You can now support Shaper Of Worlds on Patreon.
Monks Of Saint Ivor's Monastery
The monastery that was formed around the teachings of Saint Ivor's The Serene is quite eclectic (some would say eccentric) and permissible place, where those who made a modest donation can pursue calm, contemplative life, study writings, tend to the gardens, admire art collections, meditate, or participate in internal social life.
The daily activities and spiritual life of the monks is gently overseen by the good Abbot Serenity. The mundane needs are tended to by the monks of lesser standings (those who could not donate to the monastery's coffers nor offer expertise in worthwhile skills) and a number of servants.
Those who enter the monastery with intent to stay, shed they former name and take a new one, symbolizing their new self and new pursuits. Usually, there is about 20 to 30 monks in the full standing in the monastery at any one time, though (almost) anyone is free to leave, except of those in whose name families made special arrangements.
The majority of monks in full standing—donators—is composed primarily of former merchants and minor aristocrats, artists, and scholars, who were enticed by promises of peaceful and spiritually fulfilling life far from the dangers, turmoil, and hustle of mundane life. They have their share of quirks and peculiarities, but they pale when compared to secrets of the more colorful monks.
Brother Vinegar, The Embalmer (CE human male)
Peculiarities and overall creepiness of brother Vinegar—a middle-aged but still well built balding man who tends to stare at his speakers with a disturbingly unblinking gaze—are considered by his confraters to be tied to his utter and complete dedication to tending to the dead monks. Which is not completely inaccurate, but the truth is much more grisly. Before coming to the monastery, the future brother Vinegar—a traveling merchant at that time—was also a murderer, a serial killer who picked a random victim every few months. He tells himself that he is reformed by now, keeping his urges in check, but that is a lie. The last victim he killed bore blood of a fey and brought upon brother Vinegar a terrible curse — he suffer threefold the harm he causes to any other living being. He left behind his past life not out of regret or remorse but because his survival instincts overcome his murderous urges. He found a safe haven from his past and future temptations here in the monastery. Now he meagerly sates his old habits by handling the preparation of corpses of dead monks for their interment.
Sister Inkblot, The Librarian (N astomoi? female?)
A inky-black silhouette of a woman, dotted with specks of silver making her resemble a hole in the world revealing the night sky beneath. She does not speak, communicating in writing or by projecting her thoughts to those nearby. She seems to read text instantly with her touch and has perfect recall of the location (if not full content) of the books kept in the main library.
She arrived to the monastery long ago and offered the abbot a book—one look inside made him accept her and made her assistant to the old and ailing librarian, and in a few years the latter's long-expected death put her in her current position.
Sister Inkblot is known to slip some books to unexpecting monks on occasions, seemingly according to what she thinks would be the best for the would-be reader at that time, though other think that is less a matter of wisdom, and more of pranks. She is known to be protective of the books, and detests anyone who would cause any damage to the collection, but at the same time, she was seen destroying some unidentified books and writing herself, when she thought that no one sees her.
Sister Pearl (NG dwarf female)
A rather young dwarven redhead who was born a princes and fled her family lands to avoid an arranged marriage. To her surprise, not long after she heard about her own wedding taking place—apparently her family, her husband, or someone else, arranged for a pretender to take her place... And sent assassins after her to prevent her from revealing the truth. She managed to avoid them, barely, and decided to seek refuge far away from her homelands.
Now she lives in the monastery, hiding her true identity, and fulfilling herself as a wood-working artist and a sculptor. She is still wary of newcomers, not completely convinced that the killers lost her track as her continued existence threatens the status quo back home.
She never revealed her identity to the abbot, but she paid for her way in with a gorgeous pearl necklace—and he managed to secretly determine its origins, though how much does he know is hard to say.
Brother Keyhole (LN human male/CE possessing qlippoth spirit)
The future brother Keyhole was a promising young lawyer. He had the misfortune to receive an oversight of an inheritance case that involved a manor that belonged to a deceased practitioner of dark arts, a certain number of occult devices of various types, and a bunch of misguided potential heirs struggling with each other. In the end, after the dust settled, and the bodies were buried, the manor and the remaining objects passed to a distant relative, and the now clearly insane solicitor was quietly sent by his relatives to a monastery far away to "recuperate".
Sadly, no one recognized that the poor sod became possessed by an alien intelligence from before the dawn time released from, or maybe conjured, by one of the occult artifacts from the collection he handled, an entity whose very nature is inimical and incomprehensible to mortal life. Thankfully, the spirit trapped within the brother Keyhole's is either very weak, or maybe it is just a shard of greater being, with very limited ability to affect the world—it can watch and listen, compel its host to walk for short periods of time, and occasionally take over his left arm, doing such things as stealing things or striking others. It can also prevents brother Keyhole from speaking coherently. By now he has learned that trying to warn others is pointless, as the sentences he utters become a jumbled ungrammatical mass of words.
Brother Graceful (N half-elf male)
An underaged heir to a deceased ruler, Graceful was passed into abbot Serenity's care as a young child by his uncle, accompanied by a substantial donation, as a way of non-violently removing him from the line of succession. The deposed prince knows little of the world beyond the walls of monastery beyond what he learned from books and tales of other monks, though he is vaguely aware of his origins and fantasizes of regaining his throne. In fact, he started to secretly study arcane arts from various books and grimoires that he managed to find in the monastery's library—he plans to reanimate corpses of the dead monks lingering in the crypts below and lead them as an army against his uncle. Currently, he needs to acquire a supply of onyx gems, necessary for him to master necromancy to a sufficient degree. For now, he is still limited to animating skeletal remains of chickens and other fowl, which are often served to donator monks for dinner, for a short time.
Surprisingly, while abbot Serenity is somehow aware of Graceful's magical interests, which he considers a harmless pastime, as he still views youthful prince as a child he was not long ago, he knows nothing of the latter's necromantic pursuits. Certainly, he would not be pleased with the idea of hundreds of his spare bodies walking out on him.
Postulant Scale (kobold of indeterminate gender and alignment)
Abbot Serenity was understandably reluctant to accept a kobold into the ranks of his monks. It didn't stop Scale from confidently entering the monastery and staying. The royal ransom that the kobold brought on a small cart and offered to the abbot didn't hurt, though, and helped ease the abbot's doubts. Now postulant Scale lives among the monks, occasionally hunting rats in the monastery's vast larders, sometimes seen eating bugs in the gardens.
A common gossip among the monks surmises that Scale betrayed a dragon to dragon-hunting adventurers for a share of the hoard, and now hides from the rest of kobold tribe. Or maybe betrayed dragon-hunting adventurers to a dragon for a share of the hoard and now hides from the adventurers. Or maybe both. A more ridiculous gossip claims that Scale might actually be a dragon shapeshifted into kobold to disguise among the humanoids who came to the monastery to study the teachings of Saint Ivor The Serene.
The monks generally tend to have one or more Knowledge and Profession skills, Perception, Sense Motive, and Stealth between +5 and +10, plus other skills that fit their backstory at similar levels. Their AC is typically 10-12, their saving throws are in +1 to +5 range, and hit points are between 4 and 30. They don't wear armor or weapons, though a few of them might keep a sword and a chain shirt in their quarters. Some of them might even know how to use them.
