Post by King Benon on Aug 5, 2011 23:25:30 GMT -5
Name: Paddlestick Streamdigger (pronounced due to his quaint molespeak: Pagglestick Streamdiggurn, shortened: Paggle or Paggs)
Gender: Male
Species: Mole
Age: 20
Occupation: Gouraf auxillary warrior and chief cook
Physical Appearance:
Mole-like. He has velvety gray fur, tiny black button eyes, and massive forepaws with digging claws. He is not by classical definitions "short" but he appears to be a squat fellow even though he is taller than the average beast. He looks like a jolly ol' mole.
Possessions:
Paggle's unusual life with the Gouraf (Geurilla Union Of Roving and Fighting Shrews) has made an impact on his wardrobe. He wears a traditional Gouraf Plaid Kilt and a bright headband. He looks very comical in his Gouraf get-up and also wears an eyepatch (he has both eyes, but he switches the eyepatch between eyes at night or underground so he can see better), his other eye is adorned with a monocle to aid his poor mole eyesight, and he has a life-vest made of cloth stuffed with cork for flotation. He also carries a slightly larger version of the Shrew rapier, and a Gouraf shortbow. He keeps his trusty paddle stick with him at all times: he rows with it, cooks with it, and uses it as a walking stick. As the Gouraf's chief cook he also has an expansive collection of cooking implements (pots, pans, forks, sthingys, knives) and especially takes pride in his collection of knives some of which he keeps in his belt and kilt sash in the occasional fish, vegetable or rascally vermin happens by. As a mole he also possesses an array of digging and construction tools (spade, pick, small hand axe, protractor, plum-bob, carpenter's square, adze, etc.) Pagglestick is an avid fisherman and keeps a hook in his headband and a fishing line in a beltpouch (he has no use for a rod, uses only his digging claws or toes).
Special Possession: Pagglestick is the captain of a special Gouraf boat. He commands the flotallia's chinampa. His Chinampa is made of three Gouraf log boats alongside each other lashed together, filled with baskets of earth and floated down the river. This special dirt barge is Paggs' little slice of land on the river, he has built himself a nice hut on the Chinampa and uses it as a home base for cooking and growing the Gouraf fresh fruits and vegetables. The Chinampa is maneuvered via poling it down the river by a team of shrews (like a gondola/lewis and clark) and Paggs using his trusty paddlestick as a rudder and tiller. (this was what the Aztecs did in Mexico on lake Texcoco to make farmland for Tenochtitlan)
Personality:
Paggle's personality is like that of ALMOST any mole. He is reserved and sensible most of the time, though having spent his entire life with a band of war shrews he can be as vocal, argumentative, and fierce as any shrew. He can neither read nor write, but he is inclined towards the sensible and industrious tendencies of moles. He speaks with the quaint dialect of the moles. He has a soft spot for the baby shrews of the flotilla and always has a snack ready for a hungry shrewbabe.
Strengths:
Like all moles, Pagglestick excels at digging and soil sampling. He is also an excellent cook. His life aboard the chinampa has also turned him into a respectable farmer/gardener. Uncommonly among moles, he is a fierce fighter and quite skilled with the rapier as well as quick on his paws during combat.
Weaknesses:
Paggs is not a strong swimmer, he CAN swim and his flotation vest provides him extra buoyancy but he still feels panic in cold water. He, like all moles has poor eyesight and struggles to see without his monocle. His quaint speech is also tainted by Gouraf slang and riverboat jargon, making him even more difficult to understand. Being a mole, he is also slow of footpaw when not battling, he cannot run over great distances and is not very quick, he can only manage a quick trundle.
History:
Historical Note: The family tree that produced Axtel Sturnclaw (the bloodwrath mole from Sable Quean) also had a branch of warrior moles in the south, a select few of whom experienced varying degrees of the bloodwrath. (author's note: I tend to err on the side of medicine and science and thus consider the Bloodwrath to be a genetically linked disease/mutation, like sickle-cell anemia). It is from this branch that Pagglestick is descended; though he does not have the bloodwrath his offspring MIGHT.
Personal History:
Pagglestick Streamdiggurn was born the son of a southern Foremole of a band of warrior moles. When he was only a tiny molebabe, having just learned to dig and trundle and only barely able to speak, his tribe came under attack from a band of vermin slavers. The babies and young ones were taken prisoner and the mole elders were killed. When the caper was uncovered the warrior moles took up arms and pursued the vermin.
The slavers were camped beside a river and the moles attacked in the early morning, as a flotilla of shrews were rounding the river bend, pursuing a slave galley upriver. The encampment was in disarray, vermin were fleeing hither and thither, but the captives were still loaded aboard as the slave galley pulled up. Vermin aboard were lobbing flaming pots of pitch at all and sundry, many a Gouraf log boat was consumed in the sticky fiery miasma. The mole warriors managed to charge the gangplank and make their way onto the galley but by then too many had been cut down, only a few moles consumed with bloodwrath stood, littering the deck with vermin corpses. Paggs' contribution to the melee was a chomp to the wrist of his sea rat tormentor, who flung him overboard. He floundered in the river until he grasped a stray floating paddle, the paddle that saved his life, his trusty paddlestick and name sake. The vermin vessel shoved off after their living cargo was loaded and limped downriver with the last mole falling to vermin arrow fire. The Gouraf flotilla was too crippled to pursue.
After the battle, Paggle was found by Log a Log's search and rescue team, he and his paddlestick were drug into the boat and the Gouraf shrews elected to adopt him and raise him as a Gouraf in memory of the valiant mole warriors that they had fought alongside. His rescuers did not know his name, and they knew he had no family to speak of, so they named him for how they knew him: Paddlestick Streamdigger. He grew up with as the adopted son of the Log a Log, with the Chieftan's other children as siblings, though he spent a great deal of time with all the shrew children and he learned to be a shrew, though he couldn't ever escape his mole mannerisms.
His childhood was spent almost always in a logboat, and almost always huddling facedown because of his natural fear of the water. It was only by chance that the Gouraf were hauling baskets of earth to help a beaver colony build a dam that they discovered that Paggle was content moving about the boats atop the baskets of earth. As long as his footpaws could feel earth, he had his sea legs. The shrews capitalized on this discovery and built a floating garden for the Shrew-wives, shrewbabes and Paggle. As Paggle grew up tending the garden and cooking its produce, he came to be in command of the great barge and mastered the art of steering it through the river currents. He has grown up in the tradition of the Gouraf, patrolling the river and fighting vermin.
Relationships:
He is the adopted son of the Gouraf's Log a Log but considers all the shrews his brothers and/or sisters in arms.
His real mole tribe was killed/enslaved by vermin, he was the only one to survive free. In the back of his mind he vows to save them.
He knows no other moles.
Gender: Male
Species: Mole
Age: 20
Occupation: Gouraf auxillary warrior and chief cook
Physical Appearance:
Mole-like. He has velvety gray fur, tiny black button eyes, and massive forepaws with digging claws. He is not by classical definitions "short" but he appears to be a squat fellow even though he is taller than the average beast. He looks like a jolly ol' mole.
Possessions:
Paggle's unusual life with the Gouraf (Geurilla Union Of Roving and Fighting Shrews) has made an impact on his wardrobe. He wears a traditional Gouraf Plaid Kilt and a bright headband. He looks very comical in his Gouraf get-up and also wears an eyepatch (he has both eyes, but he switches the eyepatch between eyes at night or underground so he can see better), his other eye is adorned with a monocle to aid his poor mole eyesight, and he has a life-vest made of cloth stuffed with cork for flotation. He also carries a slightly larger version of the Shrew rapier, and a Gouraf shortbow. He keeps his trusty paddle stick with him at all times: he rows with it, cooks with it, and uses it as a walking stick. As the Gouraf's chief cook he also has an expansive collection of cooking implements (pots, pans, forks, sthingys, knives) and especially takes pride in his collection of knives some of which he keeps in his belt and kilt sash in the occasional fish, vegetable or rascally vermin happens by. As a mole he also possesses an array of digging and construction tools (spade, pick, small hand axe, protractor, plum-bob, carpenter's square, adze, etc.) Pagglestick is an avid fisherman and keeps a hook in his headband and a fishing line in a beltpouch (he has no use for a rod, uses only his digging claws or toes).
Special Possession: Pagglestick is the captain of a special Gouraf boat. He commands the flotallia's chinampa. His Chinampa is made of three Gouraf log boats alongside each other lashed together, filled with baskets of earth and floated down the river. This special dirt barge is Paggs' little slice of land on the river, he has built himself a nice hut on the Chinampa and uses it as a home base for cooking and growing the Gouraf fresh fruits and vegetables. The Chinampa is maneuvered via poling it down the river by a team of shrews (like a gondola/lewis and clark) and Paggs using his trusty paddlestick as a rudder and tiller. (this was what the Aztecs did in Mexico on lake Texcoco to make farmland for Tenochtitlan)
Personality:
Paggle's personality is like that of ALMOST any mole. He is reserved and sensible most of the time, though having spent his entire life with a band of war shrews he can be as vocal, argumentative, and fierce as any shrew. He can neither read nor write, but he is inclined towards the sensible and industrious tendencies of moles. He speaks with the quaint dialect of the moles. He has a soft spot for the baby shrews of the flotilla and always has a snack ready for a hungry shrewbabe.
Strengths:
Like all moles, Pagglestick excels at digging and soil sampling. He is also an excellent cook. His life aboard the chinampa has also turned him into a respectable farmer/gardener. Uncommonly among moles, he is a fierce fighter and quite skilled with the rapier as well as quick on his paws during combat.
Weaknesses:
Paggs is not a strong swimmer, he CAN swim and his flotation vest provides him extra buoyancy but he still feels panic in cold water. He, like all moles has poor eyesight and struggles to see without his monocle. His quaint speech is also tainted by Gouraf slang and riverboat jargon, making him even more difficult to understand. Being a mole, he is also slow of footpaw when not battling, he cannot run over great distances and is not very quick, he can only manage a quick trundle.
History:
Historical Note: The family tree that produced Axtel Sturnclaw (the bloodwrath mole from Sable Quean) also had a branch of warrior moles in the south, a select few of whom experienced varying degrees of the bloodwrath. (author's note: I tend to err on the side of medicine and science and thus consider the Bloodwrath to be a genetically linked disease/mutation, like sickle-cell anemia). It is from this branch that Pagglestick is descended; though he does not have the bloodwrath his offspring MIGHT.
Personal History:
Pagglestick Streamdiggurn was born the son of a southern Foremole of a band of warrior moles. When he was only a tiny molebabe, having just learned to dig and trundle and only barely able to speak, his tribe came under attack from a band of vermin slavers. The babies and young ones were taken prisoner and the mole elders were killed. When the caper was uncovered the warrior moles took up arms and pursued the vermin.
The slavers were camped beside a river and the moles attacked in the early morning, as a flotilla of shrews were rounding the river bend, pursuing a slave galley upriver. The encampment was in disarray, vermin were fleeing hither and thither, but the captives were still loaded aboard as the slave galley pulled up. Vermin aboard were lobbing flaming pots of pitch at all and sundry, many a Gouraf log boat was consumed in the sticky fiery miasma. The mole warriors managed to charge the gangplank and make their way onto the galley but by then too many had been cut down, only a few moles consumed with bloodwrath stood, littering the deck with vermin corpses. Paggs' contribution to the melee was a chomp to the wrist of his sea rat tormentor, who flung him overboard. He floundered in the river until he grasped a stray floating paddle, the paddle that saved his life, his trusty paddlestick and name sake. The vermin vessel shoved off after their living cargo was loaded and limped downriver with the last mole falling to vermin arrow fire. The Gouraf flotilla was too crippled to pursue.
After the battle, Paggle was found by Log a Log's search and rescue team, he and his paddlestick were drug into the boat and the Gouraf shrews elected to adopt him and raise him as a Gouraf in memory of the valiant mole warriors that they had fought alongside. His rescuers did not know his name, and they knew he had no family to speak of, so they named him for how they knew him: Paddlestick Streamdigger. He grew up with as the adopted son of the Log a Log, with the Chieftan's other children as siblings, though he spent a great deal of time with all the shrew children and he learned to be a shrew, though he couldn't ever escape his mole mannerisms.
His childhood was spent almost always in a logboat, and almost always huddling facedown because of his natural fear of the water. It was only by chance that the Gouraf were hauling baskets of earth to help a beaver colony build a dam that they discovered that Paggle was content moving about the boats atop the baskets of earth. As long as his footpaws could feel earth, he had his sea legs. The shrews capitalized on this discovery and built a floating garden for the Shrew-wives, shrewbabes and Paggle. As Paggle grew up tending the garden and cooking its produce, he came to be in command of the great barge and mastered the art of steering it through the river currents. He has grown up in the tradition of the Gouraf, patrolling the river and fighting vermin.
Relationships:
He is the adopted son of the Gouraf's Log a Log but considers all the shrews his brothers and/or sisters in arms.
His real mole tribe was killed/enslaved by vermin, he was the only one to survive free. In the back of his mind he vows to save them.
He knows no other moles.
