“Just Hopkins, please.”

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Nel Hopkins is an archaeologist. He likes dead things, and things that’ve spent the last few decades—preferably centuries—covered in dust. They cause much fewer problems than people. Hopkins is the kind of person who would keep his head down while the world burned around him; don’t get involved, mind your own business Hop, just don’t worry about things too much. Though he often speaks with the kind of politeness you’d associate with a youth just apprenticed at their first job, Hopkins can become quite prickly and snippish when pressed too far into social interaction. No, I’m good, why I don’t I just leave, maybe you can find someone else to talk to. Thanks.


At only a few inches above five feet, with a narrow, gawky sort of build, Hopkins is perfectly sized and perfectly built to maneuver through the crooked and crumbling ruins of the old world, where he spends most of his time. As a result, he is somewhat unhappy in wide open spaces, and prefers the clutter of ruins, cities, and forests. A bonus: he is perfectly sized to go generally unnoticed and overlooked through much of Invernier—short enough to be dismissed, but not too short to be mistaken for an elf or some other untrustworthy fae.

His body has a certain soft, spideriness to it—the careful movements of someone who is used to handling things that break easily between his long fingers. His black hair is shaved pragmatically short, so as to not snag on anything old or malicious. His expression is, by default, rather serious and unrevealing, with a button nose, large blue doll-eyes he finds annoyingly attention-grabbing, and pale, neutral lips. His clothes are tough, all-purpose gear; you can’t afford to have fancy clothing when you’re sandwiching yourself through hard, dirty stone all the time.

He normally wears a long brown cloak that covers his entire body, with a dark hood for travelling. Perhaps out of pride in his work, pride in himself, or superstition driven by his time in those dusty, twilit ruins, Hopkins has inscribed onto the hems of his clothes several wards and symbols he had discovered during his forays through the old world, meant to encourage luck and ward off misfortune. Though this bears the obvious risk of causing him to be mistaken for a magician, Hopkins is apparently too attached to these fruits of his studies to care.


Hopkins had a rather simple, standard childhood. He grew up in Inger Biot, the last great City of the Sisters to still bear a crown. It was a busy, bustling place. He grew up on narrow, incoherent streets, constantly moving back and forth across the great bridges of the Red River, ducking between shouting merchants and vengeful hagglers and all the strange sorts a tide will wash in to a port city. He was the youngest child in a large family, and, while maybe things were different with different parents and different circumstances, Hopkins was mostly left to his own devices, and rarely troubled by family or friends. He never really knew the closeness of parents or siblings, despite knowing the closeness of great crowds and aggressive salespeople, and maybe it was no surprise, then, that as he grew older he gravitated towards solitude the way rain gravitates to the sea.

With some saved up money, Hopkins would take one-off history lectures at the House of Wisdom, where the silence comforted him, and eventually take up with a traveling scholar who came in on a boat from the distant Labyrina Islands. He had the kind of life where he could say goodbye to his family one day, and leave them forever, and this was, by and large, a trend he kept up for the next six years of his life.

Old connections in Inger Biot’s National Museum gave Hopkins a profitable way of safely storing and selling the ancient artifacts he might uncover, and the research he made. He grew used to the old country scattered all around the Great Southern Road, and spent a good deal of time in the old castles of the Helm, and the dungeons of the Brujeria, and has even made one or two forays into the Hangwood.

In recent years, Hopkins has begun the long trek to the old country of the Vanities, intrigued by the old civilization of Vence, possibly the mightiest empire to rule Invernier since the Sisters, yet so often forgotten and dismissed by modern times. He hopes to establish contact with one of the remaining Vencish clans, and arrange for passage into the old ruins—though first, of course, he must make his way safely through the Tempesta.


❖ Machete
❖ Rope
❖ Climbing Gear
❖ Annotated Map of Invernier, Including Ancient Ruins
❖ Archaeological Digging and Cleaning Supplies
❖ Sacrificial Dagger
❖ Oolasheene Divining Top


Hopkins enjoys old-school adventure novels, and carries a few old paperbacks with him.

“If someone is good at begging for their life these days, it’s probably because they’ve seen it enough times unconvincingly from the other end of the sword.”

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Claire was never the most sociable person, even before the Revolt. With her old life in the Army of Heroes cast aside, however, she has since hardened like tree bark under a snowbank. She cares little for the woes of others, even former Army members, though perhaps some old echoes of her time in the service can coax her into blithe, thoughtless acts of charity, every once in a while. Despite the rather godless sort of demeanor she puts on, Claire did feel strongly in the Army’s cause, a lifetime ago, and their fall is possibly the only source of conflict and uncertainty in her otherwise iron-clad heart.

While in the old days she cared about gardens, and pride, and doing something meaningful, Claire is a woman ground down, most of the old pillars of her identity reduced to pebbles, with survival as her only real concern, controlled flickers of wrath and sarcastic humor occasionally interrupting the monotony of her new existence.


Claire has a shock of unkempt black hair that almost radiates around her head, like fire. Her eyes, similarly black, have no fire in them, however—these are colder things, full of rain and thunderstorms in their darkness. As an experienced, bona-fide magician, Claire possess mage-eyes, in this case two sets of black irises in each eye, rather than the customary and significantly less frightening set of one each. In the old days, Claire took a hard and self-satisfied pride in her eyes—leave the other hedgewizards and conjurors to their hoods and blindfolds; with the protection of her Army of Heroes uniform, Claire bared her eyes with pride. Now, however, life has made demands of her that she follows only with the greatest bitterness.

Claire is a tall, bony woman, standing at 5’9” with sharp shoulders and narrow, unfriendly lips. Her face is rather vase-like, with long, curving cheekbones, and a hard, pointed chin. Her eyebrows are thick and dagger-like, and more often than not furrowed down in some kind of unhappy expression.

Unlike the few other true magicians, Claire rarely covers up her head, not even with a hood, as though daring intrepid knights or brawler’s to approach her. Generally, this earns enough blatant distrust and hostility that no one notices the former Army of Heroes agent beneath the skin of a distrustful witch.


Claire grew up as most children on the Tempesta grew up; working with livestock alongside siblings and neighbors, ambitionless, quiet, living something that could best be described as content, though perhaps what she felt wasn’t exactly the same as what content describes, not all the time. This was where she learned her first piece of magic, an old charm her father would occasionally call out to imbue rain with strange power for nourishing cows and vegetables. In time, she learned it as well, as did all her siblings, and in another life that would have been the beginning and end of her magical knowledge.

But something—maybe curiosity, maybe wanderlust, maybe discontent—would eventually push her into the arms of the Army of Heroes, and, with the blessing of her family, she went on to support her regiment as a nurse and aide, eventually honing that old family spell into something more powerful. She would pick up other little powers in the style of what she would later learn to call ‘Solvita,’ and, though her eyes one day warped monstrously under the weight of her new powers, she bared her mark with pride, deflecting suspicion with her prodigious brute power, all of it channeled into the service of the Tempesta, and the powers that be in the Army of Heroes.

She never lost that fiery commitment when the September Revolt first broke out, though by the time of the Unforgivens her passion had faded into a mechanical aggression on behalf of her faltering superiors. She fought, and fought, and fought, and eventually she realized that years of fighting had transformed her from the old Claire—the proud, chin-jutting-out, hands on her hips Claire—into the kind of person who could now recognize it was time to stop fighting, and run.

In the time since then, Claire has taken to wandering up and down the Tempesta, taking odd jobs, selling her spells to the handful of hamlets that might tolerate her, and eking out a bare, careful existence at the edges of the heel of the newly ascended People’s Legion. Due to familiarity with the region she has mostly stuck to the Causeway, where the agents of the Legion are few in number, though she has recently toyed with making the long journey to Brujeria, and finding some witch-settlement to join up with.


❖ Dagger
❖ Army of Heroes Insignia
❖ Bow and arrow


Claire has a strong fondness for flowers and gardens.

“When my mother sang, all eyes would be on her. When I sing, most often it is to keep eyes off of me.”

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Almari has always been very inquisitive, eager to gain new knowledge and skills, always wanting to learn new information. Her curiosity often gets the best of her however, and leads her down paths that are probably unwise. She is very focused, and when she wants something she is not easily swayed until she has it. She can be somewhat greedy and self-centered. She has a fine eye for expensive items and luxuries, but she doesn’t often let herself indulge in such things outwardly, as she doesn’t like to draw attention to herself. Almari is usually quite calm in her manner, and rarely loses her temper fully. She tends to be more neutral, though all the same she can be quick to smile or add a smart or sarcastic comment to the conversation.


Almari, at 5’6”, is somewhat tall for her kind, but like other elves she too is thin and somewhat gaunt, with smooth, light grey skin, long, pointed ears, and a lean build. Almari has long, pin-straight black hair that falls just above her waist, and somewhat unsettling eyes due to her forays into magic. She has sharp, if elegant, features. Almari has a long nose, high cheekbones and sharp brows.

Almari prefers simple, yet well made clothing in dark colors. She often wears a plain tunic under a fitted jerkin of worn leather, and close fitting breeches tucked into tall leather boots. Like many travelers in the Tempesta, she wears a long, black cloak with a hood she usually keeps up to keep people from getting too good a look at her eyes. While most elves have eyes of solid black, the dark color of ALmari's eyes is disrupted into fragments by threads of white in a complex design like spiders' webs or a shattered mirror. The only bits of adornment she wears are the multiple silver rings and gem studs in her long ears, and a raw amethyst crystal hanging from a thick bronze chain, usually tucked beneath her tunic.


Almari grew up in the large city of Evenwell, an underground city within the Elven Gestalt, near the city of Nicodeme. Almari’s family was somewhat poor, struggling but still managing to get by. Her father was a miner, a common profession for Elven men in the area. Her mother however was a tad more unusual, being a relatively well-known singer in their part of the city. Almari’s early childhood was quite happy, as she spent much of her time helping her mother around the house and looking after her younger sister. Their family was unusually close compared to most Elven families, and often considered somewhat odd by those who knew them. Her mother was focused on giving Almari as much education as possible, though they had few books to study from. She also taught Almari the songs she knew, and later taught her a couple of spells she could weave into such songs. They were simple, small spells at first. Almari, ever curious, was fascinated by the magic, though her mother warned her to use it sparingly, lest it warp her eyes. Still, Almari continued to practice it here and there when no one was watching.

When she turned thirteen, her parents arranged an apprenticeship for her with a local fine jeweler, hoping that she would learn a respectable trade and increase her standing later in life. Almari found the work interesting, and loved being able to see the fine jewels and delicate gold and silver wire, and all the beautiful things that could be crafted out of it. For a time, things progressed smoothly, but then her father became ill when Almari was fifteen . At first it appeared to be nothing more than a passing cough, but it refused to go away, and soon worsened instead. Her father began missing days of work, as did her mother when she stayed to take care of him. Food started disappearing from the table, then what few valuable items they had were sold as his state worsened. After the first night they went without supper, Almari pocketed two jewels from the workshop she apprenticed at, quickly selling them to a small shop owner in a distant neighborhood. This act, seemingly small, started her off down a dangerous path. More and more, she would look for things to take, food or a new scarf to grab from a stall as she walked down the street. Her parents questioned where these new things came from, but as her father missed more and more work, they began to stop asking those questions.

Almari began looking for larger jewels and more expensive items, driven by a desire to help her own family as well as a greedy drive of her own. She soon became acquainted with questionable figures to whom she could sell a jewel or two, and made a few deals with these new friends to pick up other skills, such as how to pick a lock or scale a wall. She even found ways in which the musical spells her mother had taught her could be used to move unseen, and sneak into places she really shouldn’t be.

Things escalated for a year, with her father’s condition worsening and Almari becoming bolder and bolder in her little thefts. When she turned sixteen, several things happened in quick succession. Her father was forced to leave his job entirely, and when they discovered what medicine would be needed to treat his illness, it was not cheap. Almari had been too careless in more ways than one, and just as the people at the workshop began looking for culprits behind missing materials, she noticed her eyes beginning to change as well. The master jeweler accused Almari of the thefts, and when he could not prove it, he fired her. He had already been talking to the city guards, and Almari decided in desperation to break into the home of a wealthy merchant in the city. She almost escaped with both his wife’s fine jewels and her safety, but a misstep alerted the household and nearby guards to her presence, and she barely managed to make it away in time. Almari managed to fence the goods that night and get the money to her family, but the guards were out looking for her by then. She confessed what had happened to her family, and despite her parents’ feelings of guilt for what they saw as their fault, and their protests, she was forced to bid them a quick and tearful farewell before fleeing the city.

After that she flitted from city to city in Gestalt, trying to get messages to her family when she could, and even visiting them on occasion. Over time, her continued use of magic to aid in her thieving warped her eyes fully, causing suspicious glances wherever she went. She continued to go after more and more conspicuous items, regardless of the increased risks. While at first she told herself she did what she did to help her family, her own selfish interests and desire to go after more and more did not help her. She liked the bits of luxury and the thrill of taking risks and trying to increase her skills at lifting a purse or climbing through a window unseen. When it seemed like trouble was about to catch up with her, she decided to leave Gestalt altogether, ensuring that her actions wouldn’t get back to negatively impacting her family and that she would stay out of prison.

Since then she has rarely stayed in one place long. Almari was not completely unused to humans, but she was not yet comfortable living among them, especially above ground, where activity took place in the light of day. She continued to wander, plying her trade and then leaving when her activities or the fact that she was an elf with mage eyes drew too much suspicion. Somewhat down on her luck and running out of ideas, she found herself in the small hamlet of Alonso, trying to plan her next move.


Coinpurse
Dagger
Lockpicks
An old necklace of her mother’s


Anything that doesn’t fit in the other sections? Throw it here!

Nothing to add at the moment, but perhaps later.

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"It is not the strongest who survive, nor the most intelligent. It is the ones who can run really, really, really fast."

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Rogafi is a traveler by birth, a survivor by necessity, and a wanderer by nature. Born as part of a traveling caravan, he rarely stayed in one place for more than a few days, and he still gets an itch in his feet that only the road can scratch. After the loss of his caravan and family, he scrabbled to survive in the streets of Viola, and even now, he watches those around him carefully as he eats, as if he's afraid that they'll try to take his meal from him. When he's on the trail, he looks ahead with one eye and back with the other. Trouble and Rogafi are old friends, but something in him thrives on adrenaline and adventure.


Rogafi is a thin, angular scarecrow of a man. His gaunt cheeks are covered with a bristly black beard, hiding most of his lower face but his thin lips. The narrowness of his eyes is pronounced by the heaviness of his brow, and his face has the wrinkles of a man ten years his senior.

He wears the heavy brown cloak of a traveler, which has seen more than a few seasons of wear and tear. There are off-color patches where he's done his best to mend tears and holes, but he's never been able to find a scrap of cloth with the precise shade of brown as the rest of the cloak. He finds this irritating, but cannot for the life of him explain why. Under the cloak, his clothes are equally as worn, and his boots are so broken in that they're practically a second layer of skin.

He can almost always be seen carrying his courier's satchel, where he keeps his deliveries and packages. The leather is so thick that it could probably deflect an arrow, and it looks like it has on more than one occasion. Looking closer, it's also apparent that it's been kicked, stabbed, clawed, and chewed on, but Rogafi still wears it with pride.


In the Age of the Widow, there's no profession that is more dangerous, or rightly maligned, than the courier. With the efertide making travel barely even a fantasy for the common folk, it takes a special sort of fool to risk running the long roads, darting from bonfire to bonfire. Rogafi Levilse is exactly that sort of fool.

Rogafi was born as part of a traveling caravan in Milos, a small band even in terms of the nomadic packs that traveled the long roads of that land. It was by necessity; the Levilse Bonfire had long ago been lost, and without it, the caravan was slowly being ground down into the dust. To survive, they had adopted the ways of the Old Soot, and at a young age Rogafi began learning those traditions from his grandmother, the clan's matriarch. It was a hard, meager life, but it was the only one that young Rogafi had ever known.

The Levilse Caravan is gone, now. Travelers discovered the tangled, rotting remains of their wagons littering the rocky back roads the Levilse had walked, with not a sign of life or death among them. Rogafi won't say what happened, or how he came to become a street rat in the alleys of Viola, but the nomads love to whisper.

"The Levilse fell victim to a plague, and young Rogafi was sent away before he could fall ill."

"A monster destroyed the caravan, and swallowed them all whole, except for little Rogafi, who was too small to even be a morsel."

"The old gods came to collect the ashen tax, and only Rogafi escaped."

Without his family, Rogafi scrabbled to survive in the streets of Viola, until he was old enough to take on the first courier job he could find. He's run the long roads ever since, always with one eye looking over his shoulder.

For someone from the Wainwaters, Araigne has no business being so nervous. She isn’t what you’d expect from those dark and gloomy marshes; adverse to conflict in all of its forms and with feelings more fragile than glass, the only thing that seems to be holding this gangly little Carnelian together against the all-encompassing desolation of Invernier is an ungodly amount of tolerance, forgiveness and hope. Most would call her naive or delusional but Araigne prefers to call it an “alternative outlook on the situation” and, as a result of her optimism, is best described as an overall amiable companion. A productive side effect of her patience is her ability to take on long and arduous tasks with something that isn’t quite determination but a sort of slow-and-steady approach. She has a LOT of patience and doesn’t mind if something takes a few days, weeks or months to complete.



Averaging at around 6’3”, Araigne is much like her kin in the sense that she is tall and lithe. However the way she carries herself makes her seem a bit gangly and awkward, more like a newborn foal than a delicate spider. Her skin is pale and covered with black chitinous plating, only revealing the pointy elbows and sharp jawline and little flashes of sallow skin between the plates. She’s missing two toes - the third and her pinky - on her left foot and the plating is somewhat disfigured around the injury. Her eyes are a bright green.

Araigne’s beauty lies predominantly in her outfits. Most of them carry the practicality of a nomad but also have the professionalism and detail that only bespoke craftsmanship can replicate. She wears predominantly cloth and leather outfits with decoration and muted colours. Some jackets and tunics have delicate embroidery whilst others have stitching that’s only meant to keep the clothing together. The only constant within her remarkably varied wardrobe is the way they move on her body - each and every garment fits perfectly and flows across the stiff plates on her body in the most flattering way possible. here are some examples of varying degrees of complexity. (All of these links lead back to their respective artists.)



Deep in the foggy marshes of the Wainwaters, a smattering of stilted houses were reconstructed, clustered together against the efertide. There had to be no more than 50 people living in this tiny, tiny ‘village’ tucked away amongst the gnarled treetrunks and rustling reeds. There was only one path - if you could call it a path - that duck and wove through the wilderness towards safety, towards the Tempesta. This settlement creatively named itself “Bogtown” and received no visitors save for the beasts that lurked on its borders who dared to attack.

Compared to the rest of Invernier, Bogtown was a very strange place to live in. An odd mixture of tribal, primitive survival and the remnants of high culture from the diverse origins of its settlers, mixed incongurously with the rural life of farmers and countrymen. There were fields of weird crops to eat and teams of hunters who knew how to swing from branch to branch to kill monsters and bring their carcasses back to the town. You had oracles and soothsayers alongside professors and philosophers, who all talked with blacksmiths and tailors. Most of them knew how to fight; all of them knew how to hide. Every month or so a team of scouts would take that winding road to The Outside and trade their (obviously rare and difficult to acquire) crops and furs with travelling merchants before tackling the insurmountable task of bringing carts full of supplies through a deadly swamp to their relatives.

Araigne Dorvina lived with her grandparents in one of the stilted huts in Bogtown, descendant of two craftsmen who mysteriously vanished one night when she was too young to remember their faces. Not that Araigne minded; she had her duties to take care of. Like every other craftsman in Bogtown, Araigne’s life consisted mainly of staying indoors and working tirelessly on her job because going outside meant plunging yourself into danger. Her Grandmother Trinira was an incredibly skilled seamstress who passed down all of her skills to her grand-daughter. Araigne learnt how to make incredible things out of cloth and yarn - boots that never lost their soles, tents that never leaked, big wooly sweaters so warm and colourful they could ALMOST hold back the efertide itself.

“The secret,” croaked her grandmother midway through embroidering a travelling cloak, “is knowing what the fabric likes. Put stitches just like so, speak to the cloth, cut it gently and follow my teachings. You’ll be a natural before you’re twenty.” Araigne listened and spoke words she did not understand to bits of fabric year in, year out. She memorised patterns and could knit in her sleep if she had to. A little over a decade of doing nothing but tailoring had that sort of effect on people; you learn much more in a much shorter period of time. It also had other effects, like instilling fear of ‘The Outside’ into her and making her godawful at social interactions. It made her weak and thin and pale, unfit for going outside in the first place. But most of all, it denied her the chance to learn from life - it made her naive and childish, idealistic and unable to accept the true horrors she lived in.

She was nineteen years old, three months away from her twentieth birthday, when a pack of beasts broke through Bogtown’s defences and started tearing down the stilts holding their houses in the air. Araigne did what she was told to do and she ran as fast as her bony legs could take her, tearing through the trees and wading through waist-deep pools of mud and silt. Other people were running with her, running away from her, away from the monsters in any direction they could get to. The scouts and hunters were bunched up in the town in order to stave off the beasts. They all split up and Araigne kept fleeing until she no longer heard the screams of her neighbours echo across the marshes.

Araigne kept running, then stumbling, then wandering until she was cold, hungry, afraid and lost. The Wainwaters weren’t kind on lost wanderers and Araigne knew this all too well. She also felt the chill of night start to settle in as the sun sank under the Wainwater’s dense canopy. She knew of the efertide and she knew that if she did not find light or shelter soon then she’d surely die. Just as the orangey glow on sunset started to dim, a flickering fire roared into life a few leagues off from her position. She eagerly approached it, oblivious to the threat of a trap. What she found was, to some, much worse than death.

Shuffling around the impromptu campsite was a short, stocky goblin in heavy robes wearing a dark cowl over his head. He looked up briefly when Araigne stumbled into view and ultimately ignored her to continue whatever it was he was doing to prepare for night. Araigne wasn’t afraid of goblins, nor was she frightened by his mage-eyes. She begged and pleaded with the warlock to let her into his tiny tent, promising she’ll be extra quiet and stay out of his way as much as a six-foot Carnelian could in a goblin-sized tent. It took some convincing but the last thing this hooded stranger needed was a missing local last seen near his campsite, so he relented and let her stay the night.

By dawn he pegged onto the fact Araigne was utterly useless and wouldn’t last two minutes on her own. Since he was also searching for settlements within the Wainwaters for reasons he would not disclose, the Goblin took Araigne along with him to find her home again. They wandered for weeks and weeks, but all the shacks and hovels they came across weren’t even remotely familiar to the Carnelian. Almost a month had passed when the two travellers surprisingly found themselves at the very edge of the swamp. Araigne was understandably terrified; she had been born and raised in damp, muggy bogs surrounded by tall trees. Everything outside of the Wainwaters was too bright, too sparse and open. It put her on edge. However with no way to go back to where she came from and no idea where to go from here, she had to once again beg the mysterious Goblin to keep her around for just a little while longer.

It was actually during their trip to a nearby village that the Goblin finally picked up on Araigne’s knitting, some weeks after she traded some herbs in for a ball of yarn and some knitting needles. He noticed what he thought to be an incantation flowing out of Araigne’s mouth as she merrily stitched away and took an interest in whatever it was she was making. She proudly announced that she could do things with fabric that others could not, and was making a pair of woolen socks that dry really quickly. All of a sudden Araigne’s travelling companion was more than happy to keep her around, provided she worked hard at making new clothes - enchanted or otherwise - and he’d manage all those difficult financial affaires for her so she didn’t have to worry about money.

Initially, the goblin warlock fleeced Araigne and used her talents for his own benefit. He took the lion’s share of the profits and bought Araigne all she needed but rarely gave her enough to buy what she wanted, whilst he indulged himself on the back of her hard work. Then one day, out of the blue, Araigne received a sudden and unexpected pay rise from her ‘boss’. His mood gradually shifted; he was less scathing and rude to Araigne as the days passed by and even went so far as to defend her from time to time. He started to treat her less like a labourer and more like a person.

They still travel together to this day. Araigne is the sales front; her tailoring can be done weeks in advance in standardised sizes for the general public, or she can make more money by taking on commission work from well-to-do individuals. The goblin works behind the scenes, managing the money, ordering supplies and ensuring they have enough to make it to the next settlement.


(NB: This list is exclusive to what she carries on her person at all times. She USUALLY has access to a small wagon containing mediocre/good quality tailoring materials such as leather straps, threads, large rolls of fabric, shoe soles, etc. Whether or not she’s able to access said wagon all the time in the RP depends on what we’re doing.)




❖ Owns a mountaineering yak which Araigne affectionately calls ‘Gertrude’. It carries her tailoring supplies in a small wagon behind it, with some materials strapped to the saddle. (It is too small for Araigne to ride.)
❖ Whilst not wholly illiterate, reading is more of a ‘work in progress’ for Araigne. She cannot understand longer words and has difficulty focusing on small print.

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A waif of a girl, Ylliana is small and skinny and in drastic need of a proper meal. Her once round face has become slightly angular, the freckles dusting her cheeks and nose more prominent as they adjust to a smaller canvas. Back then, she heard people say (even if it was with disdain and envy) she was a "pretty little thing" who would grow up beautiful like her mother. Ylliana wonders if they would say the same thing now.

She used to have wonderful silky hair that she loved to twirl around her fingers, but without means to properly groom herself, it has grown duller and coarse. If her mother hadn't treasured it so, she would have hacked it off long ago. But she did and Ylliana would sooner cut off her little toe than entertain the idea of disheartening her mother. Her fingers could never thread each chestnut strand as deftly as her mother used to, however. With each attempt, what she ends up with instead is a tangled mess, far worse off than if she leaves it alone.

The tattered remains of her clothing have been hanging looser over her increasingly gaunt frame. Her cloak slips down her shoulder every so often, revealing the tears scattered across her worn linen shirt. The breeches she wears, clearly borrowed from someone much bigger, is cut off haphazardly at the cuffs and rolled up to her ankles. An old sash cinches her breeches at the waist and does well enough to keep them up.

If anything is striking about her, it is her blue eyes. Bright and intense, something about them makes people feel like they are being scrutinized, as though they piercing through soul and spirit.


Born during a starless night, the darkness that welcomed Ylliana to the world would become her constant companion. Her mother recognized the signs of her failing sight when she was three months old and still heedless of distractions that should have caught an infant's attention. Bright trinkets dangling playfully overhead was met with futile squinting, if given notice at all, even though she responded well enough to the sounds around her.

More than anything, her mother was relieved to have diagnosed her disability early on. She was able to adapt their home to her needs, and Ylliana would grow up never needing help getting around. Still, it helped little that they lived in Glen Owen, of all places. The small town—nestled smack dab in the middle of a glen, a stone's throw away from the Great Southern Road—was infamously easy to upset. Everything scandalized them so, and there was her mother: unwed, pro-magic, a courtesan by night, raising a child with a disability.

They were more or less pariahs in the disparaging town, yet not once had Ylliana felt unloved or unwelcomed or any less. Her mother more than made up for all the rancor, and they surrounded themselves with the right sort of people. Everyone else was noise she could easily tune out.

Ylliana adopted her mother's resilience and thick skin and learned to survive in a world that seemed to conspire against her. Even so, nothing could have prepared her for one magical encounter in the woods.

She was running an errand with her mother that day, a quick trip to the next town over for some new garments. They were to return before sunset as usual and took the direct route through the woods, one she had come to know by heart. It was rare for her to get sidetracked—her mother taught her better—but there was something about the strange echoing noise that seized her curiosity.

It was such an odd sound, deep and haunting and kind of lonely, so unlike anything she's heard that she had to stray momentarily to investigate. Ylliana meant to return before her mother noticed, but ended up deep in the heart of the woods instead, so invested was she in this mystery. The sound kept moving further away, fading into the distance just as she ought to have reached its source. It would have been an affront to her very being to give up right then; she was all of nine years and twice as stubborn as she was the year prior.

Ylliana cannot completely recall what transpired when she finally reached it. No matter how hard she tries, she remembers only this: the sound was a voice. It asked for her name, for a wish, and then everything turned black.

Come nightfall, her wish hadn't been granted and Ylliana was both relieved and disappointed. Just as she resigned to believe the whole thing was merely another of her grand imaginings, however, there came the same strange haunting sound, echoing throughout the small cottage in which they lived. Ylliana dropped to the floor within seconds of hearing it, eyes burning and body aching. Even though her mother was screaming frantically, all she could focus on was the strange voice whispering in her ears.

According to her mother, she was out for nearly a week. When she finally came to, the world that greeted her was a different one. A vibrant one. The first thing she noticed was an eerie orb of light floating beside her, whence her mother's heartrending pleas ('wake up, little star, don't leave me alone') originated. She mentioned this to her mother after their teary reunion and they came to the conclusion that whatever it was she happened upon in the woods, it had granted her a miracle.

This newfound sight, borne from her simple wish to see her mother, hadn't been what she expected. Yes, she could see. But not like that, not like how others do. What she saw instead was essence, her mother explained. She still didn't get to see what her mother looked like, but she saw the light inside her. To Ylliana, it shone brighter than the rest; a pretty color that brought to mind a flower's sweet scent or a soothing lullaby. It made her feel safe and at home. The other orbs she spied floating about town were nowhere near as enchanting, and she happily took it to mean that the hateful people were what could be called ugly.

When word spread about her miraculous vision, the people of Glen Owen began to fear her, to fear the magic that was cast upon her. Ylliana made it worse by mistakenly believing she was helping when she shared her sight and the information she gleaned off it: "Mister Percy's light is shrinking," she opined, a day before the man in question succumbed to a mysterious illness. "I think he's dying." They didn't deserve it, not one bit, but even so she had hoped her mother's reputation would be improved if she became of some use to the town. Instead, all she did was fuel the town's deep-seated hatred for magic and stir them into commotion.

After the foretold passing of Harold Percy, the town's beloved magistrate, the town fell into a state of disarray. People blamed Ylliana for his sudden death and demanded she be executed for her witching ways; there was no need for any trial, they agreed, as there was already proof enough in the magistrate's death.

She and her mother fled that night, even though the dangers of the efertide loomed in the horizon. At that point, the ancient curse had been the lesser of two evils. Oatcake, an ailing elderly librarian and among the few in the town whom her mother trusted, helped them escape to the Great Southern Road, but that was as far as he could take them. Even he was too fearful of what the night had in store.

Tempesta was the only place they could live in peace. The neighboring town of Harcourt would have already heard about the 'cursed child,' and although Mediolann and Nicodeme would have spared them days' worth of travel, there was no telling what they would do with someone touched by magic. Her mother was worried a bigger city would overwhelm Ylliana's senses as well. Although they were poorly equipped to travel, her mother used her wits and charm and they mostly got by with help from other travelers along the way.

Ylliana would reach Alonso alone in the back of a farmer's carriage, between crates of crops to be sold in the market that morning, angry and afraid and at a loss of what to do. They had been close, so close. After everything they've been through, it was the efertide that had managed to separate them.

Portait [+]

Artist:omupied.deviantart.com

"The dead bless us with their wisdom, the living curse us with their ignorance."

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Levranelle has always been one to boggle the mind. His constant blabbering of seeming jibberish is enough to unnerve most, if not that then the piercing gaze he has his will. He'll often go on and on about his pet cat Snuffles, and seems to obsess over his livelihood. He gets rather upset if you talk down to him or his cat, and will often retaliate with a sharp tongue and a swift kick to the groin. Almost seemingly to top it off, he insists he sees the souls of the dead, and can often times be found talking to the open air with vivid language explaining things to said souls. Many deem him to be insane, but others believe this probably isn't the case.

Three traits where instilled into his personality by his grandmother's teachings and the way she raised him. One, all living things deserve to be cared for, to live, to thrive. Lev hates death, destruction, and illness and will go out of his way to help out a living creature. Two, Lev will not bend his will for the desires of another. His Grandmother always said that if you live in someone else's shadow, you'll never be a light unto the world. Lev will not let his "light" be snuffed out, and will not take any flak from anyone. Levranelle Reverante was a name that would not be spit upon as long as he could help it. Three, he will be strong even in the face of the world's greatest despair. People look for hope, for love, for a future. Levranelle will not let darkness prevent him from smiling, it will not prevent him from saving a life, and it sure as hell wouldn't keep him from enjoying his life. If he is not the optimism in the room, he has stopped being Lev.


Peel back the hood and find him when he's scantily clothed and most free, Levranelle is a rather androgynous character, his dark brown, silky, long hair making it easy to mistake him as a woman from behind, and the odd youthfulness of his face making the puzzle of his gender even harder, if not for his obvious lack of breasts and feminine curves. He has few to no lines on his brow depending on his expression, and no obvious blemishes on his face. Every feature of his is somewhat elegant, from his thin brows to a full, set of impossibly pink, lips. Most notably, his eyes are piercing and yellow, in the darkness they seem rather normal if not for the color, but in the light the pupils contract into a thin line much like a cat and give away his magical nature.

Lev is rather lithe, but does not immediately seem to have much muscle. It has lead to him seeming far younger than he actually is, travellers often mistaking him for someone's errand boy. He is not of a tall stature either, evening out at about 5'6". He often wears a loose fitting shirt with a rather low neckline, and pants that flow loosely over his legs. When out and about he covers himself with a long purple scarf, made of a thin material, that he can use as a hood.


Levranelle entered the world in tragic circumstances. His father had died while "peace-keeping" with the Army of Heroes, leaving his mother to suffer the pregnancy herself. Lev was born breech, and the battle to get him out of the womb left his mother on her deathbed. Under the fool moon, his mother cradled him in her dying breaths, and whispered into the night that one day Lev would grow up to be a man with gentle hands and a heart so pure the Promised Words would one day speak of his own soul to conjure hope in the darkness. Inspired by her daughter's words, Lev's grandmother Agatha vowed to raise him according to her daughter's last reverie.

It was to be difficult, however, as Levranelle was a handful for his grandmother. He would constantly get lost in his own imagination and wander away from their cottage outside the village. She knew he would get himself lost one day, so she emplored the town for a pet for her grandson. Enter Snuffles, the long time best friend of Lev. Snuffles von Leoparte kept Lev's attention constantly, and kept Lev around the cottage long enough for him to pay attention to his grandmother's work.

Agatha was the town's healer, a hedgewitch whom healed with potions and words of power. She fancied herself like a grandmother to much of the town of Alonso, kind and gentle, and always there to offer a wise word and a kind touch. The villagers may not have seen her that way. As he grew older, Lev was fascinated by the respect she garnered, and when a day came and past where she healed Snuffles of an illness, Levranelle decided for himself that he would learn from her.

On her eventual deathbed, Agatha reminisced of her life alongside Lev and Snuffles and a few of the women from the village. She told Levranelle of his mother's wishes for him, and told him that no matter what he should always try and bring hope to their town. She implored him to take over in her stead. As her final act as his grandmother, Agatha cast a spell on Snuffles, binding his life to Lev so they would never part, and ensure her grandson was never alone.

Days after her funeral, the grief-stricken Lev began to see her ghost, unspeaking but always nearby, approving and disapproving, always just barely out of vision. Was his mind playing tricks on him? Or was that really her? Unwilling to find out he accepted these visions of her. Overtime it was not just her specter he'd see dancing right outside his vision, he'd see ghosts of his ancestors, of men and women in town he had witnessed die.

Years later, now firmly the new healer of the community, Lev claims he converses with the ghosts regularly, and that some of them guide him to new revelations of the world, and warn him of the dangers they once faced. If ever a newcomer comes to town and needs his services, he often lets them know that the dead see all, and that it's unwise to cause a disturbance in his town.


❖ [A ceremonial blade of a dark colored steel]
❖ [A large over-the-shoulder bag used for carrying an assortment of potions and other things]
❖ [A smaller bag used for coin]
❖ [Dried meat-treats for Snuffles to keep him sated]
❖ [6-7 Potions used to treat flesh wounds, and a few others he claims help grow hair or make the skin look youthful]


Unlike the rest of our "heroes" Levranelle has spent his entire life up until now in Alonso. He lives in his grandmother's cottage a good walk just outside the village and has a store of supplies the party can pull from before they begin their journey.

Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety percent...OUCH! Argh!! Goddammit that hurt...

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Kaeli is an oddball and eccentric to the very core, especially by Elven standards. Sometimes stereotypes are exaggerated and sometimes they fit to a tee. Put simply, she's one of those people who wants to know how everything works, can usually give you an educated guess right off the bat, and - given enough time - can usually replicate it. In general, she is obsessed with technology, preserving it, repairing it, and improving it, a passion which goes far beyond her people's rather practical and uninspiring relationship with things mechanical. On projects of great import or that have struck a particular chord with her, Kaeli will work tirelessly, with near-boundless enthusiasm, an eye for detail, and a need for perfection that borders on the insane. Social interaction, sleep, and most anything else be damned.

If a given goal is not a project but an endeavour, then she will go to great lengths, often at not-inconsiderable personal danger, in order to see it through. Otherwise, she is curious and inquisitive but flighty, branching off tangentially at once in terms of ideas, conversation, and projects. She enjoys meticulously planning more than she does following through, and collects and keeps things that most people would consider junk simply because she sees them as works in progress, interesting, or simply because she wants to be prepared for any eventuality. In particular, she enjoys solving the problem of her own strange body and finding ways to do things that would seem to be beyond her physical capabilities.

Just as Kaeli can lose herself for hours in a project, she can lose herself for hours when talking about a subject or with with a person whom she finds genuinely interesting. This tendency, alarmingly aberrant among elves, has only grown more pronounced since she left her homeland. When engaged in these fits of passionate gabbing, she has been accused of talking 'at' people as opposed to talking 'with' them. Her standards in terms of 'interesting', however, are higher than she probably realizes. People are usually just surroundings as opposed to being genuine 'company'. They're an audience for her genius, a sounding board for her ideas, and the source of interesting problems and opportunities to be solved or seized. Some also make great guinea pigs.

In terms of romance, Kaeli thinks about it from time to time just as any red-blooded woman might. Then she shuts it out of her mind. She is keenly aware that society at large does not consider her attractive. Like most elves, she also can't 'do' smalltalk and flirting, and she isn't even any good at the social rituals expected of her own people, let alone the more elaborate and frighteningly involved ones so beloved of humans. She often ends up simply lurking and dreaming. In many ways, she's a dreamer. In many ways she holds delusions of grandeur and achievement on an epic scale. However, she's self-aware enough to see some of these for what they are. There's a thin streak of bitterness that runs through her thinking and it's a product of the subtle but ever-present discrimination that she has faced growing up with a very visible deformity. Elves are not a warm, fuzzy, communal people by any stretch of the imagination, but her upbringing was marked by complete disinterest from even close family, often tipping over into utter neglect.


The first thing that stands out about Kaeli is the fact that she looks like half a person. The result of a rare birth defect, she was born completely without legs, not dissimilar to Kanya Sesser or Jen Bricker. Beyond that, she's rather unremarkable: petite and pale, with white, wavy, shoulder length hair often pulled back into a sloppy ponytail. It's all-but preternaturally unruly, though sometimes she can fuss it into place. Kaeli's facial features tend towards 'mousy' but actually somewhat attractive, though she doesn't put much effort into her appearance. Indeed, the closest thing to makeup that she's known to wear is the series of oil stains and smudges that can be found on her hands, cheeks, and clothes. These compete with a number of small nicks, burns, and scars from too much tinkering. She's also considered quite stocky and muscular by Elven standards due to the upper body strength that she needs in order to get around.

Kaeli's clothing reflects both necessity and her eccentricity. Both of her pointed upper ears are pierced in multiple places, and she's not averse to self-adornment, though it's rarely with the shiny jewellery common to her race. Rather, she owns a necklace made from a very light silver chain, some old screws, a handful of bolts, and a couple of washers. She can also always be found wearing either a pair of round-rimmed tinted shades or goggles that she uses to protect her eyes from the harsh sunlight or hold back her unruly hair. Kaeli wears a custom-made garment on her truncated lower body made of a rough, sandy-coloured fabric, with a thick, cushioned leather pad at the bottom that she uses to sit and 'walk' on. Generally, she dresses in a form-fitting shirt in either purple, forest green, or crimson with a row of buttons running up the middle. Its sleeves are invariably rolled up. A brown leather belt with a prodigious number of pouches, clips, and various doodads rests snugly upon her hips, and a second, thinner belt encircles her upper waist. Filling out the ensemble is a bandolier with several pockets running from her left shoulder to her right hip, where it's clipped into her belt. A pair of elbow pads adorns her arms, and tough, worn out fingerless gloves with protective mitts that flip over complete the outfit. Kaeli usually carries a backpack that seems slightly too large for her, and when it's cooler, she bundles up in a sandy-coloured hooded hip cloak that effectively covers her whole body.


Kaeli Kinseld was the second girl as well as the third and final child born to parents of high standing. Her father was the town recordkeeper and brother of the thane while her mother was a jeweler of some repute. Due to her startling deformity, her birth was a bitter disappointment and it was hoped that she would die quietly in infancy, lest she grow up to be a burden. In the event, she not only survived, but grew into a curious, lively, and (with the exception of her missing legs) healthy child. Unlike her older siblings, Kaeli was not groomed for an advantageous marriage or a lofty position, either political or professional. As a result, her education was sparse and was piggybacked upon that of her slightly older brother, Heddenrad, who was privately tutored in - aside from instruction on recordkeeping - what were considered the classical Magdalenese subjects: linguistics, smithing, hunting, mathematics, natural philosophy (science), and jewellery-making.

In the event, while her brother approached his studies dutifully and at times diligently, Kaeli tore through her books with an appetite for learning that - while it was somewhat selective - bordered on the obsessive. The walls of her bedroom were often filled with drawings and partially-completed sketches, and her young mind was filled with ideas. In particular, she gravitated towards all things mechanical and electrical: understanding them, disassembling and reassembling them, and making them function. If she was hopeless at hunting, too small for smithing, and unenthusiastic about crafting finely filigreed and delicate jewellery, she had nimble, dexterous fingers, an eye for detail, and a keen intuition for the workings of anything with moving pieces.

For the most part, however, people paid little attention to the girl, except as a curiosity, and she was left largely to her own devices. The one exception was Kaeli's (really her brother's) natural philosophy and mathematics tutor, a prematurely cantankerous academic named Tasten Aldavere. He spent extra hours fostering what he believed was a brilliant young mind, and his attitudes, mannerisms, and methods had a profound impact on her development. In her mid-teens, she was betrothed to him, even though he was nearly twenty years her senior. In reality, it wasn't a marriage founded on love, since Tasten was rather clearly homosexual. Rather it was a union of kinship and mutual respect, carefully calculated by the pair to afford Kaeli both some independence from her family as well as some monetary attention.

For a handful of years, things went well. Kaeli continued to educate herself and earned the respect of a notable portion of Magdalene's academic community. Even her father, who had advocated for exposing her to the elements during her infancy, came to appreciate her gifts and even fund some of her pet projects. Then her uncle, the local thane, made the grave mistake of defying the Alfking of Magdalene. Exactly what happened is not something that she will ever talk about, perhaps because she has never taken much interest in politics. A ruler who had for Kaeli's entire life seemed distant and mildly benevolent struck with sudden, ruthlessly efficient ferocity, purging her entire family. A harmless and somewhat useful curiosity, she was spared, inherited a small portion of her family's fortune, and placed under house arrest. Driven to depression by the restriction on her ability to move about freely and to tinker and scrounge outside of the confines of her home (where literally all of the best stuff was) and sensing that Tasten was likely to protest (thereby putting him in the line of fire), she slipped out of her cellar in a small wine barrel, and arranged to have herself smuggled out of town.

With no choice but to end up far away from home and, to a lesser extent, curious about the mysteries of the world outside of the deep forests of Magdalene, she began traveling the roads of Invernier. Kaeli learned quickly and out of necessity how to cover large distances, where to hide, as well as who and what to avoid, while gradually using up her coin. She earns a sporadic income by repairing simple things well below the level of her expertise whenever she sets herself down for a handful of weeks as well as occasionally appearing in performances similar to sideshows. She doesn't particularly enjoy those jobs, but they put coin in her purse and provide her with free and easy travel.


Kaeli carries a small, lightweight, and finely-crafted tool set with her at all times. She has a handful of semi-functional electrical lights, a magnifying glass, her wedding ring, various replacement parts for common mechanical items, a needle and thread, a few changes of clothes, a switchblade, and a couple of cans of something like improvised pepper spray, with different varieties effective in repelling different common threats. She's working on auditory weapons as well and on extending the range of the sprays. She swears that she'll finish eventually.


Even with legs, Kaeli would be considered small. Without them, she's absolutely tiny (maybe 2'6" and 55 lbs) and excellent at hiding in places where most people wouldn't even bother look. She can hold her breath for an extremely long time, remain still and quiet for extended periods, and go for longer than most without food and water. Conversely, she obviously moves at a slower pace than most people, expends more energy in doing so, struggles with tasks that require size, and tends to have her skills met with a certain skepticism in most places that she visits.