Description and Background
Description:
Physical Description:
Roughly four feet tall, Borum life as a miner as left him stocky and stout. His shoulders are broad and strong, adapted for lifting a heavy load. His belly, nurtured by many steins of dwarven ale, strains against his belt. His skin tone is a deep tan, like the color of baked clay. A pendant made of intricately carved wood always hangs from his neck. Unlike most dwarves, Borum keeps his scalp shaved clean.
Borum's most noteworthy feature is a series of burn scars that speckle his face and scalp. They run across his skin in dark streaks, like veins of ore streaked across a cliff face. The scars make it impossible for him to grow his hair out without unsightly bald spots.
Personality:
Many would describe Borum as peculiar, even eccentric, for a dwarf. He enjoys sun shine, open spaces, and even elven wine on occasion. He feels that greed is a destructive influence, and that a rigid code of honor can get in the way of doing what’s right. He’s even been known to ride a horse on occasion, relishing the opportunity to travel swiftly so that his message can spread that much quicker.
The irony that he, a dwarf of the Fireblaze clan, was almost killed by fire is not lost on Borum. He sees flame as a source of purity and divinity. Without the fiery fate he endured, he would have never found his true calling as a cleric. He imagines the fire burned away his pride, shame, and greed, and left a sense of purpose in its wake. It is that sense of purpose that urges him to do good in the world.
When it comes to expressing his new faith, Borum is often stymied. He has no holy books to point to or any commandments to follow. If pressed on his faith, he has a habit of explaining his simple tenets with longwinded anecdotes. As he is not a very bright or charismatic person, he tends to let his actions do the talking for him.
Background:
History
Borum used to be a miner and prospector of some note. His job was to search for veins of precious ores and to scout out the best place to expand a mine to find them. During one job, Borum made a huge error. Much time and gold was wasted digging a deep tunnel that led nowhere. Dwarves were injured, and not a single scrap of ore was found. Ordinarily, the miner’s would have moved on, but Borum pride got the better of him.
Even when told there was nothing of value in the deep tunnels, Borum's pride hardened his resolved. And when his fellow miners refused to work, he went down into the mine himself. He toiled for hours in the deepest tunnels, howling in rage as his pick found nothing but stone. Blinded by his greed and his pride, he did not realize his strikes had caused explosive gasses to seep from the rock. With his very next strike, the sparks from his pick ignited the gas. The dwarf was left horribly burned and in a coma. When he was discovered, a small chunk of wood was found clutched in his hand.
Days later, when Borum awoke, he was a changed dwarf. He no longer felt compelled to hew to the strict codes of his people, feeling they led him to his accident in the mine; his dwarven hubris had almost led him to disaster. He saw the flames that scorched him as a baptism of sorts, and the diamond he clutched as a sign from the divine. He tied the diamond around his neck as his new holy symbol, shaved his now singed and mangled mane, and began his new life.
Since that day, Borum has spent his days traveling from village to village and teaching his new philosophy. Not being the best orator, his message is invariably simple: always do good, and don’t let anything get in the way of that task. |
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