Artemisia's page

Domains : Charm (Love subdomain) , Protection (Purity subdomain)

Your faith is your greatest source of protection, and you can use that faith to defend others. In addition, you receive a +1 resistance bonus on saving throws. This bonus increases by 1 for every 5 levels you possess.

Resistant Touch (Sp): As a standard action, you can touch an ally to grant him your resistance bonus for 1 minute. When you use this ability, you lose your resistance bonus granted by the Protection domain for 1 minute. You can use this ability a number of times per day equal to 3 + your Wisdom modifier.

Purifying Touch (Su): At 8th level, you can touch a willing creature with divine power, giving it a saving throw against each effect currently affecting it, using the original saving throw DC of the effect. Each successful saving throw ends the related effect. The creature can choose not to make a save against an effect. You can use this ability once per day at 8th level, plus one additional time per day at 14th and 20th level

Domain Spells: 1st—Protection from Chaos/Evil/Good/Law , 2nd—shield other, 3rd—remove blindness/deafness 4th—spell immunity, 5th—atonement, 6th—antimagic field, 7th—repulsion, 8th—mind blank, 9th—prismatic sphere

Charm Domain (Love subdomain)

Granted Powers: You can baffle and befuddle foes with a touch or a smile, and your beauty and grace are divine.

Adoration (Su): As an immediate action, you can attempt to thwart a melee or ranged attack that targets you. This ability functions as sanctuary, but only against one individual attack. You must use the ability after the attack is declared but before the roll is made. The creature attacking you receives a Will save to negate this effect. If a creature has more than one attack, this ability only affects one of the attacks. You can use the ability a number of times per day equal to 3 + your Wisdom modifier. This is a mind-affecting effect.

Charming Smile (Sp): At 8th level, you can cast charm person as a swift action, with a DC of 10 + 1/2 your cleric level + your Wisdom modifier. You can only have one creature charmed in this way at a time. The total number of rounds of this effect per day is equal to your cleric level. The rounds do not need to be consecutive, and you can dismiss the charm at any time as a free action. Each attempt to use this ability consumes 1 round of its duration, whether or not the creature succeeds on its save to resist the effect.

Domain Spells: 1st—charm person, 2nd—enthrall 3rd—suggestion, 4th—heroism, 5th—charm monster, 6th—geas/quest, 7th—insanity, 8th—euphoric tranquility, 9th—dominate monster

She has brown hair in a page-cut with a few locks of hair artfully highlighting her forehead. Her features are pretty and she looks emphatically younger than even her 21 years old. Her smile and her voice are especially notable , moreso than the rest of her features

Artemisia has a sweet tooth and tends towards fat , with a curvy body . She’s quite careless about eating as only the young (and the gnomes and Halflings) can be. Nonetheless this actually serves her when she ministers to people as her demeanor and look inspire confidence and she is quick to comfort people if they need it

Her eyes are unusual , the left is brown and the right blue. Some clerics of Shelyn have suggested it may be significant but it just seems natural to her.
She has adopted many Gnomish mannerisms such as a brief laugh when she considers that something someone has done is remarkable or appealing . This has sometimes been interpreted as mockery but it is not the case.

She is also prone to interject the occasional expression in Gnome , so natural has the way of thinking of the Folk become to her as a result of living all her life in Whistledown and then being taken under the wing of a gnome mentor. Usually however , the eye-rolling stares of other humans have taught her to keep this quirk in check.

Artemisia is careful to start the day with a sprinkling of lavender water and in a way this has become her signature scent. However she is not vain about her physique and dress sense , unlike some other clergy members who set great store by external appearance alongside (and sometimes she felt at the expense of) the inner beauty taught by Shelyn

Artemisia was born in the quiet Varisian community of Whistledown , to parents (Nigel and Beryl Hazelhurst , both in their early 40s) who had settled in the area after an unsuccessful time in Riddleport ,the city of their birth. The city’s shipyards provided plenty of work but the city's justified reputation for criminality did not suit her parents’ desire to settle down to a life free of protection rackets , and the general feeling of insecurity did not encourage them to raise a family there .

This proved the deciding argument when their brief romance blossomed into an unplanned pregnancy and the birth of Artemisia. Although she was expected to help with the housework and look after the siblings that followed , there was something restless about the girl that saw her organize various forms of neighbourhood games and ‘adventuring expeditions’ mostly fed by the tales of gnome neighbours. Their outlook on the natural world also made a strong impression on the child and when wandering Whistledown she was keen to explore blooms of mushrooms that might be fairy circles and the like , and usually mindful enough to leave a small offering for the spirits and fairy-people that dwelled in the world , or so she had been warned by storytellers.

In the absence of ships to build her parents settled for small-time wood-turning and furniture-making which held poverty at bay while the bulk of their living was down to subsistence farming in this fertile area

As the eldest her parents naturally showed her how to turn and paint the decorations and statuettes they were selling and she proved quite adept at it . Her rambles in the surrounding countryside had given her an eye for detail when it came to imitating animal shapes and postures and the simple process of whittling wood was done quickly enough not to exhaust her short-attention span (which lengthened substantially when things did interest her, but only then).

Her parents were somewhat disappointed that she probably didn’t have the patience to make a good apprentice for the larger pieces such as chests and chairs that they were sometimes asked to make. But there were other siblings to take after her. She was also relegated to the non-physical task on the farm due to a relative weakness her parents could only attribute to fate , but she was adept at selling door to door and generally looking after her siblings so this compensated somewhat

One day letting her mind wander , she was inspired to create a wooden version of the symbol of Shelyn without intending to and it vastly surpassed her earlier efforts (and those since then) . Her parents had been simple worshippers of Abadar and were at first quite nonplussed with this apparent strange sign of another god’s favour , especially considering their daughter seemed ill-suited to the work they had put her to.

However one of the regular customers of the Azure Cup (the human-sized inn in town) was a gnome cleric of Shelyn who had done some adventuring and she agreed to tutor the girl in exchange for companionship . Artemisia’s parents disapproved even further of what they saw as the life of ‘carousing’ these frequent visits to the Azure Cup entailed for their daughter and relations are somewhat strained with her parents as a result. The frequent ‘nature walks’ to learn about the close relationship that gnomes have with the environment whose beauty pleases and is in part due to Shelyn’s grace were further seen by her parents as a form of idleness and this did little to improve their opinion of Artemisia . In spite of that the fact that she continued to live with them and was staying around the village for much of her training did not strain their relationship overmuch

In the taproom of the Azure Cup she had many occasions to listen to lovesick teenagers and adults of the town plot to gain the attention of their love interests and she tried to arrange ‘fortuitous’ meetings between her village friends and others using her position as a fixture of the Azure Cup to spread Shelyn’s blessings by example.

She was eventually ordained after some years in Magnimar , where her parents were content to see her move to (at least it was nothing like Riddleport) and began to appreciate the artistic life of the city , though she was often considered a ‘country bumpkin’ there , even by the more urbane members of Shelyn’s clergy though most of them did so without malice. Her religious education was more formal than with her mentor but in many ways the love intrigues and match-making continued among the students and between a host of others from Maganimar whom they interacted with . The frequent visits to the Maganimar opera , concert halls and her daily interaction with various street performers in the streets of Maganimar as well as the student bards who were tutored at Shelyn’s temple made a strong impression on her.

Though not particularly gifted for singing (which she enjoyed nonetheless) and seemingly not much with a musical instrument (when the students were instructed to set up makeshift bands with their dormitory mates she was often given the cymbals or a similarly simple percussion instrument while the more proficient were on flutes and harps) , she had learned from her experience at the Azure Cup how to play an audience when telling a story , varying the pitch of her voice and personalizing the effects of the tale as well as inserting repetitive stock phrases that her listeners came to depend on and expect.

Much of her repertoire was an embellished and borrowed version of the tales she had heard but it did further encourage the desire for adventure within her

Through the grapevine at one of the theatres she heard of a new position for a cleric of the goddess in the romantically named city of Whitethrone. When she realized that it was in Irrisen she had already agreed to it . And on her last visit home for some time , her faithful gnome mentor encouraged her to explore an entirely unknown and different world . Perhaps she would become an adventurer like the ones she dreamt of being and played at as a child . At least this is what she has told her younger siblings and they wait impatiently to hear her stories . Her parents believe that she is still in training in Magnimar , and perhaps it is for the best though Artemisia will have to tell them at some point

Mentor name : Akka Tomte (Gnome Cleric of Shelyn , possibly from Irrisen or had some knowledge of it from personal experience through adventuring . If so she appears to have changed her name to adopt an Irrisian-sounding one , either because it made a strong impression on her or because of something else ( as payment or memento for magical tutoring ? Because of a geas/curse ?) Artemisia never actually found out). She wasn't too forthcoming about this , a stark contrast with nearly every other subject she talked about

Siblings : Violet (sister , now 14) , Ged (brother , now 10)