"Knock on Wood"
Herb is a Warforged, College of Masks Bard from The Great Forest. Herb was found by a Deaf bard, who listened to her music by feeling the vibrations of her instruments through them and the ground. She fixed a broken and unresponsive Herb who had multiple broken masks alongside him beyond repair. She taught him how to play music even though she was deaf to it, and how to carve masks to replace broken ones. After her death of old age, Herb would forget her as he would forget everything, but he kept mementos of her and everything else he cares about never truly to forget. His goal is to create a song neither he nor the world will ever forget.
Herb is a curious, sentimental, spiteful and painfully oblivious, obsessively clinging to fleeting moments and trinkets in a world he can barely hold onto. Though he forgets names, faces, and places, he never forgets how things made him feel — and that longing drives everything he does.
Knock on Wood
Herb is a Woodsworn — a living construct of bark, root, and carved wood — whose origins stretch back further than even he can recall. Found unresponsive in the depths of The Great Forest, he was discovered by a travelling bard who was Deaf from birth. She heard nothing of the world but felt everything in it: the resonance of a struck drum through the soil, the hum of a plucked string through timber and fingertip.
She repaired him over many seasons, replacing his shattered masks with new ones she carved herself, teaching him the shapes of music through vibration and touch. Though she never heard a single note he played, she gave him more than craft — she gave him purpose. They travelled together for what Herb now suspects were decades, though the exact shape of those years has long since blurred into feeling.
When she died of old age, Herb forgot her. He forgot her name, her face, the sound of her laughter. But he remembered the weight of her hands guiding his, the warmth of sitting beside a fire while she hummed songs she'd never hear. He kept everything she gave him — every carved token, every tool, every feather pressed between old pages — not knowing why he treasured them so fiercely.
This is how Herb moves through the world now: accumulating mementos of people and places he cannot keep, haunted by the echo of feelings that have outlasted their origins. His singular ambition is to compose a song so enduring that neither he nor the world will ever be able to forget it. A monument to everything he has lost and loved.
Herb made his debut in Session 01 of the Immortal City of Edelith campaign. Placeholder: add the specifics of how and where he entered the story here.
Summary of what occurred this session goes here. What did Herb do, learn, or lose? What moments stood out?
Summary of what occurred this session goes here.
He never forgets how things made him feel — and that longing drives everything he does.
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