[c] Obadiah Thompson and Maple (A) | Page 1 | ❧ Character profiles | Guild Forums

Rejam

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Posted: Wed Feb 15, 2012 5:36 pm

Obadiah Thompson
age | early 30's
chosen | 18 months ago
guardian | Maple, doe
occupation | layabout, benefiting from forgiving and wealthy parents
frequently spotted | Palisade, downtown Oldcastle
positives | intelligent, good-humored, blind to class distinctions
negatives | addicted, irresponsible, hair trigger, vulnerable,
blind to class distinctions (whether this is a positive or not depends on who you ask)
asides | self-conscious when sober; verbose nearly always, obsessive

Posted: Tue Mar 26, 2013 10:10 pm

History

A former wealthy playboy who decided it was glamorous to slum it, Obadiah (or Taym, as he is known to his friends--a reference to an old folktale) quickly learned that the more willing one is to stand near the edge, the easier it is to fall.

As a young man Taym lost his job with his father's bookkeeping firm, a well-respected establishment that would not keep a drunkard on its payrolls even when the drunkard was the owner's son. He slid from drinks into opium, and eventually a fiery argument between the arrogant and entitled Taym and his distraught, buttoned-up father led to the latter showing the former the door.

In the intervening years Taym's life has been marked by a series of poor choices, to put it mildly, interspersed with brief periods of responsibility and familial acceptance. Were it not for the pity of his adoring and forgiving mother, he'd have long ago likely died in an alley with his veins full of chemicals.

As it is, he has fathered a child (a daughter, Tuesday, who is raised by her grandparents and whom he loves profoundly despite his realization that it is healthier that he is not a part of her life) and taken to the sea; he has worked and slept in stables and in horse racing tracks. He's worked as a bookie and a wrangler overseas, spending time on the vast flat plains of the new world on the back of a horse and among the cattle, a job that suited his animal-loving disposition just fine.

On his return to Sunderland the 30-something Taym seems like an old man, and his hands shake incessantly--ruined forever by his bad habits. Something had called to him one night on the prairie, and the urge had grown louder and stronger than even opium or morphine had ever called to him.

He'd sold his horse, stopped in the port town to pick up a pretty doll for Tuesday and a wind-up tin bird for an old friend, and had taken the first ship over, spending sleepless nights sweating from withdrawal and a strange ineffable longing as the vessel tossed him around his bunk.

His plan had been to stop by his old estate, to follow-up his constant letters to his daughter and his mother with a visit, perhaps even yet another paternal reconciliation. But the Motherland had had other plans, and as soon as his feet touched the dock he found himself buying a mule and spurring it, not towards Oldcastle and his family home, but towards the Wardwood...

About

Taym was once a jovial, polished talker and an established wit, if something of an eccentric. He was given to periods of brooding that made him naturally irresistible to a certain breed of woman, a talent he learned to harness early. Among his many vices is a love of a well-turned ankle, and he will go to great lengths to acquire women--women who, with few exceptions, he keeps until he is tired of them, and then discards. His reputation precedes him in many a drinking establishment, and a woman who loves her sister will tell her to stay away. It probably won't do any good.

But when his life began to take bad turns and he found himself separated from his family's money and good name, these introspective periods became wildly unpredictable. There is still a rough-and-ready, well-spoken charm to him, but it is tempered with bouts of near-violent anger or grief that can be sprung by the most innocuous triggers. His love of words and learning has become a tic, an obsession: that pause you see when he learns your name is his attempting to form an attractive and memorable acrostic from its letters. His blunt speech is thrown into strange courses by randomly-tossed large words, or by strings of synonyms inserted one after another into his sentences.

Perhaps Taym's strangest and most jarring quality is his deep-seated need to be seen as a rescuer, a white knight--never mind that he needs rescuing himself. No one is more susceptible to a damsel in distress than he--Tuesday's mother was deaf and half-blind, though beautiful--and his particular weakness is for animals. At one time he had a pack of dogs and a stable of cats and horses, but when he was turned into the streets they became the domain of his mother, with none to accompany him but a dog he scooped from the fighting pits in the New World, where his job had been to hold the losers over a grate to bleed, to prevent them from ruining the floor.

Appearance

Of middling height and skinny build, Taym is easy to overlook in a crowd. His usual gait might be described as a slink--there is something very vulpine to the way he moves and to the way he smiles--although it is just as likely to be a limp, depending on what the day has held. His long thin hands shake without stopping.

Although time has not been kind to Taym, his face is still, in a strange way, appealing. Not attractive--interesting. His skin is both sallow and sun-weathered, like a sick man taking sun at the shore, and his dark eyes are shadowed by a heavy brow and framed with crow's feet and dark circles. A few days' growth of beard forever darkens the hollows of his high cheekbones and the ropey length of his neck; he needs a haircut at any given time, although he has shed the low ponytail that he brought with him, a souvenir of the untamed quality the New World yet retains.

His clothes are laid out by a servant who cares more for appearances than Taym does, and he has yet to care enough to properly re-master the art of the cravat, which he finds choking and unpleasant. On the days when he feels cold--which now can come even in the heat of summer--he bundles into thick scarves and overcoats and gloves. Other times he is prone to loosing his buttons and his sleeves to the point of scandalousness, and loosening his cravat until it falls uselessly around his collarbones.

He still has, and occasionally even dons, the stranger accoutrements of the life overseas he found so much more pleasant than the life he has here: pointed-toed boots and a strange, broad-brimmed hat, and a long leather coat that still smells, he imagines, like the dust of the plains.

Taym's Living Arrangements

Taym's various locales can be complicated to keep sorted.

In Palisade:

His family's current estate--recently inherited by his father--is in the countryside outside of Palisade, and Taym makes occasional visits there. One of the many scattered pieces of real estate that have come into the Thompson name over the generations is here: a town house, one of the ones that Taym is supposedly taking care of with the help of a pair of family servants. He has however let it become overrun with dogs, cats, birdcages, and one dirty street urchin by the name of Bird, all of which (but particularly the last) have scandalized the neighbors.

Oldcastle:

The house Taym grew up in is in the outskirts here, currently inhabited by his brother and two sisters. He will occasionally stay here if they can tolerate his presence, but there are a couple of townhouses in downtown Oldcastle where he can also be found at times. Having nests--and really there is little else to call his ratty habitats--in both cities helps tamp down Taym's constant need for a change of scenery and stifle his wanderlust, but if he continues to neglect the properties under his care he is likely to see them removed from him again.

Rejam

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Rejam

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Posted: Tue Mar 26, 2013 10:12 pm

Maple

Although Taym felt remarkably at home in the New World, guiding cattle across vast expanses of land to the markets with several of his fellows and living a simple rough life in the open, the urge that drew him back to Sunderland was, like so many things in his life, a call that he could not ignore.

When he emerged from the Wardwood he held a totem in his hand and a fear in his heart. He'd heard the stories, of course--in Oldcastle, especially, they were so prominent--but he'd never really believed them. Not even when a letter from his daughter excitedly told him of the doe she'd seen in the city, a sight he'd dismissed as a child's imagination.

But now he held the totem, and the relief was quite like getting a fix--more so. And now, perhaps, there would be a time in his future when Taym--trembling, battered, skinny Taym--would sit upon his pale steed and be the white knight he had always known he would be.

It is a hell of a legacy to live up to, and Taym, in the darkest corners of his heart, is not sure that he can manage. Especially not now, when he has seen the mute and terrifying wolf-stones in the trees, with their eyes glowing, seeming almost alive...

Maple is a skittish-seeming, hyper-alert doe. She has expressions of displeasure: a snort, a shake of the head--that she airs often, usually in response to some less-than-desirable emotion Taym's let slip. In the Dreaming, she is a bit prudish, a bit nervous, but--and this is what fails to show in the waking world--desperate to prove herself, and hard as a stone in the face of real danger.

Whisky

Bird has always been in the habit of bringing Taym strays, but Whisky found Taym on his own. The hulking creature has the run of the house, and purrs like a jungle beast. He has is every inch a tomcat: self-possessed, demanding, and regal. He rarely has need to fight, getting by on intimidation alone, but when he does fight he fights grimly and dispatches his foes without mercy. Taym admires him, and lets him sleep in the bed.