Bulbin and Ramkin

[Deleted]

Creation of the Dolls:

Once upon a time, a young woman found Herself barren. She wanted to raise children of her own, so she made herself little dolls. She gifted them the ability to make themselves, never once using Her power to strip their lives away regardless of whether they were Bad or Good. They could be beaten, trained, jailed, but never punished with non-existence and that is what She Believed.

Or so the stories told.

They also said she died peacefully. The ones who were alive back then could tell you otherwise.

The truth of the matter was she was very young, married to a successful man who needed heirs. She was so desperate for children of her own, she looked into the pasts of her ancestors, into the forbidden tomes. She imbued former souls into tiny painted faces before reawakening them. Even though the original purpose of this was to attempt to give her husband the child he deserved, she could never show them to him. But that didn't stop her from making nearly fifty of them herself. Every scrap of fabric, every sliver of metal, she snatched them up and put them into her next creation.

Eventually she was found out, declared a witch and a heretic (for obvious reasons). And stoned to death with her husband throwing the first one.

Nearly half the dolls didn't survive the fire as the house was burned to the ground. What was left wandered off, slipping their way through cracks in houses until they found the cracks in the very universe and hid away in the void. The Big Folk there found them annoying, but less inherently evil.

[Deleted]

Profile
Name: Ramkin
Age: few years
Gender: NB (uses masculine pronouns)
Race: Animated Doll

Appearance
Height: 4.5’’
Weight: Like holding an empty mug

Ramkin is a small mostly abstract looking humanoid doll. He barely towers over a cup of coffee and his body is made up of several patches of fabric, mismatching both in pattern and texture. He has the basic two arms and two legs, both ending in tiny four-digit wooden pieces that sort of resemble sheep hooves. On the back, he has an odd looking little tail, sewn swirls of fabric giving it almost a stylized squirrel look.

Most peculiar is probably all the detail given to his head. His face is literally a mask, perhaps wooden and painted, or perhaps ceramic. Even knocking on it produces different noises day to day. The eyes and mouth are flexible enough to produce expressions and even consume things, but remain rigid to any outside forces. Both are also pitch black inside, even when light is shone directly on them, making it impossible to see if there’s really anything underneath the mask.

The mask is held onto his head by thick leather straps on the sides which wrap around a pair of horns. The horns themselves are very much designed to mimic a ram’s, polished and buffed wood giving off a glorious sheen and letting the knots of the previous tree(twig) show through.

Personality
VIRTUES:
Good at finding things
Fiscally responsible
Careful
Confident

FLAWS:
Lazy
Greedy
Self-centered
Snide
Spiteful

LIKES:
Gemstones
Money (Coin only)
Screws
Cigarettes/Cigars

DISLIKES:
Big Folk
People disturbing him
Being forced to do anything
The smell of perfume

Vocally, Ramkin’s personality doesn’t shine through very well. He has an incredibly deep voice that doesn’t seem to match with his small stature at all. Beyond that, it also remains rather monotone, only bits of sassiness leaking through. The words that he uses will help, referring to pretty people as Doll-Face (a high compliment indeed), or sarcastically calling the whiny ones ‘Princess’.

But he is a doll of pleasures. Physical touch is mainly lost on him, as he doesn’t have a true nervous system of any kind, but he likes collecting. He’s the greedy sort, hoarding shiny treasures in his hut and displaying the best pieces like some sort of museum. While he prefers natural things, like precious stones or metals, a particularly nice looking piece of plastic, painting, or sculpture could sway him. He finds value in a lot of weird things.

But he’s also a carefully lazy little creature. One can only tempt him with things he perceives as an equal payment. He is not the type for high-risk high-reward, seeing as he’s not really made for much in the way of fighting. In and RPG he’d be the guy you’d go to to sell off your weird monster loot and then buy enchantments from.

To sum up, he is lazy, greedy, and self-centered. He’s not likely to assist someone without obvious signs of reward or some major chance that he thinks said person might be an Asset later down the line.

Friends are not something he will broach. He’s mostly the type to wait for others to come to him. It’s not as if there isn’t a reason he’s cautious about the Big Folk. Dolls aren’t typically looked upon with favor in his world.

He’s also a major smoker and gifting him various pipes and plants will likely get into his good graces. He is also sadly not above obvious bribery.

Skills
As with all animate dolls of his kind, he can sew and cut off parts of his own body to replace. It’s an odd procedure, but the connecting parts, even if held on by just a thread, will still have life and mobility to them. The key component is the mask. As long as the parts are sewn to the head, which is still encompassed by a mask. This allows him to change fabrics on a whim.

The mask itself seems to be the part that contains his ‘soul’. Removing it and applying it to another doll could in theory transfer his entire consciousness. Similarly, just removing and reapplying it to the same body will ‘kill’ and ‘rebirth’ him, leaving him disoriented. He doesn’t remember or even seem aware of time when the mask is not connected to a body. This also technically makes him immortal from an aging standpoint, as he can just replace old parts and the mask doesn’t decay.

While he definitely has the ability to feel pleasurable things, such as eating, he doesn’t feel pain. At least not nervous system like pain. Emotional or mental distress is definitely possible, particularly when denying him things that he wants.

Every doll has both unique skills and mostly unique whims. Ramkin’s whims are above, tied to his personality, and in exchange for pretty shiny things, he can tap into the unique energies of the stones. While crystal healing on Earth is subject to much debate (and ridicule), Ramkin’s is the real deal. A lot of times it’ll involve turning large pieces into amulets to be worn at all times, or shattering to activate the stones strength for temporary luck.


History
Ramkin wouldn’t consider himself very spiritual but there was a certain level of it that was ingrained in day to day society of the dolls. You woke up, you bowed in the direction of the She statue that existed in every major undertown and you went about your day. Ramkin couldn’t tell you much about his earlier life. Much like babies, that early time after a fresh mask is placed upon something for the first time tends to be an easily forgotten whirlwind.

It didn’t take him long to settle into his corner of the town. It had a direct entrance to the streets above and outside, where he could quietly deal with the more tolerant of the Big Folk. Though it also meant that every time a fight broke out right above him the whole house would shake up.

He’d go up, trade the wares, set an enchantment and then come back down. With time, he made enough money to hire others to go up for him, to hire others to find what he wanted. There was no shortage of dolls that thought themselves warriors and he was not above profiting off their ills and desperation.

And then he died for the first time.

The idea that his first death was caused by another doll of all things was rather unusual. Typically the first time a doll’s mask is removed it’s by the smaller Big Folk, plucking at parts like disassembling a fly. But no, it was a revenge style scheme which in his mind translated to less of “I should stop being a dick” and more into “these people don’t deserve me” and so he packed up his things to move to the Big Folk city of Scrapton before making his home outside of the undertown, directly in the walls of a bar and art gallery.

At least he knew everyone here was also a dick; makes it easier to predict people.

The place used to be a cafe, back before the war began. Irving used to just be a simple artist obsessed with coffees and teas. Now the poor bugger was taking in refugees and selling beer to various ravagers and other war torn groups. The place quickly became a little haven where no short of shady dealings happened, people bribed Irving for info and other things.

Next thing you know the blighter is literally beating info out of people with a baseball bat.

Ramkin helped, for a price. Irving let a lot of Doll’s take up residence in his bar. They had a phone line of sorts, where Ramkin lived inside of the phone’s shell. Irving would slip him a bribe and he’d mobilize the others to hunt people down. They couldn’t do much after finding the person, of course, but half the battle is location.