Torin

Torin — Custodian of Complicated Inheritances

Also known as: Torrin, “Joran” (heist alias — considerably more convincing than Nucko’s “Jaro Guap,” which is a genuinely low bar to clear), “Young Boinevo Man” and “Bow and Arrow Man” (Keth’s first two attempts at naming him, in order of increasing accuracy) Status: Alive. Recently survived his own public execution, which is a sentence this wiki did not expect to add to his file and is thrilled to report anyway. Order: Windrunner — First Ideal sworn (“Life before death. Strength before weakness. Journey before destination.“) Spren: Paul — named, per Torin himself, “after the Paul from Logan,” to Keth’s immediate and total approval (“He’s Paul.” “The guy we golf with.“) Family: Younger brother of Theren (deceased), later revealed to have spent 25 years as a Ghostblood double agent alongside Nucko — a fact Torin learned the same evening as everyone else, standing right there for the whole mega-reveal. Companions: Shield (Ryshadium horse — “a very good boi,” no roll required), Flick (ferret, first confirmed kill of the campaign, gold-tooth disposal specialist) Weapon: A Grandbow, gifted by Sebarial (deceased) in trade for the party’s Red Thorn seeds — now supplemented by an honest-to-goodness Shardblade of his own, no longer borrowed, no longer theoretical, no longer a running joke about who’s technically holding the family heirloom. See Key Moments. Romance: Liss, a Kholin War Camps clerical worker — survived Torin forgetting her name mid-cover-story to become officially, contractually courting.

Overview

Every party used to need someone who was not, technically, capable of summoning a god-forged killing machine out of the Cognitive Realm on command — someone whose combat contribution was a very good bow, a very good horse, and a ferret with a taste for noses. That was Torin, right up until the night he got tied spread-eagle between four horses at his own public execution and decided, out loud, to the ground, that he had somewhere better to be. He is, as of very recently, extremely infused: a Windrunner with a spren named after a movie character, a Shardblade that showed up in his hand with no explanation and has since stuck around, and a body count that now includes a kill “through the gem heart” that this wiki is legally obligated to describe as extremely metal.

Officially: a marksman with a longbow, later a Grandbow, later — no caveats this time — an actual Radiant. Unofficially: the guy who refused to use his family’s priceless Shardblade to cut a hole in a wall for a button heist “because it’s beneath it,” then swore a sacred oath to summon one of his own the very first time it actually mattered. Consistency is still a spectrum. He loves his horse, adores his ferret, and appears constitutionally incapable of remembering a woman’s name after two weeks of forced marches — a flaw that has cost him dearly and which he has, against all odds, worked to fix. He has also, more recently, become “friend” to a Shin swordsman who spent a full scene trying out worse nicknames first. Growth, on this wiki, comes in strange shapes.

Origin

Torin’s introduction to the party doubles as the worst night any of them had had up to that point. Moments after the battle that killed Theren, Nucko stood over his brother’s body holding the recovered family Shardblade and, upon meeting Torin for the first time, offered it to him outright. Torin refused — calling it a symbol of his family’s corruption, a line the table has never gotten more detail on, and this wiki isn’t going to pretend it invented any. Whatever happened between Torin and his family, and whatever that blade actually represented before it ever touched Theren’s hand, stayed unsaid. He eventually accepted the weapon anyway, not out of forgiveness or reconciliation with whatever it symbolized, but to keep it out of worse hands. Kael, meeting a total stranger being handed a priceless Shardblade, was audibly not thrilled about it and threatened to end Torin personally if he ever abused the weapon. Torin agreed with him on the spot. The party debated the whole arrangement and ultimately settled on letting Jaro hold onto the blade — which has not stopped Torin from being the one repeatedly recorded carrying, refusing to use, and getting threatened over a Shardblade in every session since. Custody, on this wiki, is a theory. Possession is a fact.

A few days later, Theren’s body was brought aboard ship, posed, and turned permanently to stone via Soulcasting. Torin sat with it. When it came time to say something, he didn’t reach for anything grand: “I’ll remember you as the good brother you were when I was a kid.” No footnote necessary. Some lines just get to stand there.

★ The Execution That Didn’t Take: How Torin Became a Radiant

If you want the one story that explains why Torin’s frontmatter now says “Windrunner” instead of a shrug, it’s this one.

Captured by Thack and hauled in front of a crowd of Yips for a public execution — stretched spread-eagle between four horses in the town square — Torin got the full villain monologue first. Thack leaned in under cover of “checking his bindings” and told him, quietly, personally: “I’m sorry, I have to do this. I really wish I was doing this to your brother. You were never involved in this. But you know, I’m really here to make sure that you and your friends die. It’s nothing personal.” Then he broke three of Torin’s fingers by hand, one at a time — pointer, middle, ring, left hand — while asking, conversationally, whether Torin knew how he’d been taught respect. Torin passed a discipline check to resist screaming on a flat 17 and didn’t so much as flinch. Thack, visibly disappointed not to get a reaction, had the horses started anyway.

Stretched three ways at once with his gear stripped and his fingers freshly broken, Torin worked one arm loose — a natural 21 against a raised-stakes DC of 20 — and heard, for the first time, a voice in his head asking if he’d like to say the words today. He looked at the ground and said them: “Life before death. Strength before weakness. Journey before destination.” The table’s exact reaction, verbatim, deserves to be on the record: “Hell yes. Torrin, you have just sworn the first ideal of the Knights Radiant. You’re going to explode in light. You are now empowered. Guys, we have all five Radiants back in the party for the first time in a long time.” His fingers knit back together as a free action. A Shardblade appeared in his hands with, in his own player’s words, “no clue where it came from” — Ravan had, in the same instant, asked his own spren Twoie to manifest as a weapon in Torin’s grip, which is either the explanation or a coincidence generous enough to functionally count as one. Torin used it to cut himself the rest of the way free in a single action. The GM’s welcome-back line has since become unofficial canon: “Welcome back to Radiant Hood, buddy.”

The spren showed up properly in Session B, name and all: Paul, bonded and confirmed, christened by Torin himself after the title character of the film Logan — a naming choice Keth endorsed instantly and without question (“He’s Paul.” “The guy we golf with.“) This wiki has elected not to ask further questions about the golf.

Key Moments

An Inheritance Nobody Can Fully Explain

• Refused Theren’s Shardblade on sight, on the grounds that it represented his family’s corruption — a sentence the campaign has never once elaborated on, and which this wiki is choosing to respect rather than invent an answer for.
• Accepted the blade anyway specifically to keep it away from anyone who’d actually use it, prompting Kael to threaten his life over it within minutes of meeting him. Torin, remarkably, agreed that was fair.
• Present for the party’s formal ruling that the blade would go to Jaro for safekeeping — and then went right on being the one everyone remembers holding, refusing to swing, and getting menaced over it. Someone in this campaign is keeping bad notes, and it might be the Shardblade itself.
• Flatly refused to let Nucko use it to slice a convenient hole in the wall of Sensible Curiosities during a button heist, on the grounds that using an ancestral weapon of unknown moral weight for petty larceny was “something so trivial.” The building survived. Barely.
• Cornered by the Ghostblood spy Kel in the woods outside camp, who mocked him for the blade and threatened to weaponize Torin’s “high-eyes lineage” as blackmail. Torin’s answer was an arrow to the back, no hesitation, no follow-up questions.

The Business of Being “Joran”

• Went undercover with Ravan (posing as the Reshi merchant “Gellis”) to secure the party’s front business, The Glyph Pool — tanked the official registry leadership check with a rolled 2, but recovered enough charm to talk clerk Liss into a friendly discount and her tavern schedule.
• Insisted their deckhand Dblar be kept entirely out of the loop on the shop’s underground lair and its finances — a call that, given everyone else’s track record with secrets, was probably the correct one.
• Rode Shield to help Kael lay defensive traps faster during the frantic 45-minute prep for Operation Defend Kilna. No roll required. Shield, once again, a very good boi.

The Romance of Torin & Liss

• Reconnected with Liss at the tavern mid-cover-op, immediately forgot her name from sheer exhaustion, and tried to cover by introducing Flick. Liss saw through it instantly — she’d worked out he’d only romanced her for a cheap business license — and threw him out in tears in front of a Kholin guard, who put a hand on his sword hilt for good measure. Torin’s parting move: having Flick pickpocket a single mark off the guard on the way out the door, because apparently priorities remain priorities even during a public heartbreak.
• Watched Liss rebound directly into Kael’s lap the second he left the room, culminating in Kael carving her a creepy little stone statue and setting up a date to buy illegal Horn Eater White. Somehow this worked in Kael’s favor.
• Tracked Liss back down at the Ornery Chull with a bouquet and a pair of custom shoes hand-crafted by Gavlin. Got caught in a small lie about whether he’d stitched them himself — and won her over anyway by admitting, honestly, that he’d just wanted to impress her.
• Secured a 200-mark private dinner, officially became her courting partner, and personally ended Kael’s rebound plans in the process. The wiki does not know how Kael feels about this. The wiki suspects “fine, mostly.”

Blood and Bowstrings

• Landed a clean longbow shot square between a White Spine’s shoulder blades during the temple trial gauntlet, doing his part to help take down four horse-sized monsters in a stone corridor.
• Claimed the Yu-Nerig greatshell as his personal quarry and put three unrelenting longbow shots into the 20-foot aquatic monster while the rest of the party lit it on fire, turned it to stone, and generally made a production of it.
• Fell completely immobilized for three full turns during the meteorite ambush when enemy compressor fabrials seized his armor solid — a distinctly un-fun reminder of what fighting alongside Radiants looks like when you aren’t one. (Historical note, now moot — see below.)
• Test-drove his brand-new Grandbow against an enemy Skybreaker mid-battle, rolled with disadvantage from his strength deficit, and completely whiffed the shot. Crestfallen, he put the bow away to nurse his bruised ego. The Grandbow’s win rate remains a work in progress.
• Charged into the enemy on Shield during the meteorite ambush, trampling a cluster of burning soldiers — and, as a side effect, accidentally stomping out Nucko’s fire attack mid-battle. Friendly fire, four legs.
• Watched Flick secure the ferret’s first official kill of the campaign, biting a soldier’s nose clean off from Shield’s flank for the finishing blow.
• Took a direct hit from an enemy catapult during the same fight and went down unconscious for the rest of the session — the cost of being the one party member without a healing Surge on standby. (Also, as of Session A, moot.)
• In the campaign’s final confrontation with Sebarial, charged the demigod on Shield as he took Kael hostage; notched bomb arrows to collapse the facility’s external support towers while the rest of the party stripped Sebarial of his weapon and ended him for good.

Arson, Twice — Keep These Straight

• At the Kholin war-camp Church of the Yips chapel, alongside Kael and Gavlin: passed a 19 Survival check to find fresh axehound paw prints proving the escaped Hansy had been through recently, then rifled the private office for a hierarchy chart of the Nine Seneschals, 100 marks, and an ear trumpet before dousing the bookshelves in Horn Eater White and torching the top floor. Snuck downstairs afterward acting completely oblivious as smoke poured in behind him, letting the chapel’s own guardian take the blame for a “candle left burning.”
• At the second Church of the Yips chapel, in Highprince Aladar’s camp, alongside Kael and Nucko: waited as Kael bypassed the locked door with stone shaping, set the building ablaze from the inside, then tunneled the party out beneath the foundation. From 600 yards away, Torin notched a bomb arrow and put a bullseye clean through the remaining stained-glass window, bringing the entire structure down. Two chapels. Two different fires. Zero regrets on record for either.

Reckonings, Deceptions, and a Weirdly Good Poker Face

• Rolled a natural 20 on Deception to cover for a visibly sweating Nucko during the Gold Tooth Incident, convincing a suspicious Sebarial that Torin possessed “the innocence of an honest man” — a genuinely funny thing for anyone to say about a man currently operating under a false name.
• One of only two party members to shake off Sebarial’s poison unassisted the night the crew was kidnapped, thanks to another well-timed natural 20.
• Warned the party, correctly and pointedly, that Sebarial had never once entered a city without already having eyes and ears on the ground — a read on the man’s paranoia that turned out to matter.
• Walked back from executing the Ghostblood spy Kel and talked Nucko through whether Jernah, one of his parents’ three killers, deserved to live — reasoning that if Jernah was genuinely remorseful and no longer a threat, living with the guilt was punishment enough. Then agreed to help Nucko hunt down the two killers who were still out there.
• Alongside Nucko, was openly hesitant about handing the Unmade Sja-Anat her trapped spren’s gemstone, pointing out — reasonably — that the party’s last brush with an Unmade ended with his brother dead and their closest ally turned briefly homicidal by the Thrill.
• Present for Nucko’s farewell, alongside Gavlin and Ravan, when Nucko sat the three of them down for a real goodbye before handing Gavlin the Raysium dagger and walking off down the road with Vesper (Blue). No disguise, no vanishing act — just one more person Torin has had to watch leave.

The Execution and the Ideal

• See ★ above for the full account. Broke free, swore the First Ideal, and put a brand-new Shardblade to immediate use — a very different outcome than the last time this wiki had to describe Torin dangling from something against his will.
• Cut himself free of all three remaining bonds in a single strike, then walked into the building where his own stripped inventory was being kept, because apparently even Radiant awakenings don’t come with an exception to “get your stuff back first.”
• Was, per the GM’s own framing, one of “all five Radiants back in the party for the first time in a long time” the instant he swore — a milestone this wiki did not expect a man best known for a very good horse to personally trigger.

The Yips HQ Infiltration

• Manifested Paul properly for the first time on-screen, and immediately put him to work — Paul located a secret latch behind a fireplace on a single “very insightful” check, opening into a converted axehound den with a doggie door leading outside. Thack used that exact route to vanish from the party for a second time roughly an hour later. Torin found the door. He did not, unfortunately, find Thack.
• Was on the receiving end of Keth’s opening attempt at a name — “Young Boinevo Man” — countered with “bow and arrow man that’s the best you’ve got, you could just call me friend, you don’t have to call me bow and arrow man.” Keth’s reply, on the record: “Okay. Friend. That I have never talked to before.” A friendship, officially timestamped.
• Landed his first true Shardblade kill through an opponent’s gem heart mid-duel — a clean counter-swing after stumbling back from an axe blow, ending with the enemy’s eyes burning out before he hit the ground. The GM’s exact words: “well done, dude.”
• Used Division for the first time successfully, after — by his own accounting — failing every previous attempt at it: dissolved a Fused soldier straight to ash, cracks crawling up her carapace as she crumbled. A long-awaited combat first, immediately followed by a well-earned “that is yep.”
• Took a direct hit from a thrown conference table during the opening seconds of the Odium/Ervel ambush — the only party member who didn’t get out of the way in time.
• Ended the session having helped Keth adhere Ervel to the floor, having failed to stop Ervel from escaping with a kidnapped Gavlin, and having watched the building they’d just cleared lose most of a wall. Session ends on the cliffhanger; Gavlin remains in Ervel’s custody as of the last recorded turn.

Relationships

• Theren (deceased) — older brother, remembered fondly despite whatever “family corruption” the shardblade represents. Torin’s last words to his stone-turned body: “I’ll remember you as the good brother you were when I was a kid.” Later revealed to have been a 25-year Ghostblood double agent, which somehow hasn’t touched that memory.
• Liss — romantic interest turned officially courting partner, after surviving Torin forgetting her name in public exactly once.
• Sebarial (deceased) — complicated; benefactor, kidnapper, gold-tooth interrogator, and ultimately the campaign’s central threat. Killed by Nucko in the final confrontation Torin fought through.
• Nucko — fellow original party member, partner in the woods ambush against Jernah’s killers, one of the three Nucko sat down with to say a proper goodbye before departing the party for good.
• Kael (deceased) — threatened to kill Torin the night they met over the Shardblade question, then spent the rest of the campaign as a reliable ally and occasional rebound rival for Liss’s attention. Died in the same battle that ended Sebarial.
• Gavlin — crafted the custom shoes that helped win Liss back; one of the three present for Nucko’s farewell; as of Session B, the person Torin failed to keep out of Ervel’s hands.
• Ravan — partner in the “Joran & Gellis” front-business con and the woods ambush against Jernah’s killers; one of the three present for Nucko’s farewell; his spren Twoie may or may not be responsible for Torin’s Shardblade showing up in the first place.
• Jaro — officially holds Theren’s family Shardblade per party decision, though the session record keeps putting it in Torin’s hands anyway — now somewhat academic, given Torin has his own.
• Thack — personally tortured Torin at his own execution and personally lied to his face about it being “nothing personal.” Still at large. This one’s getting personal anyway.
• Keth — went from an unnamed stranger who couldn’t be bothered to get his name right to “friend,” on the record, inside a single session. Fought alongside him through the Yips infiltration and the Ervel ambush.
• Paul — Torin’s spren, named after a character from the movie Logan, bonded as part of the Windrunner Ideal. Enjoys perception checks and, apparently, golf.

Related

• Kholin War Camps
• Church of the Yips
• The Glyph Pool