Basic Backstory / Military Experiences / Personality / Religion

About

	Hide of Beast
	‎ ‎ ‎
	Gender: Agender (no preferred pronouns but defaults to "they/them")
	Race: Tabaxi
	Class: Fighter
	Appearance: 5'0", yellow eyes, very thick and dense gray fur.
	‎ ‎ ‎

Basic Backstory 🐾

Hide was born in an isolated mountain Clan located in the mountains near Othye. This Clan is called Bright Peaks, with three nearby Clans named Radiant Slopes, Whispering Dens and Tall Pines that it shares its location with. While growing up Hide loved to adventure; they would disappear in the morning, sometimes dragging along a sibling or two, and come home in the evening with scraped knees and a fun story to tell. Their siblings came back in varying levels of disrepair.

A large part of life within these Clans were yearly journeys out of the mountains and along various routes through different towns and cities in a merchant caravan (often just referred to as the Caravan by the Tabaxi of these Clans). These journeys were spent selling goods and the Caravan would return with tons of acquired goods, stories, etc. (More detail in sections below…)

Growing up, they became entranced by tales of battle and glory they read in foreign books brought back to the Clans. Your typical “heroic war hero” stuff. They quickly gained an interest in joining the military, but due to the remoteness of where they lived, it wasn’t easy to do so. The Clans preferred a life of neutrality, unrelated to the goings-ons of the rest of society, and Hide’s interests in getting involved in such things were seen as strange. For a time Hide tried to find work in a job more “suitable” for themself, and as a young adult worked for a time as a merchant along with the rest of their family, but they were never happy. Eventually, they made the decision to leave the Clans behind.

For a time they wandered throughout Othye, finding work where they could. They found work as a mercenary, taking part in minor military conflicts (think stuff between individual cities), hoping to one day be able to work their way upward to become a royal knight. They still had an idealized concept of knighthood. However, years of experience in battle eventually soured that belief. Actual, real combat was bloody and ruthless. They found little of the honour and glory that they had read of. They also found themself feeling very out of touch with the other mercenaries in their band, who were far from honourable. Hide found themself feeling ashamed of their previous idealism, and eventually left the band altogether and the area of Othye altogether.

Uncertain what to do with themself, they continued wandering the land, finding work where they could. Mostly basic mercenary stuff still, but they tried to avoid major military battles and the like and mostly found themself offering bodyguard work or escorting goods. Sometimes they delved back into work unrelated to combat, doing basic labour and things like that.

Just before the campaign begins, they find work acting as a bodyguard for Priestess of the Moonlit Shard Osuna.

Terrible Experiences in the Military - EXPANDED!! 🐾

Hide’s final military experience was a battle where they were hired as a mercenary by a noble to take part in a war between two cities (which cities? It’s a mystery). As they fought, a group of soldiers they had fallen in with cornered a small collection of enemy soldiers (around 7) with their backs up against a river. The enemy group then surrendered. Despite this, a boisterous and confident soldier, a half-elf named Ricalath, pushed everyone forward. Hide, startled, attempted to stop them, but eventually felt that all they could do was watch as the enemy soldiers were driven into the river, where they drowned. Hide took in the horrible scene, watched as the soldiers on their side jeered and laughed, and just stood there, completely unsure what to do.

That night, lying unsleeping in their tent, Hide was overcome by a mix of intense guilt, grief and confusion. They had already been struggling with the experience of fighting – the blood and horror, the death, the unfairness of it all, how meaningless it all felt – but the fact that they had just stood there and watched all that had happened made it all feel so hopelessly pointless. That night they snuck out of their tent and, breaking their contract, made as much distance as they could between them and the battlefield. They ended up leaving Othye entirely, worried about being tracked down by the noble that hired them – whose money they had taken with them, another guilty moment for them, but money they felt they required to get out of there – or by friends or family members of the deceased.

One of the largest doses of reality for Hide after leaving the Clans was that as they started taking part in these battles, things became a lot more complicated than just honourable good guys vs evil bad guys. Most of the battles they fought were for causes they truly did not care about, and were mostly just means to an end. Hide had wanted to gain renown and to someday join a higher ranking military, but the selfishness of this motivation soon made itself very apparent. They were killing people that they didn’t know as a pawn for people they didn’t care about to further their own career – all to kill even more people later. The guilt and anxiety of it all wore right through them. By the time the incident with the river happened, Hide felt like they no longer even knew themself anymore. They couldn’t stand that they had let themself get this low.

At the same time, they couldn’t bring themself to go back to the Clans, even as homesickness and loneliness grew and grew. The reasons for this are two-fold; on one hand, the idea that all of this time all the death and killing had been for nothing was unimaginable to Hide. Continuing to find work using their fighting skills led to a lot of miserable experiences, but at least those skills were being used for something. At least they could be used in some way for protection. The other thing that held them back from going back to their family was an intense feeling of shame. It wasn’t like in the Clans there wasn’t any death, or even any murder – although murder was extremely rare – but Hide couldn’t face the fact that they had left their family behind, abandoned the people who had raised and taken care of them, just to go off and kill people. And now that Hide had experience in killing, they felt like they were different from their family in ways that made it very difficult for them to imagine going back now.

And even if they went back – what would they go back to? Hide hadn’t felt fulfilled with society in the Clans even before they left; to go back now, with the guilt and alienation they felt, wasn’t an option.

And so they wander the land… looking for purpose… sadly…

Personality 🐾

Despite leaving most of the idealism behind them, Hide can’t seem to free themself from it completely. They’ve become quite jaded over the past six years, but they still can’t help themself from trying to do the right thing. They like helping people when they can. Hides tries to be objective when it comes to who to trust and how much to trust them, but they’re naturally trusting anyway and even when uncertain towards the nature of someone, tend to lean towards trying to see the good in them. This is a source of internal conflict for them. Hide truly wants to see the good in people -- and if people truly aren’t good, they at least want to do good themself. That said, Hide’s good will only goes so far, and once they feel truly betrayed it’s very difficult for them to come back from that. Subconsciously, there’s almost a catharsis to Hide in realizing that someone has fully lost their trust since it gives them an “excuse” to not be caring and not to extend themself for them anymore. Hide can become pretty catty (pun unintended) and cold once Hide feels like their good will has been betrayed, which is an aspect of their personality they have some difficulty with since it contradicts their idealized view of themself as some paragon of honour and as a shield to the weak and all that.

For the record, from my perspective, I think Hide would have a healthier relationship with everyone if they didn’t try to overextend themself to try and meet those ridiculous standards – they’ll try to be an asset to everyone they meet, inevitably run into conflict, continue to try and show good will, hit a breaking point, and then all the stress put into being a “good person” then ricochets back around into being angry, cold, and for lack of a better word, “mean”. This is an aspect of their personality that grows more and more intense as time goes on. Even though Hide knows that the whole idea of being an “honourable knight” has been a lie all along, they still hold onto this idea of being able to represent these positive aspects of a knight as a way to try and make everything that’s happened since they left home mean something.

Hide tries to avoid unnecessary killing. Experience in military conflicts has left them with some terrible memories, and if possible they would rather not end more lives than they already have. That said, they’re not a pacifist — if killing has to happen, it’ll happen. They hate it, though.

Hide grew up in a Clan that specialized in making clothing and as such has a lot of skills around sewing, which is handy because clothes made for Manul Tabaxi tend to be scarce outside of mountainous settings. They make a lot of their clothes either themself or by tailoring clothes made for races that are similar in stature. They enjoy sewing and find the process soothing, and when in cities or towns will often make it a point to check out clothing shops and the like.

Hide and Religion 🐾

Religion isn’t really a Thing in the Clans. There is a casual following of the Cat Lord, but it’s really not taken seriously at all and to call the Cat Lord their “god” is not accurate to how the Tabaxi consider the relationship. Since there aren’t really any “rules” to their beliefs, how each Tabaxi handles their connection to the Cat Lord differs, but for Hide he’s less of a God and more of a figure of historic importance with a lot of power. As far as Hide is concerned, that is basically how you could describe any God; just a being with more power than you have. Not really a predator and prey relationship, but something more similar to the relationship between a sentient creature and an ant. Hide doesn’t deny the hierarchy of these beings and also understands why people would worship them, but also kind of subconsciously views worship towards the Gods as being somewhat selfish in nature. If Hide ever met the Cat Lord, they would, if anything, want to be considered a friend, not an underling. And friends don’t act sycophantic with the specific interest in gaining power from the people they’re friends with. (This is a complete under-simplification of how religion works and the nature of religious people, but Hide REALLY doesn’t give it enough thought to have really worked through the logistics of it all.)

Hide mostly tries not to think about the details of it – like magic, it all seems kind of outside of Hide’s relevance. They absolutely have not discussed any of this with Osuna and don't really plan to – when Osuna speaks of Selune, Hide just kind of nods along without any real personal interest. They understand that Osuna was basically created to serve Selune and so understands that for her there really is no other choice but to be religious.