Dorje Rinchen
Type: NPC Affiliation: Blue Hat Order (Rootstone Keepers) Status: Missing — last seen Snow Lion Road, early spring Location: Unknown (believed to be in the Lost Valley of Bhūtaka)
Overview
Dorje Rinchen is a Blue Hat druid of considerable experience, responsible for the spring boundary rites on a stretch of the Snow Lion Road that passes through Drolskor territory. He has performed these rites for decades. He trained one apprentice: Yeshe Drolma, who was to perform the rites alongside him for the first time this spring.
He did not come.
He left in late winter without explanation, sending only his dog Kharpa back to the Drolskor camp. The spring rites lapsed. The boundary failed. Whatever Dorje Rinchen went to find in the north, he has not returned from it.
Appearance
Older than he looks at first glance. Blue Hat robes, travel-worn and practical. A bone ring on his left hand that he touches when thinking. Economical in movement. He carries a folded thangka of Blue Breath iconography and smells faintly of juniper smoke.
When the party met him at the Breath-Stone of Open Sky, he was propped against the stone with three winter wolves sitting nearby, badly injured from an encounter with the Snowbound Children he had failed to resolve. He conducted the entire conversation as though he were not hurt.
Manner
Flat. Declarative. Does not announce jokes — delivers them in the same register as everything else and moves on. Precise rather than cold. He will name a failure accurately and without self-pity, and then ask what needs to happen next. He is not warm in any conventional sense, but he is trustworthy in the specific way that people are trustworthy when they have no interest in being liked.
"Naming it a failure is for later. Right now there are four children moving south who cannot find home."
"Someone has to do it. The Yellow Hats were already full."
Known History
A long-circuit druid, he covers a regular seasonal route across the northern roads, maintaining boundary rites, reading ley currents, performing death ceremonies for those who die without proper attendance. He has worked the Snow Lion Road stretch for at least twenty years. The Drolskor camp knows him well. The boundary demons on his circuit know him better.
He is not attached to any fixed camp or settlement. He moves.
Kharpa
Dorje's mastiff. Large, shaggy, the color of old rope. Arrived at the Drolskor camp alone four days before the spring rite window closed, and has not left Yeshe Drolma's side since. Does not pace. Does not bark. Stands where he stands and waits.
Kharpa's bite is sanctified — he can strike demons and creatures immune to non-magical weapons. He has been sitting at boundary stones his entire life. He knows what things like Gyelmo Kharchen are. He is not afraid of them. He is simply not leaving until Dorje comes back.