Who is Thaddeus Snaatch?

I’ve recently started my first Dungeons and Dragons campaign. It’s a game that I’ve long coveted to play. My character is a Elvish Wizard named Thaddeus Snaatch.

I have found Fire Bolt to be indispensable and Magic Missiles to put a bow on most enemies. However, I’ve only felt well covered in combat. In role play and general adventuring, I feel lost – not lost but lost as Thaddeus. I don’t know what he wants, thinks, or is looking for in the world. So, as the titular questions asks, Who is Thaddeus Snaatch?

Where does he come from?

The Snaatch family has a pedigree whose depth is only rivaled by its purity. An old wizarding family with a long standing tradition in the practice of Abjuration. Heralded as the “Iron Guard of Deloria”, the Snaatch family has a history deep entwined with the proud city of Deloria. As the settlement was budding into a township, it was the Snaatch family’s charms, wards, and banishings that kept its denizens safe. With time, Deloria transformed into the city we know it as now, and in step the protection evolved alongside. As veritable “founders”, the Snaatch family naturally grew with its city. Protection can’t be free; even if it has no price, the protector will always garner favor from the protected.

In the old times of war or siege, the “Iron Guard” is loved by every inhabitant of the city. It offered a nearly infallible defense from all the assailants, and those who get through the wall won’t be in this realm for much longer.

In the old times of peace, the defenses still held strong. Our benevolent guild of protectors split their time between: maintaining the guard with understood languor, using well funneled taxes for universities to further magic (mainly their magic), and offering private protection – at a premium of course.

However, we find ourselves in new times of peace. In these new times, the Snaatch protections grow thinner over the heads of anyone who doesn’t have deep pockets or elvish blood. It seems the Snaatches are much less concerned with the “Iron Guard” they once upheld. Their attention now turns enriching their practices, their bottom lines, and their lineage. For those who are kept out of the proverbial rain, the Snaatch family is old, rich, mature… the old guard. For the rest of the city, the iron reputation has long tarnished and has been pejoratively renamed platinum. One must wonder, in times of such peace, what are we keeping out? By the same sword, it seems that everyone but those protected by new order can see the odd lines the new “Platinum Guard” draws.

…

This is where our hero comes in. Thaddeus J. Snaatch VII is anything but his father’s son. From a young age, he was much too happy to have a friend to be selective to their creed. Afraid of stepping on bugs not to mention banishing beings from existence, abjuring seemed to Thaddeus less of a practice of protection and more of a practice of selection.

Never one to stir the pot, his father and uncles are older and (ostensibly) wiser. Surely, they know how the city and its people work. If not for them, some other group of codgers would be enforcing curfews and the like.

Moreover, he knows that there are far worse lives than living in the nicest house in the nicest part of town. He has it nice: far nicer than most for certain. The pangs in his stomach may well be from how he feels about “the family business”, but if he isn’t sure he might as well hold up in a castle while he sorts it out. Right?

Why is he a Wizard?

Put simply – why wouldn’t he be a wizard. His father (and father’s father (and on)) was a wizard if not a great wizard. Before he could be offered the choice of what to be he had began studying spell casting. The curriculum was very encouraging to the Abjuration arts, if you could believe it.

He was a quick study; be that because he actually liked to study or because it was the only thing he could do to get attention from his father. At a young age, he could parry weak attacks, ensnare animals in practice, and shroud himself in magic making him generally more formidable. With time, he learned more about the work he was being shoehorned into; the love Thaddeus felt for his studies was cast in a sour light. But, his precocious nature kept him in the books.

With the smallest hint of rebellion in him, he needed to figure out how to keep studying without signalling defection from his families practices. Ingenuously, Thaddeus reasoned: failing the study of magic, what is more wizardly and honorable than the study of the study of magic! Furthermore, the study of the study of magic is thankfully agnostic to the type of magic whose study is being studied. So, Thaddeus Snatch claimed the Order of Scribes as his school.

What has him down on his luck?

Thaddeus seemed to have figured out how to distance himself from the privatised protection syndicate of his family while getting to keep his head in books. Thaddeus J. Snaatch VI seemed to think differently.

To put it short – our hero got cut off and kicked out of the house. Saddled with the costs of joining his new order, studying, and living, his pocket money (despite being a commoner’s life time wages) was running thin. Ignorance is expensive after all.

Thrust into the “real” world, a small part of him loves being in and among “real” people with “real” problems. This small part is annoyingly vocal; you can find him at the pub extolling “commoner’s ale” and talking about the “rustic” foods at the market. His new abode is certainly more humble than anything he’s seen before, but how comfy, right?

A much larger part of Thaddeus, that he doesn’t understand if he even knows about, is very fulfilled to be out of his family’s purview. To be out on his own has freed him of the dissonance of a bystander that vexed him for so long. Whether or not Thaddeus is aware of it yet, he is learning that a hungry soul is far worse than a hungry stomach.

Despite his positive (if not ignorant) outlook, the noble pursuit of developing spells takes a long time to turn profits. So, something will need to change soon for him to have a chance to continue his new life. And crawling back to daddy isn’t an option.

Why is he in this ragtag bunch of misfits?

Thaddeus has now found himself in a ragtag bunch of misfits. This begs the question – why?

It was a fine day – a bit past noon, Thaddeus was touring the market in the slums he was now living in. His promenade doubled as a study break and a way of him thinking about thinking of making money. Maybe, he could sell spell scrolls or simple spell books? The selling of parlor tricks would be a hard pill to swallow for any scholar not to mention one who comes from such a high status family.

While lamenting his fall from grace, a ruckus stirred up around some charlatans booth; one who is always selling the most valuable chunk of garbage you’ll ever hold. From the booth, he sees a poor goblin being chased by a warlock and a halfling. What was he to do but run to help.

The rest is the campaign thus far.

Again… Who is Thaddeus Snaatch?

Thaddeus J. Snaatch VII is an Elvish Wizard. He’s tall and lanky like so many elves. Similarly elvish, he blonde silken hair, but, unlike his kindred, it will just never lay flat. Neither comb nor brush nor oil nor salve has tamed the mop upon his head.

He’s a meek person, keeping a small footprint despite his height. Time under his father’s boot made him feel lesser than. Finding himself and his worth is the journey Thaddeus is on.

Thaddeus loves his books; he’s in the Order of Scribes after all. Often his nose is in a book. Failing that, he’s trying to be inquisitive and incisive, appropriate or not. Thaddeus is someone who still doesn’t know the difference between intelligence and wisdom.

Since being marked a black sheep he has a new stride, still coltish, but new. He may be ignorant, but he nevertheless finds it hard to not do what he thinks is right. Within that, above all, Thaddeus wants to put good into the world.