The Witch's Chaos

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Name: Miranda (Fathom)
Age: 27
Height: 5’8”
Hair: Dark Violet
Eyes: Green
Hometown: Faybrook

Personality:
Cruel, cunning, and most importantly unpredictable. There’s no telling what mood she’ll be in given any particular time of day.

Bio:
Miranda was born into a world stricken by poverty and despair. Abandoned at an early age by her father, Miranda and her mother moved from village to village, leaving behind their hometown of Faybrook, seeking food and shelter from whomever was willing to offer it. Yet for all their efforts no one seemed willing to help. Miranda, at first confused and afraid of their situation, began harboring bitter resentment towards the villagers, not immediately recognizing that they too were suffering.

But in her weakened state, all she knew was that they refused to help her and her mother.

Miranda and her mother wandered around for a few more years. On her tenth birthday, however, Miranda’s mother passed away from a combination of sickness and depression. Miranda cried night and day, and while she cried rain fell heavily upon the world. She didn’t know it then, but a terrible power began to manifest inside her, slowly twisting her innocent feelings and replacing them with anger and betrayel.

Miranda's situation only grew worse. She was taken off the streets by a wealthy nobleman, and if she had any thoughts of living a better life, they were soon squashed. She was beaten and abused, used as a petty servant for his amusement. At some point during her captivity, Miranda discovered that she could use magic. Though inexperienced at first, she began to secretly practice her spells, finding them delightful and extremely useful in performing her tasks. And each time she felt her anger swelling, Miranda found that her spells became increasingly more powerful and destructive.

Upon her eighteenth birthday, Miranda rebelled against her master and his house, leaving nothing but a pile of smoldering ashes where the proud and noble estate once stood. She stood there and watched as the flames consumed the mansion, and she smiled upon hearing all the death cries that came from within.

From that point forward, Miranda has acted on her own, sewing destruction wherever she can. At one point she wandered without a purpose, but she has recently learned of a powerful artifact known as the Staff of Faith. It supposedly imbues the owner with powerful Arcane abilities. Though she feels as if no one is powerful enough to challege her, Miranda wouldn't mind some added insurance. From what little she has gathered thus far, she has learned it lies in some dark tomb at the base of a cathedral.​

The War of Souls and the Staff of Faith

Nearly five hundred years ago, two great nations fought against each other in what later became known as the War of Souls. King Vess waged a fierce campaign against his brother Trois for control over the princely states in Toien. The war dragged on for nearly thirty years, and cost the lives of countless men and women. High Priestess Selia, bearer of the fabled Staff of Faith and servant to the King Vess, died in a terrible battle that devastated the countryside. It was thought that the Staff had been destroyed in the chaos that ensued, but it was later revealed that the Staff had been borne away to a safe location by a group of devout Knights. That location was a closely guarded secret, and even till this day no one is sure of where it is.

The End of of the War and the Return to Peace

Without his trusted advisor to guide him, King Vess could not hope to win the war. He relinquished his crown and turned it over to his brother, then went into exile. Trois ruled for forty more years, passing away at the age of 92 and giving control over to his son. His family has been ruling over Toien since then, which itself has seen relative peace and prosperity.

Toien is now ruled by King Trois IV, and he rules from the fortified city of Seldin. A long road connects the various towns and villages, ensuring trade and commerce between them. Each of village is governed by an elected Mayor, who travels to Seldin once every year to deliver a report on their state of affairs.​

OOC: Figured I'd provide a little map that I cooked up that gives a better visual of where the story currently takes place. I have more drawn up, but I'll add those later when the story moves a bit further down the road. The way I see it, the adventurers can start out in any of the cities described above. I'll do some NPC'ing to get everyone together, and then the action can really start. I'm also open to ideas/suggestions, so feel free to send me a PM with your thoughts.

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Toien

Home to the King Trois IV, Seldin is a thriving city that is connected to the outlying villages via the Old North Road, and it was rebuilt after its initial destruction during the War of Souls. Its fortified walls stand much taller than in days past, and the only entrance into the city is through a tall pallisade gate that faces the road.

The road leading west ends at the port city if Isis, and to the east is the ruined city of Medion, destroyed during the war.

Southwest of Seldin is a tomb dedicated to High Priestess Selia, a courageous and devout woman that died during the War of Souls nearly five hundred years ago. She was the original owner of the Staff of Faith, but it was said to have been either lost or destroyed. It was thought to have been buried here, but extensive searches have produced nothing.

Further south lies the Stone Tower, held and maintained by the Royal Knights of Seldin. On the other side of the mountains lies the Forest of Illusions, an enchanted forest that keeps most people from reaching its inner sanctum, Clerin's Tower. Clerin is a somewhat powerful mage that acts as an advisor to King Trois.

The tiny village of Grenoble lies just off the road, acting as a resting place for weary travelers. They have small shops that sell quality armor and weapons, and there is even a small shop that specializes in potions and minor power stones. Further down the road splits, leading Southwest towards the commercial city of Greenfield, and Southeast towards Ladesa.
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Name: Marguerite "Maggie" Pynchon
Alias: The Magpie
Age: 24
Height: 5’6”
Hair: Black
Eyes: Hidden
Hometown: Grenoble

Personality:
Calm. Unwaveringly calm. Her circumstances are such that madness is ever darkening her doorstep, always lingering in her shadow when she walks. Her only defence against this is to be at peace in all things. This is rarely easy. Harder still is her need to impart that peace to the world around her, as the world is often dubious of peace... especially when her own inner peace is perceived as madness by others.

Bio:
Maggie is and was the youngest daughter of a great potion-maker, Raul Pynchon, and he would travel up and down the long roads between Isis and Greenfield with his son and his girls, plying his trade and selling his wares. Based out of the small town of Grenoble, Raul had many friends there in the community of talisman-makers and weaponsmiths, and even those who didn't count him a friend respected his skill with alembic and cauldron and mortar and pestle.

Many would-be potion giants came from far and wide during Raul's off season, during the winters when it became too much of a hardship to travel and he instead performed services out of the family home. One of these was a zealous youth named John Mayhew, who claimed to have discovered-- at first through accident, and later through purposeful experimentation --a way of distilling into liquid form the internal magics that all living things carry within them. Raul was at first intrigued, but then became quickly horrified when he discovered Mayhew's "distillation process" involved, invariably, the death of the creature from whom the magics were being distilled. He refused any further interaction with Mayhew, and demanded that Mayhew never sully The Family Pynchon with his presence again.

Mayhew flew into a rage, and, with a cry of insensate fury, mocking Pynchon for his close-mindedness, took nearby Maggie's collar in one hand and his sample mixture in the other, and poured the distilled mystic fluid into Pynchon's youngest daughter's eyes.

She screamed, jagged and broken, as she felt her sight consumed by liquid fire, and the last comprehensible thing she would ever see would be her father running to her aid, and her brother Tom defensibly slaying John Mayhew with a poker from the fireplace.

Awakening, she discovered that her eyes saw only shapes and colours and chaos, only migrating patterns of fractal light and patches of power. Her normal sight was gone, her normal human ability to process vision torn away from her, and were she to dare gazing long into the swirling maelstrom that was her new sight, she found she trod ever closer to the realms of delirium. Thus, for her own safety, she has forever consigned herself to blindfolded darkness, hiding her eyes.

Perhaps fortunately, her other senses were accelerated, also. She can hear so clearly that the proverbial falling pin is like a ringing bell to her, and her sense of touch is so heightened that she can count blades of grass as she runs her fingers through a thick lawn. Her sense of smell is such that she can track over unbroken stone what most hunters could track only over soft ground, and her taste is so acute that she can pick a single grain of sugar out of a tablespoon of salt.

These, too, could have been a source of madness for Marguerite...

...if not for Barrow, one of Grenoble's most respected weaponers and-- or so his legend claims --one of the only trackers to have ever traveled to the heart of The Forest of Illusion unaided. Barrow was and is a student of the internal magics, a master of the workings of the body and the mind, and he took little seven-year-old Maggie under his own wing.

He taught her Focus. He taught her Calm. He taught her Unbroken Thought, and the Peace known only by wandering starlight and by the tiny patch of darkness that resides within a flame.

Thanks to Barrow's training, Maggie has since become a hunter and a tracker and a yeoman of skill surpassed only, Barrow maintains, by Barrow's own. Even unsighted, Maggie can strike a bull's-eye on a windy day, stave off of hosts of bandits single-handed, and pursue a fugitive across hundreds of miles of hazardous terrain. Her inner compass is nearly infallible, and even while sleeping she never loses track of time.

She still considers Grenoble her base of operations, though her father and brother and sisters have since moved much further south, perhaps searching for a cure for her visual malady, a way to reverse the damage done to her. She makes her living by escorting travelers along the same routes she had once taken with her father, seeing unprotected pilgrims safely from such places as Isis all the way, sometimes, to Ladesa.

She wields a fine bow, constructed by Barrow and given to her as a gift. Her arrows she makes herself, most of which have sharpened heads capable of piercing leather armour, but some of which have specialised heads designed for certain circumstances: "nightingales," for instance, which serve as signal whistles when fired high into the air, or "tripflyers," arrows used to knock weapons from opponents' hands or to slice taut ropes in twain. In close-up fighting, she is fully capable of bringing down large men barehanded, but when bloodshed is called for she draws a pair of wicked short swords of exotic design, also bestowed upon her by Barrow.

Among other hunters and guardians of travelers, Maggie is known as The Magpie, for her raven-dark hair and her ability to pick out of the deepest cover the glinting steel of bandits laying in wait.

Frequently, she wears a grey hooded cloak over a slender, powerful form nigh-invariably clad in Lincoln green.

To remove her blindfold is to invite madness.
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