About Ambriel KogalnicaStatistics:
Female Elven Arcanist (School Savant: Void) 2
CG Medium Humanoid (Elf) Init +3; Senses Perception +3 ------------------------------ DEFENSE ------------------------------ AC 14, touch 13, flat-footed 11 (+1 armor, +3 dex) hp 13 Fort +2, Ref +3, Will +3 (+2 vs enchantments) (+2 vs Spells & SLAs) ------------------------------ OFFENSE ------------------------------ Speed 30 ft. Melee 0 Ranged +3
Monument Scholar (Campaign):
Forlorn (Race):
Slippery (Combat):
Pragmatic Activator (Magic):
Pride: (Drawback):
FEATS Breadth of Experience:
SKILLS (12 points; 4 class, 8 INT) ----------------------------
*ACP applies to these skills
+2 Perception (Elf)
Languages Elven, Taldane, Sylvan, Draconic, Celestial, Abyssal, Thassilonian, Varisian Special Abilities:
------------------------------ SPECIAL ABILITIES ------------------------------ Elf Low-Light Vision 60' Elven Immunities:
Elven Magic:
Keen Senses:
Arcane Focus:
School Abilities (Void): Void Magic:
Void Awareness (Su):
Reveal Weakness (Su):
Aura of Prescience (Su):
Void School Spell List
Opposition School: Metal Spells:
------------------------------ Spells ------------------------------ 0th Spells Prepared: (4/day) Spells Cast: (at will) Acid Splash
1st Prepared: (2/day) | Cast: (2+1/day) Burning Hands
Gear/Possessions:
------------------------------ GEAR/POSSESSIONS ------------------------------ Scroll: Shield
Spellbook
Carrying Capacity
Money 13 GP 8 SP 3 CP
Background: Elevator Pitch Style:
The details of the very earliest period of Ambriel’s life are unknown. She was found in the wilds at an age approximately comparable to a human child of 3 or 4 years old by a passing Varisian Caravan. One of the Caravan’s families took her in. None of her relatives were ever located, and nobody ever came looking for Ambriel, so she was adopted by the family. Initially Ambriel integrated well into the Caravan’s extended family and Varisian culture. By the time she was approaching adulthood however there were serious problems. The adults in her life were by then mostly the grandchildren of the generation who had originally taken her in. Being entangled so closely with a family whose generations marched on past her so quickly took a harsh psychological toll on Ambriel. Some of the Kogalnica clan resented pouring decades of care into a seemingly perpetual child. By the time she was around the age of 80 or 85 (not even Ambriel knows her exact age) she had separated from the family to live on her own. The Kogalnicas had traded life on the road to settle in Magnimar permanently a couple of decades previously, so Ambriel was able to secure employment at a library and move to a different neighborhood. Ambriel took up arcane studies alongside her regular job. She didn’t receive formal instruction. Her intelligence proved more than adequate for solo learning much of the time. When she did need help she would strike up a personal or intimate relationship with a mentor or tutor who could help. It was a slower way to learn, but Ambriel’s focus on magic would wax and wan over time as well. Her last tutor crashed Ambriel’s cozy little system, and the rest of her life as well. He was a half-elf named Herrick, and in retrospect Ambriel realizes he was too good to be true. She became overly involved with him romantically, and he used his advantage to get Ambriel to unwittingly help him steal a book from Founder’s Archive and Museum of Ages, where she worked. He had been playing a long con on her the whole time. Herrick got away clean with an irreplaceable book with an incalculable value.
Background: Full Version:
Alika Kogalnica found the elven child Ambriel beside a stream where she had gone to fetch water. Alika supposed the girl to be an equivalent age to a human of three or four. She was in good health, though disheveled and dirty. The elf child seemed very happy to see someone, but spoke only elven so there was little Alika could learn from her about her circumstances. Finding nobody else in the area, Alika took the girl back to her family’s caravan, which was camped nearby. Two of the caravan’s members spoke elven, but they were not able to learn much from the girl. Her name was Ambriel. She knew no family name. She had been alone in he forest and scared, but stayed by the stream when she found it because she was thirsty. Ambriel thought it had been about two days since she saw her parents, but didn’t know what had happened to separate her from them. A more intensive search of the area turned up no clues about what had happened or who her parents might be. A couple of days later, when the caravan was ready to move on, the Kogalnica clan took Ambriel along with them since there seemed nothing else to be done. The expectation was for someone to claim Ambriel as they traveled about asking as they passed through places if anyone knew about a missing elf girl. But as months turned into years, nobody ever did. There was no particular moment or event marking it, but as chances grew slimmer that her family would be found, Ambriel became more and more a Kogalnica. While Alika and her husband Davos were primarily Ambriel’s new parents, raising children was also a group responsibility in the caravan. Ambriel was to some greater or lesser degree raised by all of the adults. For a while things went very well. Ambriel became extremely close to Alika and Davos, as well as many of the other adults. But with added time cracks in the arrangement began to appear. At first they were minor. As her peers passed her into adulthood, Ambriel was left behind. She was hardly changed and had to adapt to a new set of younger children who came up as her new peer group. Ambriel was a tween when old age took Alika and Davos, as well as the rest of the adults she had first known. It fell to her former age peers to become her new parents. By the time Ambriel reached about 85, roughly her late teens. Her new elders were the children of those children she had first known. The situation created problems on both sides. Ambriel was finally an adult physically, if not intellectually or emotionally. She was also by generations the oldest person in the clan. For her part Ambriel had been through the heartbreak of losing all of her loved ones three times over. She decided that in order to save her sanity, she could no longer develop deep emotional attachments to humans. Nothing was ever said directly about it, but all parties felt Ambriel needed to go. By this time the clan had been settled in one of the Varisian neighborhoods in Magnimar for a few decades. Ambriel knew the city better than anywhere else in the world so she remained there, moving to a new, more central neighborhood. Ambriel’s considerable intelligence had already secured her a job as a librarian at the Founder’s Archive and Museum of Ages, so she had no difficulty supporting herself on her own. Ambriel maintained an active social life, mostly with new human acquaintances. For a while early on she tried to establish friendships with other elves. There were other elves in the city, mostly from the Mierani Forest she discovered. They tended to treat forlorn elves as not fully elven though. While they were not intentionally cruel, Ambriel could clearly tell they thought of her as maimed or damaged. She found their condescension or pity insulting, and so she made it her habit to avoid other elves. Ambriel’s grand project since striking out on her own has been to understand the workings of the Void. Originally she had simply wanted to learn magic, but her interests expanded with time. She had long known of the Void. Tales of the origins of the Black Butterfly are a staple of Varisian folklore, and the Black Butterfly more than Desna or other supernatural beings or Empyreal Lords fascinated her. When she was young she would riff on the Black Butterfly’s creation: from nothing, but suddenly there fully formed, as a metaphor to describe her own discovery by Alika and the Kogalnicas. Ambriel never considered attending a college of magic. She felt herself capable of learning on her own, and in any case she did not have the kind of money needed for enrollment. If she found herself stuck on a problem she could not solve, she could always find a lover/tutor among the many students and teachers of magic who cycled endlessly through the schools. Many men, and a few women, have held the role over time. Such relationships tended to be short lived. To a person they found Ambriel a frustratingly unfocused student. She would work diligently under their guidance for a little while, but then she would move to another interest or take a break from studying stretching into months or years. It did not help that Ambriel refused to commit to anything other than the most casual of relationships. In Ambriel’s view her various tutors were always driven by something else underpinning their love of magic. It could be desire for wealth, power, or recognition, but they always barreled ahead as fast as they could so they could reach their goal. Ambriel understood, they had so little time to make their mark on the world. But she was certainly not going to change her ways to satisfy them. Magic was only a facet in her larger project, which also included philosophy, cosmology, theology, and arcane history. No one facet should advance too far without the others she thought. She was coming to believe the Void was not the absence of all things, but the absence of time. The material multiverse is subject to time, with its linearity and regularity. The Void, from which the material arose, was material or energy not subject to any such restrictions. It was pure chaos, unsortable or uncategorizable into any smaller distinct units. The material sprang from the Void, but the Void held the material together. Ambriel wants to know if she is correct, and if so how it works. For a human generation or so this was Ambriel’s life. But the last tutor she took on ruined it for her, and ended the Magnimar phase. He was a half-elf named Herrick, but in retrospect Ambriel is not sure she truly knew anything more about him. He was certainly well-educated, and shared more of her interests than previous tutors had. He was also accommodating of her meandering style of magical study. Ambriel felt a connection to him of the kind she had not felt in a long time, becoming closer to him than she had previously allowed herself with others. She began to wonder if maybe it was possible they could remain together for the long-term.
The book theft blew into a scandal among intellectual and literary circles in the city. Without an apprehended thief to blame, Ambriel took the brunt of it. Rumors circulated saying she was actually an accomplice, or even the mastermind who planned it. Her romantic history, which was no secret before anyway, was now subject to moralizing. Her friends were no longer eager to be seen with her in public. Ambriel blamed herself as well, humiliated that she had been so thoroughly conned that she broke her personal rules about romantic partners. Without her library position Ambriel no longer had access to books she needed. There was no chance she would be getting any type of similar job in Magnimar anytime soon. She was socially ruined for a long while at least. So she decided to leave the city and moved to Riddleport for a while. She made some connections there among the Cyphermages, and learned a little secondhand about Thassilonian magic. It was enough to convince her it might be a new route on her quest. Certainly the ancient civilization possessed extremely advanced arcane knowledge, most of which is lost or secret in the present. Ambriel didn’t stay any longer that she felt she needed to though. The Cyphermages were a cliquish and stingy group. Besides, she found Riddleport to be intolerably filthy and crude. When she believed things had blown over enough, she returned to her home city of Magnimar, hoping for a new beginning by throwing in her lot with the local Pathfinder Venture Captain Sheila Heidmarch.
Appearance and Personality:
Height: 5'10" Weight: 114 Hair: Black Eyes: Emerald Green Ambriel is of average height and weight for an elf. If she lived in Kyonin she would probably not be counted among its fairest roses, but in Magnimar she was always quite a sight. Her jet-black hair, pale skin, and large, bright green eyes, along with her willowy figure and elven grace made her the subject of adoration and envy. She dressed conservatively for work, as was expected of her. But she was willing to spend on stylish, flattering clothes for nights out. Ambriel left most of her work clothes behind when she packed for Riddleport. Despite her focus on magic and intellectual pursuits, Ambriel is no introvert or recluse. She loves to socialize and meet new people. Her extracurricular interests have shifted often over time. In the past she has been an avid theater attendee, opera fan, and regular among literary salons. At certain points she dabbled in the Empyreal cults common in Magnimar. As she explores new pursuits, she makes friends and acquaintances to share them with. Many years of this lifestyle have made her well recognized if unimportant in circles surprisingly high on the social ladder for a humble librarian. Ambriel is most comfortable around humans, and least comfortable with elves. As long as Ambriel sticks to her rule to not become emotionally invested in particular humans she finds them good company. Humans have mostly been very accepting of her in return. Ironically, for a non-human who no longer associates with her extended, adopted Varisian family, Ambriel is one of the greatest repositories of Varisian folklore, tradition, and history in the region. Three generations of living as a Varisian and an excellent memory means she has direct knowledge of Varisian culture from before Chelaxian 'civilization' and urbanization arrived to change things. Elves can almost without fail discern Ambriel’s background. In part this is because she speaks Elven in a formal, almost ossified way. Although she has ensured she is fluent in the language, she has not used it enough over the years since she was a small child to develop the natural tone, cadence, and colloquialisms of a lifelong daily speaker. Really her first languages are Varisian and Taldane. But it doesn’t even take speech to give her away. She doesn’t know precisely what but something about her body language, or carriage, or facial expressions is off to elves who have always lived among their own. Unlike most elves, she does not look down on humans, or consider their lives too short to matter. Ambriel sees it as a matter of scale and perspective. Elves think of human lives as trivially short because they live hundreds of years. But to something living thousands of years, so elves must seem trivial. And, aboleths say, view the creature living thousands of years as inconsequential. She is not even sure gods are immortal in the way it is typically thought. They can die, certainly some have. Perhaps they are mortals with a long, to this point undefined, lifespan. The possibility hasn’t been tested yet. While her knowledge of arcane and many other matters is very extensive, Ambriel has always been more an arcane theoretician than a practical magical caster. She will have some adjusting to do if she is going to make it as a Pathfinder Agent.
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