Dolora, Redeemed Thassilonian Wizard

[eriktd]

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Name: Dolora, Thassilonian Redeemer
Race/Class: Human Wizard (Pact Wizard)

Appearance
Dolora has an exotic beauty, made strange by her fey-touched features-- her eyes are slightly larger than average and sparkle with flecks of gold and silver, purple and green. Her ears are slightly pointed, like a cat's, not like an elf's. Her dark skin is lustrous and shiny, like she is made of polished brass or mahogany. Her thick black hair grows absurdly long even when she cuts it, so she usually ties it back with the same strips of leather she uses to hold her place in her books. She typically carries a long staff with a rounded end-- a shepherd's crook-- as if it were a kind of totem or badge of office. Otherwise she dresses simply, with a small bag of spellcaster's components at her belt and a pack containing books and sundries. A blue swallowtail butterfly often sits on her shoulder, perhaps a sign of blessing from Desna.

Personality
Dolora's brain is constantly evaluating and criticizing herself. She believes that she is prone to laziness because of her specialized understanding of Thassilonian magic, and also believes that her magic encourages kindness and humility. Thus she strives always to be more humble and kind than she is lazy, to remain virtuous. She also recognizes that being overzealous can lead her specialized form of magic astray, just like being proud or wrathful opposes sloth, and so she worries about being too keen on anything for the sake of her arts. She is friendly to others, especially halflings-- she considers them family. She also feels at home in Sandpoint, though she has been away for almost seven years and lived at the orphanage most of her time there. Her first instinct when surprised is usually to help her friends, though not counting Academae training exercises she has never been in a battle before.

Background
Dolora was born near Sandpoint, an orphan who was given to the church. She knows very little about her parents, but suspects they gave her up because her features are slightly "fey-touched." Perhaps because of this First World influence, Dolora has a gift for the arcane arts, a quality that hardly troubled the halfling priest who served as her guardian growing up, but put off many of the other residents of the town. An avid historian, Father Corwin taught her many legends about the ancient Thassilonians, wizards who drew their eldritch powers from devotion to the seven deadly sins.

Upon finishing her elementary schooling at Turandarok Academy, her guardian scraped together enough funds to send her to Korvosa, there to learn from the legendary teachers at the Acadamae. She has been studying to be a wizard there for the past seven years. Her focus is Conjuration, but her methods are somewhat unorthodox because of her guardian's religious influence and her obsession with Thassilonian lore.

The Thassilonian magical focus is based in sin, where each sin represents a school of magic, and each sin opposes two others. To become a more puissant wizard, a Thassilonian Specialist must devote herself to a particular sin, and in so doing loses the ability to practice the magic of its opposites. But each sin also has an opposite virtue, and Dolora theorizes that since each sin is also opposed by two other sins, it might be possible for her to focus on the virtues that oppose her school's two opposing sins, and thus practice a virtuous form of sin magic. Thus, Conjuration is associated with Sloth, but also with Humility and Kindness, which oppose Sloth's opposites Pride and Wrath. By focusing on being more kind and humble rather than on being more lazy, she believes she can become a more powerful wizard while remaining a virtuous one.

So far, her proposal has raised eyebrows but has not found a sponsor, and now she finds she is lacking the resources to continue her formal education in Korvosa. She has decided to return to her roots in Sandpoint, joining a pilgrimage of the faithful traveling to witness the dedication of the new cathedral. She hopes to find a job and earn enough money to go back to her studies at the Academae or else outfit a wizard's laboratory and make a magical breakthrough on her own.
  Familiar: Starlight, Desna's envoy
When Dolora first began instruction at the Academae, she was told to choose an animal with which to bond. She experimented with several, but nothing felt right. So, she went into town to the local shrine to Desna and prayed, but before she had gotten settled and organized her thoughts, to her amazement she realized that one of the goddess's sacred butterflies was sitting upon her shoulder. It must have landed on her outside and followed her in, she decided, but it was hard not to see it as a miracle, and she allows herself to imagine that the Lady of Dreams sent Starlight to her.
 

RP Sample

 

After traveling on foot for so many days, Dolora's heart soared to see the familiar rise of the hills and the road leading into Sandpoint, and to recognize the familiar shape of the buildings near the theater and the unfamiliar shape of the new cathedral. How she longed to make her way into one of the town's many taverns and sip a glass of wine while listening to local gossip, now that she was a grown woman and could do so unchaperoned-- but she knew she had her pilgrimage to complete first, and she was anxious not to give in to her natural laziness so quickly. Resolutely, she turned her weary steps toward the new cathedral and tried to push away the feeling of dread that had dogged her since she left Korvosa, two weeks before.

She feared her guardian, Father Corwin, was dead, since she had not heard from him in the seven years she had been away. On their parting, he had given her a special shepherd's staff that he had made for her, like the one he himself carried. She had cried during the whole ship's journey to the Academae, mostly of homesickness but also because she had a premonition that she would never see him again. Something about his demeanor; she knew he intended to leave Sandpoint as soon as she left. Yet she hoped she was wrong, that he had simply been too busy to write, and that she would find him right where she left him, smoking his pipe on the rise behind the old chapel. It is a weakness in me to miss him this much, she told herself. I must be stronger. He would be proud of me, this I know.

She paused on the steps of the new building, for there was one thing she had to do before entering that was slightly more pressing, and she could wait no longer. She made a quick gesture in the air, a combination of the symbols for creation, control, earth, the corporeal body, and the mind. "PRESTIDIGITATIO," she breathed softly in the language of the Celestials, completing the verbal component of a spell she had promised herself she would not cast until she reached home. Relief flooded through her, as the spell relaxed her muscles and dulled the pain, removing the cares (and dust) of travel. Refreshed both physically and mentally, she stepped inside.

The new cathedral was in some disarray, in hasty preparation for the Swallowtail festival, and it took her some time to find a clergyman of enough importance to ratify that her pilgrimage was complete, and to accept her offering on behalf of her goddess. I hope Desna will be pleased, she thought. She hesitated several minutes, staring at the silver font of holy water. It was very strange, doing this inside the building-- Father Corwin did all of his priestly offices under the stars, with water from the creek and sand from the beach. But Father Corwin was a mendicant monk, a traveler at heart, unlike the caretaker of the former chapel. Dolora realized she had not the foggiest idea who the head of the new bishopric might be. Father Tobyn, perhaps? Was that his name?

She was startled from her reverie by the deacon clearing his throat pointedly. "Is there anything else, miss...?" he asked, his eyes flicking between her and archway leading to the many unfinished preparations for the festival that presumably needed his attention. "Oh!" she said, biting her lip. "Please accept my apology, good deacon, for I fear my mind was wholly occupied with other matters." She furrowed her brow, and could not help indulging her curiosity. "Who is the high priest of the new cathedral, may I ask?" "Why, Father Zantus, of course," he said. "Unfortunately, the high priest is busy preparing for the festival, and will not be available today. May I take a message to him?" "Oh, no, no," Dolora demurred. "It is nothing. I only wanted to ask-- er, that is, perhaps you would know. I don't suppose you are acquainted with Father Corwin...?"

"Who?"

"N-never mind," she said quickly, fighting down the rush of emotion and waving her hands frantically. "It's nothing. Thank you very much for your help. Pleasant dreams." She made her way back to the street and walked as far as she could before the feeling of malaise and grief overwhelmed her. She couldn't form a coherent thought, she closed her eyes and felt like she was in a dream, surrounded by ghosts of the past and her deepest fears. She leaned on her staff, and tried to form a prayer to the Lady, and when she opened her eyes they fell on a distant sign of a dragon flecked in orange. The Rusty Dragon? she thought, trying to remember its name. She had a vague memory that she had friends there. The thought centered her, bolstered her spirits, and she gratefully carried herself up the steps and entered.