millennialfalcon

Henry was born in a hippie commune in the Forgotten Realms, the son of a powerful druid named Barry Oak, and his cleric wife, Autumn. Barry's mother had been brought into the Forgotten Realms from Earth by an eldritch being known as the Doodler that represents all the randomness & chaos in the universe. Barry, being her son, bears a fragment of the Doodler's power. Henry also has that power inside him, though he cannot access it consciously. When Henry was a young man, he inadvertently used the Doodler's power within him to transport himself from the Forgotten Realms to Earth through a shard of a magic mirror. The experience was so traumatic that it gave him amnesia, and he forgot all about his life in the Forgotten Realms. He was found by a hiker named Mercedes Garcia, and the two would eventually wed and start a family. Mercedes gave birth to twins whom they named Lark and Sparrow. The Doodler's power passed on from Henry to his sons, growing ever stronger. By the time the boys were twelve, Henry was working as a geologist at the San Dimas Museum of Natural History, living a pleasant life with no memory of ever being anything but a normal, run-of-the-mill human on Earth. One day, while carpooling with some other dads and kids from Lark and Sparrow's soccer team, the minivan they were driving drove through a portal and wound up in the Forgotten Realms. The group passed out, and when the dads awoke, their sons were gone. They set out on an epic journey to recover their lost sons, during which Henry regained his lost memories and confronted his father. Barry Oak had partnered with two of the other dads' fathers, Bill Close and Willie Stampler, to kidnap their grandsons and attempt to use them to increase their Daddy Magic and become immortal. Henry and his friends took to calling their dads "the Omega Daddies." Early on in their journey, the dads learned of a prophecy that foretold the coming of the Doodler, "when the blood of the unsung hero is spilled." They only knew of the Doodler as the mascot of their sons' soccer team, which Sparrow had drawn. Weeks or maybe months later, after the sons had been rescued, the Omega Daddies had been defeated, and everyone had made it back home to Earth, the group all gathered at the Oak-Garcia household for a movie night. Sparrow and Lark came to Henry in the kitchen, and Sparrow told Henry that Lark wanted to apologize and bury the hatchet of a grudge he had been holding against Henry. Feeling happy, Henry hugged his son, at which point Lark slipped a knife into Henry's shoulder, revealing that Willie Stampler had told him that Henry was the unsung hero, and by spilling his blood, they would bring the Doodler into the world. Black ichor spilled forth from Henry, Lark, and Sparrow and flooded the sky, covering the world in chaos and uncertainty.

Henry is a kind soul at heart, and he loves nothing more in life than caring for his family— his loving wife, Mercedes Oak-Garcia, and his beautiful twin boys, Lark and Sparrow. As a young man, Henry accidentally transported himself from his home realm to Earth in a process that was so traumatic that his mind took all memory of his previous life and shut them behind a door in his mind so that they couldn't hurt him. The only thing he remembered was his own name. Mercedes was the person who found him, naked, dehydrated, and delirious, wandering through the rainforest. She showed him kindness, staying with him after he passed out and sitting at his bedside in the hospital while he recovered. She took this scared, broken man to her family home, and taught him how the world works, until he was strong enough to make sense of the large gaps of memory in his mind and forge a new life for himself, at her side. Whereas Henry's parents were cold to him— Barry because of his narcissistic drive for perfection, and Autumn, his mother, because she was too traumatized by Barry's abuse to show Henry any love or kindness— when the Garcia family took Henry in, they taught him how to be kind, how to care for the world he lives in and the people in that world, and how to love with his whole heart. It is thanks to the Garcias that Henry is the loving, generous man that he is today.

“Dad, stop. Stop. Dad, stop. Dad, I love you, okay? Despite everything, I love you, and maybe I’m just seeing things a little bit more clearly now, but I think you’re angry for the same reason that I’m angry. Because the thing that’s inside you, that’s inside me, it scares you the way it scares me. And I’m angry because I can’t control it. I don’t think I’m perfect, I don’t think I’m better than everyone, I think I’m fucked up! I think I’m a broken man!”

Henry is prone to adopt a 'holier than thou' attitude over many issues, but most of all veganism and environmental awareness. He makes snide remarks about how his Prius is better for the environment than Darryl's gas guzzling Honda Odyssey, and even takes the time to monologue at the rest of the group all the reasons why they should switch to a vegan diet, during a moment when the rest of the dads are passed out and can't stop him. This is a habit he subconsciously picked up from his father, who believed so strongly that he was better than everyone else that he founded a cult and populated it with homunculi clones made in his image. When Henry finally faced his father again for the first time, Barry tried to coach him through a calming yoga routine while talking down to Henry the whole time. Henry, being kind and forgiving, loves his father, but deep down he really loathes his father, and in many ways tries his hardest to be as different from Barry as he can. However, he also falls prey to speaking from a position of authority and trying to enforce his way of life onto others. Henry's bloodline is cursed to play host to an otherworldly chaos being referred to by the dads as "The Doodler," which causes Henry and his kin to have wild tendencies. In Henry's sons, Lark and Sparrow, this manifests in them wanting to fight anyone and everyone to try to prove that they are the strongest. In Henry's father, Barry Oak, it manifested in a controlling nature with barely concealed violent intent underneath it. Henry tries to suppress the fear and anger inside him as hard as he can, giving off an air of controlled calm, but when push comes to shove, he hits his limit and lets go of his rage in an explosive outburst, yelling at and insulting his friends for their frustrating insistence on what Henry sees as the wrong course of action.

“Is everybody buckled up?” “Are you boys buckled up back there?” “Boy, oh boy, are we ever!” (If you look, they are super not.) “Uh, hey Henry! I don’t mean to call your kids a liar, but—” “Oh they’ll buckle up once we get started on the road.” “Relationships are built on trust, that’s what you tell me. You should trust that we’re going to buckle up!” “You know, I’m tryna’ let them make their own decisions, it’s called free-range parenting.”

Henry's approach to parenting is, as stated previously, specifically chosen to be the polar opposite of how his own father raised him. Whereas Barry tried to exert complete control over every aspect of Henry's life, Henry chooses to employ what he calls "free range parenting," by letting the twins run wild with little or no actual punishment for their misdeeds. He tries to talk them into an understanding of why violence isn't the answer, with mixed results, and ultimately forgives them no matter what they do, going so far as to show Lark unceasing love and forgiveness even after Lark deceived Henry and attacked him, spilling the blood of the Unsung Hero and unleashing the Doodler into the world. Lark's quest for violence and vengeance plunged the world into an apocalypse, but Henry refused to punish him or blame him in any way. Henry loves a good intellectual puzzle, and he finds puns to be the pinnacle of humor. His personal flavor of nerd-dom is geology, which led him to work at the San Dimas Museum of Natural History. He loves geology so much that he convinced his colleagues at the museum to help him record a geology-themed rap EP (the majority of which is written and performed by Henry, with the addition of a rap battle from his coworkers about which classification of rock is the best). Henry's dad jokes are so potent that they can cause psychic damage in anyone who hears them— unless that person is another dad, and therefore immune.

“Well, you know what, Darryl? Maybe I am going to stay in ‘cause maybe we need to be held accountable for our own actions, no matter what the consequences, and no matter what the context is. And just because you’ve got other stuff going on doesn't mean that these people don't have a right to their anger at us. And I know it wasn't our fault, but sometimes horrible tragedies happen by accident, and that's just a dark thing you have to live with. Maybe it's important that we take responsibility for our actions. We killed hundreds of people with our actions. We need to respect this town, and we need to come to some kind of resolution here.”

Shortly after the dads arrived in the Forgotten Realms and entered the city of Neverwinter, tragedy struck in the form of Darryl tossing a bag of magic beans down an elevator shaft to Henry, to try to help him fight off some attackers. In doing so, four beans spilled out of the bags, most of which had harmless effects (summoning three frogs, a geyser of apple juice, etc.). But the fourth bean summoned something much greater: a huge stone pyramid with a 60' by 60' base. Given that this pyramid appeared in an elevator shaft halfway up a tall tower, it completely crushed everything beneath it, instantly killing or maiming hundreds of people. The dads, knowing that it was an act of random chance but still ostensibly their fault, fled Neverwinter as soon as they could. Later on, their travels took them back to Neverwinter, where they planned to hire an army of mercenaries to storm the castle of Ravenloft and get their sons back from the shadowy evil men who had kidnapped them. Of course, as soon as the Neverwinter city guards saw their minivan, they tried to arrest them right away for their hand in creating the pyramid. Darryl and Glenn tried their best to persuade the guards to let them go, but Henry's innate sense of responsibility and his strict moral code made him insist that they should face the consequences of their actions and turn themselves in. When the dads then decided to take on an unpaid intern, Henry argued they should pay him for his work.

“Okay. I'm just not gonna say anything and they should… They better not… If they ask me any question I can't be held responsible for what comes out of my mouth. So I'm just going to try to be quiet.”

Henry's desire for moral 'rightness' makes it so that he has an incredibly hard time lying. Even white lies meant to spare someone's feelings or to prevent the dads from getting in even more trouble can cause Henry intense anxiety, until he finally can't take it anymore and blurts out the truth. Early on in the adventure, the dads tried to mediate a family disagreement between a father fairy dragon, Gartok, and his kids, who ran away from him after Gartok tried to use them as slave labor. The dads accidentally removed a magical bracelet from Gartok's ankle, without knowing that by doing so, they had caused the death of Gartok's only son. Later, when the dads approached the two dragon daughters, they tried to lie and say that it was Gartok who was responsible for killing their brother, so that the girls wouldn't attack them in retaliation. Henry tried to stay silent, reasoning that a lie of omission would be easier than an outright lie, but the longer that their confrontation went on, the harder it was for him to keep quiet. Finally, he panicked, and confessed that it was Ron who removed the anklet, and in doing so killed their brother. This (understandably) did not help their negotiation efforts.

1. Preachy –
2. Volatile –
3. Repressed –
4. Forgiving +
5. Conflict Averse –
6. Intelligent +
7. Morally Rigid/Responsible +/–
8. Corny +/–
9. Honest +/–
10. Caring +