Bram Hollowell

NPC · Goliath · Beast-tamer / menagerie ringmaster · quest giver

by Codex

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.

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.

For the Game Master Secrets and prep notes, spoilers for players. Open to read.

Secrets

His prize attraction — a 'cockatrice' that always turns its head from the crowd — is a person under a curse, and Bram knows it. He can't free them: a crime boss holds the menagerie's debts and the cage as collateral, and freeing the exhibit means losing everything.

menagerie