¶ 🐦 Background
“In a land like Ustalav, faith don’t save you. Standing saves you.”
Clutch was never meant to survive. His egg was found half-buried in the cold earth outside Ravengro, a village haunted by old superstitions and older ghosts. A widowed tavernkeeper, Siska, took him in despite the villagers’ whispers that a feathered child was a bad omen.
Ustalav is a land that sharpens people like knives. As Clutch grew, he was mocked and feared — called a harbinger, a “gravebird,” a freak. But where other children bent or broke, Clutch hardened. When laughter turned cruel, he fought back. When fists came at him, he hit back harder. When creatures of the night stalked the village, he didn’t run — he stood his ground.
By ten, he was scrapping with farmhands and fending off wild dogs. By twelve, he was testing himself in backroom brawls in Lepidstadt, the knowledge center of Ustalav. He’s been cut, broken, bitten — but never beaten. That’s where the name “No-Tap” came from: in the ring under the Flickering Lamp, when a half-rotted ghoul got its claws around his throat. Clutch passed out—spasming, paralyzed, pupils blown. They thought he was done. But he came to minutes later, gagging on bile and fury, and drove his beak into the thing’s face like it owed him rent. No one who saw it forgot. And Clutch? He never tapped. Not then. Not ever.
¶ Lepidstadt University
Clutch still remembers the hush that fell over Lepidstadt’s grand quad the day he first set talon to flagstone. He was well into his twenties—no callow youth—when word of his “No-Tap” reputation in Ustalav’s backroom pits reached the ears of Dr. Leis Richleau, a radical young scholar on the Dean’s Council. Struck by the tengu’s raw resilience against a ghoul’s crushing grip, she used her personal endowment to underwrite his full tuition and lodging in the Department of Philosophy and Occult Inquiry.
He arrived under a sky of gargoyles and marble pillars, lecture notes clutched in one talon, feathered cloak rattling with equal parts pride and apprehension. To stretch Richleau’s gift, Clutch took midnight shifts at The Final Exam tavern—clearing belligerent drunks from the gardens, breaking up scuffles, and learning that standing your ground could be just as scholarly as any treatise.
But halfway through his first term, the letters from the bursar stopped arriving. No coin for food. No coin for room. No notice—just silence. Clutch scraped together enough in back-pit wagers to limp into winter exams, but the lifeline Richleau had thrown him was gone. Rumors whispered that her research fund had been frozen by infernal creditors, or that Viacarri himself had pressured the Council to pull the plug on “that gravebird.”
Still, Clutch pushed on—until convocation. Draped in his once-pristine robes, he stood among the honored names of Lepidstadt’s brightest. Then Dean Acciani Viacarri, silver-tongued and colder than the university’s stone hallways, paused mid-oration and spat out Clutch’s name:
“This… creature has sullied our halls with absences, late submissions, and brutish theatrics. He proves brute force belongs only in the pit, not the mind.”
The words thundered like a gauntlet thrown at his feet. Two days later, the final blow: a writ demanding restitution for unpaid fees and a formal decree stripping away even the memory of Richleau’s grant. No ceremony. No appeal. Just the echo of Viacarri’s claim that Clutch had “tarnished the University’s venerable reputation.”
Humiliated and half-starved, Clutch stormed Viacarri’s study at dawn; claws bared, rage aflame, only to be met by the click of an iron bolt. Dazed, bleeding, he recognized the truth: the ivory tower had no place for him.
And wherever Clutch’s name draws a crowd—be it in the blood-spattered ring or beneath the austere arches of a courtroom—he carries one unbreakable vow:
“When Acciani Viacarri and I meet again, he’ll choke on every last word he spat—and there won’t be a single book to save him.”
¶ Present Day
Years ago, after wrapping up a late-night bouncer shift at The Final Exam, Clutch was jumped in a dark alley by what he thought were pranksters from the Nocturne Phi Theta fraternity. That illusion vanished the moment fangs flashed and their ferocity struck—these weren’t drunk students playing vampire.
They were the real thing.
Clutch fought back, brutal and desperate, but the tide was against him. He would’ve died there—bled dry in the gutter—if not for Eram Vos, a half-mad scholar with too many secrets and too little sense. Vos dragged Clutch from the brink, patched him up, then left as quickly as he arrived.
Clutch never forgot.
The beating he took that night never left him. Neither did the sense of powerlessness. After weeks of recovery—and training—Clutch made an unorthodox choice. He took up a Dedication to Kurgess, the Strong Man, not out of faith, but out of grit. Kurgess wasn’t a savior. He was a fighter who rose to godhood with fists and backbone. That was something Clutch could stand behind.
Years passed. Then one night, Vos returned—wounded, hunted, starving. No explanations. Just a sealed scroll case shoved into Clutch’s scarred hands.
“Take this to Absalom. Find the Sooty Lads and Lass. Tell no one.”
No promise of pay. No guarantee he’d make it there alive. Just a debt.
And Clutch honors his debts.
¶ 🧠 Philosophy
- Hold your own, no matter the odds.
- Keep your word, even if it breaks your beak.
- Payback kindness-and pain-with interest
- Survival matters more than comfort.
¶ 🏋️ On Kurgess
Clutch doesn’t worship. He spars.
To him, Kurgess isn’t a god to kneel to—he’s a reminder that strength, earned through pain and resolve, can elevate a soul. Clutch took up a Cleric Dedication in the Strong Man’s name not for divine favor, but as a pact with power he understands: the kind that wins clean and stands tall.
¶ 🍻 Places and People That Shaped Him
- Ravengro: His village of origin — cold, suspicious, tight-knit. He carries their distrust of outsiders and their stubborn will.
- Lepidstadt: Where he earned his name, fighting in smoky tavern basements under gas lamps and noble wagers.
- Siska: The tavernkeeper who raised him and taught him decency. They parted bitterly when she begged him to leave the fight pits.
¶ 🪙 His Symbol
- A worn leather disc etched with a chalk ring — once a fight token, now his talisman.
- Fist wraps stitched with three red marks, each one a stand when everyone thought he’d fall.
¶ Tables
¶ Important Items
| Item Name | Description |
|---|---|
| Clutch's Scroll | Scroll to be delivered from Eram Voss to SOLs |