Orli Azurastrix
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Orli's life up until the age of about 16 is characterized, above all, by boredom. She was born in a small village in Damara, the second daughter of an innkeeper. She grew up, quiet and sullen in the shadow of her social butterfly of an older sister, Brianna. While her sister waited tables and flirted with the inn's patrons, Orli cleaned empty rooms, and spent evenings curled up, reading.
Those stopping at the inn often assumed that Orli was shy, or unskilled in social pursuits, and many nights someone would attempt to engage her in conversation out of pity. They found that she was quite an adequate conversationalist, and spoke openly and easily when engaged. However, most came away with the impression that Orli could not have possibly found them less interesting, and they weren't far from right.
Orli found, and still does find, people, especially humans, quite uninteresting. She feels that their lives are uneventful, colorless, and completely banal. Though she admits readily, at least to herself, that she does not totally understand all the intricacies of their lives, their behaviour, their conversations, or their secrets, she also acknowledges that they can't possibly be more interesting than what they show on the surface, which is hardly anything special.
However, once in a while a merchant would pass through, parking his wagon in their stables and checked into the inn, at which point Orli suddenly took a great deal of interest, pestering the merchant, asking for books. What little disposable allowance her father was able to pass down to her was almost always spent on books, when the merchants had them. Stories of powerful wizards and faraway places lined the shelves of her small room.
One such merchant booked a room in the inn one evening, and was subsequently leapt upon by Orli. He was a quiet half-elf, red-haired and blue-eyed, with an air of importance around him that drew attention despite his introverted demeanor. He responded charitably to Orli's requests to see his wares, and took her outside to show her to his leatherbound merchandise. Rather than stories, however, all of his books were Bestiaries and Treatises on the Planes. She dropped her entire savings into the man's lap, and walked away with as many as she could.
However, as she paged through various dissection diagrams of displacer beasts and wyrmlings, she became increasingly curious about the man who had brought them. She began watching his room, and noticed him slipping out late that night. She followed him quietly to a small cave. Once inside, the man poured out a canteen of what appeared to be blood mixed with some sort of shiny, powdered substance, in a wide circle, and chanted over it, his fingers tracing various strange sigils in the circle. As he completed his spell, the air itself seemed to tear, emitting the sounds of screams and growls, as a massive creature landed in the center of the circle. As it stood up from its crouch, she noted a dog-like face, and massive arms ending in razored pincers, and a smaller set of arms underneath. As it caught sight of the half-elf, it lunged at him, rebounding thunderously off of an invisible wall of force as the wizard smirked, amused. After this single test, it growled, a soft sound that nevertheless shook all of Orli's bones, and settled down into a crouch, imbedding its pinchers into the ground.
"What service do you require of me, mortal?"
Its voice sounded the way a dog's would, if dogs were 10 feet tall and could talk. And at the same time, it also sounded like grinding bone, and in the pauses in its speech was a sound like a thousand voices whispering too softly to make out.
"I only require that you speak with me, Glabrezu. Speak, answer questions. About yourself. About your home."
The creature smiled then, and a bit of blood dribbled from its mouth.
"I can do that, Mortal. What is it you wish to know?"
In the conversation that followed, two things happened:
- Orli decided that this "Glabrezu" was the single most interesting being she had ever encountered, with the possible exception of the wizard that summoned it
- It saw her.
All throughout the conversation, the Demon had been casting the occasional glance toward the cave entrance. Orli had hoped that it did not see her, but this hope was shot when the Glabrezu, mid-question, looked down to the wizard and grinned.
"You're being watched, little mortal. You should catch the little spy. Kill her before she tells anyone you've been conversing with abyssal agents…or give her to me..."
The wizard tensed, looking to the cave entrance.
Orli stood, and walked a few steps into the cave, trembling slightly. "I promise...I won't tell anyone...but...may I sit and listen as well?"
The wizard smiled, and patted the ground next to him. Orli sat quietly, and listened as the wizard filled a blank page in a book with the demon's words.
Over the next few nights, Orli was party to the summoning of a host of extraplanar beings, Devils and Formians and Slaadi, Elementals, and all three orders of Celestial. She regarded each with equal interest, and learned everything she could about each.
The wizard, whose name she eventually learned to be Ezrel, had stretched out his stay in the inn by several days at this point. When asked by villagers, he cited problems with setting up a venue in the next city. At the end of the week, he had inexplicably purchased a small cottage on the edge of town, and Orli became his most common visitor. He trained her discreetly, behind closed doors, teaching her summoning magics, and the languages of the planes, helping her to fill out her first spell-book, and teaching her to revere Azuth, the Lord of spells.
Rumors abounded in the village as to what they were doing in that cottage, and the subject of magical training was not a common theme. (To this day, Orli has not spoken as to whether any of these rumors were true, nor does she show an interest in doing so). This understandably made her father quite suspicious, and he followed her to his house one evening. Several hours later, he watched the two leave, and walk toward a small cavern nearby.
Ezrel had promised his young apprentice conjurer a special treat today. Again, Ezrel traced out a circle, this time in silver powder laced with an unidentifiable ooze, and chanted over it. At the end of his chant, the air inside of the circle…no, the space inside the circle, went strange. Folded, and rippled, and stretched, finally depositing a strange mass in the middle of the floor.
Its body shape was roughly that of a bird, the size of a dog, except that its beak was a solid, fused piece of bone, and its eyes were pools of black liquid. In place of feet, it bore two hooks, which it immediately dug into the ground, seemingly in an effort to keep from falling upward toward the ceiling, and its wings were replaced with a curled mass of tentacles, spread in a fan-like pattern. Its tail feathers were similar.
Its mouth, a circular, many-toothed oriface placed in what would seem to be its forehead, spoke what sounded like questions, in common, but the words made no sense together. Orli does not even remember exactly what they were. She only remembers that when her father burst into the cave, she was just starting to see the order in it.
Her father, convinced (rightly so) that what he was seeing was an abomination against nature and all that is, rushed into the cave, and struck the creature, breaking the circle and surprising it. It immediately lost its hold on the ground, and fell upward, impaling itself on a stalactite. It gibbered senselessly for perhaps another 20 seconds before it died. Ezrel, enraged, chanted off a spell quickly that flung Orli's father 30 feet, out of the cave. He stood, looking at the two with fear, and ran back to the inn.
"Somehow, I imagine this town will not be safe for either of us much longer, Orli. I thought this might happen eventually. There is a town to the east, in Narfell. Norwick. I can send you there. There are several magical organizations there from which you may further your training. Do you wish this?"
He expected her to ask if he would come with her. Instead, she looked at him, and nodded. "Can I take my books?"
His brow furrowed. "Yes, go fetch them"
She took off toward town, but when she was within range of the inn, she saw her father standing over a large fire. As he caught sight of her, he opened his mouth, more than likely planning to say something fatherly about how burning her books was for her own good. She cut him off, however.
"I see. Goodbye father." She turned, emotionless, and walked back to the cave entrance, her spellbook and a small bestiary now the only contents of her pack. Her only remaining books. "I am ready to go, Ezrel."
The mage looked at her, his expression still somewhat confused, distressed by how seemingly well she was taking this. "I just…I won't be coming with you, Orli..."
"Oh? Yes, I imagine I've held you up from your merchant route by about two years. Good travels."
And so a very confused Ezrel chanted a spell, and the world wrenched around Orli, coming to rest again in the Boarshead inn.
Character Name: Orli Azurastrix
Login Name: Oreth Meret((note, this character is not quite...created yet. However, I'm going to slap her together on saturday night, the 5th. The above is her intended character name, which I imagine is not taken yet. I'll drop another post here when she's created.))
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Reviewed - XP Pending.
