Joffrey “Joff” Bellweather
Let me tell you a tale not of great wars or dragon-flames, but of a boy no taller than my walking staff, who may yet shake the heavens with a whisper.
His name is Joffrey Bellweather, though most call him Joff, and you’ll know him by the way he squints at sunbeams like they’re whispering secrets only he can hear. He's barely thirteen summers, soft-voiced and brighter than a lantern in a chapel, with a smile that looks like it might belong to a prophet—or someone who just saw a frog do something holy.
Joff hails from a thistle-brushed hamlet where the gods are many and the sermons are short. His parents were candlemakers, salt-of-the-earth folk who believed in balance and beeswax. But even as a child, Joff was different. While other boys skipped stones, Joff held court with butterflies and tried to name them after saints. He once insisted that a patch of mildew behind the oven was the face of Zilchus. His mother was unconvinced.
By the age of ten, Joff had collected more religious tracts than the village priest and had stitched together a patchwork theology from memory alone. He read of Pelor’s light, of Heironeous’s valor, of Boccob’s cold intellect and Fharlanghn’s dusty freedom. But the problem was… they all made sense. And that was the problem.
You see, Joff is called—he knows he is—but the line keeps ringing and no god has quite picked up yet. Or perhaps all of them have.
He says the divine hums under his skin. That prayers leak out of him when he’s dreaming. Once, when he skinned his knee, it healed mid-hiccup while he quoted a Ravenguard psalm—backwards. Another time, he asked a pond for wisdom and a fish leapt out holding a copper piece in its mouth. Coincidence? Possibly. Miracle? Possibly. Story-worthy? Absolutely.
So what does a spiritually tangled boy do with all that power and no holy orders?
He joins a pizza delivery quest, naturally.
Yes, that DiGiorno convoy—the one heading to Hommlet under the protection of the newly-minted “Knight of the Crust,” Sir Cedric Mournvale (may his armor someday fit). Joff joined under the pretense of carrying sauces and stacking boxes, but I suspect deeper motives. He thinks the gods are speaking to him through the journey, through omens in the oven smoke, the pull of the road, the odd way cheese blisters into sacred geometry.
He wears a DiGiorno tabard over his robe, decorated with hand-drawn holy symbols like a divine quilt. He says it keeps him "open to interpretation." When asked who he worships, he pulls out a wooden spinner etched with deities and says, “Today? I let the winds decide.”
Joff’s companions—an eccentric elf warlock with glitter problems, a would-be knight with delusions of nobility, and a ranger who thinks alley cats count as forest spirits—have taken to him. Whether out of fondness or morbid curiosity, they keep him close. He gives surprisingly good advice for someone whose primary source of divine guidance is pastry patterns.
He has not yet chosen his god. Or perhaps, he is being courted by many, a rare soul with a heart wide enough for the heavens to argue over. Whatever the truth, there’s a quiet power to Joff Bellweather. I’ve seen him stop a bickering argument with a question so innocent it silenced cynics. I’ve watched him lay a hand on a wounded crow and whisper, “I don’t know who’s listening, but please help,” and watched the bird fly off like nothing was ever wrong.
So mark my words, reader: the gods are watching this boy. And one day, one of them will step forward. Or perhaps he’ll teach us all that belief doesn’t always need a name.
Until then, look for the boy with a prayerbook full of doodles and a dream full of stars.
And if he tells you the mushrooms are trying to talk to him? Listen.
