Listener Ash Tovar

Listener Ash Tovar, the monk who sought his own pain

Listener is the one who learned to keep silent long enough to hear, he who had been nothing but a scream. In the end he discovered a truth: he had been seeking this physical pain. Suffering in the body was a way of not suffering in the mind. The day he understood that, he stopped being the discipline's victim and became its student. Each stroke tattooed on him tells a suffering, each small break in the line a revelation: the only book he ever wrote himself.

Describe him

You move little, and never without reason. You look at people a long time before answering them, when you answer at all. Your voice is low, even, almost breathless. You seek no comfort: no seat, no shelter, no warm meal. People say you are calm. Those who have seen you up close say rather that you are holding something back.

Play him

Play the silence: with him, it says more than any shout. Keep him almost motionless, sparing of word and gesture. Don't show all the tattoos at once: let them be glimpsed, and explain one only in a moment of trust. When the energy runs through his hands, play the restrained effort, never the flash.

What he says (rarely)

"They called me Dung, then the Lost One, then the Condemned. The one name I keep, I earned."
"Silence isn't peace. It's what holds back the rest."
(before a mistreated child) He says nothing. He stops, and the cold falls.