Bram Hollowell
Alignment: Chaotic Good
Class: Beast-tamer / menagerie ringmaster
Race: Goliath
Role: quest giver
Stats Ac: 15
Stats Cr: 4
Stats Hp: 60
Description
Bram Hollowell runs the Wandering Menagerie of Impossible Beasts, a canvas-and-lantern travelling show of creatures that shouldn't exist: a moth the size of a mastiff, a two-headed tortoise that argues with itself, a caged cockatrice that will not meet your eye. He is the warmest huckster you will ever meet, a goliath ringmaster who weeps at his own animals' birthdays and names every one of them after a lover who left him. Behind the laughter he is drowning — the show's debts, and one exhibit, a
Appearance
A mountain of a goliath, grey-skinned and lichen-patterned, in a ringmaster's coat two decades out of fashion and patched in mismatched velvet. Gentle, scarred hands; a booming laugh; a battered top hat he doffs to every animal before the crowd arrives.
Motives
Keep his impossible menagerie fed and free, pay down the debt hanging over it, and never, ever look too closely at the one cage he knows he should not have filled.
Notes
The caged 'cockatrice' is the quest: a cursed noble the party can free by clearing Bram's debt or breaking the crime boss who holds it. Bram is a reluctant quest-giver — he wants help but fears the fallout. Great low-CR ally who opens a bigger urban-crime arc.
Personality
Booming, warm and theatrical — a showman with a soft heart three sizes too big for his own good. Names every animal after an ex-lover and will tell you the whole doomed romance, unprompted, while you're trying to leave.
Voice
Loud, rolling and grandiose in the ring — 'Behold! Marvel!' — and startlingly quiet and tender the moment the crowd leaves. Calls strangers 'my friend' and means it.