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PLAYER
Player name: dani
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comatoseroses
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bythehand
CHARACTER
Character Name: Merle Highchurch
Character Age: unspecified, but definitely on the older side. like the equivalent of 50-something for Dwarves? definitely over 100.
Canon: The Adventure Zone
Canon Point: Episode 69: fresh from beating the Hunger!
History: Merle's wiki page is here, though that only gets into pre-canon stuff (here there be spoilers ftr)! As one of the main 3 protagonists, though, he's pretty involved in the entirety of canon, which has a directory guide page here! There are also some transcripts recorded here, which is pretty handy for an audio-format canon.
Personality: First and foremost, Merle is a cleric: a class traditionally designed to heal party members and cast buffs during battle to help them out. Or in other words, a traditionally supporting role. One might expect to meet a cleric and find a man of strong faith and compassion, dedicated to bettering the lives of others and to keeping them in good health. At the end of the day, though, Merle's... he's not exactly a good cleric. He almost never casts spells to toughen up Magnus or Taako, and the vast majority of the time, he'll be in a battle casting strictly offensive spells at enemies, assuming that the spells even work properly the first time around. Oh, he cares a great deal about the people that he's grown close with, and he'll do his part to watch their backs, but he seems to sort of forget his primary intended role most of the time. Merle's really intimately aware that he's not so great at the supportive and healing aspect of being a cleric, actually. From the outside it would appear that he simply doesn't care if he's nailing it or not. He's here, he's casting spells, he's trying to have a little fun, and that would seem to be the long and short of it.
One of the words most frequently (and accurately) used to describe Merle is "irreverent." Whether he's talking to a deity or king, losing a body part, or in a situation that could only be described as grave, it's incredibly rare that he seems to be taking things seriously in the slightest. When asked about his casual attitude, all he essentially has to say is that no one's getting out of this life alive-- so why not enjoy the ride without getting hung up on a lot of things? This is a philosophy that contributes to a lot of Merle's actions and reactions in canon, a core staple of his personality. He's a man who tends to try to let things roll off of his back, first and foremost, or at the very least a man who goes to a lot of trouble to avoid thinking about things that would otherwise be pretty upsetting. Merle does a lot of joking that isn't super well-timed, says almost anything that pops into his head, and openly initiates discussions with Taako and Magnus about whether or not they should just go ahead and kill like, ninety percent of the other characters that they meet on their adventures. He's got no problems with lawbreaking, violence, murder, looting, lying, regifting stuff that someone just gave him a few minutes earlier... the whole kit and caboodle. Taking things seriously and discussing them seriously with others isn't something that he does often, across the board.
For as much as he's committed to going with the flow, his irreverence also functions as a bit of a defense mechanism. Beneath the surface, Merle is a person who has a lot of insecurity. He's especially insecure about his usefulness to his current party/employer, and about his competence overall. In fact, these insecurities run so deeply that he can be standoffish, even outright mean, to new people on the scene who seem to know what they're doing. Merle feels threatened by their presence and worries that he'll wind up replaced, or maybe just dumped. This applies to characters of all walks of life in the series, including a literal child. Let no one say that Merle Highchurch is a soul above things like pettiness or jealousy. (With his memories from the Stolen Century back, this tendency has eased up a little bit!) He also walked out on his wife and two children without a word a few years back. The reasons why haven't been specified in huge detail-- apart from the fact that he and his wife weren't in love, and the implication that they didn't make for a compatible couple in general.
Even this is something that he feels guilt over in current canon. He's making no efforts to get back together with his ex-wife, but he's gone out of his way to get back in touch with her, and especially to try to reconnect with the kids. These insecurities and old shame are things that Merle plays incredibly close to the chest. Taako and Magnus, arguably the two best friends he's ever had, weren't aware that Merle even had kids until very late in canon. That was a deliberate choice on Merle's part: only one other person in canon seemed to find out about them, and Merle made him promise not to tell anybody about it under the threat of extreme violence. That was Angus, the literal child that Merle is jealous of and insecure about. Seriously, let no one ever ever say that Merle has any real chill when it matters.
Spirituality is another huge core aspect of Merle that merits discussing. According to his own personal recounting, he's been in sort of a... habitual worship of the deity, Pan, since the day he was born. He was raised in a big ol' Pan-worshiping, nature-worshiping commune of sorts, something that gave him a very sheltered and focused childhood. From his side, it almost feels like becoming a cleric in service of Pan was more an extension of old habits and duties than it was a decision made based on the strength of his own faith. He believes in Pan, yes, but there weren't exactly a lot of other options to consider growing up, either. Still, even coming out of the place that it did, he struck out into the world on that path determined to spread faith and hope and goodwill back in his youth. The commune he was raised in felt too insular for his tastes: he felt that the people there weren't at all concerned with bettering mankind. In his life, he's used his faith and his informal personality to give people hope and inspiration when they most needed it. He's reached out to others to support and encourage them, he's calmly faced things so much bigger and more terrifying than anything else he'd ever learned about. For a very long stretch of his life, Merle Highchurch was a man of very genuine faith and unreserved kindness. As he put it himself: someone who, no matter how bad or crummy things got, always opts to choose joy over despair.
Merle is a lot more worn-down these days. His irreverence veers towards the ridiculous, his kindness and gentleness have been tamped down very firmly, and his faith was severely shaken up until really recently at his canonpoint. But (especially with his Stolen Century memories in place) the old Merle is still rattling around in there somewhere. He's still capable of kindness and understanding and surprisingly profound opinions! He'd just also usually rather do something more fun and stupid than provide such services.
So all that considered, another relatively simple way to describe Merle's philosophy and personality is "washed-up, kinda tired, chaotic neutral hippie". He believes in a life approach where someone works to embody the things that they want to be and to do, without trying to make a bunch of rules and restrictions to push onto other people. Without trying to make a bunch of rules and restrictions for themselves. Merle is a dwarf with absolutely no qualms about violence, theft, looting, or murder. He's got a terrible memory, too: a lot of the time he can't even remember the right names for people he's regularly associated with for years, let alone remember something he bought two days ago that could potentially be super useful.
He has the laid-back, informal air of someone who probably used to be able to help people feel at ease in his presence without a lot of fuss. But as he is now, he's mostly just going with the flow and working not to take anything seriously if he can help it. Even if he can't help it, he'll keep a lot of his more serious personal struggles to himself rather than share with the class. He's insecure and petty, about as lapsed as a cleric can get, and has literally used a spell slot to charm sentient vines in a crunch. He's made a lot of mistakes in the past, most of which he feels guilty about and has tried to actively make up for. Merle can appear very world-weary and cynical on a bad day. But at the same time, earlier in canon when Magnus was pushed out of his own body and Taako was soul-spelunking to save him, Merle turned away from two volatile enemies and reached into the astral plane to pull them both back. He didn't have any definitive proof that that's where they'd be, or that Taako would have a hold of Magnus, or anything really. All he had to go on was faith that they would be there to catch.
Throw in the nature-oriented magic domain and deity that he chose to serve, and you've pretty much got a morally-dubious beach dwarf grandpa on a plate.
Inventory: Merle's current items in canon are all detailed here, which is a list I am 100% willing to cut down on as needed, because 99% of the time he doesn't even remember he has most of this.
Abilities: This may get long and if it does, that's my bad, I'm sorry.
Merle is a level 12 D&D cleric, who took to a specialty in nature and chose to serve the deity Pan! Which is basically to say that he's normally the magic sort of guy with a veritable truckload of spells and cantrips to his name. He operates on the same rules as any other cleric from this system: with a limited amount of spells he's able to cast per day, and a limited number of cantrips he's able to have prepared to use per day (though cantrips can be used at will without a limited number of slots every day). Merle is able to prepare 5 cantrips to use at will!
At level 12, Merle is also able to cast: 4 first-level spells, 3 second-level spells, 3 third-level spells, 3 fourth-level spells, 2 fifth-level spells, and 1 sixth-level spell, per day (the slots can be recharged with a long rest as well, but they don't get those... super often in canon).
A list of spells he's used in canon is located here, with some basic explanations! A lot of the spells have a generally short duration, especially the most powerful ones. And obviously the ones that involve summoning beings from other planes or communicating with beings/deities in other planes would be moot on any day in-game.
Aside from magic, Merle is relatively experienced with battle by this point! He's got a warhammer and knows how to put it to use if he needs to and all that jazz. Merle isn't the fastest, strongest, most agile, or most tactically minded guy, but he does the best he can.
As a Dwarf, Merle also comes pre-packaged with a resistance to poison. He used to have night vision, but recently lost that ability.
Flaws: If there's anything Merle is for sure, it's flawed. He's sort of a "man of the cloth," so to speak, and supposedly meant to take up a neutral good alignment, but his actions don't tend to match up with those labels. He's extremely impulsive and can be short-tempered, not to mention capable of holding one heck of a long grudge. While he mostly defaults to a casual and irreverent method of interacting with the world, Merle has absolutely no problems with breaking laws, stealing from people, looting dead people, lying, threatening violence, or straight up being violent in a fight. He's quite possibly the member of the main trio who most often asks the other two if they should kill whatever new NPC they've just met, if he finds the NPC suspicious or especially annoying or something. He's been known to tease/mock people, and he can be extremely money-motivated. He also kinda ran out on his wife, stepdaughter, and son a while back, and goodness knows he's definitely not feeling great about that choice.
Player name: dani
Contact: [t.fantasyfan@gmail.com] |
Characters currently in-game: finn | star wars (crau) |
bythehandCHARACTER
Character Name: Merle Highchurch
Character Age: unspecified, but definitely on the older side. like the equivalent of 50-something for Dwarves? definitely over 100.
Canon: The Adventure Zone
Canon Point: Episode 69: fresh from beating the Hunger!
History: Merle's wiki page is here, though that only gets into pre-canon stuff (here there be spoilers ftr)! As one of the main 3 protagonists, though, he's pretty involved in the entirety of canon, which has a directory guide page here! There are also some transcripts recorded here, which is pretty handy for an audio-format canon.
Personality: First and foremost, Merle is a cleric: a class traditionally designed to heal party members and cast buffs during battle to help them out. Or in other words, a traditionally supporting role. One might expect to meet a cleric and find a man of strong faith and compassion, dedicated to bettering the lives of others and to keeping them in good health. At the end of the day, though, Merle's... he's not exactly a good cleric. He almost never casts spells to toughen up Magnus or Taako, and the vast majority of the time, he'll be in a battle casting strictly offensive spells at enemies, assuming that the spells even work properly the first time around. Oh, he cares a great deal about the people that he's grown close with, and he'll do his part to watch their backs, but he seems to sort of forget his primary intended role most of the time. Merle's really intimately aware that he's not so great at the supportive and healing aspect of being a cleric, actually. From the outside it would appear that he simply doesn't care if he's nailing it or not. He's here, he's casting spells, he's trying to have a little fun, and that would seem to be the long and short of it.
One of the words most frequently (and accurately) used to describe Merle is "irreverent." Whether he's talking to a deity or king, losing a body part, or in a situation that could only be described as grave, it's incredibly rare that he seems to be taking things seriously in the slightest. When asked about his casual attitude, all he essentially has to say is that no one's getting out of this life alive-- so why not enjoy the ride without getting hung up on a lot of things? This is a philosophy that contributes to a lot of Merle's actions and reactions in canon, a core staple of his personality. He's a man who tends to try to let things roll off of his back, first and foremost, or at the very least a man who goes to a lot of trouble to avoid thinking about things that would otherwise be pretty upsetting. Merle does a lot of joking that isn't super well-timed, says almost anything that pops into his head, and openly initiates discussions with Taako and Magnus about whether or not they should just go ahead and kill like, ninety percent of the other characters that they meet on their adventures. He's got no problems with lawbreaking, violence, murder, looting, lying, regifting stuff that someone just gave him a few minutes earlier... the whole kit and caboodle. Taking things seriously and discussing them seriously with others isn't something that he does often, across the board.
For as much as he's committed to going with the flow, his irreverence also functions as a bit of a defense mechanism. Beneath the surface, Merle is a person who has a lot of insecurity. He's especially insecure about his usefulness to his current party/employer, and about his competence overall. In fact, these insecurities run so deeply that he can be standoffish, even outright mean, to new people on the scene who seem to know what they're doing. Merle feels threatened by their presence and worries that he'll wind up replaced, or maybe just dumped. This applies to characters of all walks of life in the series, including a literal child. Let no one say that Merle Highchurch is a soul above things like pettiness or jealousy. (With his memories from the Stolen Century back, this tendency has eased up a little bit!) He also walked out on his wife and two children without a word a few years back. The reasons why haven't been specified in huge detail-- apart from the fact that he and his wife weren't in love, and the implication that they didn't make for a compatible couple in general.
Even this is something that he feels guilt over in current canon. He's making no efforts to get back together with his ex-wife, but he's gone out of his way to get back in touch with her, and especially to try to reconnect with the kids. These insecurities and old shame are things that Merle plays incredibly close to the chest. Taako and Magnus, arguably the two best friends he's ever had, weren't aware that Merle even had kids until very late in canon. That was a deliberate choice on Merle's part: only one other person in canon seemed to find out about them, and Merle made him promise not to tell anybody about it under the threat of extreme violence. That was Angus, the literal child that Merle is jealous of and insecure about. Seriously, let no one ever ever say that Merle has any real chill when it matters.
Spirituality is another huge core aspect of Merle that merits discussing. According to his own personal recounting, he's been in sort of a... habitual worship of the deity, Pan, since the day he was born. He was raised in a big ol' Pan-worshiping, nature-worshiping commune of sorts, something that gave him a very sheltered and focused childhood. From his side, it almost feels like becoming a cleric in service of Pan was more an extension of old habits and duties than it was a decision made based on the strength of his own faith. He believes in Pan, yes, but there weren't exactly a lot of other options to consider growing up, either. Still, even coming out of the place that it did, he struck out into the world on that path determined to spread faith and hope and goodwill back in his youth. The commune he was raised in felt too insular for his tastes: he felt that the people there weren't at all concerned with bettering mankind. In his life, he's used his faith and his informal personality to give people hope and inspiration when they most needed it. He's reached out to others to support and encourage them, he's calmly faced things so much bigger and more terrifying than anything else he'd ever learned about. For a very long stretch of his life, Merle Highchurch was a man of very genuine faith and unreserved kindness. As he put it himself: someone who, no matter how bad or crummy things got, always opts to choose joy over despair.
Merle is a lot more worn-down these days. His irreverence veers towards the ridiculous, his kindness and gentleness have been tamped down very firmly, and his faith was severely shaken up until really recently at his canonpoint. But (especially with his Stolen Century memories in place) the old Merle is still rattling around in there somewhere. He's still capable of kindness and understanding and surprisingly profound opinions! He'd just also usually rather do something more fun and stupid than provide such services.
So all that considered, another relatively simple way to describe Merle's philosophy and personality is "washed-up, kinda tired, chaotic neutral hippie". He believes in a life approach where someone works to embody the things that they want to be and to do, without trying to make a bunch of rules and restrictions to push onto other people. Without trying to make a bunch of rules and restrictions for themselves. Merle is a dwarf with absolutely no qualms about violence, theft, looting, or murder. He's got a terrible memory, too: a lot of the time he can't even remember the right names for people he's regularly associated with for years, let alone remember something he bought two days ago that could potentially be super useful.
He has the laid-back, informal air of someone who probably used to be able to help people feel at ease in his presence without a lot of fuss. But as he is now, he's mostly just going with the flow and working not to take anything seriously if he can help it. Even if he can't help it, he'll keep a lot of his more serious personal struggles to himself rather than share with the class. He's insecure and petty, about as lapsed as a cleric can get, and has literally used a spell slot to charm sentient vines in a crunch. He's made a lot of mistakes in the past, most of which he feels guilty about and has tried to actively make up for. Merle can appear very world-weary and cynical on a bad day. But at the same time, earlier in canon when Magnus was pushed out of his own body and Taako was soul-spelunking to save him, Merle turned away from two volatile enemies and reached into the astral plane to pull them both back. He didn't have any definitive proof that that's where they'd be, or that Taako would have a hold of Magnus, or anything really. All he had to go on was faith that they would be there to catch.
Throw in the nature-oriented magic domain and deity that he chose to serve, and you've pretty much got a morally-dubious beach dwarf grandpa on a plate.
Inventory: Merle's current items in canon are all detailed here, which is a list I am 100% willing to cut down on as needed, because 99% of the time he doesn't even remember he has most of this.
Abilities: This may get long and if it does, that's my bad, I'm sorry.
Merle is a level 12 D&D cleric, who took to a specialty in nature and chose to serve the deity Pan! Which is basically to say that he's normally the magic sort of guy with a veritable truckload of spells and cantrips to his name. He operates on the same rules as any other cleric from this system: with a limited amount of spells he's able to cast per day, and a limited number of cantrips he's able to have prepared to use per day (though cantrips can be used at will without a limited number of slots every day). Merle is able to prepare 5 cantrips to use at will!
At level 12, Merle is also able to cast: 4 first-level spells, 3 second-level spells, 3 third-level spells, 3 fourth-level spells, 2 fifth-level spells, and 1 sixth-level spell, per day (the slots can be recharged with a long rest as well, but they don't get those... super often in canon).
A list of spells he's used in canon is located here, with some basic explanations! A lot of the spells have a generally short duration, especially the most powerful ones. And obviously the ones that involve summoning beings from other planes or communicating with beings/deities in other planes would be moot on any day in-game.
Aside from magic, Merle is relatively experienced with battle by this point! He's got a warhammer and knows how to put it to use if he needs to and all that jazz. Merle isn't the fastest, strongest, most agile, or most tactically minded guy, but he does the best he can.
As a Dwarf, Merle also comes pre-packaged with a resistance to poison. He used to have night vision, but recently lost that ability.
Flaws: If there's anything Merle is for sure, it's flawed. He's sort of a "man of the cloth," so to speak, and supposedly meant to take up a neutral good alignment, but his actions don't tend to match up with those labels. He's extremely impulsive and can be short-tempered, not to mention capable of holding one heck of a long grudge. While he mostly defaults to a casual and irreverent method of interacting with the world, Merle has absolutely no problems with breaking laws, stealing from people, looting dead people, lying, threatening violence, or straight up being violent in a fight. He's quite possibly the member of the main trio who most often asks the other two if they should kill whatever new NPC they've just met, if he finds the NPC suspicious or especially annoying or something. He's been known to tease/mock people, and he can be extremely money-motivated. He also kinda ran out on his wife, stepdaughter, and son a while back, and goodness knows he's definitely not feeling great about that choice.