app

[uncharisma]

PLAYER
Player name: Javid
Contact: erlking / javid#6941 @ discord
Characters currently in-game: n/a

CHARACTER
Character Name: Mollymauk Tealeaf
Character Age: 2 (as Mollymauk; he has no memory past the last two years, but has the appearance and demeanor of someone in his twenties.)
Canon: Critical Role
Canon Point: 2.26: Found & Lost
History: wiki
Personality:

Mollymauk Tealeaf intends to never tell the truth a day in his life. A liar and a cheat through and through, Mollymauk -- Molly to his friends -- actively avoids the truth if he can help it. "The truth is vicious," he says. There's comfort in dishonesty. You can have anything, want anything, be anything, just trust in untrustworthiness and believe you'll disbelieve. Molly has a million stories and back up stories for every aspect of his life, and the moment the truth starts to leak out, he panics.

Because Molly has only been Molly for a little over two years now. Not long ago, he woke up buried beneath the ground, apparently left for dead and without a single memory to his forgotten name. And Molly's grown to actively not want to know who he was or what his name was or be left with any trace of the man called "Lucien". He likes who he is now, who he's become without Lucien's influence, and the person he's slowly built up from the bottom; if Lucien came back, who knows what type of person he would be? Nothing terrifies Molly more than the shadow of Lucien that hangs over him like a funeral shroud someday suffocating and replacing everything about who he is.

As a result of his relatively low amount of remembered experiences, Molly is constantly seeking out the next thrill or piece of excitement in his life. Often, this can be as hedonistic as a massage and hand fruit feeding from two escorts or an herbalists' answer to drugs, but it's also just as much anything new that he can get his hands on. Which, when you've only been "alive" for two years, encompasses a lot of different things. Despite his living in the moment attitude, though, he has a surprisingly pessimistic (or "realistic" if you ask him) outlook on life, but in a strangely positive way. He finds the beauty in everything, even things such as the fact he believes most people die unfulfilled in some way and that the world is incredibly cruel. He doesn't seek to add to the world's cruelties, though. Far from it.

Because Molly truly believes he's a good person. He strives to be. In his travels with the carnival and with the Mighty Nein, he has always aimed to leave every place he goes a better place than when he entered it, the people with more security in their lives, spreading what little good they can do as a small group of people. His methods, however, prove to be less than great. Sure, he always overpays for things and is always willing to do a good turn should the need arise, but he's also always been a conman. His tarot readings, which he views as a way to urge people on the correct path, are based entirely on insight, deception, and sleight of hand. He reads what the person wants to hear or what he believes might help them the most, shuffles the cards around and stealthily slips the ones he needs in, and adjusts their meaning entirely based on a first impression. And it helps he makes a little coin while he's at it. He doesn't stick around to see if he's given people a true new lease on life as a result; he firmly believes it's very possible to overstay your welcome as a carnival troupe or an adventuring group, and the longer you stick around in a populated area, the more likely public opinion of you will start to sour. Maybe if he weren't literally lying through his teeth at people at all times, something that historically causes friction when done to large groups of people, he wouldn't have to worry about that so much.

Molly basically has no boundaries when it comes to those he counts among his friends, too. He firmly believes he knows what's best for any one person, whether he's known them for a few seconds or a full two years, and knows better than they know themselves. Sure, he's incredibly insightful and able to read a person pretty well, but he can be outright manipulative in the worst way. For example, when he disagreed with what seemed like Caleb pocketing loot on the downlow, he knew how to get his attention: by pinning him to a wall, something he knew would make him distinctly uncomfortable as all physical intimacy does, and intimidating him into sharing with the class. His insight into people helps him get what he wants from them, but when all else fails he's never afraid to fall back on his tiefling variant spell Charm Person. Knowing he can "charm" anyone and make them extremely susceptible to his suggestions and willing to be cooperative with what he says, he actively uses it a few times even on his own friends, despite the fact that they express discomfort being magically manipulated in this way. He used it to help Fjord interrogate Nott, the skittish thief, as to why she was rifling through Fjord's stuff, for example, causing Nott to opt not to trust either of them at all for a good long while afterwards.

His magic and insight isn't the only way he knows how to be manipulative with people. Knowing he's a tiefling, and thus the subject of frequent automatic disdain, he presents himself flamboyantly very purposefully. He knows he's ostentatious and downright proud despite his contentious heritage, and he means to be that way. In his opinion, walking into a room and seeing everyone's snap judgments of him aids him in his snap judgments of them; it's easy to see if someone's not worth your time if they automatically sneer at you throwing your identity in their face. There's comfort in being irrevocably himself, to the point that he's extremely comfortable in pretty much any social situation -- he's stated a belief that nudity solves everything, because it makes you vulnerable in a very particular way that lowers a lot of outward barriers.

The fact that he's got a 0 charisma modifier and constantly relies on charisma rolls is very indicative of who he is as a person, or at least who he's become based on his short life in the carnival. He's got a particular "carnie charisma" that operates with ease and confidence in social situations, but in a slightly unsettling way that can cause discomfort in others. He's got all the sleazy charisma of your stereotypical used car salesman, in other words. The type of person you feel in your gut is taking you for a ride, but seems like he believes he can do it anyway even though he knows you feel that. He can be a bit unsettling. Another aspect of carnie culture he sort of exudes is a bluntness to his speech when dealing with people. He'll be the first to call someone awful and insult them, but in a very loving way. His friendship with Beau basically operates on an initial dislike from both sides, and growing to be frequently annoyed with her and disliking her even as he becomes extremely attached to her. If he were still around, his player has stated that he'd believe his own death protecting her was worth it, if only so he could get the eternal one-up on her. He's very protective of his people, and operates on a sort of "only I and our group get to insult you" sense of protectiveness.

And that sort of leads into the fact that he's utterly terrified of being without a group to rely on. In his short life, he's never been alone for more than 24 hours, and is afraid to think of what it would be like to be alone. He's the opposite of an introvert; more extroverted than an extrovert. He clings to groups of people to actively avoid loneliness; when the carnival started to fall apart, he latched onto the first convenient group that came his way, and actively works to keep the dynamics in that group attached to one another. He cultivates a sense of found family no matter how unwilling its participants are at first.

He firmly believes that people operate better together, so it's darkly poetic that his death is what made the Mighty Nein truly realize their need for one another.

Inventory:

• A pair of scimitars, one carnival glass and one golden one called Summer's Dance. The latter allows its user to cast teleport an extremely limited number of times within a thirty foot range each time.
• Fortune telling tarot deck
• Disguise kit
• Pouch of incense
• Periapt of Wound Closure - a necklace that has the effect of, upon reaching death's door, instantly allowing the wearer to hang on from the brink. In D&D terms, it's coming back with 1 HP once you hit 0 for the first time per long rest.
• A terrible tapestry decorated with symbology of the Platinum Dragon. Ugly chic as hell.
• A brooch of the Platinum Dragon's symbol
• The very ostentatious clothes on his back

Abilities:

DARKVISION
Molly can see in dim light as if it were bright light, and in darkness as if it were dim light.

HELLISH RESISTANCE
Molly has resistance against fire due to his heritage as a tiefling.

VICIOUS MOCKERY
Molly can inflict psychic damage on someone from afar by intimidating them with utter nonsense babbled in the language Infernal. This also causes them to be a little less able to hit on their next attaack, due to being thrown off by the "mockery".

CHARM PERSON
Only works on humanoids. Unless the target resists, Molly can "charm" a person for up to one hour. If he or his companions harm the person, the charm fades. When the spell ends, they know they've been charmed.

ENTHRALL
For up to one minute, Molly can cause anyone that he can see and can hear him to struggle to perceive anyone but him, causing enemies to focus only on attacking him, for example.

BLOOD CURSE OF THE EYELESS
Harm comes to Molly when he uses this ability. Blood bubbles up in the target's eyes, causing them to become temporarily blinded for a couple seconds. Mainly used to cause enemies' attacks to have trouble hitting.

BLOOD CURSE OF PURGATION
Harm comes to Molly when he uses this ability. Poison removes itself from the targets' blood.

CRIMSON RITE
Harm comes to Molly when he uses this ability. By bleeding on a weapon (or other object), he can imbue it with the ability to magically damage others with either Rite of the Frozen (ice damage) or Rite of the Dawn (radiant damage).

HUNTER'S BANE
Molly has a strange ability to understand and locate fey, fiends, and undead creatures, despite his amnesia.

FIGHTING STYLE
Molly excels in dual wielding weapons, able to quickly cut through opponents.

PROFICIENCIES
Skilled in acrobatics, insight, deception, and sleight of hand.

Flaws:

Molly is a liar, fullstop. He has history as a charlatan and uses his ability to understand others quickly -- or at least make snap judgments of them -- to manipulate others into believing whatever he'll have them believe or do what he believes is best for them, even if it involves hurting them and crossing lines to get there.

He's perfectly willing to magically charm people to get what he wants out of them, including friends, against their will. At his worst, he's blunt and rude, and picks out what a person dislikes most about themself to highlight if he feels he needs to, such as when Nott continually needles him about his past as Lucien until Molly pulls out her discomfort with being a goblin and what that means in society to get her to back off, suggesting that Lucien could be someone who targets and eats little goblins for all he knows.

He's got very few lines he won't cross, even despite his need to do good in the world. His brand of good just involves being a complete asshole about it.

SAMPLES
Action Log Sample: Toplevel and subsequent threads on the TDM