Sawyer Cymerian is a shadar-kai who formerly worshiped the Raven Queen for over eight-hundred years in the Shadowfell. During this time, he went by the name Dredge, and dreaded missions that required him leaving the Shadowfell, as the world outside seemed too bright, strange, and overwhelming.
For the majority of his service to the Raven Queen, he endured severe depression, as many shadar-kai lived lives that were joyless and grim.
Initially enduring dreary centuries of depression, after beginning to take a daily medicinal dose of Jergal's wort, his depression improved substantially and he found new enthusiasm for life and the pursuit of happiness free from the Raven Queen, setting him forth on a mission to permanently cure his depression and possibly find a way to extend such a gift to others with depression or other psychiatric disorders.
Appearance
Sawyer has dull grey skin of a pallid appearance, making him constantly look either deathly sick or already deceased. Any hands on him would feel him chill to the touch and absent of the warmth of life, giving the impression he might be a living corpse, or a being stranded on the border of life and death.
But in reality, shadar-kai are cursed with such a ghastly appearance, and Sawyer tries to make up for it with a constant bright expression and colorful clothes.
Golden rings and heart piercings decorate his pointed ears, and he has a labret ring on his lower lip that his tongue fidgets with when he’s nervous.
His body is androgynous and adorned with black swirling tattoos all across his torso and arms, twisting onto his neck and face in a stark juxtaposition, like black ink droplets into milk. With both black scarla and pupils, his gaze can be eerie and abysmally unsettling to strangers unfamiliar with him, and his white outgrown hair he ties back into bun can give the vague resemblance of a drow to the untrained eye.
Whilst it’s difficult to tell at a glance that his body is biologically female, he makes no effort to bind his small chest, which the more perceptive might notice. Otherwise, he is overall difficult to discern the biology of either which way, and capitalizes off his androgyny in order to circumvent effort into passing as a man.
History
Like many of his kin, there was little joy in his life for centuries, other than the meager pride to serve the Raven Queen well or the mockery of culture his people clung to. In his city he was an apothecary, and took advantage of the traveling the Raven Queen demanded of him by using his trips as opportunities to collect herbs and roots. Despite trying to bring back samples to the Shadowfell, he rarely got medicinal plants and herbs to successfully flourish in the harsh and unforgiving conditions of the Shadowfell.
Deeply interested in herbalism and medicinal apothecary, Sawyer was experimental with the potions, elixirs, and medicines he made, and often tested the effects on himself to determine the effectiveness of his recipes. Despite shadar-kai bodies being able to live to the normal elven lifespan of seven-hundred fifty years, he prematurely killed three of his prior corporeal vessels by accident via self poisoning from his various amateur experimentations. As with all shadar-kai, his soul was returned to the Raven Queen and born into a new vessel. His fourth (and current) vessel is forty-three years old, and biologically female.
Although shadar-kai tend to care little for their bodily vessels, Sawyer was irritated with his ‘accidental’ wrong sex, and suspected it was a slight by the Raven Queen for his carelessness with his prior bodily vessels, in addition to his lengthy and slow completion of the missions she gave him, as he would go on frequent detours to harvest regional herbs. This caused Sawyer to grow more distant from the Raven Queen as a result. He began to think the Raven Queen did not care about shader-kai, and his faith only evermore wavered.
Collecting books and conversing with anyone with botany knowledge, whispers and rumors of herbal remedies for the mind reached Sawyer’s ears. Fantastic stories of teas and tinctures that soothed the coldness around the heart, and softened the sharper edges of reality.
Tales of Jergal’s wort drew him in, a tantalizing promise of happiness and enthusiasm for life. The wort was abundant and common, so the next time Sawyer passed a field’s worth he stuffed his bag to the brim with the flowers and leaves, returning to the Shadowfell leaving a trail of loose leaves and petals behind him from the sheer volume of his haul.
In secret, he dried the leaves, he diffused the petals in oils, he grounded the roots into fine powders. Any which way the plant could be rendered, he did. Topical oils and tinctures from the golden petals yielded nothing, and the powders he tried to bake into breads or pack into tablets did nothing more than taint his palate with the bitter earthy punch of dirt.
However, the dried leaves soaked in hot honey water welcomed him into a world where suddenly the outside world offered a contentment that contrasted the stygian world of the Shadowfell. The passion he had for apothecary flourished in a newfound drive and pride, and Sawyer began to detest mission after dreary mission for the Raven Queen.
Each night when he met the bottom of a warm cup of Jegal’s wort tea, he not only felt the heat in his stomach, but the warmth spread in his chest and linger deep within his heart and soul. The corpse-like body he inhibited, cool to the touch with a deathly pallor that chilled even the warmest of rooms, now moved and awoke with an energy that felt downright alive.
It was on a mission to collect the soul of a circus jester that Sawyer felt a pang of sorrow that cracked something deep and sacred with him. A human jester, adorned in bright colors and aged smile lines across his face, stricken with a heart attack and robbing countless people of the joy of his jokes and performance.
A man whose career was smiles and laughter, brightening the lives of those around him. It was a purpose far more noble than any other drive in life Sawyer could fathom. In a moment of weakness, with shaky hands he nervously stripped the jester of the honor of his attire, before slowly dressing himself with a heavy, guilty heart. It felt like robbing the man of his skin and identity, but when Sawyer looked into the mirror and saw himself, he saw someone new. Not Dredge, the servant of the Raven Queen cursed with a joyless duty to harvest sorrow at her command. Instead, he saw a new man, a man who could use his power and knowledge to bring happiness to the ones around him.
In honor of the jester, Sawyer adopted his name, and his passion for contagious joy, learning silly jokes and humor to try and make others smile. He never returned to the Raven Queen that day, he refused to allow what little happiness that flourished within him to decay and fester under her cruel command.
Jergal’s wort tea was just the beginning, and while Sawyer never missed his daily dose, he wanted a permanent cure for the harrowing cracks on his psyche that his servitude to the Raven Queen left behind. Rumors of a rare fungi deep in the Underdark speckled the chapters and pages of medicinal botany in his textbooks: Cheshire Crestcap, a bioluminescent violet mushroom that had the almighty power to change the emotional chemistry of the one who consumes it.
After decades of being departed from the Raven Queen’s service living and studying in solitude for a solution, Sawyer felt he finally found it. If he got his hands on Cheshire Crestcap, he fully believed he could render it into an elixir that could mend his soul once and for all. And he didn’t want to stop there; others who had such dismal gashes in their soul could be given the opportunity to heal if he could create a stable rendition of the fungi.
With not much more than his decades of notes and his stashes of dried Jergal’s wort, Sawyer made his way to the Underdark, ready to fight, adventure, deceive, or do whatever it took to get information or locations to Cheshire Crestcap. He was determined to change his life, and the lives of all those who suffered like he has, bringing light and joy into the hearts of the beaten and broken.
Personality
Sawyer, thanks to the balance of Jergal’s Wort, has an upbeat attitude and general optimism. He is overly confident in himself and his abilities, particularly when it comes to his skills and apothecary knowledge, although he is aggressively average overall and a lot of his confidence is misplaced and ambiguous. But he makes up for his poor judgment of his own skills by sheer perseverance, and is more likely to achieve his goals by stubborn persistence rather than talent or expertise.
Having an affinity for jesters, clowns, and comedians, Sawyer enjoys learning and telling jokes. Most of his jokes are very bad, as he thinks jokes like knock-knocks are downright hilarious. He likes to entertain and make people smile to the best of his ability, and while his dream career would be in comedy and performance, he feels shepherded to a greater purpose with psychiatric apothecary.
Without Jergal’s wort, he regresses into a husk of himself, a mere echo of his passions and enthusiasm. In this unmediated state he is unmotivated, quiet, and detached.
Trivia
- If he misses his daily dose of his rudimentary anti-depressant, he will begin to experience withdrawal symptoms the next day, which will give him disadvantage on saving throws.
- Sawyer is currently in his fourth reincarnated body, and although is unhappy his current vessel is biologically female, he is determined to keep it because he knows death will return his soul to the Raven Queen.
- His skills as a phantom rogue came from his training and service to the Raven Queen.
- He stole his jester outfit because he was enamored by the colors and flashy style, and his fashion style is considered very bright and an eyesore by most.