Walter
From Walterpedia, the Walter encyclopedia
Walter is a water genasi cleric of the tempest domain. He comes from an as yet unnamed underwater city and is on holiday. Walter worships Istishia and wants to convert everyone to his god. He believes everyone should worship Istishia for thier own good, and people who chose to worship other gods are misguided idiots at best and freakish cultists at worst[1].
The first day of his holiday Walter got lost in the woods and met a feral man who he named Barry. He took Barry on a ship where he met Ragnor. They are his best friends.
Personality
Walter is an upbeat and happy character who is completely oblivious to the fact that people find him annoying. He will happlily blather on about istias to anyone who will listen (and anyone who won't). He considers everyone he meets a friend and is quick to trust. He believes that everyone has good intentions and does not realise when people are out to deceive of trick him.
Walter is very cold to people who openly worship other religions, believing them to be cultists who are out to fool people into following false gods. He especially hates fire gods or other water gods. His most hated god is Kossuth. He is openly rude and rolls his eyes and contradicts them when their talking.
Although Walter is fascinated by the culture of dry land, he finds peoples ways to be backwards and is grossed out by a lot of the customs that people find normal. He is especially put off by the ideas of cooking food and burning or burying corpses. He makes no secret of this and is often openly derogatory or condescending.
Walter is terrified of fire as he believes it to be sent from an evil fire god.
Early Life
Walter was born at the age of 0 in a small village on the outskirts of nowhere. He is the youngest of 14 children, his parents run out of name ideas at child 10 so he has 2 brothers and 1 sister also called Walter.
It is very common for the water genasi to have a lot of children and sell off the youngest to the church. The Istisians come the villages once per year with their big cart and buy up the children that are old enough to work. Walter went to the church when he was 4 years old. He doesn't really remember his family at all but he's unbothered as he has always seen the church as his family.
The church in the Aquatic capital is the biggest church of Istisias in the world - about the size of a university campus. Walter went to Sunday school every day and learnt everything about the religion and the Istisias Bible. He also had to spend a lot of time scrubbing algea and molluscs off of the walls of the church buildings and hoeing the sea cucumber patches.
Walter wasn't very popular as a child and didn't really have friends. When it came to his work and worshiping istisias, Walter was incredibly earnest but also completely incompetent. Some of the clerics found this endearing but they mostly just found him incredibly annoying. Walter had moments of sadness and depression but he mainly didnt mind not having many friends as he had a strong belief and love for istisias and felt he could always turn to his god.
When it come to learning cleric spells Walter found it all super frustrating. Casting cleric spells seemed come easily to all the other initiates but he could never produce anything more than a few bubbles. He decided he must not have done enough to earn Istisiases favour and started praying and reading the istisias bible all the fucking time.
Walter failed cleric school and was assigned missionary work as he was really annoying[2]. He went with a small troup of clerics and priests to travel to small towns and villages to preach the word of istisias. It was during this time that Walter first visited dry land at a small port town that had a strong trading relationship with the aquatic cities. Walter discovered that he had a knack for languages and learnt common to preach istisias to the people who lived there. He bought an Elven phrase book (laminated) to learn during his down-time on his travels.
Walter was obsessed with the culture and lives of the land people and found thier way of life facsinating. The people of the town were used to the istisians being closed off and didn't know how to deal with one who spoke their language and wanted to be friends with them. The fishermen saw an easy mark in Walter and taught him about gambling. Walter didn't really understand about money as it was not used in the underwater world and lost it all easily. He didn't understand that the fishermen just saw him as an interesting freakshow and thought they was his friends. It was the first time he'd ever had friends.
One night the fishermen pressured Walter into drinking with and he got super shit faced (he was showing off how he could do shots through his gils). He stumbled back to the camp where the other clerics was staying and they immediately realised he was pissed and accused him of heresy for rejecting the water of istisias. He was immediately sent back to the city the next day in disgrace.
Walter fell into a terrible depression as he realised that he had betrayed his god to impress his friends. He spent all of his time praying to istisias for forgiveness and rededicated himself to worshipping istisias and reading the bible.
When he got back to the city he stood trial for heresy and was found guilty. He was sentenced to 5 years of hard labour doing all the shittest jobs in the church and was put back down to the lowest rank of the church. Walter petitioned the judge to let him go back to cleric school and retrain in the name of istiasias but he was rejected.
Walter found his 5 years of hard labour peaceful and cleansing and his relationship with istisias grew to a new level as he matured. Although the other convicts complained about their hard lives and plotted to escape, Walter stayed quiet and was thankful to istisias for his second chance. Everyone found him really annoying.
After his sentence was up Walter once again petitioned the judge to let him back into cleric school. The judge allowed it due to his good behaviour, but under strict conditions that he didn't fall behind. By this time, Walter was in his late 20's training with teenagers (who where still fucking better than him).
Career
Walter finally passed cleric school at the age of 32 and was given a special recommendation by the clergy due to his dedication to istisias. He was sent to a small church in a town miles away from the city (he was still annoying) and was given the position of junior cleric but quickly moved up in the church due to his enthusiasm and ability to convert pagans to istisias. He moved between small-town churches for 10 years before being promoted to senior cleric and was invited to a ceremony in the city to celebrate his promotion.
As a senior cleric, Walter was entitled to chose his own path as long as it honoured istisias, and he decided to return to the scene of his greatest crime - dry land. He wanted to take a holiday to a far away land to bring the good word of istisias to the pagans who lived there. By now, Walter was begrudgingly respected by the clergy so they granted his request.
Controversies
Walter pushed a guy off of a boat.
Walter made a guy repeatedly go get him water when he knows create or destroy water.
Walter repeatedly pronounces his friends name wrong and makes no effort to correct himself.
Walter repeatedly calls other clerics cultists and weirdos and denounces thier gods.
Walter drank some wine given to him by a fae creature in the desert.
Walter killed god.