how did alec get his start adventuring?? whered he get his sweet clothes? i love him

Hi!! I'm so fucking flattered and excited that you'd want to know more about my little guy. I've been playing him for only two sessions so far and I'm already so obsessed with him so I'm gonna try to... well, no, I'm probably not gonna manage to keep this short, why lie to myself hehehe.

He was raised by his grandma, a brilliant, forest-dwelling woman named Yvonne who also studied medicine in the big city - she became nomadic shortly after Alec was born (his human dad died from illness while his mother, a wood elf, wasn't confident in her ability to raise a child). She raised him on the road, so technically he began adventuring right away! Yvonne felt that it was her duty to spread out her knowledge, acquired through her time spent in druid camps and in the city's academies; they acted as a traveling doctors and educators, especially in smaller towns and communities. Alec really internalized this, as well, becoming deeply fixated on how the body operates and developing a really special connection with wild nature and people's place in it. When his grandma passed away, he continued her work for a few years, until the plot misfortune struck him and he was kidnapped and sold to a family from a town which used forced labor to maintain their gated community. He survived there for a few years, and in the midst of the abuse he made friends with a cleric of Silvanus; over time he picked up the faith as a means to maintain his dwindling hope for escape and a connection to his life's work, using his knowledge and his developing magic to act as a hidden healer for the other prisoners.

The story of the short campaign actually picks up over a decade after their revolt and escape, and we see a very isolated Alec that's become so riddled with mental-health issues that he essentially threw himself into a self imposed exile in a little cabin in the woods; he fears he's lost himself in his struggle with trauma, his own mind becoming his captor, and hating himself for not being able to cope easily. He feels weak, pathetic, with no right to the magic he was taught or the love of his god. In an effort to not lose himself entirely, Alec began to write: he wrote books and books on medicine, taking refuge in the meticulous transmission of all his knowledge, all that his loved ones taught him, and all that he learned on the roads.

He forces himself to venture into the forest more and more, to lose himself for hours in the work of drawing leaves, plants, fungi, natural phenomena, etc, as faithfully and beautifully as possible. He hopes that, despite his own perceived brokenness and helplessness, the project may one day be useful. Gradually this work becomes the closest thing Alec has to therapy, and his meticulous books of medicine and natural guides evolve into hybrids of intimate, autobiographical, philosophical writing, intertwined with transmission of knowledge. We start with an Alec who connects with life from an observer's point of view, at a safe distance, deep self-loathing and doubt making him feel utterly unable to actually help people anymore, but still stubbornly trying to find a way to worship and help.

What finally gets him out of this exile is getting a letter from a small community of ex-imprisoned comrades, asking for help to both build more stable living conditions for themselves and find one of the revolt's ex-leaders, who has gone mysteriously missing. He only takes a single book with him.

Understandably, Alec doesn't have a lot of money and most of the money he has he spends on supplies (though he makes his own paper and paints, he still buys ink. and oh yeah, food too, when he remembers, sure) so actually his cute fancy clothes are mostly all hand-made by Nayab, my partner's character, who is a tailor and his best friend:-)

He's usually adorned with various trinkets he got and made from the woods. His clothes often appear well-kept at first glance - a clear effort on his part to show himself with dignity and care, because self-image comforts him and reminds him of his freedom and autonomy. On closer inspection, however, it is impossible not to notice the dirt that still clings to his trousers; the tint of moss and ink on his fingers and under his nails; the leaves in his wind-blown up-do. All those things that give him away as an agent of inescapable nature.

Fun facts! - He has a fantasy french accent that comes out when he's nervous. He's a lesbian. He was so socially incompetent when they met that the party suspected him a traitor. He tried to ease a companion's suspicions by showing him how maps work, and it worked; the companion kept poking him about his past and Alec kept trying to keep talking about maps. He's covered in scars, which he revealed to the same companion in a symbolic gesture of vulnerability, and then almost threw up afterwards from anxiety. He has gotten more hugs in three days of adventuring than he has in years. He sleeps in tree branches. He did surgery on someone in session 2 and secretly cried for 3 hours afterwards. He got treated with so much gentleness and compassion and love that he's speedrunning his character arc. He's starting to realize that maybe community and direct action are the answer, and his self-loathing is keeping him from a world that loves him and needs him there. His journal is starting to fill up, for the first time in a decade, with the faces of friends.

Also, he has a pinterest board!

Here's a little sketch of him last session:-)