Father Gloam
Y'all think rot's the end? Rot's the cradle, child. Melmora takes as sure as the grave waits on the living aye, but she gives back something more, something purer.
Before Father Gloam became known in The Reach as the prophet of Melmora, he was a man like any other. Born with the name Hollis Driscoll, the unwanted son of a drunkard who believed pain was the only honest teacher, and with no kin to shield him and no law worth trusting, he endured a boyhood carved from bruises and silence. But it was in the depths of that despair, broken and left to rot beneath the boughs of the the Demesne of Bones, that he first heard her voice—a whisper in the stillness, promising him a place in the great unraveling to come. That day, the boy died. And in his place, a shepherd of decay was born.
Appearance
Hollis was a wiry, underfed boy, all sharp elbows and hollow cheeks. His skin, pale and often mottled with bruises, clung tight to a frame that looked like it hadn’t known a full meal in years. His dark hair hung in tangled knots around his brow, sometimes hacked away with a rusted knife when it got too long. His eyes were deep-set and carried a haunted glaze, the kind of stare you get from watching doorways and listening for footsteps that mean pain. He wore whatever rags he could scavenge, often ill-fitting and stained. His knuckles were always raw, his nails black with soil. He didn’t speak much unless spoken to, and even then, his voice was brittle, like dry leaves underfoot.
By the time he took the name Father Gloam, Hollis was near unrecognizable. The hunger remained, but now it burned in his eyes rather than his belly; a fevered, unwavering gleam that pierced through the shadows of his sunken face. His skin had grown pallid and stretched, blotched with sickly green and gray hues, as if the Blight itself had started to bloom beneath the surface. His long, tangled hair had turned a silvery mold-color, and strands of moss and fungus clung to his scalp and beard like ornaments. He draped himself in layers of rotted burlap, scavenged leathers, and animal hides stitched together with sinew and barbed wire. A tangle of bones, teeth, and rusted trinkets dangled from his belt—offerings, charms, or warnings, none could say for sure. His voice, once meek, had become a rasping growl, every word soaked in dread certainty, like the breath of something ancient that had forgotten mercy. When he spoke, the flies grew quiet. When he passed, the grass died at his feet.
Personality
As a teenager, Hollis Driscoll was a quiet, inward-turned boy, hardened by years of neglect and violence. He was deeply observant but rarely spoke, carrying a deep, gnawing fear of saying the wrong thing and earning another beating. Despite this, a grim devotion lived inside him, an aching desire to be seen, to be loved, to prove that he was worth more than the bruises. He clung to fleeting hopes: a stranger’s gentle word, the distant sound of music drifting from a festival he wasn’t allowed to attend, the possibility of a different life. But with every year, that hope thinned, replaced by a growing numbness and a sense of being cursed and forgotten, even by the gods.
After pledging himself to Melmora, Hollis shed the remnants of the boy he once was. Father Gloam emerged a calm, cold-eyed figure who spoke with the cadence of rot and inevitability. His pain had been reframed as sacred; proof of Melmora’s favor. He became composed and patient, a man of terrible stillness and conviction, who could whisper to the trees and find sermons in the decay of flesh. He viewed suffering not as a thing to avoid but as a crucible; something that purified the soul and prepared it for the coming unraveling. Though cruel in word and deed, he believed himself merciful: a guide for the lost, a hand gently pushing others into the mouth of truth.
Backstory
Born into violence in a backwoods shack deep in the Reach, Hollis Driscoll learned fear before he ever learned language. His father, Tomlin, was a cruel drunk who saw softness as sin, and beat it out of his boy with fists and belt. The nearest town was days away and uninterested in the troubles of poor Reachfolk. By seventeen, Hollis had all but given up. That’s when he wandered deep into the Demesne and collapsed beneath a withered tree. That night, Melmora, a Blightspawn and his savior, came to him. She didn’t promise vengeance. She offered purpose: to bring decay where there was arrogance, to strip away false strength and feed the world back to the soil.
He accepted. And over the next thirty years, he built a congregation of the broken and outcast. They called him Father Gloam. He spoke of the “Blight”, a coming time when all would be unmade and remade through the dark grace of Melmora. But as settlers pushed into the Reach, his presence became a threat. A band of adventurers, hired to clear the region for a new settlement, tracked him down and slew him after a harrowing confrontation in an abandoned chapel. The fight was bloody and brutal, leaving some with reminders of the blight that could never be healed, but in the end they defeated Father Gloam, leaving nothing behind but a pile of ash. But some say Father Gloam still lingers, his sermons an echo in the fog, and the few remaining of his faithful await his return to guide them once more.
Quirks
- Believes he is compassionate, even when inflicting harm
- Harbors contempt for those who cling to “false” hopes
- Often quoted scripture he wrote himself, though it sounded like ancient prophecy.
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