Alaris
From Valwiki
"Don't fret, mommy's here" - Her mother's last words.
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| Player: | Phantos. | |
| Title(s): | Your character's titles. | |
| Age: | 26. Born in 30 PF. | |
| Race: | Tiefling. | |
| Eye Color: | Blue. | |
| Hair: | Black. | |
| Skin Tone: | Chalky. | |
| Height: | 5'10. | |
| Weight: | 145 lbs. | |
| Alignment: | Chaotic Evil. | |
Contents |
Personality
Socially withdrawn, Alaris finds it difficult to make new friends. The few she has made have been especially patient individuals, usually those powerful enough to survive or control her random outbursts. She'd prefer a gregarious life than one of solitude, but she understands her physical deformities and temper don't make for the best social life. As a result of this, and her travels, Alaris comes off as something of a recluse, spending many a night researching dusty old tomes or analyzing magic items with her inherent powers. When it comes to priorities, Alaris can be downright greedy, putting herself and her goals above others in a group. Still, she understands the usefulness of teamwork, and will let companions have their way if it means surviving a dangerous situation. Ultimately, she is not above foul play if it means scoring a bigger slice of the pie. Combined with her fragile disposition, Alaris' greed has made her the outcast of many a group.
Equipment
Alaris is often seen carrying a heavy backpack filled to the brim with all manner of odds and ends, usually magical in nature. She is not trained to use any weapon other than the magical gifts she was born with and, as such, employs only a comfortable suit of enchanted leather armor and any other magical relic she may have acquired (but not yet absorbed) when presented with a fight.
Abilities
Though untrained in the arts of magic, Alaris' natural affinity for sorcery is her claim to power. Unlike traditional spells, however, Alaris' primary attack is a powerful sonic scream of force that can cause damage to objects and creatures, depending on how much energy she expends in the process. It can be considered on par with elemental spells such as fireball or lightning bolt in terms of upward thresholds. She is also able to cast minor spells, such as magic missile, but is not confident in this ability.
In addition to her offensive capabilities, Alaris is able to use her voice as a means of echolocation to sense the distance of objects, though this cannot travel through solid objects (e.g. cannot be used to detect individuals in a building). This proves useful in cavernous environments or while trying to navigate in the dark, the latter of which being especially difficult for the woman as her eyesight is very poor. Another ability manifested as a sorcery is the power of siphoning magical energy from enchanted items to be used to increase her spellpower for short amounts of time. This leaves the items mundane, though there is a small chance the process backfires and destroys the item in a deadly explosion.
Background
Birth
Born as the first and only child to her mother, Alaris is the product of a dark act. Taken against her will by a Tiefling, Alaris' human mother was left depressed and mentally scarred from the encounter late one night in a farmstead on the outskirts of Ganelon. Carrying the child to term became one of the few things her mother looked forward to in the ensuing months, though friends and relatives offered little support for a child conceived in such a manner. Local folklore deemed such things as ill omens, and that the mother should attempt to purge herself of the evil child, though these rituals were often performed poorly and involved more superstition than divine oversight. When Alaris was not born after nine months, her mother became even more withdrawn, leaving her shamed family and living alone in the wilderness. After two years of subsisting on the wilderness, she finally gave birth to an extremely colic daughter (Late 30 PF).
Postpartum Depression in Alaris' mother set in very quickly, her mind slipping from the constant trauma dealt with over the last several years. At ten months, Alaris' screaming woke her mother for the last time. Dousing herself in lamp oil, the crazed woman set herself aflame and sought to give Quietus to her daughter before succumbing to self-immolation. Holding her down with one hand and sticking her fingers into the baby's mouth with the other, Alaris' mother nearly strangled the infant to death when the child's latent sorcerer powers activated for the first time; a deafening sonic scream choked out of the child with such power that there was little left of the deranged mother afterward. This harrowing experience left Alaris not only an orphan, but scarred physically: her tongue is damaged in such a way that she cannot differentiate tastes, and two streaking scars, from two tightly pressed and burning fingers, run down from her eyes to her mouth.
Childhood
Alaris continued her crying for several days, before being found by a traveling troop of soldiers serving in the Second Valikorlian Empire (Late 31 PF, age 11 months). Finding the child extremely malnourished and weak, the soldiers had her taken back to the capital city of Valikorlia to be placed in the care of an orphanage, run by the church at the time. It did not take long for the care-takers there to calm the infant down and she enjoyed a relatively peaceful upbringing, until the dread dragon Thuulsander destroyed the city and forced the inhabitants to flee (32 PF, age 1.5). Given to a retreating caravan by the orphanage, whose caretakers stayed behind to offer clerical support, Alaris became stressed by the situation and began to cry, a high-pitched shriek that angered the weary refugees. At the first possible convenience, they left her at a makeshift orphanage in Bridgeton where she was mostly neglected, despite the constant crying.
The port town saw many during this time, with simple folk making plans to leave for safer lands as tales of destruction by the massive dragons spread like wildfire. There would be no such boat for Alaris, however, as the orphaned children of the time were many and many were taken as wards of the kingdom. Overburdened by the sheer number of parent-less children, Valikorlia saw fit to bequeath children to different factions in the hopes of a good upbringing. Some children were sent off to become the apprentices of magicians, while others went on to become squires. At such a young age, Alaris had no applicable skill and a physical impairment which left her rather unsightly. To make matters worse, her lack of social skills made her a poot fit for even the most basic of servant duties. Indeed it seemed she was good for little more than crying, though this fact would soon come to the attention of a representative of the Sound Society, a group of psions and bards who roamed the world in hopes of cleansing it from aberrant taint. Curious of the child's screams and eager to raise a ward of their own, the group of nomads paid a discounted price for their new daughter and continued onward (34 PF, age 4).
Youth
While Kharlia busied itself with the threat of the Viith-Sos, the Sound Society sought out the secret evils of the world. Alaris, still unable to speak properly or given any real education, was taught by the nomadic scholars and warriors of the secretive group. Through divination, they discovered her past, and her fiendish nature, but decided to keep her in hopes of someday turning her into a sorceress in their ranks. Of particular interest was her voice, which could be amplified to amazing and deadly levels. Though she had difficulties with conversation, managing only a raspy whisper, Alaris grew into an obedient, if angry, young adult. Certain aspects of her dark past were slowly discovered throughout the years, such as an inability to differentiate between colors or having any functional taste-buds. Deciding at last to reveal the source of her powers, the psions told Alaris of her origins and of her inherent abilities, and she learned to hone the anger and hatred towards her parents into a grim determination for when the group invariably brought her along on their crusades. By the time she hit her formative years, Alaris had become a seasoned combatant with the Sound Society, routing several horrifying aberrations from their Underdark lairs with help of the same sonic shrieking that disparaged her from so many. Though still a young woman yet, Alaris was spared from none of the questing held by her brethren in the clan of zealots.
One such crusade involved the Underdark city of Sslodraeth, wherein the psions aimed to destroy an enclave of Illithid and their Elder Brain in a compound known as Ruaglaa (38 PF, age 8). Here the sorceress showed some of the greatest zeal during preparation, as this was a rumored location of her father. While she helped lay waste to the mindflayers, Alaris found no trace of the man in the Duergar city, though she did discover he was held prisoner there for a time many years prior. Spending time in the ruined aberrant compound, another of the girl's Tiefling mutations manifested itself: the ability, through her hands, to siphon energy from magic items or even living creatures. Her psionic wards were wary of this change, worried that the prolonged exposure in Ruaglaa was having a negative effect on their combined forces. Their stay was cut short, worries or no, when the Divide ripped across the world and shattered most of its landscape; the underground city was no exception, suffering heavy causalities. Looking to move on now that their crusade had been fulfilled, the Sound Society left to join the rebuilding humans on the surface continent known as the Westlands (40 PF, age 10).
No less focused on vengeance than before, Alaris vowed to remain with her adoptive family until she reached adulthood before leaving to strike out on her own. When that time came, she was allowed to take a portion of the treasure she helped accumulate over the years and left with the clan's blessing (49 PF, age 19).
Adulthood
Taking her earnings, Alaris traveled east along the plains of the Westlands until she made her way to a port that sailed into the Kharlian Mainland. Landing in Ganelon, she traveled to the farmstead of her birth and confronted the remaining relatives on her mother's side. Explaining who she was and how she had survived her mother's attempted murder-suicide, Alaris was horrified to find that her mother's family still harbored the same superstitious feelings about her, that she was devilspawn and should be cast out from society. Overcome in a moment of rage and betrayal, Alaris turned her sonic powers on them and set fire to the family farmstead. Emerging slowly from the scorched land that was once her family's legacy, Alaris was never more determined to find and kill her father than before (50 PF, age 20).
Alaris invested her wealth in a small home in Ganelon and spent the next few years looking into rumors of buried or hidden treasure, which she desired for any magical properties the troves may have held. Much of her material wealth was spent in that time purchasing and absorbing magic items in hopes of it boosting her natural-born powers, though this sometimes resulted in dangerous side-effects (53 PF, age 23). Of note, she developed a fascination with the city's well-known merchant and enchantress, Erika Okibi, whom Alaris admired for both her success as a woman and expertise with the magical arts. Attaching herself to as many expeditions and guilds as possible, Alaris eventually bankrupt herself and took up residence in Wayward's Rest, serving in the adventurer's guild headquartered there as a means of learning and to support herself (54 PF, age 25).
Antisocial nature and quirks eventually outcast her from peers in the guild, though she was tolerated well by the senior members of the group. When word of the Concord Ordnance spread to Galewind, Alaris was sent on a mission of diplomacy to Hunter's Isle, a move which she mistakenly assumed was punishment in response to an incident wherein she burnt down several trees near the guild house. Curious to stay on the island for its other potential benefits in the way of treasure and arcane knowledge, she maintained the position of housekeeper for several months (55 PF, age 25).
