Gainsley “Bless These Gains” Blessedheart is my very first Dungeons & Dragons (hereafter referred to as “D&D”) character. He is a Hill Dwarf Monk.
Gainsley is boringly average in every way. A typical dwarf stands between 4 and 5 feet tall – Gainsley is exactly 4.5 feet. He ties the end of his scraggly beard through a small, worthless ring made of slate. The only noteworthy fact – in the same way that footnotes are noteworthy – is that Gainsley weighs 175 pounds, just slightly more than the average dwarf’s 150 pounds. I’m going to hazard a guess and say that’s because of his bulging muscles.
Gainsley remembers little of his childhood. According to the monks he grew up with, he was abandoned at the steps of the monastery, with nothing more than a cloth diaper and that aforementioned slate ring. He spent most of his childhood years training with the monks. He was miserable. Dwarves are not built to learn martial arts – especially arts that were created by and designed for larger beings (with longer limbs). Every master at the monk laughed at Gainsley, except for Master [REDACTED]. He never gave up on Gainsley.
Master [REDACTED] constantly tried to adapt conventional martial arts techniques to help Gainsley, but was largely unsuccessful. On an uneventful day of training, Master [REDACTED] taught a modified technique to Gainsley: the Falling Meteor. Something in Gainsley’s brain clicked, and he attempted to use it in a friendly sparring session with Master [REDACTED].
It was successful!
Unfortunately, it was too successful. Master [REDACTED]’s head was no longer where it should be, and Gainsley was covered in a fine red mist.
He had killed the only person who had never given up on him.
And so Gainsley ran. He ran, and ran, and ran until he could run no more. Then he picked himself up and ran again. He decided that he did not want to be around people anymore, and hid up in the mountains for a couple of decades. Eventually, he left his self-imposed exile and entered the nearby town of [UNNAMED]. He capitalized on his muscular physique by doing whatever physical labour and odd jobs he could find. Gainsley then spent that meagre sum on ale, food, and housing – in that order.
He was happy with that life. Well, as close as you can be to happy when you killed the only person who ever believed in you. And so, Gainsley lived without being truly alive.
Gainsley had just turned 200. Instead of reflecting on what he could have accomplished in twenty decades or looking towards the future, he chose to drown himself in ale at the nearby tavern. That was when he laid his eyes on a noble-looking high elf tart…
The Misadventures of Gainsley Blessedheart 