Ailis Slagdam's page

Pt. I

Ailis was born to a small dwarven mining family in the Mindspin Mountains just north of Nidal. Her clan occupied a small town set up around a large iron mine, and made its livelihood trading iron, furs, goat's milk and artwork of carved stone with regular caravans of merchants. The clan did not participate in local political drama, even going so far as to turn away refugees from Nidal when they arrived. The clan elders had decreed that such political opinions were a luxury that the clan could not support, and that the chance of calling Nidalese shadowhunters down on the town in search of escaped refugees was just too great to justify the good that it might accomplish. However, Ailis' father did not hold that same opinion. While many discouraged him from his course of action, having children only intensified his belief that inner goodness trumped any considerations of practicality. He had wanted to be a good role model. As such, he built a series of small sheds where people fleeing Nidal could shelter, and would sometimes enter the shadow-tainted country personally in order to meet someone who wished to flee northward.

While his intentions were noble, it later turned out that the fears of the clan elders were vindicated. The Umbral Court had caught wind of this people-smuggling operation and tracked an escaped slave up into the mountains, directly to the dwarven town. Attacking in the night, they managed to not only assassinate the convict but also killed many dwarven guardsmen and citizens (for truly, in a dwarven settlement every citizen is responsible for the safety of all) who were caught unawares by the shadowy commandos.

Following that disaster, Ailis' father was stained with great dishonor. As was tradition, his entire family was exiled from the clan and stripped of the clan name. They were cast out into the hills to live a subsistence life, friendless and unloved.

Pt. II

As often happens with youths, there came a time when Ailis began to hate her family for the awful circumstances that they found themselves in. They lived in a hut in the wilderness, and when everyone pitched in they just got through the winters through a combination of gardening, hunting, and incidental trading. Despite many fights with her two older brothers, Ailis could not bring herself to show respect to her parents because of the shame that they had levied on everybody. They lived in the mud, and it was directly her father's responsibility.

So one day, Ailis ran away. She packed a small bag with non-perishable food and she fled into the mountains. She ran as far as she could, resting by the roadside and begging strangers for a carriage-ride when she met one. She went North, traveling on her own until she reached Korvosa, where she found work at first as a bodyguard and a room above an old textile factory. As she got more comfortable living on her own, she moved on to working as a bounty hunter, and then to being a "collector of antiquities". Since both jobs involved going abroad and finding either peoples' hiding places or the hiding places of things, she began to get some experience in the department of "looking for things that are hidden". However, a chance encounter in a ruin in Southern Varisia looking for an escaped convict led her into the company of Eando Kline, one of the world's most famous Pathfinders. While he was searching for Azlanti language data in pursuit of the creation of a cipher, many of his party had died to monsters simply on the way to the ruin. Thus, he employed the help of Ailis. Working together, they found both the convict that Ailis hunted and several intact monoliths with Azlanti symbols carved upon them. Before parting, Eando made a pitch regarding the Pathfinder Society to Ailis, and she said that she would take it under advisement.

In fact, the notion of working as a Pathfinder greatly intrigued Ailis, and upon returning to Korvosa and collecting the payment for her job, she set about arranging boat transportation to Absalom.

Pt. III

That a talented and driven woman like Ailis would be accepted into the Society as a novitiate is basically a foregone conclusion, and following her acceptance Ailis would spend several years in Absalom, training in combat, attending study courses, and doing her best to earn the respect of her peers. When she was finally accepted as a full member of the Society, she wasted no time getting out into the field. She decided that her speciality would be dwarven history and dwarven-adjacent cultures. Dwarven culture was milennia old, and it had evolved alongside several other cultures, most of which it was in conflict with - giant, orc, goblinoid, and duergar societies. And while the dwarven empire of today was great, the world was filled with ruins both occupied and unoccupied from a time when it was even greater. There was much to learn about the interplay between cultures, the advancement of dwarven culture, and things that were lost to history. Alongside any who would go with her, Ailis delved into old underground ruins all over the Inner Sea Region seeking and cataloguing this information.

Her greatest breakthrough, and her noteworthy entry into the Pathfinder Chronicles came fairly recently. While exploring an ancient and abandoned dwarven settlement, Ailis accidentally broke through a stone partition and found an even deeper, larger tunnel. Upon exploring this tunnel more thoroughly with her Pathfinder compatriots, it became clear that this was a cyclopean dwelling of ancient pedigree and significant lost knowledge. Her most recent year of work was spent excavating it, recording bits of lore, preserving tools, and map-making inside the cavern. She taught herself the language in order to better understand the history of the place, and when she submitted her full report to the Decimvirate she garnered no insignificant renown among the world's archaeologists.

Now

A few weeks ago, while on furlough, Ailis received word that her mother had died. When her father died, she paid no heed and did not attend the funeral, but this time she felt a pull back to her homeland for the first time in a long time. She returned to the Mindspin Mountains to attend her mother's funeral and wake and found that her siblings had secured the rights to rejoin the clan and that their mother had died not too long after, of a sickness she had caught the previous winter. She returned to decades of judgment from her brothers, who laid the fault of both of her parents' deaths at her feet because she wasn't there to take care of them. To make matters worse, she still bore the shame passed down from her father, so while she was tolerated in the mining town due to the circumstances, she was universally shunned.

When word came up the mountain of a Nidalese refugee bearing unusual news of a powerful magic artifact, Ailis jumped at the opportunity to return to work. She gave her siblings a cursory excuse and then stole down the mountain, hoping to delve into ever deeper ruins in search of ever more exciting secrets.

Road Map:

Ailis has a couple of main drives into joining this adventure. While she is always motivated by lost or esoteric knowledge and the hope of being successfully published in the Pathfinder Chronicles, she mainly just wants to distract herself for the moment. Seeing her family again was hard, and facing the judgment of her siblings drove her back into her work with great rapidity. What I most hope to see from Ailis in terms of future development is the use of skills or character features that she already possesses to help someone else with their own problems. She is, at her core, a supportive person, and she currently is facing a very serious level of self-doubt. Perhaps seeing what she already is could help her move on.