Jerome the Scribe

by Sheila Thomas

Characteristics: Int +2, Per +1, Pre 0, Com +2, Str 0, Sta 0, Dex +1, Qik –1

Size: 0

Age: 28 (28)

Decrepitude: 0

Warping Score: 0

Confidence Score: 1 (3)

Virtues and Flaws: Clerk; Puissant Ability: Scribe, Educated, Sharp ears; Infamous (heretic), Temperate, Weakness for fine books

Personality Traits: Conscientious +2, Pious +2, Aesthetic +1

Reputations: Heretic 4 (ecclesiastical)

Combat: Fist: Init -1, Attack +1, Defense -1, Damage +0

Soak: +0

Fatigue levels: OK, 0, -1, -3, -5, Unconscious

Wounds: -1 (1-5), -3 (6-10), -5 (11-15), Incapacitated (16-20)

Abilities: Area lore – his original home 1 (family), Area lore - his monastery 3 (personalities), Area loremarket town 2 (merchants), Area lore - covenant 2 (magi), Artes Liberales 3 (grammar), Athletics 1 (climbing), Awareness 3 (books), Bargain 2 (favors), Charm 2 (making excuses), Civil and canon Law 1 (canon law), Etiquette 2 (clergy), Folk ken 3 (monastery inhabitants), Guile 2 (excuses), Latin 4 (ecclesiastical usage), Local language 5 (debate), Organisational lore – Benedictines 3 (routine), Philosophiae 2 (aesthetics), Profession – scribe 5 (layout), Stealth 3 (indoors), Teaching 1 (Latin), Theology 1 (history)

Appearance: Jerome is of middling height and build, clean-shaven, with tidy, short, fair hair and blue eyes. He dresses neatly, but very plainly. He has a monkish air.

Jerome was born to a peasant family who sent him at the age of seven to live in a Benedictine monastery where he received a reasonable basic education. He picked things up fairly easily, showing particular aptitude with a quill. He had little difficulty accepting the restricted life amongst the brothers, but occasionally he would sneak down to the kitchens to find something extra to eat; he was caught and punished far less often than he deserved.

It was expected that Jerome would take the vows and become a monk himself, but he put it off.

At about the age of 20, he got hold of Honorius' 'De rebus ecclesiasticis' and absorbed some of the ideas on predestination, but got it garbled. Unfortunately, his head was full of this one day when the Prior engaged him in discussion, and Jerome's views displeased the Prior so much that he was ordered to leave, lest he mislead others.

Having little knowledge of the world outside the monastery, Jerome found it difficult to settle. He maintained a temperate life-style and found some of what he encountered amongst ordinary people quite scandalous. Eventually, while working as a scribe for hire in a small town, he met someone from the covenant who, after seeing his writing and talking to him for a while, invited him to visit the covenant with the possibility of being given work there.

Jerome's training and skills make him a useful scribe. He is a quick and accurate worker with a neat hand and a good aesthetic sense for layout. He is also suitable for the role of librarian, if such an important role may be entrusted to a mundane. It might be a little inconvenient that he sometimes takes a liking to a particularly beautifully-produced volume and makes it difficult for anyone to remove it from his sight.

by Neil Taylor

Characteristics: Int +2, Per +1, Pre 0, Com +2, Str –1, Sta +1, Dex 0, Qik 0

Size: –1

Age: 26

Deccrepitude: 0

Warping Score: 0 (0)

Confidence Score: 1 (3)

Virtues and Flaws: Covenfolk; Book Learner, Educated, Good Teacher, Small Frame; Transvestite; Obsessed: be accepted as a scholar

Personality Traits: Brave +3, Secretive +2, Devious +1

Combat: Fist: Init +0, Attack +3, Defense +3, Damage –1

Soak: +1

Fatigue levels: OK, –1, –3, –5, Unconscious

Wound Penalties: –1 (1–4), –3 (5–8), –5 (9–12), Incapacitated (13–16)

Abilities: Own Language 5 (vocabulary), Artes Liberales 5 (logic), Awareness 1 (search), Bargain 1 (tuition fees), Brawl 2 (fist), Carouse 1 (student songs), Chirurgy 0 (2) (first aid), Civil & Canon Law 3 (France), Concentration 0 (1) (distractions), Etiquette 0 (1) (nobles), Folk Ken 2 (townsfolk), Guile 4 (disguise), Home town lore 2 (places), Latin 5 (academic usage), Music 0 (1) (sing gruffly), Paris Lore 1 (streets & taverns), Philosophiae 5 (Natural Philosophy), Ride 1 (donkey), Teaching 3 (private tuition)

Equipment: (men's) clothing, parchment & ink, teaching materials (wax tablets, etc.) and such

Encumbrance: 0

Uberto

Naimes — a scholar, slight of build, young, with scarcely a wisp of beard yet on his chin. Or, underneath the clothes and bandages, a young woman determined to make her way despite society around her. She has an obsessive determination to prove herself as a scholar in her own right. (An easy path would have been to enter a nunnery, but she never met that opportunity.)

Isabelle, as she was christened, was the last in a large family, mostly boys, and some years younger than the others. Her mother died when she was 8, and though her father was moderately wealthy he was too busy to pay detailed attention to his family, which allowed Isabelle to slip away from home and (in clothing stolen from her brothers) take a place at the cathedral school. The teachers approved of their bright lad, quick with answers… little knowing "his" secret.

Her father disciplined her a few times, but assumed she would learn and grow out of it. By the time she was a young woman, her ways growing excessive even for home, she fled with a sum of money, and made her way to Paris. There she managed to join the University, funding herself by teaching merchants offspring to read, but before she finished her studies she was discovered and forced to flee again. Since then she has sought employ as tutor to nobles and their offspring, but has become increasingly cautious about discovery — choosing flight first when she senses she might be unmasked. As such, she has managed to acquire some genuine letters of reference to bring to new employment.

She recently arrived at the Covenant, not realising who or what they represent, seeking her sort of employment. They have taken her in and she is finding a special place, outside the normal bounds of Medieval Society, a place where the genuinely odd can find freedom to be themselves.