Ekra the Bird Bard Dad - Finding Your Own Language with Sophie Katz (D&D 5e)

What qualifies as language? Where do you mask? And where do you reveal your true self? And who's more inspiring than a dad? Hello friends welcome to characters without stories, a TTRPG podcast about the roads not yet traveled. I'm star. This episode I'm joined by Sophie Katz. Sophie is a Jewish, a romantic asexual writer, storyteller and all around nerd. She is the host of the podcast. I love this thing so freaking much currently on hiatus while she finishes up her master's degree. Sophie, I'll give you a chance to plug your projects at the end. But right now, do you want to tell listeners a little bit about yourself?

Those are the big important things for us to talk about today. I am a writer. I'm a storyteller. Those are the things I love more than anything else in the world. My pronouns are she her I forget that that's been mentioned already. And I'm really excited to be here today. Thanks for having me on the show Star.

Of course, I'm really excited for this conversation. So to get into it, then Sophie, who are you bringing to the table today?

I am bringing Ekra, Ekra, the Kenku bard to the table today.

This is a character built for d&d Five E, correct?

That is correct. That is correct. But it's sort of written in resistance to a d&d five E if I'm being honest,

Ooh tell me more.

So if you've played d&d 5e, or watched various, various live play shows that use the system and if Kenku have ever shown up, the way that Kenku are presented in d&d lore is very interesting to me. In that when I was reading the lore, I had a very specific reaction. That was a no, that's not true reaction, which is interesting, given this is not my story, not my thing I'm writing but I'm like, no, this doesn't sound right, I'm going to do something different. So Kenku are bird people, and they're not like the Aarakocra, they cannot fly. They're just these little five foot tall, pretty much at the most bird people with these feathery hands and no wings. And they also don't have a voice of their own. The legends say that Kenku were cursed or that they betrayed their god, there's different versions of the story, depending on where you look. And as a result of the Kenku were punished, their wings were taken away. And also their ability to speak on their own was taken away. And so all the Kenku can do if you meet a Kenku, it's not going to talk like we're talking right now, the Kenku will mimic sounds that it's heard before, which could be words could be natural noises could be unnatural noises just depending on what this Kenku happens to have heard. So I'm reading about Kenkus as I'm looking through the Volos guide to monsters trying to find interesting things that I want to play as maybe someday. And it says that it's not just that Kenkus can't talk. They can't come up with their own ideas. They have to copy from the world around them. And I'm reading this and my brain just went no, just because someone can't speak in the way that you expect them to doesn't mean that they're not thinking, the idea that a Kenku would not be able to come up with their own plan or, or make up their own speech, their own song, because they lack the ability to speak in a language that makes sense to you. That just struck me as a problem. Yeah. And so I was like, well, maybe this is just a stereotype. Let's work with that. Because the first time I thought, oh, Kenku Kenku Bard could be fun because like a Kenku Bard could make found poetry with the sounds they make around. And I mentioned this to someone a very long time ago. And they pointed out that this would not work that Kenku can't come up with their own poems. And I said, Well, that's no fun.

No. Why would you want to play a character who can't come up with their own ideas? It does not make sense to want to inhabit that

Maybe it makes sense if it's just supposed to be some monster that you can kill without feeling sad about killing it, because Oh, it's not really a person that doesn't really have its own ideas. But role playing games give you the opportunity to imagine beyond limitations like that. We are able to imagine ourselves as a bird person as a cat person as someone who lives 1000 years someone who only lives 20 years and inhabit that world where all this magic happens. And it just really frustrated me to read about Kenku as such a limited thing. And so my thought was no, that's stupid. I'm not going to do that. I'm going to play a Kenku Bard.

Yeah, I love that point that you just made about how playing a character in a role playing game gives you an opportunity to inhabit something you are not. And to, to learn from that. I think that's beautifully put. Thank you. I think it's also kind of a fundamental misunderstanding of the way that we learn language. Because when we're babies, we start out, we're just mimicking sounds that we hear, we're not necessarily understanding it. And then as we learn language, we learn it by repeating things that people say,

Yes, yes, absolutely. You know, those, those videos, there's so many of them these days, it really started with like, the hunger for words Instagram account, I think it originally was, where it's a dog that has been given buttons, and it pushes the button and the button says mom or says food there, it says outside. And that's how the dog tells the owner, what they want, humans can be really like, we really want there to be something that that separates us from the natural world. And so it's like, oh, you know, only humans have the ability to communicate like this. It's like, all that language is is we agree that this sound means this thing. Anything that can make sounds and has any kind of cause and effect idea, which is pretty much all living things like even plants, you know, react to things like cause and effect sort of way. That's language, this noise equals this thing is language. And so it does not make sense to me that you could have communities of Kenku, who just never communicate with each other that they wouldn't figure out, you know, for this maybe small pocket of Kenku. Making this bird noise or plus this dog noise plus the sound of a tree falling down means I love you, you know, that would happen. That's just how it works. That's what language is.

That's a really interesting mental image. This really reminds me of there's that Star Trek The Next Generation episode, which is called Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra, where they speak entirely in metaphors. And that kind of reminds me of what you just said, which is like, well, maybe tree dog bark means I love you.

And why not?

Yeah, why not? Language doesn't have to work the way that we think it works. There are lots of different approaches to language.

Yep, all language needs to be is what works for us. And honestly, it's in a way ablest and also in a way racist. If your assumption on hearing someone speak in a way that doesn't make sense to you is to assume there's no thoughts going on inside that brain.

Yeah, good point.

Kenku rights.

Yeah, it definitely made me think of things like sign language or hieroglyphics. They're completely different ways of understanding.

Well who's to say Kenku don't speak in sign language? They have hands?

Yeah.

If they can't talk, they will find a. Like they have families. You know, they, they're people you can play as?

Yeah, it's definitely that very brief snippet, in a piece of racial lore means so much when you actually think about the implications.

And I am the kind of person to think and think and think about the implications.

Was the spark that led you to creating this character, this anger, or I don't know if it was anger for you, but the way that you felt about this racial description in the lore?

Yeah, I was mostly thinking about how a Kenku Bard would interact with the world around him in with the expectations of the world around him because unfortunately, it's it's not a big stretch of the imagination. To think that in universe this would be an unfair stereotype placed upon the Kenku Would you say that the setting that you're thinking of for this that because they're different, they must be just animals. I was also thinking about mechanical like, if I wanted to convince a DM to let me use this character someday, I would at least need to be able to like make sure that he could communicate on an okay level with the other players because also I like role playing. I wouldn't want to just like sit there and say nothing. And also I I am not much of a voice actor. I am no. Matthew Mercer, I really won't be able to do really cool animal noises and trees falling down noises as a Kenku. And have anyone be having fun with that. I decided that what happened to Ekra when he was a hatchling was he was snatched up he was basically kidnapped from home by some marauding, maybe it was an adventuring party. Maybe it was just some merchants, I don't know. But someone was like, Oh, cute little bird thing, I'm gonna sell it as an exotic pets. And so he was bought by this eccentric rich woman who just carried him around with her all the time you like, like, you know, rich people will have like their little dogs in their bags or something and just talk to him non stop just treating him like her baby slash pets, definitely a thing that she owns not really treating him like a person. And so he listened. And he learned and grew to the point he had enough of a vocabulary that it's like he's playing Mad Libs constantly. So his tone of voice makes no sense. It's all disjointed. But mostly he's using her voice. And he figured out pretty quickly, oh, if I entertain this woman, then I make sure I get fed. And make sure she doesn't get mad at me because I am this thing that she owns. And that was the first 12 years or so of his life. Kenku come to maturity at 12. And at that point, he eventually got fed up with his circumstances like he was living in quote, unquote, living in luxury, but it was very much a gilded cage that he did not have any ability to live his life any way he would want to with this woman. And so finally, he took up his lute and ran away, and made his way out of out of civilization and outs to the wilderness where it can who lived and went through the slow process of reintegrating himself into a society that he did not understand at all. And that was definitely not easy, because, you know, he was raised by a different species. But I'm an I'm an optimist. I'm an idealist. So he did, he did make it. I think Kenku are very patient with each other. Like you have to be, you can't expect anyone to immediately be on the same page as you like, we're as wise and most concrete don't even use words at all. Because if they're far away from people, they're never going to learn a common word. So I think that they are patient with each other. And they saw this last young man, and we're like, Hey, okay, well, we'll figure this out. And he eventually got married, got a husband, and they raised two kids together. And then one day, his youngest daughter was kidnapped in the same way that he was. And that is his call to adventure. That's why he returns to civilization, as the D&D world knows it, and starts getting involved with not Kenku people again, cuz he wants to figure out where his daughter is, and get her and bring her home. character is a setting in which Kenku aren't really seen as human, or as humanoid I guess is, you know, the DND term for it? That's where his origin would come from that his experience with the world is basically what the Kenku lore in the player's handbook sets up that they're not really people, they don't really think and it would certainly depend on the other players, and looking forward to seeing how other players react to him and what questions they might ask because there's lots of opportunities for him to react to them in turn that if they say to him, Oh, well Kenku don't have language, he would probably get kind of mad about that. It's interesting thing being someone who is difference and in a way that other people refuse to ignore.

Is this something that you do often when building characters I know that some people would prefer not to encounter discrimination based on their their race in d&d? This is different from race in the real world just to reiterate, but is it something that you enjoy playing out? Or is this something that you're doing or thinking of specifically for this character?

It's a story that matters to me. This is definitely the most blatant I've been about it and like having it all wrapped up, but then also, the other character I've played the most of so far is a explicitly pacifist character in the d&d world, which is another kind of how the heck do you do that? How does this work within the rules within quote, unquote, the way the game is supposed to go? You know, you're supposed to go around killing people. So what happens when you have a character who fundamentally doesn't want to do that? I'm fortunate enough to have a wonderful dungeon master and a wonderful group of players who they don't always you know, agree with my character, but they are as players are willing to play with this and the Dungeon Master is always throwing challenges my way to like test my character and see how far her philosophy can go and that makes a cool, interesting story. So I guess the trend for me is making characters that push back against the assumptions of the game in a way than when you have a game that has everyone is very, very glad everyone's you know, being so noise about it right now, because being noise about things is how you make it better. But there are a lot of problems in Dungeons and Dragons as it exists and how it's written and the assumptions that are made. The whole concept of this race is this way, is fundamentally problematic. And so yeah, by all means, I'm going to have fun making characters who look back at that. And they leaning on the fourth wall kind of way, almost and say, but we're not like that. Or maybe we are like that. But is it really a bad thing?

Dear listeners, you cannot see. But I was I was nodding vigorously through that whole statement. Because to say the least D&D has some problems with race. The Kenku, also, being the idea of a cursed race also comes up a lot. And oh, that's, that's no fun.

I don't like that either. And that's something that I would hope would come up eventually. Because I think practically speaking, it will be complicated for Ekra specifically, because I think generally speaking, Kenku don't see themselves as broken. I think that it's all that they know, and it works for them. And when you're surrounded by other people who do talk like you and act like you and have the same cultural values as you, you don't have any reason to think there's something wrong with you. But Ekra was raised by someone who treated him as fundamentally inhuman. And she introduced him to language and music and art in a way that is not what Kenku would create on their own. And that's what he's been immersed in. That's what music is to him. That's what song is to him. And I think he would at times find it frustrating that he can't participate in the same way that a human would like, like Ekra is a bard who can't sing. He could copy someone else singing, but he can't sing himself. That's not how his voice works. And I think that if he had grown up without knowing that that was something he quote unquote, should wants. It was a big, very different, but that's not how it is now.

Ekra is a bard, did you have an idea for subclass there?

It's funny because I've built him twice now. Because there I made him a very long time ago for a game that then took a like, a full like year after I made the character to even have a session one and then has not had another session in the month since. So that was just a level one version of him. So I wasn't even near thinking about that kind of things. But I've just now rebuilt him is sort of like an alternate universe version of him. Where I've also like, I've tweaked my thoughts on this personality that for this version, so like, there's there's one version of Ekra and the other version of him. But this one I've been thinking, because there's just in case we get to move up from level two to level three, I'm thinking I'll go with college of Valor for him. Part of that was talking with the other players for this new game and trying to balance out with mechanics a bit. Part of it was also wanting after playing a pacifist character, I want to try out playing someone who's a little more feisty. He's a dad on a mission, he's gonna find his girl and he's going to kick the butt of whoever gets in his way of finding his girl. So yeah, he's going to be a little more stabby than the person I played last. But I also didn't want to do like, you know, college of swords because that didn't line up with his backstory like he didn't learn cool flourishy sword tricks, but an interesting adventure stories that lines up well with what he might have heard as this rich woman was reading him stories as a kid.

So just in case anybody listening is not familiar. Can you tell us a little bit about what that subclass is

So the bard subclasses they call them colleges, which I kind of laugh about, like bards go to college and what it might be like at Bard College, their arts programs get lots of funding. But not Ekra, did not go to college. Well, most of the bard classes are a lot more focused on the way the bard interacts with people. They're more charisma persuading, deceiving, performing focused, but in the interest of making someone a little more, a little more angry, a little more stabby. That's why I was looking at swords or valor, which Swords is sword swallowers and people who throw the swords in the air and do cool tricks and sword dances. That would be college of swords, but I didn't think that that really worked with Ekra. So College of Valor is a bard who is really interested in adventures and adventure stories and not only the stories of the past, but the stories they're being made that he Is there in the moment that he's gonna, you know, write a song about the adventures of this party someday. And because this bard knows that they are going to be in adventuring scenarios, they've learned how to use a sword in the shield, a lot of bards will be just focused on their magic just focused on their powers of persuasion, both natural and enhanced by whatever magical instruments they may have picked up along the way as their focus for their powers. Ekra is gonna he does not an exact fit, because he didn't really want to be an adventurer. He's just doing it because he's a good dad and good dad will chase his daughter to the ends of the earth if he has to, but it was the closest thing I could find which limitations breed innovation and all that jazz. I like to you know, take things and make them my own when I can.

Yeah, I think our traditional idea of what a bard is is very tied to music. And I like a more expansive definition of what a bard is and what a bard can be. Personally, I've played a cheerleader Bard, so her magic came from her ability to shout really loud and do some acrobatics.

Yeah cause bards inspire, bards support. Bards have turned into at least you know people mythologizing about d&d games as it were into the they're really flirty, flirty, sexy, you know, doesn't care about anything, but we'll get get what he wants, because he's super hot sort of sort of thing. Maybe this is the the aro/ace of me speaking. But that's not the only way to inspire people like flirting is not the biggest motivator in the world. You know what's inspiring? A dad. Yeah, like a parent saying, you got this kid, I am here for you like Ekra. He's like 25, you know, like, thank you. That's middle aged for a Kenku. They don't live as long as a lot of the other species in d&d, but I can definitely imagine that if he gets any inkling that any member of his party is like, mentally younger than him, he's gonna adopt them. He's too much of a dad to not be like, Oh, you you are your teenager, you are a poor child. Let me help you.

I love what you just said about dads and parents in general, being kind of an inspiring coach for their child and being that support and inspiring their children to do what they want to do with their lives. That's so sweet. I love it.

He's gonna be a dad bard, bird dad, bird bard, they haven't figured out the best way to combine those three words.

And if he has a dad bod, he's a dad Bard with a dad bod.

He's got a bird bod, at least.

Does Ekra tell a lot of dad jokes? Who? And how would jokes work with Kenku?

I bet Kenku sense of humor is probably different than other people's sense of humor. He's got me he's got enough of a grasp of common that he could probably tell a joke. But his delivery would probably leave a lot to be desired. Unless he put like a ton of thoughts into which example of which word he's going to use. Like that would take a lot more thought. He probably has a really dry sense of humor, just because it's his his tone of voice, like I mentioned before, Speed Round madlibs. He'll pick whatever word is most available in his head at the moment for what he does. I think there might be quite a bit of accidental humor from him because he'll he'll come across a gaps in his vocabulary from time to time. If he's never heard anyone talk about something before then he'll just not be able to say it. So we'll have to talk around it. So that could get funny. I don't know if he personally would find it funny, but from an outsider's perspective.

Yeah, yeah, I can see that. So you talked about his motivation for journeying? What is his daughter's name, by the

His daughters were Koura and Hyah. And his husband way? is Awak when I was thinking about names. I did a lot of listening to like videos of ravens, because ravens make a lot of weird noises and they're really cool. So the woman who kidnapped him, Lady Fiona, well, she didn't kidnap him, she bought him. But anyway, she called him Birdie. And once he escaped into the world, he didn't want to have anything to do with her, you know anymore. Like you want to be a Kenku. And so he chose a name that was up sounds that he could actually make. So Ekra. That's a bird sound. And so I was looking at YouTube watching videos, and I saw a video of a raven just going "a, Waka waka waka waka waka" and I'm like, that's his husband's name. Yeah, so Koura and Hyah are the daughters. I can't remember right now. Which one I said was the missing one.

Oh man, being a bird race and being called Birdie is like the highest insult. I can't imagine like if you named your child humanie. It's very insulting.

And like of course, it will be, you know, up to the DM, if and when we ever run into Lady Fiona when exactly she's like, but I can imagine that one way for it to go is that she probably doesn't even realize that she mistreated him, she probably thinks she was uplifting this poor little creature, and they think she was doing him a favor. And that just genuinely does not get it. And that could be a storytelling wise a fun argument to have.

Do you think that he has a lot of animosity towards her? Or is it more just kind of a wanting to divorce himself from her company and from that association?

I think it's complicated. I think that he definitely realized he was unhappy enough to decide to leave. So there's that. And then I think he had the opportunity to go out and spend just as many years certainly childhood years are formative in a lot of ways. But it was like 12 years with her and 12 years without her in the next 12 years being with people who were demonstrating before him every day that it's possible to be all the things that the humans told him he couldn't be, and that it's possible to be happy and have love and have arts and have a sense of purpose in your life, living in a very different way and communicating in a very different way. And so I think he reached the point where he didn't speak with her voice anymore. And now he's back, interacting with people that he knows he needs to talk to them, or they won't take him seriously. And he won't be able to find his girl. And so he's back using Lady Fiona's voice again, just because that's the majority of his vocab. That's the easiest thing available to him. And he cannot there's nothing in the d&d lore that limits how much a Kenku can remember and mimic. It's just a part of them forever, he would never be able to completely divorce himself from the influence she's had on his life, whether he wants to or not. And that complicates the issue. And it's something you can't really get rid of. How can you feel about that? It can't be entirely positive. It has to be complicated. Yeah, absolutely. It's a tool that he uses. And it's something that in some ways, holds him back from being fully Kenku. In the way he would have been, if that none of this had ever happened. And at the same time, it's all he knows, it's all he is, it is a part of him. And he does like music. He does like poetry. He does like using the sounds of the world around him and the sounds of the world around him for his life includes human sounds includes lady feeling his voice. And so it is what it is. And what it is, is complicated.

Yeah, definitely, the sound of her voice is probably linked to some very traumatic feelings from him. And every time he speaks, he has to recall something that's traumatic to him, I can imagine that'd be very difficult.

And at the same time, it's the only option. So he has to deal with it. And he has to be okay with it. And that is, like speak speaking from personal experience, in some ways, the things that you have to be okay with, that's a very insidious thing. And you can go a very long time being convinced that you're okay with the things you have to be okay with?

Definitely, how do you think that your personal experience has influenced building this character?

Speaking as a writer and storyteller, it is nigh on impossible to avoid having the characters that you create have a part of you in some way, for better or worse, I'll say that Ekra is very close to my heart thematically speaking, at least, certainly nowhere near literal, a lot of the ways that Ekra has struggled with interacting with a world that expects something of you that you're not, and the decisions you have to make of where do you comply? And where do you not? Where do you mimic? Where do you use scripts? Where do you rely on observing the world around you? And where do you try to be yourself at the risk of alienating the world around you? And also, where do you find the people who are like you and do think like you and do laugh at the same jokes you laugh at and do take comfort in the same traditions you do? And I think this is this is one of those stories that I can imagine. People have dozens of different identities relating to this feeling. I think this is one of those universal stories. It is a story I do find myself coming back to in one way or another a lot.

Yeah, I talked to Stevie always back. And that was one of the things we talked about is that part of what makes d&d attractive I think, especially to people who are kind of experoencing this disconnect with who they are and how the world sees them is that it gives them an opportunity in world to find that kind of found family that you need to navigate that kind of disconnect and those kinds of feelings and traumas.

Definitely.

So why don't you tell me a little bit about what Ekra looks like.

Ekra is like all Kenku, a little bird person, he's about four foot nine or so like he's not quite five foot, he's a still counts as on medium size as D&D sizing goes, but he's not very strong. He's just a little bird man. He has very dark brown feathers, like not quite black. But like if you've just glanced at him in the right lighting, you might assume they were black. And he's got very dark black eyes. And so I decided that part of Kenku arts is bleaching and dyeing their feathers.

Oh, interesting.

And so the feathers on the back of his head are purple. And he keeps with him a green feather. And that's one of Awak's feathers, his husband's feathers.

Oh, nice.

And he wears a very simple sort of traveling cloak. Like he wasn't really planning on dressing super fancy or buying a lot of clothes. When he was going out. It was just Nope, I gotta go find my girl. So it's got a hood that he can pull up if he wants to. But usually he doesn't, because he's hoping that someone will notice him. And the way that they react to Oh, there's another one of these bird people, that that'll be the clue he needs to finding, finding his daughter.

I love the idea of the dying of feathers and having feathers instead of a lock of hair. I think that's a really interesting flavoring to add to the race. I love it when people do that kind of thing.

Thank you. I was just thinking about like, left to their own devices. What would they do if they weren't being held to other cultures standards? Or what do they have? They have their feathers, they do something with the feathers. They've got natural plants and stuff around them. They can make dyes.

How much experience do they have with sword fighting? You mentioned that they use a rapier when they start out at level one. Are they just completely green? Or did they do a little training first?

I don't think he had any official training the thing he had like official training and was his music that like like Lady Fiona paid for him to learn how to play the flute and a couple other instruments so he could entertain her. And he takes a lot of joy. And that's the swordfighting is something he's just picked up out of necessity. Like I can imagine that when he was going out into the world for the first time he just found a dagger somewhere. And that's how he defended himself as he was making his way through the wilderness for the first time. And so that's where he started to learn things. Need to figure out where he got his rapier. Maybe he stole it. I don't know. He at some point ended up with a sword and is a very he's he's very low level. So it makes sense for him to not know a whole lot about it yet, but he will definitely learn through experience, but he has a decently high dexterity. So he'll be at least able to hit things if not cause a lot of damage. He's not a very strong person.

It's always good to have room for growth, especially in a level one character.

Yeah, no, he's not. He's not a seasoned adventurer. He is a dad.

Yeah. What flaws do they have?

Besides just being of not very strong, little bird man. Definitely his temper. It's not something that he'll. But this is getting into how I've had different thoughts on his personality from one version, the one game that hasn't had a second session yet. And the other game that's about start initially had him very quiet. And in the backgrounds, just sort of going with the flow and not really pushing the narrative at all, which I sort of fell into, mainly because that group had a lot of first time players in it, I wanted to, you know, be supportive and not take over too much of the limelight. So I sort of fell into that pattern of behavior for him. So I think that would be a flaw for that version of him is that he the much more you know, practical thing would be to say, Nope, we are going we're gonna find my girl, I don't care about this stuff, let's let's go. But he's being much more passive at the time. And his inexperience with interacting with people recently would also be a flaw, but in the way I'm currently building him, he is much more inclined to snap at people basically, if they cross him or if they say something he doesn't like or if they imply that he's an animal, or that he's stupid, or that he's somehow lesser in any way that I think he's all of the complicated feelings we were talking about before with how much he wants to lean into his past or his presence or the human influences or the Kenku influences. I think he's really sensitive about that. And if any one pokes, he will snap back. And if there's any threat to his child or his perceived children, he will be very feisty and very eager to tell you to shut up and stick a sword in your face to make you shut up. When he was leaving home, his husband and other daughter didn't want him to go. I think it's not the most uncommon thing in the world for little Kenku to disappear and never come back for various reasons. If you're out in the wilderness, maybe you get snatched up by a monster, or maybe you get snatched up by someone who's going to sell you on the exotic pet trade. And I think that's a walk told him no to stay, I don't wanna lose you, too. And Ekra is like no and stubbornly went off after his daughter, which is the in a way the noble thing to do, but it also is, now they've lost two family members. Maybe they don't know if he's ever coming back.

Yeah, that's a hard choice to make.

I think he's a little impulsive in that way. I don't know if he puts a ton of thoughts into issues, which would make it even more important to the times where he is really carefully considering his choices and choosing his words. But it'll be interesting to see what influences in the story worlds develop that.

So Ekra's a bard and you said that they enjoy music. Do they compose music?

Yes, yes. Ekra does. I mentioned before some frustration that not being able to sing and so he's also you know, he's a lyricist in addition to a composer, but he likes to have a lot of fun with his music. This is actually one of the first things I thought of so I can't believe I haven't said this already. When I was thinking about what a Kenku Bard would be capable of, Kenku mimic, that's the whole deal. So he will play a song on his lute. And then he will sing the lute line using his mimicry ability. While he is playing on the lute, something that harmonizes with the melody he is repeating. So he's basically dueting with himself or as you know, the high fantasy version of like a loop device.

That's really cool.

I don't know what the actual practical terms are for such things. I just know this looping.

Yeah, I have no idea. Listeners, please tell me what that is called.

It might just be looping, I don't know. But for him, it's the self duets, because it's just him playing with himself. And he could layer different sounds on top of each other and use the music he finds in the world around him in addition to the music that he makes, but Ekra definitely takes a lot of pride in the songs that he is able to create and the sounds that he's able to create without the influence of the rest of the world because it's kind of proof against the way people see him. There is a mind in here. There is a heart this song didn't exist before. And now it does. And that was me.

Yeah, very cool. Ekra, do you give people second chances?

Second chances. Second Chances. Depends. Some people help you. Some people hurt you. Some people take a long time to learn. I think if someone came to me and said, I'm sorry. I know what I did. Wrong. I would consider it.

Thank you so much. I think that voice is really interesting. I definitely would enjoy playing with that character.

That makes me happy to hear. I definitely plan to if my co players say anything like particularly though interesting or fun or fun specific phrase I will jot it down as something that Ekra would use.

It definitely puts a different spin on character catchphrases, because Ekra's might be other characters catchphrases. Sophie, thank you so much for sharing Ekra on the podcast. How can people find you?

You can find me a couple of different places. You can find me on the platform where I found you which is TikTok. I am at Sophie a Katz on Tik Tok. I am also at Sophie a Katz on Instagram it's not Sophie Katz it's also not Sofia Katz it is Sophie A Katz because if you Google just Sophie Katz you get the Sophie Katz mystery series which has nothing to do with me. But I feel like I need to read someday because like it must be about me, you know?

I'll put the links in the description. So feel free to check those out and find Sophie that way.

Yes. And if you're interested in my work as a writer, you can find me at Sophie-a-katz.com which has all my portfolio various things and stories that I've worked on. And I really do plan to relaunch my podcast. I love this thing so freaking much once I'm done with my master's degree in just a few more weeks, because I really loved making that podcast so freakin much pun completely intended. But if you want to catch up on that before I start making new episodes, because there's about 100 episodes on there, you can find it on Spotify, Apple podcasts, and basically everywhere that the anchor app distributes podcasts to, and I hope you enjoy.

Please, please tell me what the podcast is about because I'm sure everybody else listening is curious now.

So I love this thing so freaking much is a podcast about passion. Every episode, I bring on the guest, who gets three minutes to speak uninterrupted about a topic of their choice. The only requirement for this topic is it's something that you love wholeheartedly and want to tell us why you love it. So you get to talk about it, then we have a little conversation and the episodes are a 15 minutes or less, it's very much a pick the thing you could talk about for hours and hours and hours on end, we're gonna give you the very short first reaction of why you love it. And it brought a lot of joy in my life in a time where I really needed that joy. And I really look forward to doing it again and I hope that it brings all of you joy as well if you take a moment to listen to it.

Yeah, please go check it out. You can find me on Tik Tok at starmamac. You could also listen on YouTube just search for characters without stories. Please Like Subscribe rate, review on Apple podcasts, and share with your friends share with your favorite barista. Every little bit helps. I'm currently accepting submissions, particularly for non d&d characters. So if you'd like to share character, you can go to the submission form at characters without stories.com Thanks for listening and may all your characters find your stories.