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Cinnamon

Name Cinnamon
Age 41 (BaliDnD), 27 (Birminghouse)
Race Sun Elf
Hometown Somewhere in Asteri, Umbria
Class Evocation Wizard
Status Alive

Overview

Cinnamon is a major NPC in Bali DnD, serving as Oleander's mentor and a senior agent of the resistence. A younger Cinnamon appears as a player character in Birminghouse DnD, chronicling parts of his quest to return to Umbria. In the past, he was a member of the same adventuring party as Kevin (and his boyfriend). His current cover job is studying one of the many volcanoes on Umbria, though he appears to have a personal interest in it as well.

Personality and Relationships

Cinnamon is very unlike the stereotypical image of a wizard. He is capricious with a penchant for violence and a strange fixation on magic duels. His specialty is pyrotechnics and demolition; unlike most wizards, he treats his magical experiments more like art projects than science, though he is certainly a perfectionist when it comes to his work. Despite his quirks, he is a confident, seasoned adventurer who performs well under pressure; he likes to joke around and doesn't always treat situations with the seriousness they deserve, but he is a quick-witted strategist with an eye for precision. Cinnamon displays a pathological need to be the strongest person in the room. On one hand, he legitimately enjoys fighting (especially winning) and knows he is good at it, accounting for his obnoxious, cocksure demeanor. On the other, he is absolutely convinced that he must be capable of fighting his way out of any situation, a neurotic fear that he tries to conceal. He is sharp-tongued and confrontational, even when it does not serve his best interests. At the same time, Cinnamon is least self-aware of his reputation as a rather unpleasant individual - perhaps this contributes to his paranoia that nearly everyone wants to hurt him. In the depths of his mind, he might admit that he's a real piece of work, but a battle against himself is not one he thinks he can win. Cinnamon struggles on and off with alcoholic tendencies. He was able to keep his drinking to a minimum for Oleander's sake during his youth, though recent events have sent him spiraling.

To put it plainly, Cinnamon has been bewitched body and soul by Kevin Nguyen. Yeah, he can't explain it, either. Although Cinnamon lies and pretends to have various saucy exploits, he has not been intimately interested in a single other person before or after his relationship with Kevin. As young adults, he had a sort of fascination with Kevin partly due to how different their lifestyles and attitudes were, and partly because he struggled to understand why Kevin not only saved him but continued to put up with him (not many people put up with Cinnamon). Neither of them were really able to make any other friends in college due to their poor charisma, so they spent a lot of time together. He often felt that Kevin needed a chance to eschew his responsibilities and indulge, which Cinnmon certainly provided. His tendency to get into scraps frequently caused Kevin to excessively fuss and dote over him, which he secretly took great pleasure in. Despite his long-held resentment for Kevin in the interstitial years, the two are quick to return to their old dynamic (albiet divorce-coded) once they reunite in Bali DnD. Initially, the tone may have been more hostile, but it's mellowed out into something of an outlet for both of them. Cinnamon has fun teasing Kevin, and Kevin is more gruff with him than he was in the olden days. Being the two mentor characters of the group and sharing many secrets and traumas, the two naturally feel more comfortable confiding in each other than with the comparatively young adventuring party. In private, they are more physically and emotionally intimate with each other. They are not very open about the nature of their relationship with the "kids," but it is certainly obvious to anyone with decent insight.

However, Kevin is not the most important person in his life, at least not anymore. Cinnamon cares very deeply for his apprentice, Oleander, who he took in as a sickly child and nursed back to health. They have outwardly contrasting personalities but gel together nicely. He is gentler with Oleander than anyone else, though he is insistent on teaching him how to handle himself in a fight. Having raised him from a young age, he can read Oleander's emotions very well. Cinnamon notices when he is repressing himself and tries to give him an outlet through wizard duels. While he is confident in his apprentice's abilities and believes him to be a skilled caster (and more of a traditionally 'smart' wizard than Cinnamon himself), he is terrified of anything happening to him and can be over-protective.

Among the rest of the BaliDnD party, Cinnamon is most fond of Solomaz, who he respects for his straightforward nature and practical skills. He is often particularly rude to Nag, perhaps because of Nag's closeness to Oleander, or perhaps even because he reminds Cinnamon a bit of his younger self. Or maybe he's just annoyed by Nag being nosy about him and Kevin. In Birminghouse DnD, he at least tolerates the other party members, but thus far is too depressed about Kevin to form a strong dynamic with them. His exact relationship with Sal (and how it would come to affect his relationship with his own apprentice later) is yet to be determined.

Appearance

Cinnamon is notably tall - around six-and-a-half feet - and lean with long limbs and broad shoulders. His facial features are sharp, yet elegant. He does not appear particularly strong, but he is surprisingly agile and energetic for a middle-aged wizard. He has light brown skin and wavy blonde hair. While some of the marks on his skin are freckles, many of them are actually just because he has bad skin. Potentially some sort of eczema. Thanks to his elven heritage, he looks fairly youthful for his age. His left ear is frayed from an unspecified tussle in his youth. Cinnamon cares about his appearance and dresses fashionably, if a bit eccentrically sometimes. His outfits usually consist of earth tones and warm colors (and purple). He likes patterned shirts. Cinnamon typically wears several pieces of gold jewelry; both his ears are pierced in multiple places. He also had a lip piercing in his 20s, though he no longer wears it. Before taking his job at the Dry Gulch Wizard Tower, he wore his long hair in a bun. Since then, he's started cutting it short and wearing a beret. By the time of Bali DnD, he has gotten a fire absorbing tattoo on his back.

He and Kevin have a set of "matching" bracelets. His initially had a golden phoenix with a ruby eye curled around a sapphire, but Kevin switched their bracelets before sending him off to Keplinger Isle. Therefore, he wears a bracelet of a silver dragon with a sapphire eye curled around a ruby until the two of them reunite, at which point they swap them back. He sometimes wears it as an anklet.

History

Pre-Birminghouse Campaign

"Self-taught" low-level wizard Cinnamon was banished from Asteri when he was 19. His family sent him off on a merchant ship to the mainland, but he got into a fight with one of the sailors and was promptly thrown overboard somewhere not too far from the mainland. Kevin happened upon him half-drowned on the beach and saved him. With nowhere to go, Cinnamon simply followed Kevin back to his school, becoming a student there shortly afterwards. He majored in wizardry with a focus on evocation, though his magical education was suppplemented with information on architecture and special effects.

The leader of Kevin's party at first rebuffed his attempts to bring Cinnamon into the party, saying that Cinnamon did not come off as an intelligent or respectable spellcaster. However, an unfortunate incident left them in need of a new wizard... and a new one was conveniently waiting right there! Within their party, Kevin and Cinnamon were the only two who appeared to actually have a healthy dynamic with each other. Thanks to their skilled and charismatic leader, the party was eventually hired by Oil Industries to do various tasks. Expectedly, things eventually fell apart for them, though I shall not yet detail this. Cinnamon was prompted to act drastically due to [spoilers] and rebel against their leader, expecting Kevin to be on his side. Instead, Kevin was furious at him for endangering both of them in such a way. The leader found out about this and privately told Kevin that he would kill Cinnamon if Kevin didn't. Kevin confronted Cinnamon alone in combat and downed him. Instead of killing him, he sedated him and sent him away on a ship, explaining in a note that it was "for his own good" and that he would tell their former leader that Cinnamon was killed and his body destroyed. Equal parts livid and distraught, Cinnamon fixated heavily on his fight with Kevin for a very, very long time. He believed that he could have won if not for the oft-repeated fact that he "hesitated" and became obsessed with winning duels.

Birminghouse Campaign

After being shipped off to Keplinger Isle, Cinnamon teamed up with Vasily and King Toli to defeat Sal Mon's apprentice in order to him back into an elf and get some sort of epic quest boon. The reward turned out to not really exist, but he instead requested to become Sal's new apprentice in order to improve his wizard dueling skills. Sal agreed, although he was more interested in the academic side of magic and did not seem to understand Cinnamon's insistence on dueling.

In need of money to return to Umbria, Cinnamon hesitantly agreed to look for a missing merchant ship along with Vasily and King Toli. Tragically, the king died in his sleep en route to their destination, and Cinnamon was unable to loot his corpse due to the interference of Dr. Dirt. With the doctor joining the party in Toli's stead, the three continued to the lighthouse, though they struggle to work together. Through some unexpected moves, they managed to skip most of the dungeon and had to deal with many encounters' worth of enemies at once. The party fled, only managing to save one boy, and the island was taken over by a giant water elemental. Given his fear of water, this was all deeply traumatic for Cinnamon.

In-Between Campaigns

Cinnamon returned to Umbria with the intent to find and confront Kevin, though he had no idea where to start since Kevin was no longer associated with the old party and immune to scrying. He also had no money. As a result, he ends up taking a shitty job as the town wizard for Dry Gulch. Not long into his tenure, he came across Oleander and took him in. Now occupied with caring for his new apprentice, his quest for Kevin was left abandoned. Until...

BaliDnD Campaign

Stats

STR DEX CON INT WIS CHA
8 16 16 20 12 8

Trivia