Clod - XERES LIVE!

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Basic Information

Full Name

Clod

Nickname(s)

None

Race (Grade)

Human, (D)

Class

Butler

Height

8'1"

Birthday

Frostnight 14, 1225

Age

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Birthplace

The Glacial Wendigo

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Bloodline Ability

🔮Unknown

This Bloodline ability has not yet been unveiled to you.

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Physical Description

Clod, Butler to Arties Geodegazer

Appearance

Clod stands at eight feet and one inch, a fact that becomes immediately apparent the moment he enters any room not built to accommodate him. He is broad-shouldered and heavily built, though the word "brutish" would be entirely the wrong one; there is nothing aggressive in his frame, only mass, and even that mass seems to carry itself apologetically, as if he is always slightly aware of the space he takes up. His skin is a pale, ashen gray, the permanent complexion of a man born and raised in a realm that never once saw sunlight. It is smooth and slightly cool to the touch, like weathered limestone, and despite his age it carries far fewer lines than one might expect from a man nearing eighty. His eyes are large and pale, a washed-out silver-gray, like old river ice, developed over generations of Hollow-born ancestry for seeing in the near-dark, and they remain somewhat sensitive to bright light even now, decades after his rescue. He keeps his hair close-cropped and tidy. His formal butler's attire is custom-made at considerable expense, yet it fits him with perfect precision, neatly pressed at all hours.

Unique Characteristics

What makes Clod immediately striking is not simply his size, but the profound gentleness that radiates from it. His enormous hands, each one capable of palming a dinner plate as though it were a coin, move with extraordinary care and delicacy, handling glassware and folded linens with the patience of a man who has spent decades proving that his size need not be a liability. He does not walk so much as he drifts, adjusting his gait to minimize the sound of his footfalls on any floor type, a habit formed in service long before it became muscle memory. Because he cannot speak, his face has become extraordinarily expressive without ever becoming theatrical: a slight tilt of the head, a softened brow, a slow blink, those who spend enough time around Clod begin to read him as naturally as they would read spoken language.

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Personality & Temperament

Positive Traits

Excessively kind, generosity appears to be his default state
An exceptional listener who makes people feel heard
Patient to a degree that borders on the supernatural
Thorough and meticulous
Deeply loyal, his devotion, once given, does not waver

Challenging Traits

Cannot speak; relies entirely on gesture, and expression
His size continues to startle those meeting him
Carries a quiet, constant grief since Elpis's departure
His hollow-born eyes remain sensitive to intense light
Deeply ingrained habits

— He set a cup of tea on the table before she had finished thinking she wanted one. He didn't make a sound. He just nodded and left., Overheard from a guest at the Geodegazer Estate

— I've met generals who were less reassuring to have nearby. There's something about the way Clod looks at you that makes you feel like everything is going to be fine., A member of the household staff

Likes

The quiet hours before the household stirs in the morning
When a guest eats a meal he has prepared with clear satisfaction
Soft, ambient light, candles and lanterns
The smell of clean linen
Tasks that require thoroughness over speed

Dislikes

Bright midday sunlight; he squints and tilts his head away from it
Being thanked loudly, a nod from him is a request to move on
Watching someone struggle with something he could resolve
Loud, sudden noises that disrupt the peace of a room
Anything left unfinished

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Background & History

Born in the Umbral Hollow

Clod was born in winter of the year 1225 in a place known to its inhabitants simply as the Umbral Hollow, a vast, lightless realm existing in a fold between planes, entirely severed from the light of any sun or star. The Hollow is not an underground cavern, though it resembles one in character: it is a dimension of perpetual, absolute dark, its terrain a labyrinth of black stone and still water, lit only by colonies of phosphorescent fungi that cling to the ceiling of the world in pale blue clusters and provide just enough glow to see by. Those born there develop over generations into something slightly different from standard humanity, broader, paler, with those distinctive silver eyes, and often considerably taller than their surface-world counterparts, as if the body compensates for its lightless environment by growing outward in every direction. Clod was born larger than most, even by Hollow standards, and showed no voice from his very first breath. He came into the world already silent, and the Hollow's inhabitants accepted this without particular concern. In a place where one learns quickly to move quietly and communicate in subtle ways, muteness is not a disadvantage.

Life Within the Dark

The Umbral Hollow was not a cruel place by design, but it was a hard one. Its communities were small and insular, organized around the shared need to maintain the fungal light-groves and navigate the treacherous stone passages between settlements. Resources were scarce and carefully rationed. Clod, from a young age, fell naturally into the role of caretaker, not by assignment but by instinct. He was the one who noticed when someone's lamp was running low before they did, who showed up to help carry loads without being asked, who sat with the sick through the long dark stretches when the fungi dimmed toward something approaching night. His muteness had made him an exceptional observer. Without the ability to fill silence with his own voice, he listened with his whole body, learning to read people the way others learn to read text. By the time he was a young adult he had become, without any formal title, the settlement's most trusted attendant, the one people sought out not for answers but simply for his reliable, unhurried presence.

Elpis and the Way Out

In approximately the year 1252, a figure appeared in the Umbral Hollow who should not have been there at all. Elpis Basajuan, then in the midst of one of his long, centuries-spanning periods of exploration and knowledge-gathering, had located the planar fold leading into the Hollow through methods no inhabitant could explain. He arrived in his human visage, carrying light, real light, a golden mage-flame that the Hollow-born had never seen and which caused immediate chaos among the light-sensitive population. Most fled. Clod did not. He stood at a respectful distance and watched the stranger with the same patient, measuring attention he gave to everything. Something about that stillness, that complete lack of fear or aggression in a being who was very obviously built for both, caught Elpis's attention. They communicated slowly, Elpis speaking, Clod writing in the fine ash-dust of the Hollow floor. By the end of that conversation, Elpis had extended an invitation: to leave the Hollow and enter service in the world above. Clod did not answer immediately. He returned to his settlement, said his farewells in the way he said everything, without words, but completely, and walked back to the dragon in the dark. He has not returned to the Umbral Hollow since.

Decades in Elpis's Service

The transition from the lightless Hollow to the sunlit world above was not easy. Clod wore darkened lenses for the better part of his first year in Elpis's household, and the sheer quantity of sound in the open world, wind, birdsong, the creak of a building settling, required an adjustment that took months. But the work itself came naturally. The skills he had developed in the Hollow translated directly: attentiveness, patience, a thorough knowledge of what people needed before they asked, and an absolute reliability that did not depend on mood or circumstance. He was already an exceptional caretaker. Elpis gave him a framework, the formal structure of a proper household, and Clod inhabited it completely. Over the following decades he became indispensable, moving with Elpis through the varied chapters of that long and complicated life: the years of empire-building, the political tensions, the arrivals and departures of allies, the grief that ran as a permanent undercurrent beneath everything the Dragon Emperor did. Clod witnessed all of it from the precise, quiet position of a man who is always present and almost never noticed. He was the first one up in the morning and the last one to bed at night, and in more than fifty years of service he never once needed to be told what to do twice.

After Elpis

When Elpis departed this world, Clod did not grieve loudly, he is constitutionally incapable of doing so. But those who knew him well enough to read him could see it plainly in the weeks that followed: a fractional slowing of his movements, a stillness in his eyes that went beyond his usual calm, a tendency to pause slightly longer than usual before resuming a task. He had devoted more than half his life to one household and one master, and that chapter had closed without warning or ceremony. The question of what came next resolved itself practically and, perhaps, inevitably. Arties Geodegazer had been a part of the world Elpis moved through for as long as Clod had been in service. He already understood the shape of her household, her guests, the rhythms of her estate. When the transition was request by Elpis, he accepted it without hesitation, not because it was the easiest option, but because his friend wanted it so. He arrived at the Geodegazer Estate with a pair of duffle bags filled with personal effects.

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Goals

Serving Arties with the Same Standard He Held for Elpis

Clod's singular professional ambition is to provide Arties (and her household) with the same quality of service he gave to Elpis, which is to say, exceptional service, offered without fanfare and without expectation of recognition. He does not see this as a lesser posting or a consolation. Arties's household is complex, dynamic, and demanding in ways that genuinely interest him: a steady flow of diplomats, soldiers, travelers, and strange creatures requiring accommodation, all with different needs and protocols. He approaches the challenge with the same thoroughness he applies to everything. His standard has not changed. The name above the door has.

Ensuring the Household Never Has to Think About Logistics

Clod's deepest professional satisfaction comes not from being thanked but from the household running so smoothly that no one needs to think about the mechanics of it at all. He wants every guest to feel welcome without effort, every meal to appear without friction, every practical detail to simply be handled. He considers himself most successful when his presence is functionally invisible, when the household operates like a well-maintained clock, and no one has to see the winding. He coordinates quietly with other staff and, where possible, streamlines every process until it takes the minimum possible effort from anyone other than himself.

Finding His Footing in a New Chapter

More than fifty years of continuity ended abruptly with Elpis's departure, and Clod is, in his quiet way, still finding his footing. He is not lost, his sense of purpose is too well-established for that, but there is a process underway of slowly learning what this new household is, what it needs from him specifically, and who he is within it. He takes this process seriously, though it shows only in small ways: the extra time he spends observing before acting, the careful notes he keeps in his small leather journal about each member of the household's preferences, the deliberate patience with which he holds himself back from assuming that what worked for Elpis will automatically work here. He has always been a learner. He is learning now.

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Current Status & Relationships

Allegiance

City of Goodberry

Role

Butler

Associates

Arties Geodegazer (Current Employer) Elpis Basajuan (Former Employer)

🤝 A Note on Communication

Clod does not speak and has never spoken. He communicates through gesture, facial expression, and, when precision is required, a small leather-bound notebook he keeps in his breast pocket, writing in a neat, unhurried hand. Those who spend more than a few days around him tend to find that spoken language becomes surprisingly unnecessary; he has a gift for making himself understood through subtler means that most people haven't needed to use since childhood. New guests are sometimes unnerved by a mute man of his size approaching them. This feeling passes quickly once he sets a warm drink in front of them and inclines his head with the particular expression that means, plainly, that everything is fine and he is glad they are here.