Jack Ashfold

((WIP))
https://www.myth-weavers.com/sheet.html#id=1934238
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nP6nKTu6TGY

to do:
-change jack's origin
---father isn't biological father
---demon mother abandoned her in the town square as a newborn
---he caught someone trying to drop her into his slag pit
-add jack's mother's info to npc list
-commission that bridge perch
-commission goat

Brief Timeline/Notes

• Jack's demon mother left her at her human father's doorstep as a baby and he raised her alone.
• When she was 10 Governor Copperbelly hired Captain Blackjaw to raid her town.
• Her father was killed and she was kidnapped by Blackjaw's trafficker fleet where she worked as a cabin boy.
• An order of all-woman monk sailors attacked Blackjaw's ship and abducted/freed her when she was 16.
• She stayed with them and gained years of fighting and magic training until she was 20.
• She was reminded of the traffickers during a routine sailing mission with her new sisters.
• Her goal is to find and kill Blackjaw and Copperbelly.
• Her possessions include a small cutter named The Hammer, a pocket knife that belonged to her father, and a shortsword that was her broadsword when she was a child.
• She has a hatred and fear of guns, as Blackjaw is the only man she's ever seen wield one.

• Mild mannered and shy, very lonely but has trouble warming up to people and often gets defensive when approached.
• Goes quiet and very serious during combat, hates fighting and sometimes has meltdowns after battle.
• Can't stand having blood on her weapons, clothing, or skin, sometimes obsessively bathes after a fight.
• Sometimes doubts her ability to accomplish her goal, and secretly hopes to find someone to settle down with instead.

Bio:

Jack is a tiefling monk searching for the two men responsible for her father's death.

She is the daughter of human blacksmith named Dharros and an unknown female demon, who left her baby at the man's doorstep on a dry summer night. Raising her was difficult in a town of mostly humanoid people, but her father's reputation as both a skilled fighter and a valuable asset to the town's metal trade protected her, as well as her father teaching her to defend herself from a young age.

The human Governor of their home town hated anyone he considered a monster, so he hired the traffickers who sell him his slaves, a band of cold blooded pirates, to raid the town and kill or kidnap anyone he deemed not human enough. Humans, dwarves, halflings, gnomes, and most elves were left unharmed or suffered as collateral. Anyone that resembled an animal, demon, or dark elf was captured or killed. Jack was at home with her father in their forge when they were attacked.

Jack's father fought off handfuls of pirate grunts, until the half-elf leader, Captain Blackjaw, dueled and eventually killed him. Jack tried to attack him, but was easily captured and brought aboard the ship with the other captives from the town. 

While they were trying to cage her, she pulled her father's pocket knife and wounded several of the sailors, and killed the captain's cabin boy in the scuffle. Blackjaw broke up the fight, and seeing that she was more trouble than she was worth to sell, but too useful to throw overboard, forced her to be his new cabin boy. Deciding this was her best shot at a decent survival and at killing the captain, Jack let herself be shanghaied into service.

She made a feral reputation for herself early on, as with just a small pocket knife she would send deckhands to the doctor with stab wounds almost daily for trying to hit her, but almost never spoke and had a look like a terrified fawn in her eyes at all times. Eventually Blackjaw gave her her sword back, saying that if she was going to kill a man, she should do it right, and stop wasting their bandages and medicine. Both of them knew Jack had no chance at surviving if she betrayed him, so the meek tiefling continued to behave, and was left alone by the men now that she had a sword on her belt. 

Two years in, she gained some minor respect as the only one who knew anything about weapon and tool repair on board thanks to Dharros' training, saving the crew money and time by not having to go ashore for new equipment as often. This added to her guilt, but she told herself it would be worth it when she had her chance to end their campaign.

Six years after her capture, the fleet encountered another group of pirates, piloting much smaller, sleeker, and faster sailboats, and outnumbering the traffickers a dozen to one. 

After exhausting Blackjaw's cannons, the new pirates boarded the trafficking ships and attacked. All of the pirates were female monks, and to Jack they moved and fought as if they were demons spirited by the winds themselves. It was a no brainer: she immediately turned on her captors and helped the women, leading them to the captain's armory and helping them easily take over the flagship, making sure the women took every single weapon Jack forged herself.

At the end of the battle between pirates not a single monk had fallen, but all but a handful of the traffickers had been slain. Blackjaw survived by cowardly fleeing with a small band of his most trusted officers in one of the monk's boats during the chaos, and Jack never saw him again.

After the attack, enraged by her inability to avenge her father, Jack expressed to the monks that she wanted to return home to at least take out the corrupt Copperbelly. As a reward for helping them fight, and because who doesn't love murdering a slave owner, a small party of the women went with Jack in a schooner to the coastal town while the rest sailed away with the captives that they'd freed and a few prisoners who'd surrendered.

(come up with names and a story for these women and put them here)

When they reached the town, they learned that Copperbelly had fled years ago, chased out by rioting townspeople who were sick of his sky high taxes and of his hatred of monsters not only destroying their town, but their economy and reputation. A new human governor is in charge, one Daniel Goldwick, but he has no information on where the ugly man went. Feeling for Jack however, he offers her the deed to her family's property, but Jack sells it right back to him in exchange for his personal ship, which he gladly parts with. He has no time for sailing with his new job anyway, and Jack can't bear to live in her dying old hometown anymore.

The women took Jack back to their island (name pending). Jack took interest in her new home immediately, and within three days of landing, she began her monk training. The kind governor's ship became hers, and she named it The Hammer after her blacksmith heritage.

The island is home to a tiny village of elders, children, fishermen, and farmers to the south, but the majority of the island and the population belongs to the all-woman monk order led by a 140-year old yuan-ti matriarch (name pending). Most of the women that choose to join the monk order are refugees/runaways that washed up on the island, rescued from ships like Jack's, or even criminals themselves who've decided to turn their lives around. Most of the villagers are related to a monk somehow, but some are just there for the peace and quiet.

Monks are encouraged to live in the wilderness for the duration of their training. Jack takes to this life comfortably, living in progressively more sophisticated structures that she builds with her own hands on a clearing in between two narrow rivers, eventually living in a comfortable round hut made of clay bricks and a thatch roof. But she ended up not needing it much, as by the time she'd been training for three years she was skilled enough to join the sailors who'd freed her. By this time she'd proven to be in tune with nature and was being trained in the way of the four elements.

On her first patrol at sea, the women and their boats encountered a pirate ship chasing a pair of battered sailboats. They prepared to attack the larger ship, but after seeing them, it fled too quickly for them to catch up to. Besides, the smaller boats were sinking. They chose to save those people instead. The people they rescued began to explain who was chasing them, and Jack immediately recognized the description as Captain Blackjaw. He was still out there and tormenting innocent people, and likely so was Copperbelly.

Enraged by this discovery, Jack knew that she would never know peace again until she hunted down the two men, avenged her father, and ended the suffering they were causing. At age 20, she's left her island paradise and her new family aboard The Hammer in search of these wicked men. It's this search that brings her to her future adventures. She is primarily motivated by guilt, and partially blames herself for Blackjaw's continued career, because she worked on his ship for so long and not only failed to kill him but helped his work continue.

Should Jack ever find and execute these two men, she'll finally be free of a life of fighting and chaos. She'll return to her island monastery to complete her training, and hopes to live out her life quietly as a teacher and a blacksmith like her father, and maybe raise a family of her own.

Campaigns

• unnamed
  • After arriving in a port city following a lead on several kidnappings, Jack meets with a party while fighting off a pack of common muggers. Since their goal is to end the corruption in this town, she decides to join them, hoping that her lead and their mission are adjacent. She is currently staying with them in a small monk temple, which their party member Morton belongs to. 
  • Jack met a half-elf woman named Raina who is enslaved by The Brand, an organization working for (the bad guys??) which mark their grunts with a cancerous dark scar that spreads from their hearts and eventually kills them. Jack sympathizes with Raina's plight, knowing what it's liked to be trapped working for terrible people. They bonded briefly as they talked on a riverbank one starry night, and determined to help Raina and people like her be freed from the situation she grew up in, Jack stays with the party to help them help The Brand.
  • They are currently traveling up a mountain to the Temple of the Tempest Wyrm so that their sorcerer companion Morton can begin his monk training. Along the way they met a tiny metal man named Grimble Greaseknuckle.
  • Cool things that happened:
    • Used Step Of The Wind to sprint 80 feet down a boardwalk and leap 40 feet onto the deck of a moving ship.
    • Had a tender moment with the captain of that ship (Raina) that solidified her motives for the campaign.
    • Helped Finn and Whistler realize that Finn might have A Feeling Or Two.
    • Did a sick somersault to stab a crocodile in the head and save Silas.
    • Did a sick stab and slash to behead an even bigger crocodile and save Morton and a cute tiefling.
    • Cute tiefling turned out to be a Slod, beat her dead and then cried about it.
    • Wasted a nat 20 on an Acrobatics check and perched perfectly on the post of a bridge in a mine. It looked cool though.
    • Bought a goat. His name is Muffin. He's a good boy. https://imgur.com/a/T1iTKlj
    • Got a necklace that permanently sounds like the ocean from their gnome friend Grimble.

• Dharros
  • Jack's father, a human blacksmith. Was in his late 30's at death.
  • Infuriatingly sweet and patient. Loved his daughter more than anything.
  • Loved by the whole town, massively respected. Jack was safe in his shadow.
  • Hated the governor openly.
  • Massive flirt, but decided not to date anymore once he had Jack to take care of.
  • Jack was left on his doorstep as a newborn.
• Governor Copperbelly
  • Human, middle aged, ugly, portly, fake teeth, grey hair dyed ugly blonde.
  • Wants power, owns slaves, hates "monsters" (any race that doesn't resemble humans).
  • Hired Blackjaw to clean his town of them.
  • Chased out a few years after for raising taxes and taking crops.
  • Useless on his own without people willing to work for him.
  • Jack's secondary target; she would abandon chasing him if it meant finding Blackjaw.
• Captain Blackjaw
  • Half-elf, early 30's, loves treasure and riches, cares only about personal wealth.
  • Crew is mostly humans, half-elves, and half-dwarves.
  • Extremely beautiful, calm, and charismatic, anime villain vibes.
  • Competent on his own, doesn't need followers to be a threat.
  • Completely cold and will do anything to anyone if the price is right.
  • Respects selfishness and survival instincts, actually liked Jack when she proved tougher than she looked.
  • Would try to convince her to work for him if they ever crossed paths.
  • Jack's main target, dead without question if she ever sees him.
• The Monastery
  • Yuan Ti matriarch, 140 years old.
  • The women who took Jack to her hometown and back to the island.
  • Jack's various teachers over the years.
  • Assorted farmers, fishermen, elderly, and children in the village.
  • A couple of monk lady flings.