Character Base

• Character Name: Mollymauk Tealeaf
• Age: Early to mid-twenties physically, his consciousness has been in existence for two years
• Canon (Date/Year Released)/Canon Point: Critical Role Campaign 2 (January 2018-June 2021), Episode 26: Found & Lost
• Items Coming Along: Coat, clothes, jewelry, Periapt of Wound Closure, Summer's Dance scimitar, carnival glass scimitar
• Content Warnings for Character: violence, death, self-harm to activate special powers, swearing, sexual language, alcohol consumption and abuse, recreational drug use, fantasy racism, gore, body horror (applicable past canon point), eye horror (applicable past canon point), blood, content related to being buried alive, and I'm not sure if you can call it identity issues bc Molly is very solid in his identity, it's just that he is not the only identity the body has ever had and he fears the last one.

Character Background

• History: Mollymauk Tealeaf's history. Lucien is the body's previous occupant, while Kingsley is the body's future occupant. Yeah this tiefling is technically three characters who've had the same body at different points in time.
• Core Relationships:
MOONDROP & FLETCHING CARNIVAL
The Fletching and Moondrop Traveling Carnival of Curiosities is the name for the circus that took Molly in when he first came out of the grave, amnesiac and aphasic. So much of his value system and his personality is learned and patterned off the circus and its members, from its ringmaster Gustav right down to Toya, the young dwarven singer. It's in the circus where Molly not only learned to read fortunes and juggle, but also how to relate to other people, trusting them as much as possible even though he didn't see any trustworthy quality, how to be generous even when being a little criminal, how to con other people in such a way that it bettered them, and how to take care of a group of misfits. He is a weird mix of judgmental and non-judgmental thanks to his circus upbringing: he needed to make snap judgments fast, because the transient nature of the circus meant he didn't have time to build relationships up with people outside the group, but inside the group he is not someone who gives a whole shit about how weird someone is besides finding them interesting. His showmanship and sense of style is very much in line with a circus barker whose job it was to lure people to come see a show: he's bright, he's loud, he's showy and glittery and ostentatious as all hell.

YASHA
Yasha is an aasimar barbarian from the wastes of Xhorhas who somehow ended up in the carnival as a bouncer! I don't know how either. According to Yasha, Molly was the first spot of color she saw after coming out of a years-long traumatized daze brought on by her wife's murder at her tribe's hands, and after being resurrected months after his untimely death, the nameless tiefling who used to be Molly very quickly recognized Yasha as love. Their friendship is a strong bond where they both very clearly rely on each other, as Molly, in episode 14, looks to Yasha for reassurance before he admits to his lack of a past to a very suspicious Mighty Nein. They're deeply affectionate towards each other, often cuddling or leaning against each other, and losing one tends to set the other off very badly: Molly does not take it well when Yasha is kidnapped in episode 26, and Yasha takes it even less well when she finds out he's dead four episodes later. This relationship shows that he's a very affectionate person, to the people he's built friendships with, and is easy and free with that affection to such a point that he'll think nothing of casual intimacy.

THE MIGHTY NEIN
The Mighty Nein is the group of adventurers that banded together in the aftermath of the circus disbanding, taking in Molly and Yasha. They consist of Fjord the half-orc warlock (later paladin), Caleb Widogast the human wizard, Nott the Brave the goblin rogue (later Veth Brenatto the halfling rogue, it's a long story), Beauregard Lionett the human monk and Jester Lavorre the tiefling cleric, and after Molly's death in episode 26 they're joined by Caduceus Clay the firbolg cleric and Essek Thelyss the drow elf wizard NPC that the Nein just kinda loved into becoming one of them. (The latter two won't be talked about as much because Molly hasn't met them, but they're included for completion's sake.) The Nein start out as essentially a group of assholes who happen to pull together during a time of crisis and then just...sort of kept going with it, folding Molly and Yasha into their group even though Yasha tends to come and go pretty often. Molly's attitude towards them is that he doesn't quite trust them, at least at first, but he likes them and is actively protective of them all. He grows to care deeply for and even love them over his short time with them, making tarot cards featuring their likenesses and bonding with them over the course of their travels together, looking out for their safety in and out of fights and trying to impart lessons onto them about looking after each other in his own carnie way (ie cornering and "gently, socially" pinning Caleb to the wall when he tries to hide some of the loot from the rest of the party, to essentially talk him into being fairer with partitioning the loot). Even when he has friction with the group, Molly is very good at setting that friction aside in order to ensure that harmony within the group reigns, and is very insistent that at the very least, they try to trust each other as much as they can. Sure, he lies to them plenty, but his lies don't harm anyone in the Nein. In fact Molly loves them, by the time of his death, because he risks his life in order to get their kidnapped members back and pays for it dearly.

BEAUREGARD LIONETT
Beau is a human monk from Kamordah who Molly heavily disliked from the moment they met. The feeling was mutual, because through their time with each other they needled repeatedly at each other. Multiple times Beau has snarked at Molly for being a liar and Molly has snarked at Beau for being an abrasive asshole, and one shining moment of this was when Molly, on Beau commenting about needing a "simple tool", immediately shot an insult at her calling her a simple tool. However, they slowly got around to caring deeply for each other, and a couple of days after his big, Zone of Truth-induced confession, Molly and Beau went tripping on drugs together and wandered off to a cemetery to talk about childhoods. Molly's relationship with Beau shows that he makes a snap judgment almost immediately on meeting someone, because he took one look at Beau and decided she was something of a trash person, but even though he can be judgmental and even bitchy towards someone, that doesn't stop him caring deeply for them and wanting them to be safe. It just means he'll needle them the way he bantered with Beau, who he ended up dying for so she'd be safe in the fight that killed him.

LUCIEN AND KINGSLEY
Who are Lucien and Kingsley? Well. See, the thing about Molly is, he is not the first occupant of this body, nor is he the last. He's never met either of these two, but his relationship to Lucien is pretty integral to who he is as a person, and he has some heavy influence on Kingsley. Simply put, Molly and Lucien consider each other as absolutely nothing. Molly calls Lucien "an asshole who abandoned this body" and reacts very, very badly to learning anything about Lucien, preferring to simply pretend Lucien never really existed. Lucien, in the final two arcs of the campaign, derisively calls Molly "an empty speck" and is perturbed by Molly's lingering feelings towards the Mighty Nein. Molly doesn't want to know a single fucking thing about Lucien—it's not that he wants to get out of Lucien's shadow, it's that he straight up insists the shadow should not be there at all. He refuses to consider Lucien as anything in relation to him at all. This stands in contrast to Kingsley, who claims Molly as an older brother in the last episode of the campaign, and is open to learning more about him from the Nein. We really don't know a whole lot about Kingsley because he only showed up in the last episode, but it's clear that he doesn't view Molly with animosity for being the last person in this body, and indeed actually honors him, taking his last name and memorializing him by naming his ship after him after he turns pirate. He simply doesn't view himself as the same person as Mollymauk. All three identities have personality traits in common, with different flavors, but they've turned out very different characters. (It's highly likely that either Lucien or Kingsley will pop up in events, but mainly, Molly will be the identity in play here.)

Character Personality Through Key Moments

(2+) Positive Experiences:
INTRODUCTION TO THE NEIN
From the word go, Molly is described as ostentatious, ridiculous, and full of bullshit. This is obvious from his introduction to the then-unnamed Mighty Nein, where he and his best friend Yasha give out flyers for the circus that they're a part of. Taliesin describes the horn jewelry he wears as "extremely ostentatious" and his now-iconic coat as "ostentatious, ridiculous, overblown," and Molly in personality lives up to that. He rolls up to this group of people full of suspicious tension and advertises the circus to them via talking up the show, naming it "a steal" at five coppers or five silvers and "worth every penny" at five gold, telling them that in "one month’s time, people will be buying your ale to hear the tale of what you saw at the Traveling Carnival of Curiosities this night." In his capacity as a circus barker, he's used to trying to convince people into coming to see the show, and the spiel he rolls off to the Nein has the sense of a practiced bullshit speech, dodging around what exactly they're going to see and merely promising a good time. When Jester asks him to read her fortunes, he agrees readily to it, and rolls an insight check in order to cold-read Jester, then a sleight of hand check, which means that he rigs the cards to read what he wants them to read. He is an accomplished liar and bullshitter and a very ostentatious person, and these things are on display from the moment we meet him. He also makes snap judgments, as he seems to quickly see Jester as an easy person to get on the hook—not quite wrong, but not quite right either, as first impressions go. His snap judgments may not be the most accurate, but they're accurate enough for his purposes.

HOSPITAL HEIST (positive bc it's hilarious to ME personally)
Episode 12's ("Midnight Espionage") hospital heist starts with Molly, in preparation for the con where the Mighty Nein will steal a handwriting sample for Jester to forge so they can frame someone for conspiracy against the crown, putting scrambled eggs and ketchup on his dick. It ends with Molly breaking through a goddamn window after getting thrown into a cell in the hospital. In between, he ditches the scrambled egg dick con and goes all fucking in on a different con with Fjord assisting, causing a distraction so Fjord can sneak around and find the samples Jester needs. He causes a large ruckus by puking into a dude's face, does one point of damage to himself by clawing up his neck a bit (and incidentally starting up a little ice fleck on his nails), fucks with the orderlies, and generally is a huge, terrible distraction. This entire mess proves that when Molly decides on a goal or a con, he commits fully to it come hell or high water. He thinks nothing of doing damage to himself if that's what it takes, something that shines through in his general lack of concern about causing harm to himself on a regular basis in the midst of fights, and he goes whole hog when given an opportunity. It also shows us that he can also be a deeply ridiculous person: he didn't actually have to puke in the dude's face or cast Vicious Mockery on the orderlies or put scrambled eggs on his dick. He just did those things because he figured why the fuck not. He doesn't seem to mind that this entire endeavor became such a huge mess, which shows us that Molly is quick to move on from disasters and generally quick to forgive and forget. He's also very confident, because not once did he falter in the entire con. It's wild.

GETTING HIGH WITH BEAU
Molly is incredibly open to new experiences. Like. A little too open, maybe. Having been Molly for only two years so far, a lot of the things that most people may take for granted is actually new to him, and he likes experiencing them for himself, good or bad. He's something of a hedonist, buying drugs in episode 4 for "when life is disappointing" ("Disparate Pieces") and trying them out with Beau in episode 16 ("A Favor In Kind"), as well as trying out some carnival games and enjoying the simple strawberry that he gets when he wins one in episode 17 ("Harvest Close"), and hiring two escorts for a full-release massage in episode 18 ("Whispers of War") when he gets the chance. He's a big believer in the YOLO philosophy, and lives his life as well as he can and as happily as he can, letting most insults and instances of disrespect pass him by with a cheery claim of having heard much worse, and amusing himself often. Whenever he gets the chance, he takes the path with the more interesting and new experience, accepting the risk that comes with it as worth it, especially if reality at the moment sucks. And he's not a great big fan of having to face cold, hard reality and truth. Especially not if that truth has teeth and comes dragging his past with it. However, when someone knows the truth about him already, he's much more willing to talk to them somewhat more honestly than before about an aspect of the past, as seen when he gets high with Beau. When their wanderings take them to a cemetery, Molly, unprompted, brings up the fact that he technically doesn't have a childhood, and Beau speaks in vague terms about her abusive childhood, prompting Molly to ask, sincerely, "What happened to you?" He doesn't care about other people's pasts and won't ask them too much about it unless it comes back to bite them in the present, but when they do offer it up, he shows sympathy and even kindness.

(2+) Negative Experiences:
WAKING UP
Molly's first real memory is waking up to dirt on his face. That left him with some deep trauma he refuses to address, because as far as Molly knows, for some reason, the person who used to occupy his body was buried in a shallow, unmarked grave, and was left alone there. It's easy to assume that up until he met the tabaxi cleric Cree Deeproots, Lucien's right hand woman, Molly thought of Lucien as someone who was likely left for dead, and he didn't want to know what had happened that Lucien would've been left for dead in such a way. It's left him with an impression so negative that he completely refuses to have anything to do with his past. He doesn't want anything from Lucien, not the baggage that he left behind, not the relationships he had, nothing. Molly is adamant that he built his own life and his own person up from nothing, and will not give that up to pursue any leads about Lucien. "That person is dead," he says about Lucien, "they abandoned this body, it's mine now." However, this also means that Molly is not equipped for anything that comes even close to dealing with Lucien, as when he meets Cree in episode 14 ("Lost & Found"), he is uncharacteristically nervous and panicky. This leads him to lie to Cree, and while he pulls this lie off, he also goes a little too far in the details, trying to present the whole mess as one that was engineered by a traitor within the group. He hates Lucien so much he refuses to acknowledge him at all.

KYLRE TURNS ON THE CIRCUS
In the circus, there was a devil toad by the name of Kylre. He turned out to be a nergaliid that ate people's souls, and lost control in a huge way in the very first arc of the second campaign. Molly helped kill him in episode 3 ("The Midnight Chase"), and rescued Toya, the little dwarven singer, from him. Molly picks her up and gently talks to her about Kylre's death, trying to be kind to her in breaking the news that they killed her closest friend. We can see here that Molly is the sort of person who takes the time to be kind to people, especially those he cares about, even in the face of loss and grief. He's not always the best at it, but he does what he can to soften the blow. He's compassionate to other people, even if his way of showing it can be a little screwy because of how he was brought up as a circus barker. Also, he mentions that he used to eat meals alongside Kylre, which tells us that he likely thought well of him too. He trusts people even if they're not trustworthy, because most of the people he knows are untrustworthy on some level, keeping their own huge secrets from each other, and he prefers not to know what those secrets are unless they might harm the group. When they do harm the group, though, as Kylre did, he'll do what he feels needs to be done.

DYING ON GLORY RUN ROAD
Molly's death in episode 26 ("Found and Lost") was at his own hands, by accident: he amplified a blood curse in order to give his friend Beau a chance to get out alive. It's not that Molly doesn't care about himself, or that he's a martyr—on the contrary, Molly is not a martyr, and doesn't want to die for a cause like the Empire's war. But he walks into fights knowing fully well his chances of getting out alive, and indeed before his death he went unconscious in fights fairly often. He doesn't want to die, but he accepts the risk of dying for people he cares about. If he can spend his last breaths defending someone he loves, ensuring they get out of a hopeless fight alive, he'll consider it a worthy death, even if he didn't want to go in the first place. It's the flipside of his commitment to the bit back in episode 12: once he's committed to a group, to a person, he will do everything he can to ensure their continued existence and well-being. Even if it means risking his life.

(2+) Significant Relationship Moments:
MEETING YASHA (Yasha)
Yasha is Molly's best and closest friend. They met somewhere outside of the Xhorhasian Wastes, and while we don't have Molly's account of how they met, Yasha tells us that when she met him, he was the first spot of color she saw in a very, very long time. It's clear that she looks back fondly on their first meeting, so although we don't have Molly's side of the story, it's easy to assume that when he met Yasha, he decided to take her in, simply because she looked like she needed a friend. And a job. And some time to get her shit together. Despite the fact that Yasha likely wasn't able to tell him much about what she was doing out there, Molly still liked her enough to befriend her, which tells us that it's honestly very easy to get Molly to care about someone. This is something that's also evident in how quickly he grows to care about the Mighty Nein in general, risking himself in every fight they get into to ensure the safety of other members of the Nein, but it's most emblematic in his care and loyalty to Yasha, who he assigns a card called Love in his card deck.

TELLING THE TRUTH ABOUT HIS PAST (Mighty Nein)
Boy does Molly not want to confront his past. While he's generally a carefree individual given to amusement, he displays an uncharacteristic nervousness bordering on a legitimate panic attack when his past as Lucien comes back around to haunt him, in the form of Cree Deeproots in episode 14. He reveals his backstory to the Nein a little bit later once they've settled a few things with the crime boss they're trying to get a favor from, nothing with unease that now it's "officially dangerous," and that he didn't want to tell them anything about this. In fact, he starts the conversation by trying to bullshit, giving up, and telling them to ask him questions instead, something aided by Jester casting Zone of Truth at that moment. Molly doesn't want to know who he was and why he ended up in the dirt two years ago, and when Nott keeps pressing on it when he reveals his backstory, he snaps at her by pointing out that maybe "he was a goblin hunter. Maybe he ate them. Raw." The idea of even encountering something that Lucien knew doesn't make Molly feel good because the guy is dead, from Molly's perspective, and screwed up his chance to such a point that he got buried in the dirt. Molly doesn't see the need to dig him back up, because he's already built up his own identity, his own life, outside of whatever Lucien's life was, and while he's happy enough to keep on using the blood hunter abilities that Lucien apparently learned, he doesn't care to learn more about how he came about them. As far as Molly's concerned, what works works, and he doesn't need to go poking around into his own past to gain an insight into how. This is also why he doesn't generally see the need to learn about other people's pasts, beyond maybe the basics if that's needed. Again, Molly really does not care about someone's past, just their actions in the present.

Chapter 2 Attributes

• Canon Powers: BOY OH BOY Molly is a level 5 blood hunter, which is a homebrewed D&D class Matthew Mercer cooked up. There have been two versions of the class, the one Molly started out with (and died as) and the revised version that's on D&D Beyond. To make it easier for us all, I'll be playing exclusively from the first version, because the two versions have different key stats - Molly's version relies on his wisdom stat, while the newer version relies on the INT stat. So here is his character sheet at level 5, and what follows is me explaining how the powers work, sorted into class abilities and race abilities.

CLASS: BLOOD HUNTER
- Hunter's Bane: Molly is sensitive to the presence of fey, undead, demonic, and other unnatural creatures. In fact, he can actively track one creature with this ability, and can recall information about their kind or that specific creature a lot easier than he can remember information about himself. Although he can track, say, zombies from The Walking Dead pretty well, he's only going to have information on Exandrian undead at hand unless he starts reading up on other worlds' versions of unnatural creatures.
- Crimson Rite - Rite of the Frozen: Molly can imbue any sharp object, such as his prop scimitars, with the element of ice by cutting himself on them. This manifests in ice crystals forming along the edge, magical frost turning the object into a viable weapon. When he attacks with them, not only is it going to hurt like a bitch, it's also going to be cold as fuck. This effect fades once the weapons leave Molly's hands, or after a day if they don't.
- Blood Maledict - Blood Curse of the Eyeless: Molly can make someone within sixty feet go blind for two minutes, thus making one of the hidden eye tattoos on his body start bleeding (ie the one on his neck, hidden by his peacock tattoo). The target's eyes go black, and blood trickles out from the corners of their eyes for the duration of the curse.
- Ghostslayer - Rite of the Dawn: Molly can make any sharp object glow by cutting himself on them, and much like the Rite of the Frozen, if someone gets hit with a sharp object under this rite, it's going to hurt like a bitch. Towards undead creatures, it hurts even more, the effect akin to a Buffyverse vampire getting smacked in the face with a holy object. This effect also fades once the weapons leave Molly's hands, or after a day if they don't.
- Blood Maledict - Blood Curse of Purgation: Molly can remove poison from somebody's bloodstream. If he amplifies this (and does even more damage to himself), he can cure blindness, deafness, or paralysis. The amplification effects only work if the condition he's trying to remove is temporary: he can't cure Matt Murdock's blindness, for example, as that is permanent, but he can cure the effects of a spell that causes blindness.

RACE: TIEFLING
- Hellish Resistance: Molly is hardier than others when it comes to being burned. He's not immune to its effects, but he doesn't get burned easily—he can hold on to a red-hot piece of metal for a few seconds longer than an ordinary human being without suffering much more than a slight burn.
- Darkvision: Molly can see in dim light as if it's bright as day for about sixty feet, and in total darkness can see as if it's just dim light, also for about sixty feet. Unfortunately he can't see colors in this mode, so don't expect him to defuse a bomb in sheer darkness.
- Vicious Mockery: Molly can yell insults at a specific target in the Infernal language, and it will actually physically hurt them. It's described as Molly boiling the blood of a creature in-game, so let's say that if something or someone gets hit with this, depending on how strong their will is and how badly hurt they are at that specific moment, they can either shake it off after a brief flash of pain, collapse in sheer agony, or in rare cases, die outright. He can't kill Superman with this, for example, but if Superman was suffering from kryptonite exposure beforehand, Molly'd probably be able to send him into unconsciousness by insulting his fashion sense in a demonic-sounding language.
- Charm Person: Once a day, Molly can charm someone within his line of sight for an hour into regarding him as a friendly acquaintance and being eager to do what he asks them to do. He can do this to at least two people, but after the hour passes they'll know he charmed them, and he can't use it again until the next day. This can be resisted by someone whose willpower is strong enough at that moment to throw off the charm, and will only be successfully used on PCs and important NPCs with OOC permission beforehand.
- Enthrall: Once a day, Molly can enthrall somebody into paying attention to him and only him, ensuring that they won't be able to notice other people around them. In a fight, this means that should this spell succeed, the target will focus only on trying to kill him, and won't be able to notice anyone else until either Molly goes unconscious, the target goes unconscious or can no longer hear him, or the spell ends. This can be resisted by someone whose willpower is strong enough at that moment to throw off the charm, and will only be successfully used on PCs and important NPCs with OOC permission beforehand.

I'd like to be able to level Molly up in-game, if that's all right! I'll be using this version of his class, because it's been revised multiple times and the current DNDBeyond version is significantly different from Molly's version.
• Blood Type: Paleblood
• Omen: A peacock.
• Blessed Day: May 9, for Mighty Nein. geddit. geddit.
• Patron Pthumerian: Bausphomette
• Blood Power Manifestation:

Fortune Teller: Molly, as a fortune teller, is well-used to telling people's destinies with a deck of custom-made cards (and a shitton of cold-reading). In canon it's a con, but he sometimes gets a bit of a tingle while pulling cards. In Trench, this tingle will become a full-blown out-of-context vision—whether it's a straightforward vision of what happened or what's going to happen, or a symbolism-laden ASOIAF-style acid trip, depends on the plotting. It won't happen often, as in canon, and it won't happen without player permission and plotting first.

Dream Walking: In canon, Lucien, the previous occupant of Molly's body, has a deep connection with the entity known as the Somnovem, the hive-mind collective of nine wizards that can invade people's dreams and impart strange powers on them, marking them with red eye tattoos. In Trench, Molly's dormant connection to the Somnovem will mean that he'll be able to walk into people's dreams, although he won't be as powerful as Lucien was—he'll be subject to the rules of the other party's dreamscape, and he won't be able to manipulate the environment around him. At most, he'll just be able to bedazzle his clothes, which is just fine by Molly, because he's going to find this ability a little bit, shall we say, off-putting.

Writing Samples

One: https://countryclub.dreamwidth.org/7310.html?thread=1867662#cmt1867662
Two: https://countryclub.dreamwidth.org/7310.html?thread=1866894#cmt1866894

The Player

• Player Name: Effy
• Player Age: 23
• Player Contact: mollymauktealeaf
• Permissions: Here!

Link to your reserve for this character: Here.

Other Characters

Link to Character 1 overall AC: https://deeringtonhall.dreamwidth.org/6597.html?thread=3243205#cmt3243205
Link to Character 2 overall AC: https://deeringtonhall.dreamwidth.org/6597.html?thread=3919301#cmt3919301

Quick note that I'll be apping Joyce in September instead!