FERN 🐺🔪

pronouns she/her

age 22

race shifter (longtooth)

class lvl 10 rogue (assassin)

d&d campaign curse of strahd

STR

DEX

CON

INT

WIS

CHA

Assassin for the Harpers; isekai'd into Barovia alongside two nobles, a half-orc paladin, and a goliath druid. She's straight up not having a good time right now.

positive

loyal, resilient, strong morals, competent in a fight

neutral

stoic, reserved, no-nonsense, professional

negative

severe, emotionally volatile, lacking hope, judgmental

As Fern is a shifter and can change into a more bestial wolf-like form (different from a werewolf as she stays mainly humanoid), she has mottled olive skin with markings that are suggestive of fur (and thin patches of fur in some places), gold wolf-like eyes, pointed fur-covered ears, a flat nose, fangs, and sharp claws. She has thick brown hair slightly past shoulder length with one braid near the front of her hairline. [ reference img ]

height 5'5"

build wiry

hair brown

eyes gold

background;

Fern was born to a shifter colony on an island off the continent of Maztica, an ocean away from the main D&D continent of Faerûn, leading her to have an insular and isolated childhood among her own people. The colony was in a rural area removed from the nearest city, which was populated primarily by halflings (who tolerated the presence of shifters despite them being a people who are often distrusted and persecuted). Growing up, Fern was instilled by her parents and the rest of her “pack” with the philosophies of being a shifter: self-reliance, but also the importance of the pack. As a child, she also formed a bond with her “beast within” (a wolf, naturally).

Around when Fern was ten years old, her father, Cobalt, was granted the honored position of a loreguard within their clan. A loreguard is meant to interact with other cultures and to protect their community from prejudice and threats posed by the other races. Cobalt started to make trips to Faerûn. But then there was one trip he never returned from, and no one in the colony ever got a true explanation for what happened to him. It couldn’t have been good, though — not when an organized group of humans from Faerûn arrived with the intention of wiping them out and taking the land for themselves. Whatever truce her father had tried to create or peace he had tried to broker, it had clearly failed, and Fern’s home was raided.

Fern's mother, Autumn, ordered her to flee, to run as far and as fast as she could. When Fern asked where she should even go, her mother repeated the shifter mantra: “Always be prepared for the journey yet to come.” Fern let her wolf self take over and ran deep into the woods, finding a cave to hole up in, but by the time morning came and she returned to her colony, she found it razed to the ground and littered with corpses.

The halflings in the nearby city would not take her in, not wanting to provoke the ire of the human raiders by housing her, and so she had no option but to travel to the continent of Faerûn in hopes that she could find a place to hide and blend in, far away from the group that wanted to root her out and see her dead. Using what stealth she’d learned through the games she’d played as a child, Fern was able to sneak aboard a ship on its way to Faerûn and remain hidden during the long, grueling journey. Once she reached the mainland (specifically Baldur’s Gate), she was struck by incredible culture shock. Having grown up so isolated, there were races and types of people she had never seen in her life. Why, then, was her kind so despised?

Determined to be self-reliant, Fern did everything she could to obscure her shifter features as she lived on the streets and fended for herself. It was during this time that she had to learn to hide and obscure as much of herself as she could, and she also had to get a hold on her own strong emotions and outbursts (natural to a shifter) so that she didn’t attract attention to herself. She was eventually picked up by a halfling woman, Quara, who ran a local inn in Baldur’s Gate and took pity on Fern and her situation. Fern, who’d been scraping by just trying to survive and was incredibly alone, couldn’t say no to the offer.

Around when Fern was fifteen, a human woman named Kel rented a room at the inn for an extended stay (because as a spy, she was working a job in the city). Fern formed a bond with her and eventually opened up about her history. Kel saw potential in Fern and her abilities, with her natural physiology as a shifter making her well-suited to train as a rogue. She told her about the Harpers, explaining that one day Fern might even be able to find out who was behind the destruction of her home and get revenge. The Harpers are about righting the wrongs in the world to make the realm a better place, and they don’t shy away from espionage as a means of accomplishing that goal. So Fern decided to leave the inn and Quara to train under Kel and join the Harpers as a rogue and assassin. The Harpers gave her something she desperately needed: a new pack. This consisted not only of her mentor, Kel, but Fern was also able to make other friends and establish the close bonds she’d been yearning for ever since she lost her home.

Fern has now been with the Harpers for seven years. While the first two or so years (ages 15-17) she’d mainly been training and honing her skills, she’s now been working actively for the group for five years and is a competent assassin. She hasn’t yet uncovered who murdered her father or the rest of her pack, but it’s one of her driving forces. She doesn’t want to be completely consumed with revenge and let her predator side take over, however, and so she also focuses on doing work that suits her, but that also hopefully improves the realm.

Then one day, Kel has a job for Fern, one that involves going to the town of Daggerford to address a disturbance. Something to do with... werewolves? This catches Fern's attention for obvious reasons, and while she'd be working with a few members of other guilds this time, she's ready for the job. Or so she thinks. After she meets the others sent on this task at River Shining Tavern, they find themselves in an unknown place, setting them on a journey they never could have expected.

The Curse of Strahd campaign unfolds from here, leading to a whole series of adventures in the mysterious and cursed land of Barovia.

MODIFIERS & PROFICIENCIES

Rogues are non-magical fighters who derive a lot of their utility from their many skill proficiencies. I may roll on some of these stats in threads for fun and flavor.

Click to reveal the list!

Acrobatics (+8)

Animal Handling (+1)

Arcana (-1)

Athletics (+1)

Deception (+5)

History (-1)

Insight (+5)

Intimidation (+9)

Investigation (-1)

Medicine (+1)

Nature (-1)

Perception (+9)

Performance (+1)

Persuasion (+1)

Religion (-1)

Sleight of Hand (+8)

Stealth (+12)

Survival (+1)

ABILITIES

🔪 SHIFTING: Fern can briefly transform into a more bestial form, where her limbs and snout lengthen, her teeth elongate, she grows more fur, etc. As she's not a werewolf, it's not a full shift and she still maintains some of her normal appearance. This grants her additional health and the ability to attack with her elongated fangs.
🔪 DARKVISION: Range of sixty feet. She can see things in dim light as if it were bright light, and in darkness as if it were dim light.
🔪 KEEN SENSES: Her bestial traits allow her to perceive things with enhanced senses such as keener smell, hearing, etc.
🔪 WEAPON PROFICIENCY: Fern can use a wide variety of weapons. Her preference is for blades such as daggers or a rapier, but she can also wield a longsword (and has recently done so with a Sunsword). She can also use both a shortbow and a crossbow if needed.
🔪 SNEAK ATTACK: Fern knows how to strike subtly or exploit a foe's distraction. If she has the advantage in a fight or the target she's attacking is distracted by someone else, she can do a great deal more damage with her weapon attacks.
🔪 ASSASSINATE: Fern is at her deadliest when she can get the drop on enemies. If she gets the jump on someone who isn't aware that she's there and/or hasn't taken an action in combat yet, she has the advantage and does a critical hit (increased damage).
🔪 SLASHER FEAT: Fern has learned where to cut to have the greatest results, granting her the ability to slow a target's speed when she does slashing damage to them and to grievously wound her enemies when she gets a critical hit (meaning they have disadvantage on attack rolls until her next turn).
🔪 UNCANNY DODGE: When someone attacks her, she can use her quick reaction time to halve the damage they would do against her by managing to dodge out of the way of some of the blow.
🔪 EVASION: Fern can nimbly dodge out of the way of certain area effects. When she has to make a Dexterity saving throw (i.e., is put in a situation where she has to rely on her dexterity to get out of trouble), if she succeeds in her roll she'll take no damage and if she fails she'll take only half the damage.
🔪 CUNNING ACTION: Her quick thinking and agility allows her to move and act quickly. She can take an extra Dash, Disengage, or Hide action during her turn in combat.
🔪 TOOLS OF THE TRADE: Fern has proficiency with Thieves' Tools, Poisoner's Kit, and Disguise Kit.

INVENTORY

🐺 Two silvered daggers, which do extra damage to anything vulnerable to silver (notably, werewolves).
🐺 Two Spiderbite Daggers, which have a chance of poisoning the target.
🐺 A rapier.
🐺 The legendary Sunsword, which once belonged to Strahd's brother. It does radiant damage and is also sentient.
🐺 A Circlet of Blasting. If she wears it, she can cast Scorching Ray with it once per day.
🐺 A crossbow and a longbow, along with some arrows.
🐺 Two tarot cards given to her by a Vistani seer.
🐺 Leather armor.
🐺 A pamphlet called Van Richten's Guide to Monsters.
🐺 A small collection of gold, silver, and bronze coins, including a few which have Strahd von Zarovich's face etched onto them.
🐺 An adventurer's backpack which holds a variety of items such as thieves' tools and a poisoner's kit, rations, a crowbar, a hammer, a rope, a tinderbox, a waterskin, a lantern, etc.

player: court . pst . she/her . demonology @ plurk/discord

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character information

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