:: Random NPC—Patriarch Benedict ::

Patriarch Benedict

by Wm Jay Carter III, 5/11/15

Homeland: Brittany

Age: Middle-Aged

Gender: Male

Stature: Average

Physical: Small Head

Eyes: Violet

Hair: Red

Outwardly: Hopeless

Inwardly: Calm

Profession: Astrologer

Money: Poor

Catchphrase: “YOU! Walking corpses, the lot! You’re already dead! Already dead...”

A clatter of objects comes from behind when a manic robed man speeds past you, looks around frantically and then slumps to the ground, despondent. The moment he notices you, his eyes grow wide in his small head and he waggles a warning finger in your direction. “YOU! Walking corpses, the lot! You’re already dead! Already dead…”

As his parents were both peasants and offered him no prospects for a finer future, Benedict of Lancashire was apprenticed to an astrologer at a young age. His studies were conducted in the monastery at Mont Saint Michel, where he became fascinated with the stars and what they predicted.

As a young adult, he found his master dead, evidently while making notations that indicated the end of the world would soon come. With no further explanation of the burning death his master had discovered—but had not survived to describe—Benedict went mad.

Convinced Benedict had a devil, the monks of the monastery performed several exorcisms to cure him, after which the young man seemed to return to his senses. Able to put aside his master’s unexpected death and the doomsday research he had been working on, Benedict took vows to join the order of brothers who had saved him from his madness. Later, he became a well-respected and honored patriarch in the monastery, and years passed with no evidence of the prophesied doom.

But the door to the astrology tower called to him. One evening—30 years to the day of his master’s mysterious death—he went inside just to check the stars for old time’s sake. None can say what happened that night, but the monks tell of Patriarch Benedict bolting through the halls of the monastery like a lunatic once again, screaming warnings of doom that was soon to come, like a man whose mind had fractured.