#Aaren D’Cannith

[eaudecrow]

Tain Gala Drip ✨

[couchtaro]

!!

from the OC introduction ask! (Sorry followers this is long but its worth it i prommy there are even pictures)

This is my little dötter Basil, a D&D PC of mine! She only saw 3 sessions of play 3 years ago but she is getting a second chance at life because @eaudecrow picked her up from the shelter and gave her a lovely yard to run around in.

Basil is a little tiefling girl whose large family runs an apothecary and surgery in a tiny little backwater town called Tarnygee. Basil’s brilliant mother developed a strain of magical herb that when processed can cast (without spell slots or prior magical ability) Lesser Restoration, thereby curing any disease instantly.

While traveling to heal a local noble, Basil’s mother disappeared and a bigshot inventor came forward claiming her panacea as his own. When Basil’s oldest brother tried to confront him and wound up dead, it became clear there was nothing they could do to get justice on their own. So, fueled by grief and rage, Basil took a job as a part-time warlock at Seelie Corp., a fey megacorporation with mysterious motives. In return for her working as their errand girl, Basil gets to be distinctly less killable and more tricky as she tries to find the inventor and extort him for the good of her destitute family.

Things aren’t working as well as she would like though: due to being basically a middle schooler, she’s got to keep her work under 40 hours a week and gets limited pact benefits. Her supervisor (a weasely pseudodragon named Keith) is dismissive and unhelpful, and her small town upbringing has kept her deeply unprepared for taking on the wild world of men and magic on her own.

Luckily, she’s found some unexpected help! While submitting her weekly report through the postal system of Fey portals, Basil’s paperwork went awry and found its way to another world: specifically a bunker in a war torn parallel version of the material plane. This bunker is the home and prison of Crow’s Aaren D’Cannith.

As a youth, Aaren invented a mechanical race called warforged, but seeing their potential for war and servitude, his family seized his blueprints (AND HIS ROBOT DAUGHTER) and disowned him as soon as he came of age. Aaren spent a few years as a vigilante trying to free his creations, but was trapped in his secret library when a magical-chemical fallout steeped his homeland in a volatile and toxic arcane gas. There he stayed, trapped and utterly alone, for three years.

Until Basil.

The two are corresponding via letters that we actually write each other, and it’s SUCH a fun and interesting method of storytelling to me aah. Despite being little more than strangers separated by a barely permeable divide, and despite Aaren struggling to believe Basil was even real at first, the two have formed a very sweet bond that makes me so unwell, you would not believe.

Both are grieved by how much of their own misfortune they see in the other. Through Basil’s letters, Aaren can tell that she is young, inexperienced, lacking support, and actively in danger as she allows herself to be used in exchange for power. He sees her situation with the eyes of someone who has been there and thus liberally (almost desperately) shares what little he can: his own arcane study materials, what he’s learned about survival and avoiding arrest, and, not the least, assurance that despite her perceptions, Basil is clever and kind and she matters.

Basil in turn is Aaren’s one connection to other people, and to a world that, while imperfect, is not ravaged and desolate like his own. After years of incarceration and tedium, he now has the exhilarating privilege of small talk and an audience for the terrible, terrible jokes he’s cooked up in isolation. He has a way to not only talk to someone outside of himself, but to help. He has something productive to do, and a reason to do it, not to mention the interesting puzzles of how their letters are finding each other and what else might be going on with Basil’s work. Basil is truly grateful to him, and returns his kindness in what little ways she can—most recently by interdimensionally mailing him his first real food in years.

Currently, Aaren and Basil are working to craft a pair of sending stones for daily artificer/botany jokes and (real reason) so that Basil can have some sort of emergency contact if she needs urgent advice. 25 words once per day is frightfully little if she ever runs into real trouble, and the limitations of their contact are never more haunting than when one considers how little Aaren could truly do in an emergency. I’m sure this frustration is only worsened by the unfortunate atrophy of his knowledge and skill caused by fog exposure. But he’s a clever man, and Crow had some ideas that seized my brain for weeks. Goodness.

Anyway in conclusion

Thanks for coming to my TedTalk

[coffeecakecafe]

art fight attack for @eaudecrow! Aaren is great and u are great for talking me into doing art fight :)

[eaudecrow]

Touch is a lot after four years of solitary confinement

(Basil belongs to @couchtaro 💖)

[eaudecrow]

Hashin’ out what Aaren might’ve looked like when he was a high level artificer vigilante, pre-memory loss. This first pass is pretty much just him in Lutka’s clothes but they sure do wear them differently

[eaudecrow]

NERD FLIRT ALERT

[eaudecrow]

I CAN POST ALL MY AAREN ART NOW

*smacks him on the head* This man can hold so much social anxiety in him

[eaudecrow]

Can i ask more about your artificer boy??

YOU ABSOLUTELY CAN hold on I’ll dump his ENTIRE backstory under the cut

OKAY SO

Welcome to Eberron, a world in which magic not only exists, but is incredibly common! It’s the 800s and the country of Cyre is embroiled in a bloody war. A brilliant man by the name of Merrick D’Cannith, of House Cannith (famous for their arcane inventions), is trying to create an automaton soldier. He succeeds—metal men are made that do not sleep, breathe, or rest. But they’re lacking the spark of true life—they only follow orders, they do not think for themselves.

Enter his son, Aaren D’Cannith. At the age of 15 this young man is a prodigy and a dreamer, taking after his father with his gift for clockwork creations. Merrick shows him the automaton and Aaren becomes obsessed with finding the key to tethering new souls to these bodies. A couple of years of intense work later, he does it—he creates “Stava,” a childlike robot assistant that he loves like his own.

Unfortunately, their House sees this new creature and only sees its potential for war. They seize Aaren’s blueprints and start mass manufacturing newly dubbed “warforged,” which are exported across continent and wreak bloody havoc as platoons. Aaren is outraged at this. In his eyes, his newly created race—his CHILDREN—is being enslaved for horrific means, and he fights against his House tooth and nail. They… do not appreciate this. The moment he turns 18, he is disowned and banished. He vanishes off the face off the Earth on that day. No investigation nor divination magic can find him, and the world is content to move on with the name “Aaren D’Cannith” known simply as the bloodthirsty warmonger that created monsters.

FAST FORWARD 7 YEARS: The reason no one could find him was because Aaren had built a magic-proofed underground bunker/library, thanks to his newly developed paranoia. (Getting thrown out of your family for defending your kids will do that.) He’s been spending his time trying to free the warforged from their chains and the war that had been fought for much too long. That is, until what’s essentially an arcane nuke gets dropped on the country of Cyre in an event called The Mourning, wiping out or corrupting all life on the surface. Aaren was barely able to duck into his bunker, breathing enough toxic gas to atrophy his arcane knowledge but not to kill him. In an instant, his home is decimated—the surface teems with hostile living spells, toxic fog, and the shells of the creatures that got caught in it. All except the warforged were affected, and the war comes to an abrupt end through catastrophic loss of life.

Meanwhile, Aaren is now trapped in his bunker—he’s too weak from fog poisoning to get himself out, and it screwed with his memories so even his more advanced works no longer make sense to him. If he doesn’t come up with a way to get a scout out, he’ll go crazy from isolation. Luckily (or unluckily) the Lord of Blades, a gargantuan warforged that went rogue and wished to wipe out all organic life, comes across him and agrees to provide Aaren the materials to build an automaton shell his soul can inhabit—a new warforged body. In return, Aaren owes the Lord a debt. And so, Lutka is born—Aaren can astral project his soul into Lutka, and he is able to venture outside of the bombed out remains of Cyre safely, though his original body remains in his bunker.

And that is how the party found him—Lutka, far from Cyre, a strange warforged not built for war with stranger mannerisms like whistling and taking unneeded breaths. With the war over and a treaty hastily signed, warforged were free to do as they wished. Aaren was now trying to regain his lost skills, discover the source of the disaster that struck his country, find out how much of his family survived, and get his own body free from the bunker tomb it was imprisoned in. Later, once his party heads into Cyre again for side quest reasons, the Lord of Blades comes across them and nearly kills them—Lutka barely managed to stop him by claiming they were needed for research, and that he’d work on “putting the power of the Creation Forges in warforged’s hands” within a year. The Creation Forges are (now-defunct) machines originally used to mass manufacture the warforged platoons. The Lord of Blades agreed to this in exchange for their lives, probably thinking he’d get his own warforged army in the future. In reality, Aaren’s going to give warforged the miracle of childbirth :)

ALSO the Lord kinda threatened to “drag Aaren out of that tin can of his” if he didn’t deliver in time, which lit a fire under his butt to get the fuck out. Just recently Lutka found a way to teleport Aaren out of the bunker, after 4 long years of not tasting good food or smelling fresh air or seeing the sun with his own eyes. In Eberron there is an underground casino that allows you to bet anything for anything else—Lutka was able to bet 1/3 his strength for the money to gain access to teleportation circles at a nearby guild of wizards, and another 1/3 in return for the ability to cast “teleportation circle” once. He gathered the party members he trusted the most to meet him, and he’s now sequestered in the Wizard’s Guild instead as he continues adventuring as Lutka!

But yeah the half of the party that Aaren told his secret to were COMPLETELY blindsided, it was great. I’d been dropping hints that something was up for MONTHS, such as the aforementioned human-ish mannerisms. Lutka also “shuts down” periodically to “look things up” that he doesn’t know, which is in reality Aaren returning to his body for a quick library reference. I’ve also dropped slip of the tongue instances such as “this body” and he never refers to the warforged race as “us” or “we.” No one’s guessed the truth, but the ones who were let in on the secret had a huge “you absolute motherfucker THAT’S WHAT YOU WERE DOING” moment at me haha

[eaudecrow]

So Lutka revealed who he actually is in our Eberron campaign, and the party members he let in on the secret reacted… about as well as you’d expect. Have a fake screenshot of the moment!

[eaudecrow]

Lutka died at level 1 by getting thrown out of a moving train. I would’ve been sad if it wasn’t so funny

[eaudecrow]

Lutka had a hell of a time readjusting to Genuine Social Interactions but it’s been good for him

[eaudecrow]

@lesserideafountain raises an excellent point, so I went with f

May I introduce Lutka, a special stained-glass warforged created for purposes as mysterious as his fascination with other warforged!

[eaudecrow]

💋 for lutka?

💋 How affectionate are they with their friends? Their family? Their romantic partner(s) (if they have any)? Are they more physical or emotional when it comes to displaying their affection? Why?

Lutka’s affection, both platonic and romantic, comes in the form of acts of service and gifts, usually. He’ll try to pay for things you need, stop at no costs to “fix you” if you’re sick/hurt, and hand-make gifts that you might’ve expressed interest in before. He’s not one to initiate physical contact since he’s gone so long without it, but it’s very welcome.

As for romantic partners: this man is a flustered MESS. Once again very hesitant to initiate physical contact but it’s very easy to work him up haha. He’s very open with his feelings though, even if through unintentional rambling, so he also hands out a lot of compliments (or in his eyes, observations).

[eaudecrow]

In Eberron canon (specifically the 2006 book Dragonmarked), Aaren d'Cannith is the father of Baron Merrix d'Cannith (not to be confused w/Aaren's dad Merrix d'Cannith Sr.). I suspect this isn't true in your campaign since Aaren was excorciated at 18 (and I assume the campaign takes place 11-or-so years later, so Merrix Jr. would be 12-14 if he exists). So, who's the current baron of House Cannith (or at least Cannith South)? Or is that currently unknown in your campaign?

I asked my DM for Behind The Scenes info, just for you Anon 💕

While Freak-Force!Aaren doesn’t know most of this, he had an adult older (half) brother growing up—Haestus d'Cannith—who was born at the time that canon!Aaren was born. Instead of being Aaren's kid, Merrix Jr. is Haestus' kid, born before bad things happened to Haestus. Therefore, Merrix Jr. is at least older than 28, given he was alive when canon!Aaren was excoriated in 970yk. Haestus is older than that, at least older than 46, and Merrix Sr. would have been at least 64, if he hadn't died in the Mourning.

As for the current barons, not currently sure! I’ll add it to my list of things to research and let you know!

[eaudecrow]

🍒, 📙, and 🍐 for aaren!!

🍒 What kind of things do they expect from their relationships? Does this differ between platonic relationships and romantic ones? Is your OC “demanding” or a door mat? What kinds of things do people expect from them in a relationship?

Ooh interesting choice! I’d say the only thing he expects is conditional love, as sad as it is to say. Though he covers it up with a façade of cheeriness, he’s learned that affection only comes with usefulness. …He makes a lot of gifts.

As for how stubborn he is, he’s pretty set in his opinions. Though he’ll appear to bend for people with more power than him, closely listening to his words reveals that he’s making promises with easily exploitable loopholes. He learned that song and dance making business deals with lofty Houses in his childhood. In the end, what people expect from him often isn’t what they get, and they can’t sue him for it :)

📙 What kind of subjects (of conversation, of discussion, in school or whatever) does your OC find interesting or engaging or that they can talk for hours about? What kind of stuff do they just find fun?

I gave this man all my adhd. Get him started on anything to do with engineering or biology, especially of the arcane flavor, and you’ll get run through the whole khan academy lecture!

🍐 What is your OC’s mentality? Are they overall positive? Negative? A bit of both? Describe their thought patterns and reasoning behind their choice making!

Aaren is very pragmatic, though that often wars with his curiosity. In any situation, he’s analyzing the costs and benefits of any given choice, and will choose whatever benefits the ones he cares about the most. If he gets interested in something arcane, however, caution gets thrown to the wind and he may make some REALLY dumb decisions. Manually thread high voltage veins through an automaton with only leather gloves for protection? Explore a wasteland alone to research volatile crystals? Use himself as the test subject to literally shunt his soul out of his body into a new vessel? All worth it! For science!

[eaudecrow]

❌ for lutka?

❌ What kind of things would end any relationship for them? Is there a history behind why these things bother them? Could they ever take someone back despite this? If so or if not, why?

Ohoho boy are you in luck because this is part of Aaren’s whole backstory. He got disowned for fighting for the rights of his inventions, the warforged. His House took his blueprints and started mass-manufacturing them as soldiers against his will. If anyone disrespects his kids, they’re OUT.

On the other hand, if they showed a genuine change in heart and acknowledged that warforged were people too, he’d be more than willing to forgive them. He just wants his creations to be treated fairly.