Stennart Goldgift¶

Stennart Goldgift

"You wanna good deal? I'll give ya a great one! But first, d'ya wanna wager if I can crack this walnut with my biceps?"

Mediocre Dwarf merchant accidentally turned heroic overnight. Slowly transforming into a World Tree seedling while desperately clinging to the strength that finally made him feel special. He knows he's cheating, he's made his peace. Now he intends to live out an unforgettable finale.

Character Overview¶

Species: Dwarf (transforming)
Class: Barbarian 5 (Path of the World Tree)
Background: Merchant
Age: 28
Alignment: Neutral

Quick Intro

At the Table

Giddy about his new strength, constantly testing limits and showing off, seeking audiences inside and outside the party.
Retains merchant instincts: friendly, transactional, loves a good deal, is an easy chat.
Terrified of losing his power and becoming "expendable" again, realizes he plays a high-stakes game and tries to do the most of every day he has.
Remembers exactly how it felt to be mediocre, and will sit with anyone who's feeling clobbered by the world.
Understands his time may be short; intends to live a life of quality, not quantity.

Backstory (Short Form)

Stennart was the expendable middle child in a prestigious Dwarf banking clan, relegated to dangerous surface trading routes. After an avalanche trapped him, he ate a mysterious fruit from a dragon's hoard to survive. It gave him incredible strength, but also began to slowly transform him into a World Tree seedling. Now he's powerful, useful, and stuck in a tough spot: terrified that if anyone "cures" him, he'll lose what makes him special, but also aware he may be choosing a short life of glory rather than a long life of mediocrity.

Playing Stennart

Combat: Enthusiastic front-liner who revels in his new strength. Great Weapon Master attacks, protective of squishier allies, may overcommit due to excitement, which frankly is just Barbarians working as intended.
Roleplay: Friendly, chatty, but quickly. Veers into performative Chad-ness if given a chance. Compulsively hides physical changes, bandages wounds quickly, prunes moss and sticks from his beard, wears gloves. Morning stretching routines are suspiciously creaky.
Party Synergy: The guy who carries everyone's stuff, haggles for deals, and accidentally breaks things when emotional. Hits hard, but needs gentle feedback when intimidation isn't the answer.

Deep Dive

Background¶

Stennart Goldgift is the middle child of five in the small but affluent Goldgift family, a Dwarf clan known for their banking expertise. While his siblings secured prestigious positions (even his deaf older brother Karbold works at the central clan vault), Stennart was deemed the expendable one. Not charismatic enough for client relations, not shrewd enough for high finance, he was pushed into the one job nobody else wanted: peddling goods on the dangerous roads above ground.

For years, Stennart ate dust on mountain passes while his family counted coins in climate-controlled comfort. He internalized his role as the family disappointment, the Goldgift who couldn't quite live up to the name.

Everything changed when a group of adventurers offered him a mysterious fruit, allegedly from a dragon's hoard, and at a suspiciously good price. They seemed eager, in fact a little too eager, to be rid of it. Stennart, ever the merchant, albeit not the smartest one, couldn't resist the deal.

Not two days later, traveling through a mountain pass, an avalanche buried him alive. Trapped in a small air pocket with dwindling supplies, he survived for a week under the snow. On the third day, he ate his trusty pack goat Wendy. Finally, in desperation, he consumed the fruit.

The transformation was immediate and catastrophic. He fell unconscious and woke hours later, fundamentally changed. Stronger, larger, filled with primal power like he'd never imagined. He punched his way through tons of snow and ice, emerging into his new life with the strength to finally punch back at a world that had always bullied him.

What Stennart doesn't fully understand yet, is that he consumed a fruit of the World Tree itself, and it's slowly transforming him into something that is no longer Dwarf, or even entirely mortal.

The Transformation¶

Stennart is undergoing a gradual metamorphosis into a seedling of the World Tree. The signs are increasingly difficult to hide:

Amber blood: When wounded, he bleeds sticky amber resin instead of red blood. He bandages quickly and inventively to hide the color, even applying red dye to avoid suspicion.
Morning rigidity: He wakes up stiff, joints partially fusing overnight. His morning calisthenics involve loud cracking sounds as he forces petrified joints back into mobility. He claims it's from "sleeping wrong," but likely isn't fooling anyone.
Wooden hair: Moss and small twigs grow in his beard. He prunes it compulsively to stay ahead of it. In dark moments he even considers the radical option of shaving completely, but he doesn't know what new features of his face it may be hiding.
Bark skin: Patches of his skin are developing a grain, turning harder and bark-like. He files them down in private, and has taken to wearing gloves at all times.
Changing sensations: He's slowly losing sensitivity, can't readily distinguish hot from cold water, and he doesn't sweat properly anymore.
Involuntary growth: Plants and roots sprout around him when Raging.

He's terrified that if anyone discovers the truth-especially a cleric-they'll try to cure him, by purging the magic with some restoration spell. And if the magic goes, he'll return to being the disappointment.

Personality¶

Forceful Negotiator: Stennart retains the polished manners and shrewd instincts of a merchant, but he has discovered a "discount" he never had before: Intimidation. He is intoxicated by the fact that people finally listen when he speaks, yet he struggles to calibrate this new leverage. He often defaults to intimidation as a shortcut, overcorrecting for a lifetime of appeasement. He’s struggling to learn that suddenly having a big strong hammer doesn't justify treating every problem as a nail.

Uncalibrated Might (Slapstick & Awe): Stennart inhabits his new body with the giddy, clumsy energy of someone who won the lottery but doesn't know how to spend the currency. This shows as physical comedy, crushing doorknobs and accidental aggressive handshakes, but also a childlike wonder. He is constantly stress-testing himself (carrying the party's entire inventory or throwing boulders for distance), reveling in what he can do now.

Honors the Underdog: Despite his power, Stennart still feels like the family screwup. He knows he was sent to peddle on the roads precisely because he was mediocre, not smart, not charming, just average. He got his powers for cheap: He's on Fantasy roids, and he doesn't moralize about the choices of others who are weaker. Therefore he doesn't judge others for their lot in life. Sometimes, you just don't have what it takes, and a false hope can be more cruel than a broken dream.

Half Slapstick, Half Tragic: He's the guy who crushes doorknobs, accidentally intimidates shopkeepers, and has to relearn how to move and behave from scratch when inhabiting a strong body, the way naturally big people learned much earlier in life. But underneath the physical comedy is a man whose sense of self is disintegrating, fiber by fiber, and who's too afraid to ask for help.

The Clock is Ticking: Stennart has made a quiet, private decision: he's not going back. He doesn't know how many days he has left as himself—weeks? Months? A year? He’s stolen fire from the gods (or a dragon's hoard), and he’s going to spend it all before the bill comes due. This makes him simultaneously a party wild card ("Let's DO it!") and an emotional ballast (he's already made peace with his death, which gives him strange clarity about what actually matters).

Quirks & Habits¶

Increasingly paranoid around fire
Drinks water constantly, feels better standing in rain
Constantly fidgets with his beard, checking for twigs
Whistles like a pro, likes to imitate bird noises he's heard over the years as a travelling peddler
Sometimes forgets his own strength in emotional moments-painful handshakes, crushing hugs, accidentally bending the cutlery
Buys the best ale, the softest silk (even if his bark skin rips it), indulges in the here and now
Sleeps outside whenever possible. "Might as well get used to it"
Tries anything that's new and promises excitement, is the party member first to say "fuck it, I'm in" when a plan gets weird
Is genuinely unimpressed with borrowed thunder and inherited wealth. He knows that says nothing of your character.

Sample Quotes¶

"I'd rather be a landmark than a footnote."

"The Duchess wants us to wait three weeks for a signature? Fuck that, I've got shit to do. Either she signs the paper, or I'm taking her door off the hinges and dangling her from a window till she sees sense. Uh, tastefully of course."

"I just... wrestled that beast like it was nothing. Fuck my life, it's all a bloody cheat. If only it didn't feel so good."

[Mumbling to himself] "Stennart, you lucky bastard. You’re cheating. You’re a fake. But you’re a fake who gets to feel what it’s like to break a mountain. Don’t you dare waste a single second feeling sorry for yourself. You’ve had more life in this last month than your brothers will have in a century of banking."

"I love you all more than my own damn family, which isn't saying much, granted. But one more joke about 'morning wood' and I'm throwing the bard into the nearest lake."

"Hate to tell you this, kind farmer, but the soil's dead and you're chasing a dream that died with it. Take whatever gold you can get for it, move to the city, get a job that doesn't depend on rain. It’s okay to walk away, and fuck anybody who judges you for cutting your losses and knowing your limits. Me? I'm a weird case. I cheated."

"Don't act so damn high and mighty. You’re only sitting in that chair because your grandfather was better at stealing than the neighbors. I'd know. My own bloody family's perfected the craft of legal theft for generations."

Key Relationships

Big Brother Karbold Goldgift: The only family member who tried to find Stennart a place in the vault, who never treated him as expendable. Their last conversation before the avalanche: Karbold signing that Stennart deserved better than the surface routes. Stennart hasn't told him about the transformation yet—partly out of shame, partly because Karbold would absolutely try to fix it, and Stennart doesn't want to be saved.
Brett Stepp: The perpetually exhausted rogue who sold Stennart the fruit "at a suspiciously good price." Brett claims ignorance, but he definitely knew something—he mentioned feeling "watched by the skies." Is he a knowing accomplice to something darker, or just a middleman who got in over his head? Either way, Brett owes Stennart answers, and Stennart knows where Brett drinks.

Notes for the DM

Dramatic questions¶

Is it truly "cheating" if you put the powers you received to actual work?
How will others react to Stennart as he becomes more and "wooden"? Is there a fear of contagion?
What would he sacrifice to keep his strength for one more week?
Is this a story about acceptance or defiance? (Are we telling the tale of someone who makes peace with mortality and lives beautifully in his remaining time? Or are we telling the tale of a party that refuses to lose their friend and moves heaven and earth to save him? Both are valid.)

Plot Hooks¶

The Dragon Hunt The dragon is tracking Stennart, not for revenge for stealing from its hoard, but because it understands what the World Tree fruit does when consumed improperly. It has guarded the fruits for centuries, and knows an uncontrolled transformation doesn't create a friendly tree-person, but an anchor point for the World Tree to manifest catastrophically in the material plane.

When they finally meet, the dragon is more weary than wrathful: "You ate it raw? Without ritual preparation? Do you have any idea... no, of course you don't. You were a little desperate peddler, not a scholar."

The dragon offers three options:

Reversal: Prune Stennart back to his original form, using the golden sickles of a Druid circle. Excruciating, and yes, he loses the strength. He becomes ordinary again.
Completion: "The World Tree's gifts are poisoned, Dwarf. Thank the natural stamina of your species for holding out this long." The Dragon can guide the transformation properly with ancient rituals. Stennart keeps his mind and becomes something powerful and possibly immortal. But he's changed. No longer a dwarf, no longer mortal in the same way. He'd be a guardian, bound to whatever place and purpose the World Tree has for him.
Nothing: "You would do nothing? Interesting. I don't intend to force my will on you. This will make for a better story." Let nature take its course. In six months to a year, Stennart Goldgift stops moving. Roots dig deep. Something new grows from the husk with no memory of banking clans or the specific way his siblings looked through him like furniture. What happens when the World Tree starts to grow on the Material Plane? That'll be up the DM.
A quest: If the party wants to rescue Stennart and keep his powers, you could always honor player agency by making a quest out of it. The dragon (or another knowledgeable NPC) can hint at extreme solutions, for example: An entire World Tree barbarian tribe with dangerous rituals, a Djinn, or Hag who trades in "botanical curses," or a Sphinx with forbidden knowledge, banished from this plane and stuck in a labyrinth like a Minotaur. But, also attempt to honor the emotional weight of Stennart's arc. Maybe there is still a steep price to pay. He's not a character who's made to ride off happily into the sunset.

Other Fruit Seekers Word spreads in certain circles. Entities emerge who want to harvest him, study the transformation, or acquire a "sample" for their own purposes. Desperate individuals offer fortunes for a single bite of his flesh (which of course does nothing, but they might be willing to force Stennart to fight to protect his body). Scholars want to dissect the process. Desperate nobles seek immortality by drinking tea from the scrapings of bark from his skin.

Worst of these are The Vitalist Cult: A fringe druidic sect believing that the World Tree's return will "cleanse" the Material Plane of civilization's corruption. They see Stennart as a living sacrament and plan to kidnap him, bury him in sacred soil, and nurture the transformation until the roots breach the surface. Led by a franklt feral Eladrin druid named Thessaly, who speaks with unsettling gentleness about "helping Stennart fulfill his purpose."

Note: Even if the cult somehow catches Stennart and has this deep hole in the ground, which is a truly macabre and compelling story beat, don't actually let a player character get buried alive without doing a vibe check with the table. This is a very real and common phobia.

Mechanics and Stennart¶

If you want to help the players to more viscerally feel the clock ticking down for Stennart, slowly tweak his Ability scores. You decide when in the campaign. Announce that Stennart loses a point in DEX and gains a point in CON, or loses a point in INT and gains a point in STR for instance. Remember that switching a player from for instance 14 DEX/16 CON to 13 DEX/17 CON would in effect be a punishment as odd numbers don't provide any bonuses. Consider allowing Stennart to keep the +2 AC from 14 DEX even when going to 13 DEX, justified by his skin becoming tougher.

Mechanical build (lv 5) and PDF download

STR	DEX	CON	INT	WIS	CHA
18 (+4)	14 (+2)	16 (+3)	10 (+0)	10 (+0)	8 (-1)

Combat Stats (With Shield)¶

AC	HP	Hit Dice	Speed	Initiative	Prof. Bonus
18	60	5d12	40 ft.	+2	+3

Saving Throws: Strength: +7, Constitution: +6 Resistances: Poison

Proficiencies¶

Skills: Animal Handling +3, Athletics +7, Intimidation +2, Nature +3, Persuasion +2

(Note: When Raging, the -1 CHA modifier doesn't count, so Intimidation and Persuasion start at +3, not +2 as above. Only then do you add STR modifier)

Armor: Light Armor, Medium Armor, Shield | Weapons: Simple Weapons, Martial Weapons

Tools: Navigator's tools | Languages: Common, Common Sign Language, Dwarf

Feats¶

Lucky: Luck points (3/Long Rest) can be spent to gain Advantage or impose Disadvantage to rolls.
Great Weapon Master: Add PB (+3) to all damage rolls when attacking with Heavy weapons. Can make an extra attack using BA on crit or on reducing opponent to 0 HP.

Weapon Masteries¶

Maul (Topple)
War Pick (Sap)
Handaxe (Vex)

Equipment¶

War Pick, Maul, 3x Handaxe, Breastplate, Shield, Explorer's Kit

Suggested Magic Items

Stone of Good Luck (Better skill checks and saving throws, with Merchant-esque flavor)
Maul +1 (For Barbs to do what Barbs do)
Bag of Holding (Uncommon, reasonable Merchant item to have, for someone from a good family)
Decanter of Endless Water (Stennart hydrates like there's no tomorrow. With this thing, that becomes integrated with his character)

📄 Download Level 5 Character Sheet (PDF)

Session Zero Considerations

Content Notes: Body horror (gradual transformation), family rejection/emotional neglect, psychological addiction to power, themes of losing one's identity and humanity. The transformation includes graphic details. Suitable for mature tables comfortable with existential horror beneath physical comedy.

Representation Notes: Stennart's brother Karbold is deaf and uses Common Sign Language. This should be portrayed matter-of-factly as just a normal part of the family dynamic.