Lamont Loftus

Human / Arcanist

Submitted character story

Lamont was born and raised on the Adventurous, a large spelljamming cruiser. As he grew up, he visited countless crystal spheres and walked upon many worlds, but he did not belong on any of them.

During his childhood travels, Lamont collected books from all the worlds he visited. He had books about the Kender of Ansalon, the Phaerimm of Toril, the psionic dragons of Athas, and the minotaurs of Taladas. He had most of the common language translations of the Little Esturel stories, republished in Waterdeep. He had all of Noah Zarch's books about fishing. He had is own copies of Martek, by Martek, Rary's Rules and Elminster's Ecologies.  

All those books were lost when the Adventurous found the Beholder homeworld. It was a complete disaster. The Adventurous was lost with nearly all hands. Everybody Lamont knew was dead. Lamont managed to escape with only one book - Van Richten's Guide to the Created. 

The loss of Lamont's ship, his friends and his family changed him. He was only 15 years old and homeless, without even a world to call his own. But he did have money and he had spelljamming skills. He was able to sign on to a spelljamming castle, known as The Citadel. This castle was also a school, with thousands of unfamiliar books and actual classes for Lamont to take.

Inspired by the lessons of the one book he could still call his own, Lamont decided to follow in Van Richten's footsteps. He studied to become an Arcanist (2e Ravenloft rules) and he set out to learn and document everything there was to know or find out about the Beholders and all their variants, so that others would be able to avoid the fate of the Adventurous.

Now that he is an adult and a level 15 Arcanist, Lamont serves as the navigator of another spelljammer, the Zephyr. It is a much smaller ship, but it is fast and invisible from a distance. Lamont is slowly rebuilding his personal library, obtaining at least one book of intellectual value from every world the Zephyr visits.