Eli Hardwood

Summary
Eli Hardwood is a Halfling, a Djinn, and probably your best friend, even if you have no idea who he is. Despite being an active member of an Immortal-worshiping cult from a backwoods town in the demon-infested Amberwood, he works hard to overcome the stereotype that all cultists are up to no good. He considers anyone and everyone a potential friend-to-be, is willing to risk life and limb to earn someone’s trust, and is often moved to tears when that trust is reciprocated. He’s also in a suicide pact/buddy-cop partnership with a demon, though their supposed friendship seems a bit one-sided. Played by Magikarp

Speaking of, Vehn is an Immortal demon from one of the infinite Realms of the Beyond. He is made of viscous shadow, existing more as a void in space than something filling it, and is capable of a great deal of ill-defined feats involving the manipulation of his own distorted body. He regards Mortals as lesser beings, as one might look at a particularly incompetent puppy, and enjoys toying with them for his own amusement; he is not above lying, manipulating, or generally fucking with people for little to no reason whatsoever. Though he would never admit it, he holds a begrudging fondness for the Halfling he works with. Played by Magikarp

Appearance:
Eli is not an intimidating man. Standing at three and a half feet tall, he sports a mop of curly brown hair and long sideburns. His features are soft and his build is rather unimpressive, but people tend to find his easy smile and earnest nature charming, if a bit annoying. He favors comfortable and familiar clothing, wearing simple brown or green trousers and linen shirts with dull red suspenders, with a deep-pocketed tan jacket. Around his neck is a thin silver necklace of a butterfly encircled by a halo; an observer knowledgeable in matters of the occult may recognize this as the blanket symbol for many branches of Immortal-centric religions.

Personality:
Eli is childishly optimistic; he truly believes that so long as something can think and feel then it is capable of being a friend. He will go to absurd lengths to make someone smile, and empathizes with people almost too well. This is an incredibly foolish and naïve worldview, to be sure, and yet it has somehow worked so far. Even with his apparent gullibility, however, Eli is not a complete fool; he would never make it as a Djinn otherwise. People often believe he can be easily manipulated and used, and though he can tell when it is happening he will often go along with it anyway in order to make a new friend. Despite his obsession with solving other people's problems, or perhaps leading into it, Eli often neglects, ignores, or even denies his own troubles; no matter how seemingly pressing his personal issues may be, he simply sees the problems of people he may have just barely met as vastly more important.

Skills and Abilities:
Summoning: Being a very small man in a very big world, full of big things with bigger teeth, Eli relies more on his allies’ power than his own to survive. It helps that these allies range from ‘otherworldly demon’ to ‘mind-warping horror beyond the ken of man’, with the strength to match. An Immortal cannot get by on kindness alone, however; be it Juice, Life, or something else, a price is always asked. This is negotiated beforehand, and paid in full when the ritual is performed.

Polearm Proficiency: To make up for his short reach and to not be totally defenseless in close combat, Eli has learned enough about polearm-based combat to fight passably. He is no expert, to be certain; taking advantage of the longer reach of the weapon, Eli fights more in a supporting role for his summoned combatants. He requisitioned an enchanted staff from a villain named Briggs, which the man used to manipulate light, but Eli hasn’t figured out how to make it do anything but emit blinding, but harmless, flashes.

Familiar:
Eli has formed a Life Contract with a being named Vehn, an Immortal formed by and subject to the whims of the Realm of the Dreamer. Eli considers the Immortal a trusted partner and his best friend, but Vehn is generally lukewarm at best; he does not feel particularly bad for manipulating the Halfling, or anyone else, but in the broadest sense Vehn’s caustic remarks and heartless actions are often meant to prod the Halfling toward becoming what he believes is a more mature person (or, at least, a more cynical, pragmatic, and self-serving person). However, he would absolutely never admit to a fondness for Eli of any sort.

Vehn’s physical form is vaguely humanoid, with his shape obscured by a persistent shadowy haze. He generally appears roughly six and a half feet tall, but this is fluid and subject to change at any time. His body is an absolute black, reminiscent not of a mere color but of an utter absence of light. If one peers into this void stars and celestial shapes can be seen, but they are unfamiliar to any known to the skies of Aneos. His head is perfectly rounded and featureless with no semblance of a mouth or eyes, yet he is capable of speech. When he does so, his voice sounds ethereal, distant, and hollow. He is also capable of concealing himself within a Mortal’s shadow, and when he does this shadow takes on the same properties as the Immortal’s body.

Vehn’s form fluctuates somewhere between solid and liquid, appearing most often to behave like a highly dense and viscous fluid but often forgoing this to flow freely, and is capable of splitting itself into many individual parts without any apparent change in size or mass (if such a concept can even be applied). If these separated parts incur damage, they will either recombine with other pieces or dissipate entirely. Vehn is also capable of warping space slightly, functioning as a very short range teleport, and his touch displaces shallow chunks of any substance away from the main object. This tends to be quite problematic for a target who likes all their fleshy bits in one place. Due to Eli’s insistence, Vehn does not strike deep into living targets and will not target irreplaceable organs… while the Halfling’s around, anyway.

Background:
It is unclear just what, exactly, is the cause of the profound prevalence of Immortal-worship cults among lower-populous Halfling towns. Perhaps the lack of trade and interaction with other races is to blame; the same trend is hardly seen in Halfling settlements existing near primarily Human or Elven cities. In any case, the mold exists, and the town of Harver’s Glen does not break it. Located in an obscure backwoods nowhere known by traveller accounts as the Amberwood and allegedly founded by Djinni, it almost seems a matter of course that the Halflings there would grow to worship some unsavory thing from the Beyond. The Cult of the Dreamer (or the Cult of Harver’s Glen, colloquially), an until-now overlooked religious movement limited to the modest Halfling holdings in the Amberwood, seems to fill this niche.

It is seemingly a universal tenant of Immortal-centric cults and churches to, at least to some degree, embrace the concept of change as an objective good. This explains the widespread use of the butterfly as a religious symbol; perhaps a bit on the nose as far as symbolism goes, but it serves as an apt enough metaphor. The Cult of Harver’s Glen is no exception to this; however, while many cults ostracized by proper society embrace a zealous extremism and turn to violence as a cheap catalyst for change, the Halflings of Harver’s Glen purportedly believe wholeheartedly that change is only meaningful if it results in a net good. In their characteristic naivety, they believe they can accomplish this by spreading enough goodwill to befriend all of Aneos. It is a ridiculous sentiment, to be certain, but it is hard to hold it against them; after all, few other races would attempt to shape the course of the world by merely befriending it.

Perhaps the strangest element of this story, however, is that such a group could arise in the secluded depths of one of Aenos’ most treacherous locales; though the most recent published survey is that of Wolfgang Sol’s account some thousand years prior, rumor and evidence concur to place the Amberwood somewhere near the heart of that infestation of nightmares known as the Darkwood. Cartographical expeditions and trade ventures based from Kan Lodar have investigated to no avail, and after the umpteenth search team disappeared without a trace talk of the Amberwood became situated somewhere between obscure legend and hushed taboo. How a village, and a village of peaceful fools to boot, could be founded there is a question which boggles the mind; so much so that one must begin to suspect that even if these rumors once held a grain of truth to them any such settlement would have collapsed within a year of its foundation.

Our only assurance otherwise comes from the testimony of a single Halfling refugee, currently living in the slums of Kan Lodar in what she claimed to be a self-imposed exile. The girl, whose surname lent some semblance of credibility to her story but shall be omitted for privacy’s sake, was unwilling or incapable of speaking to the circumstances of her departure; her voice dying after my inquiry, her hand drifted to a curious scar at the nape of her neck as she stared at nothing until I changed the subject. She spoke of the town with a wistful fondness, giving the report which forms the entire body of information recorded of the place, but at several points seemed nearly on the verge of tears; when I asked why, she again refused to speak. By the interview’s end I was left with the saccharine reflections of a homesick exile and a first-hand report so rose-tinted and riddled with convenient happenings that it could not possibly be accurate.

Supported only by the quite possibly delusional claims of a traumatized Halfling girl, and refuted by nearly every instance of common sense and logic one could apply, I believe it becomes appropriate to conclude that the rumors of a town called Harver’s Glen remain just that: rumors, unsubstantiated and blown out of proportion. I concede to the theory that such a town did, at least at some point, exist; however, the practical realities of a Darkwoods settlement, the unfathomably naive town philosophy, the risks inherent in a religious embrace of the demonic, and the unspoken terrors of its single known resident conjure a more eloquent argument for its downfall than a paper-thin fantasy could ever hope to counter.

- An excerpt from A Treatise on the Cults of Aneos, by Faltis Olek