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Amineri Brookhollow Chaotic Good Female Halfling
Level 12 Sorcerer
Str 7 Dex 16 Con 12 Int 14 Wis 8 Cha 20 Hit Points: 55 Status: Retired Part 1
As most stories, this story begins with the ending of a different story.
The Dark Lord had been released. The old gods had been cast down. The Dark Lord's armies scorched the earth and slaughtered its inhabitants.
Then it all suddenly stopped. Some say that a band of heros defeated the Dark Lord. Others say that the old gods had been fighting the Dark Lord on another plane, and had finally cast him down.
All anyone knows is that His dark armies fell into disarray.
However unknown to most, the Dark Lord had left his most able Lieutenant, Hilelth, to enforce his will in the northern part of the continent. To augment Hilelth's already potent power -- and to keep him loyal to his proper master -- the Dark Lord gave up a tiny sliver of his essence. It resided within Hilelth's soul, whispering commands and granting powers.
This seed could have re-grown into the Dark Lord, given enough time, but it was not to be. The new god Lathidus gave omens of warning to his new high priest Delmar in the Eastern Empire.
An expedition of 40 great heros set out to destroy the Dark Scion, before he could become too great a threat. They rooted out his hiding place deep under the earth.
So strong was the Dark Scion, that only two of the heros left with their lives, the wizard Chas and the warrior Hogarth. Chas sealed the cavern with a great earthquake. And so the story came to a close. Almost.
For neither Chas nor Hogarth knew that merely destroying the vessel Hilelth could not erase the fragment of the Dark Lord residing within. And so the fragment waiting within the rotting corpse. Waiting for a new chance.
Time passed, and the time of the Great War began to be forgotten. Fifteen years were to pass until the fragment of the Dark Lord was to have its chance. An earthquake broke open the earth, giving access to wear the corpse of Hilelth and the 38 heros lay.
One day an inquisitive halfling girl come exploring the cave. Seizing upon the chance, the fragment called to her, tempting her closer. As the moth to the flame she came, and laid her hand upon the unrecognizable corpse.
The fragment jumped into the living host and began to bend her to its will.
There is a curious thing about halflings. They are quite small, and not very good at fighting. But when it comes right down to it, there is a curious toughness about them.
This particular halfling, whether by design or chance, had a particular quality that made her resistant to the will of the remaining fragment. She was not rigidly opposed to its will, but rather like a willow bending before the gale she resisted its attempt to cast out her soul.
Frustrated in its attempt to take over its host, the fragment patiently waited to transfer to a new host. Its rage when it found itself inexplicably trapped caused its host to pass out.
Having spent its power the fragment retreated and plotted. Eventually it realized that tempting the its host to evil would make it susceptible. It decided to temp the halfling girl by giving her sorcerous powers. With power, anyone would be corrupted. Even were the girl to use her powers for good, the fragment could crack her open like a ripe nut.
Over the next two years as the halfling girl grew into a woman she began to manifest strange powers. Already viewed as "too adventurous" by her family and neighbors, the whispers and rumors began to grow. By the time her father sat her down to tell her she "needed to straighten out and settle down," it was easy for her to move on to greener pastures.
Over the next few years, this halfling woman had many adventures, making and losing many new friends. Her pursuit of fun was successful, but oft-times her companions met with unfortunate ends.
Part 2
The last of these groups met with a strange end while traveling in mountainous terrain north of a town called Hawkadin in the Arendish Kingdom. When a sudden freak windstorm blew up, several of her companions were blown down into a ravine. Her remaining companions, tied to the first unfortunates by rope, were also dragged into the ravine, never to be seen again.
The halfling, not being tied to the group, was spared this fate. Her end would have come soon enough, stranded along in the storm in the mountains, except for a strange encounter.
A large elemental of air come to her and spirited her away to the top of the mountain. There it requested of her to blow upon a large horn. This horn opened a portal into the elemental plane of air, and was the creatures only method of returning home. The creature could open the portal, but pass through while keeping it open. The woman, too small to activate the horn, tried to show her worth by suggesting that the elemental continue to blow on the horn, generating fierce storms. This would surely cause a group of adventurers to come and seek the cause of the freak storms. They could set both the elemental and the halfling free.
Part 3
Amineri grew up in the aftermath of the Dark Scourge. Her people took losses in the Dark Lord's war, but emerged fairly unscathed compared to others. In particular, compared to the Kingdom of Arend, they were hardly hurt at all, having spent most of the time moving about and hiding.
Amineri's mother was killed just after she was born, however, leaving her in the care of her father and three older brothers. Her father and her brothers were hard working asparagus farmers.
Amineri was never very interested in farming. Being rather doted upon by her father and older brothers, she grew up rather spoiled. Her grandparents didn't help the situation. Without a mother, she grew up a bit tom-boyish, although the efforts of her aunts and grandmother kept her at least somewhat lady-like.
Amineri's best friend while she was growing up was a boy name Hoskil. Amineri and Hoskil would roam around the village and surrounding farmlands playing around and getting into trouble. More than a few farmers woke to found his chickens let out, or his carrot or mushroom patch ransacked.
As Amineri began to turn into a woman, she began to become more moody and willful. Hoskil and she become less close, as Hoskil began to look for a woman to settle down with and marry. Hurt by this Amineri turned her back on him.
Amineri was unwilling to settle down, and was becoming a source of suspicion and distrust among her community. For about the time that she began to become a woman, she began to demonstrate unusual magical powers. Strange lights, things moving on their own, and things opening and closing themselves in her presence caused the whispers to grow.
Rumors about the "Brookhollow witch" began to circulate. Hoskil become more distant, not understanding what was happening, as well as being turned against her by his family.
When her own father and brothers began to tell her that she needed to settle down and put all this magic nonsense behind her, Amineri couldn't take it any more and left home.
On the road she found friends who appreciated her powers, and she began to be less self-conscious about them. On one occasion she saved a handsome human warrior, and the thanks and praise she received convinced her that her powers were a blessing. From that day on she began to flaunt her powers, and call herself a sorceress.
Life expectancy among adventurers is not very long, and the first several groups she traveled with met unfortunate ends. Luckily, Amineri always managed to escape somehow.
Part 4
After breaking off from the rest of the group in Bluewater, Amineri, still depressed from losing her "special powers", travelled east toward Kindertel with Oscar. Amineri's sense of self-esteem had been bound up in her value and worth to others through her usage of magical abilities, and their loss hit her hard.
Oscar was very supportive, and away from the conflicts of adventuring, and without Amineri's foreign powers between them, their friendship blossomed into love as they travelled east.
Upon arriving in Kindertel, Amineri was content to give up her adventuring past, and settle down in some quiet and remote part of the country and lead a simple, and hopefully peaceful life.
However, they then did not the wisest of deeds. They purchases, sight unseen (as it seemed such a great deal) a small inn/farmstead in the far northeast of Kindertel. After travelling for a few weeks, they found that their new home was very remote.
The road was not well travelled, but travelled enough that their two rooms for rent were filled about as often as not. There they took the first steps of settling into a happily married life.
However, then the barbarian nomads off the glacier began their rounds. They demanded protection money from all those that lived on this road paralleling their icy homeland.
Oscar refused, although Amineri thought they should simply pay and be safe, although poor. A week later an accident consisting of a dozen raiders happened across their "unprotected" home.
Trying to flee their home, they were pursued by the raiders to a cliff. There they were trapped. Desperate, Amineri managed to tap her previous (but now latent) powers, and was able to alter herself to grow wings. She tried to convince Oscar to let her try and carry him, but he wouldn't let her, as he knew he was too heavy.
Sacrificing himself, he hurled Amineri from the cliff before being cut down by the barbarian raiders.
Oscar was made an example for others, having his head set on a stake along the road, while the rest of his body was ritually consumed by the glacier tribe.
Devastated by her loss, and alone in the wilds, Amineri returned to her home, which had been plundered and despoiled. She found the remaining valuables that she and Oscar had buried outside, and set herself to regaining the rest of her powers, which she knew she could know regain. Revenge would be hers.
Taking what supplies she could carry in her Handy Haversack, Amineri fled to some nearby caves that were inaccessible except by air.
Over the next month Amineri meditated long hours every day, learning her new body, and finding the old channels that had been carved in her soul for the magical power to flow along. The effort was much greater than before, but she persevered in regaining all her former powers except one : the ability to polymorph others.
So prepared, she began her long and grisly work of exacting revenge upon those who had stolen her love and her new life. Silent and still in the night, she stalked, hunted, and slayed them. Each morning the raiders would awake to find another of the scouts stiff and cold on the ground.
She did not kill them all, but they learned to fear the nameless demon that came in the night to steal their lives.
Soon, her anger assuaged, she began to feel the loss that she had suffered, and began to feel the urge to live again. Not to settle down again - the pain of the memory was still too great for that - but to see friends and family again.
She returned and, charming the merchant who had sold her the farmstead, encouraged him to buy it back at the same price. She then returned to her family, and they made her welcome, but were clearly still not comfortable around her anymore. Her experiences had changed her, made it impossible for her to stay at home.
With nearly all of her prior adventuring friends dead, she decided to find any of those still remaining, make amends for wrongs committed in the past, and see if there was still a place for her among them.
She set out to Bluewater again. Only 2 months had passed since she had travelled this same road in the other direction, but those few weeks had changed the fibre of her being. Still mostly the same outside, but inside a fundamental, of subtle, change had occurred.
During the course of attacks upon the raiders, her powers grew and strengthened even more. Soon she had outstripped her previous levels of power, driven by her anger and grief. Whereas the trip from Bluewater had taken 2 weeks by boat and by carriage, now she could transport herself magically in an instant.
Upon arriving in Bluewater she sold some remaining items that she did not need, and rented the use of a crystal ball from the mage's college, and began trying to discover which of her old companion's still lived. << BACK
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