm. She looked forward to being old enough to help her parents. However, when she was nine years old, a fire damaged much of the farm. Her oldest brother died fighting the fire. The damage done to the farm meant that the coming months would be lean and hard.
After the fire, Tara's family traveled to a nearby monastery in the mountains to inter her brother's ashes and pray for luck and fortune. It was Tara's first time at the monastery. She was struck by the atmosphere of the monastery and the peaceful demeanor of the bald men and women who lived there. While her family busied themselves with rituals and rites, Tara wandered off to look around.
She approached one of the bald men and began to ask questions. She learned that, yes, they cut off their hair on purpose. Yes, they lived there all the time. No, they didn't have to farm. Those people sitting on cushions over there? They were watching their breath. Why live like this? Because they wanted to end suffering.
Tara looked at her parents and saw them listening to one of the other bald men. The lines of grief on her parents' faces were less pronounced, and Tara was shocked to see her father's tears for the first time in her life. Her tough and able parents, who had taken care of eleven children and a farm with such strength and grace, saw fit to listen to these strange bald people.
Tara decided that she would cut off her hair and stay at the monastery.
Her parents, while shocked, did not object. In fact, Tara saw her family many times over the next fifteen years. It was not so far for her family to travel to the monastery, and Tara was sometimes even allowed to visit the farm.
When Tara was in her twenties, her teacher fell ill. He gave Tara a letter to deliver to another monk, a monk who had left the monastery over two decades prior. The letter requested that the other monk return to the monastery in order to prepare for the teacher's passing. While it was unspoken, the implication was that Tara's teacher wanted a replacement for when he died. Tara's teacher knew that this other monk had settled on the Sword Coast. Tara was told how to get there, to look for a quiet shrine in the Reaching Woods, and instructed to make haste.
After journeying west for years, Tara left her teacher's letter at a quiet forest shrine in the Reaching Woods. Her duty complete, she decided to explore the strange new land in which she found herself.
Goals:
Learn about the religions of the Sword Coast
Make friends
Ease suffering
Possible Plot-Hook Ideas and Misc Facts:
- She does not know of her ancestry, but it might explain how she fit into monkhood so easily.
- Tara became a monk at a monastery of the Old Order. The Old Order has a tradition of not worshipping a deity, and this particular monastery long ago combined that tradition with the Shou Lung religion of the Way. Thus, the monks trained Tara in this dual tradition. She learned interconnectedness and impermanence from the Way, and impermanence, non-attachment, and non-self from her monastery's interpretation of the Old Order's traditions.
- Because the Way is not dogmatic and does not believe in Good, Evil, Law, or Chaos, Tara learned to accept others and their beliefs.
- Tara was taught martial arts as a form of meditation, and learned to respect all life and to abstain from killing. Because of this, Tara's combat is keenly defensively-minded.