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These are models for characters developed for a DnD 5E game that I'm playing in. Because I did not write the character backgrounds for either the halfling or the dragonborn, I won't relate more about them.

As for Roderick...

Roderick’s mother, Eithne, gave birth first to a daughter, Dierdre, when she was just fifteen years old, and was wedded to a local farmboy, Dauíd, some seven years her senior. Their wedding was well-attended, as both families were of middling wealth and quite popular in the village. As the sole heir of her family, Eithne was given, as was tradition, the heirloom bottle that had been passed down from generation to generation since the time of her great-great-great-grandparents.

Despite her husband’s best (and frequent) attempts, she remained barren for the next five years until, shortly before her twentieth nameday, she became pregnant again. She rapidly became exceedingly heavy with child, and fell ill as her weight increased and she became increasingly invalid. Dauíd arranged a nurse and a midwife to care for his young wife, paying for their services by trading his own labor, often working from before sunrise to well after nightfall to make sure Eithne was well looked after.

Eithne finally came to term at around ten months and gave birth to the identical triplets Roderick, Karal, and Jakob, all strong, healthy boys who looked nothing like their mother or her husband. The boys were all dark haired with golden eyes, pale skin, and a birthmark in the shape of a cartographer’s compass on the inside of their right arms.

Enraged by what he saw as his wife’s betrayal, Dauíd abandoned her and left the village to enter into service in the war against Blutgardt, where he was killed in action some years later. In the meantime, Eithne began seeing a young half orc, Bogi. Despite his size and savage appearance, Bogi was an unusually literate and gentle and, although neither he nor Eithne intended it, he got Eithne pregnant once more when she was in her late twenties.

Roderick was playing near his family home with his brothers when he witnessed an older man set upon by a gang of young toughs. The ruffians proceeded to beat the older man and were in the process of robbing him when Roderick found his voice and cried out, drawing their attention. They immediately gave chase, but Roderick, knowing the terrain better, managed to evade them. Finding Deirdre, he told her of the encounter in a breathless babble. His older sister, barely a young woman, herself, took Roderick to their mother and made him recount the story again. From there, Eithne, carrying her youngest child, Caitlyn, in her arms, summoned the headman and recounted the story once more.

Upon finding and treating the older man, they discovered that he was Duke Lovitar, a visiting nobleman from Luxanna. With Roderick’s help, the thugs who had attacked the duke were located, arrested, and imprisoned for the next eight years. Duke Lovitar thanked Roderick for his help and pledged that he would see his debt repaid in time.

When Roderick was twelve years old, he awoke from his first vision, having seen his village overrun by orcs and hobgoblins. He immediately related his vision to his mother and the headman, but they didn’t give his story much credence, believing the boy to be young and likely troubled by indigestion and bad dreams. Having had no luck among the villagers he most trusted to set things right, Roderick hiked the five miles to Duke Lovitar’s estate.

The Duke listened to Roderick’s story and, despite the boy’s youth, decided that if the boy was concerned enough to travel this far without accompaniment, it wouldn’t hurt to take his prophetic visions seriously. He organized a company of soldiers and escorted Roderick back to his village. Sometime during their preparations, a raiding party swept into the village and was in the process of murdering the men and rounding up the women when Lovitar’s soldiers fell upon them. The invaders were routed and hunted down and killed almost entirely, with only a few survivors escaping to the South.

Because of the raid, Bogi found himself increasingly unwelcome in the village and, within a month, was forced to abandon his farm and flee to the portside city of Coldharbor.

The following year, Lovitar advanced Roderick’s name to a travelling elvish wizard, Keleden Dreambrand. He suggested that Roderick’s natural mystical aptitude would make him a particularly apt student. Because of this recommendation, Roderick became Master Kel’s apprentice. He spent most of his time poring over arcane tomes and scholarly texts, but was released from service during planting and harvesting seasons so that he could lend his strength to the village efforts, in return for which, the village provided Master Kel and his student meat and produce.

During his sixteenth year, during the harvest season, Roderick met and befriended Jemmy the Rat, a half-orcish/half-elven boy several years his junior. The boys conceived of a plan to open a bar and tavern in Luxanna named “The Tin Inn” and even developed several drinks of varying (and questionable) quality- both boys were still young and lacked experience in properly mixing and measuring alcohols.

Roderick met Jemmy’s half-sister, Emma, at the harvest festival, although she claimed she was actually Jemmy’s mother, citing her half-elven nature as the reason that she and her putative “son” seemed to be so close in age. Despite really knowing better, Roderick went along with Emma’s story and they saw each other quietly for the next two years.

Just after turning eighteen, in the final harvest season of his apprenticeship, Roderick told Emma that he was about to embark on his journeyman travels and invited her to come with him. She refused, but slept with him at the harvest festival before he left.

Some weeks later, after Roderick had left, Emma discovered that she was, in fact, pregnant. She told her family that Roderick was responsible, and Jemmy, her brother, assumed that Roderick had fled in order to avoid taking responsibility for the child. Roderick still does not know that Emma got pregnant or that she had a child.

Some years later, stopping at a roadside tavern on his way to a remote library, Roderick spoke with a man who informed him of Queen Lepnar the Inexorable’s call for adventurers. Deciding that he had gained as much as he could from study divorced from experience, Roderick wrote a letter to Master Kel informing him of his intentions, then set out to answer the call.

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