Rorimac (Rori) Tosscobble

Agrarian Halfling (Rogue)
Quickened – Level 1

Age: 50
Height: 3′ 2″
Weight: 38 lbs
Hair: Brown
Eyes: Green
Favored Region: Central Erenland
Favored Weapon: Sling

Rorimac Tosscobble (aka Rori Shadowfoot) came into the world in the year 49 in a hidden part of a dark and earthy-smelling root cellar. The root cellar, unremarkable in every other way, was situated under the home of Marta and Stefan Ostgood. Rori’s family, that is his father and mother, had been taken in and secreted under the humble Ostgood abode some 40 years earlier after the Tosscobble’s village, Nitmarsh, was razed by the forces of the Shadow. Most if not all of the Dunni living in Nitmarsh perished or were driven off during the attack but the Ostgoods, living in the nearby village of Picket and being fast friends of the Tosscobbles, risked certain death to take in and hide Rori’s parents, Flambard and Gilly Tosscobble.

Flambard and Gilly lived in secret under the Ostgood homestead for many years and did their best to make themselves discreetly useful to Marta, Stefan and their 3 children so as to repay the Ostgoods for their generosity and bravery. Luckily, Picket is a small and un-interesting farming village tucked away in an even more uninteresting part of Erenland so keeping the Tosscobbles hidden proved to be a relatively simple task. While Gilly helped Marta Ostgood with the child care, cooking, sewing and darning, Flambard proved equally useful by having an extensive knowledge of plants, herbs and things that grow wild in the fields and forests. He taught Stefan Ostgood and his oldest son Nick many valuable uses for the various plants and herbs that could be found in the area. He labored in the root cellar, ever mindful not to venture out and risk being caught, and helped Stefan become quite important in the little village of Picket as both an herbalist and a healer.

As the years went by the Ostgood family grew and Stefan Ostgood had garnered some renown, at least locally, as a good man and a talented healer. He was careful however to do what he could to keep his reputation from spreading too far afield so that the forces of the Shadow wouldn’t take notice of him or his quiet little village. Likewise Flambard and Gilly expanded the root cellar under the Ostgood home fashioning, at least in some sense, a home for themselves. While their burrow was certainly not grand nor even as comfortable as the burrows that they had been raised in, the increase in space afforded them a sense of dignity as well as some privacy. It also afforded Flambard the opportunity to dig a number of secret tunnels so that he could, on rare occasions, sneak into the nearby forests or fields without risking the safety of Gilly or the Ostgoods.

It was into this difficult but bearable set of circumstances that Rorimac was born. Flambard and Gilly felt at once blessed to be given a chance to raise a son but also began to fear ever more greatly the possibility of being discovered. Until Rori’s birth, their existence under the Ostgood home had gone unrevealed to all but a few trusted villagers in Picket but raising a young boy, even a Dunni boy, in a root cellar seemed impossible. As luck would have it however, Rori, even from a very young age, had both a remarkably human-like appearance and a facility for hiding or disguising the obviously Dunni features he did have. This meant that he could pass for an Erelander child and so it was that he was able to play and learn with the Erenlander children of Picket whilst no one from the outside world grew any wiser.

Of course by this time both Marta and Stefan had grown quite old. Nick had taken a wife, Astrid, and the two of them and their children lived with Nick’s parents in the Ostgood home. Nick had himself grown into quite a talented and wise healer and continued to consult with Flambard. Rori proved to be quite bright and precocious and he showed himself to be naturally talented both at herbalism and healing like his father. Once while watching young Rori at play with the Ostgood children, Gilly remarked that he seemed also to have at least of touch of her grandmother’s secret talent and that night when she tucked young Rori into bed she whispered in his ear, “you, little one, have the gift of putting things right.”

Rori took after his father in at least one other way as well. As he grew older, braver and more curious about the world outside of Picket, Rori developed a particularly good facility for being able to move about Picket without being seen. He had discovered his father’s tunnels by an early age and now he took to using them to come and go as he pleased. This in turn began to worry his mother and she pleaded with him to show restraint and caution but Rori’s appetite for experience and adventure had already been whetted and her protests did little to temper his brashness. As Rori grew bored with sneaking about Picket unseen, his excursions took him further and further afield, at times bringing him dangerously close to encounters with the forces of the Shadow. Rori found the danger exciting and, perhaps because his parents had been so successful at protecting him, took little notice of the real and immediate danger he was potentially exposing himself and his village to.

Surprisingly and sadly, it was not Rori’s penchant for risk and adventure that proved the undoing of the Ostgoods, Tosscobbles and Picket. One evening, a year ago, Flambard Tosscobble ventured out of their burrow to the nearby forest by way of one of his tunnels. Whilst harvesting a rare flower by moonlight he was spotted and captured by the forces of the Shadow. The torture that he was subjected to was excruciating and, despite his fierce resistance, he was forced to reveal the existence of the tunnels, the burrow and the kindness of the Ostgoods. The village was swiftly put to the torch, the villagers massacred or driven off, and the Ostgoods hanged for their crime but Gilly, having perceived just in time that something was amiss, gathered young Rori, giving him a bundle of basic necessities and, kissing him on the forehead one last time, sent him off into the night…