Lothar of the Empty Jug

Lothar was born in the town of Restov...or at least he's pretty sure he was. In truth, he never really knew his parents. Raised by his older brother from infancy, until he disappeared when Lothar was somewhere around 8 years old, his only family has been the street rats and orphans common in nearly every dark corner of every town and city.

Lothar learned early on that running away was much more prudent than getting into a fight (Reactionary trait)...besides he was never any good at fighting with weapons. He only had them taken away and used against him. So it was best to just high-tail it. His size, being on the rather small end of things, was a detriment when it came to going toe to toe. But he found it rather handy when squeezing through a hole in his attempt to escape a group of thugs.

The streets breed quickness of hand and eye as well, which means that Lothar grew nimble from a young age. And he utilized this to his advantage in his too-oft dealings with his competitors. Resources being what they were, he often had to either beg of forage for food. For some reason, theft never suited him. He just couldn't seem to get used to the way it made him feel. His brother had no such compunctions, and this is what likely kept Lothar alive for the first 8 years of his life.

It was a fire that changed things. One early winter morning Lothar awoke to stinging smoke that swirled about the small hovel that he and his brother had built out of scavenged boxes and a castaway piece of sail cloth. It might have been the small candles that they'd been using to keep the place warm. Or maybe it was set on purpose by some of the more aggressive competitors in the area. Who knows. All Lothar can remember of that fateful morning was waking up coughing with half the place in flames. His brother was nowhere to be seen.

Weeks of futile searching led to Lothar believing that his brother must have certainly fallen to ill intent. And to this day, he still wonders what happened to him.

One evening Lothar, starving and cold, stumbled across a brown stoppered bottle in an alley behind a rather shabby bordello. He scooped it up, scrambled for a safe place in which he might investigate it w/out unwanted attention, and then unstoppered it. Inside he found a warming amber liquid. He sipped it and it made him cough, but it also made his belly warm. (Later he was to find that this was the very rare form of alcohol called Rum...which became his favored drink of choice when he could find it.)

An hour, and one empty rum bottle later and Lothar was out in the street singing. While he was most certainly drunk as a skunk, he was also much more clear headed than he ever had the right to be. And to top that off, he found that a strange energy surged through him. An energy that made him do things he never even considered.

A slip of the tongue to the wrong person and he was being chased through the streets by the town guard. Easily avoiding them he slipped to the ground, exhausted...his breath coming in ragged, cloudy huffs on the cold evening air. He closed his eyes to rest only for a second.

And opened them to find wonder of wonders. He was in a small stone room surrounded by wooden barrels. The room was kept warm by a series of small braziers spaced evenly around the perimeter and he was covered by a blanket! He sat up quickly only to be hit in the center of the forehead by a very sharp brick. 'Crack'! and down he went....Eyes spinning and stomach churning he looked around for the assailant. For he saw nothing to have caused such a nasty wound.

Reaching up he was sure his hand would be drawn back covered by blood, but no! OK, so what was the cause of this horrid feeling? Why did he feel so confoundedly bad? He groaned...and in answer he heard a shuffling from one of the dark corners of the room. "Ya got the head for the drink wee one, but ya aint yet got the stomach eh?" Said a deep voice that proceeded an enormous bear of a man.

Dressed in the brown cassock of an order of monks or holy men, he came forward slowly with a tankard in one hand and a loaf of bread in the other. "Here now. Take a sip-o-this and a wee bite of this hear heavenly loaf and I'll near guarantee that you feel much better."

Lothar trusted this man. He couldn't really say why, for he rarely trusted anyone besides himself. But there seemed to be some sort of aura about him that just radiated "rightness". So he nodded slowly and took a sip of the strange, pungent liquid and a larger bite of the bread. And sure enough, his head and stomach cleared up nearly immediately. This most certainly was magic of a most potent kind. And he was eager to see / try more of it!

This was the start of a wonderful relationship between Lothar and the monks of the House of Cayden Cailean.

Years of living amongst the monks, learning their ways and growing from the scrawny child to a stout (yet still short) individual able to pick up and haul full half barrels of ale in his arms, Lothar naturally fell in with what he considered his "family" at House Cayden Cailean. Which in truth was a brew pub of the highest quality.

There was only one problem, for some reason, the "magic" just never came. He was tutored and lectured day and night. But to no avail. He just didn't have the natural predilection for spells. It just wasn't in his blood. So he labored as a brewer and helper in the House for years, never believing that he was meant for more than that simple life. Drinking and brewing were his life. (Fortified Drinker trait)

This time though it wasn't a disaster that changed his life but rather the arrival of a strange individual. One evening a traveling monk came to stay with the brothers. A follower of Cayden Cailean, this brother was not a brewer, which was rather strange. But he could most certainly drink with the best of them...And when he did, strange things happened. He was somehow empowered with a strange energy and could do the most amazing things.

Lothar recognized the "energy" immediately, for he felt a small part of that every time that he drank as well. But he assumed that it was something that all brothers experienced. He was soon to learn though that this was not true at all. What happened to him was rare in the extreme amongst his brethren. In turn, the visiting monk recognized a brother in Lothar and took him under his wing, making Restov his new home.

A few years pass while Lothar was being trained by the traveler in the martial arts. A type of art / combat that was blessed by the god Cayden Caileen: The art of the Drunken Master. This is when he finally earned his honorific of "Brother Lothar of the empty jug". And this is also when his master said goodbye. It was time for him to continue his journey, but he told Brother Lothar that there were more of his kind out there. And most nearly all of them were searching for a school where they could learn the arts he'd been teaching for years.

So the master left Brother Lothar with only one directive. Find a place to open a school for their art. Dedicated to Cayden Cailean but that also teaches the rare form of martial arts known also as 'Drunken Boxing'.

Today, after a full year of trying, and failing to open a school here in Restov, Brother Lothar is now certain that his destiny demands that he head south, to carve a school out of the chaos of the wild. And lo an behold, an opportunity has arisen. As if foreordained by Cayden Caileen himself!