Rube

Rube
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In-Character Information
Country	Legion
Other Name(s)
Class	Cleric
Gender	Male
Alignment	LG except when CE (Riftwar)
Race	Human
Religion	The Forgotten Woman, The Unnamed Child, The Stranger Unto Himself
Out-of-Character Information
Date Joined	~5DY?
Affiliated with

{{#if:Human|}} {{#if:Cleric|}} {{#if:Legion|}}

What is known in character: Rube is a farmer. He has a board. His board has a nail.

Out of character backstory (mostly unknown): There is a truth that was once commonly accepted, but that is now lost among the races of the world: life is found in the knotted threads of the fabric of reality. We are nothing but the nodes in the centers of the tangles of writhing threads that bind us to other people, that bind us to other nodes. Without love, without loyalty, without friendship and family, each connecting our knot to others’, we are nothing at all. When a person or beast is forgotten utterly, and they have forgotten all of the things they love, they simply cease to be. Once it was a common form of spiritual worship to seek out those whose tangles had grown threadbare, who were yet barely connected to the world, and to bind them once more with friendship, love, and respect. The "godhead" of the faith was purely symbolic, and called variously “the unnamed child”, “the forgotten woman”, and the “stranger to himself”, for all of those names evoked peoples most in danger of becoming unraveled, and most in need of love and connection.

In that bygone day there was a practitioner of this faith who was knotted so deeply into the fabric that he swam as a string in the center of a ball of yarn, beloved by many and estranged from few. Among the many things he loved, he loved his hat. His love was infectious, so others too came to love the hat. The hat was so loved that it itself came to find a form of life, and lived even beyond the cleric himself… its knotted cloth was the perfect symbol for their shared world view. The hat grew frayed over many hundreds of years, yet even today the hat uses its magic to propagate itself and to bind people to one another, and therein to ravel the world back around itself. The hat’s existence is a continuing love story for the world in which it lives and a praxis performed graciously in that world’s upkeep.

Among the few things the hat can do is remove the pain of those freshly unraveled, and to exert a subtle form of domination upon the sufferers who are willing to accept it. The hat acts through this world by finding those in great pain, and offering them solace from their torment, as well as the meaning to be found by performing the binding of the faith of the unnamed child. After some days, months, or years of this work, the hat’s hosts are invariably themselves bound once more into the threads of the people of the world. As a final act, the hat and the host adventure together to find another willing sufferer in need of solace, and pass the hat on to begin its ritual of healing over again.

While this is not known to any in character, Rube is one such soul who is currently being fostered by the hat. Those who think they know Rube know the hat at least as well as they know the person who wears it.

One unfortunate side effect of letting the hat dominate the person, is that the person’s guards against domination are dropped and weakened. Therefore the hat-wearers are more susceptible to coercive magic than most. It is the actions of the hat-wearers while dominated by evil beings that have unraveled the hat most of all, scars the hat wears now with shame.

• During The War of the Rift Rube was driven mad by the invading demons, and was seen among the ranks of cultists fighting to let the demons through. After the rift was sealed he returned to "normal" and has since dedicated himself to finding a way to stop the Eye Demon that made it through.