About Beldraim de CodiceBackground:
Beldraim de Codice ran her fingers across the map of the places she might one day rule. Towns, hamlets, tracks of forest and farmland, villagers and wanderers. She imagined it all shrunk miniature--the people, trees, and monsters--placed into her map with her watching from above, curating their lives, allowing them to participate in something more than themselves. Her fingers smoothed the veiny creases of the scroll with the shush shush shush sounds of distant tides. In her other hand, she passed a gold coin back and forth over her knuckles. One, two, three. One, two, three. The way the metal felt against her skin relieved the pressure that had been building in her head. Now it was returning. She found her fingers lingering at the edge of the unfinished map. This would be where the countryside started to fade, and the towns surrounding Oppara began. Her paints and pencils sat to one side, unsure of themselves. The pressure built more. The coin trick wasn’t enough. She brought out another coin from her backpack and rubbed the outside edge with her thumb searching for—there--the small indention where metal had struck metal long ago. ------ Beldraim de Codice, or simply Bel to her colleagues, grew up in the Saint Lymrin Orphanage for Girls in Oppara. Years before she could remember, a fire burned through the slums, and the orphanage took its share of refugees in, and Bel was one of them. Tall, with large eyes and skinned knees, she grew clever and odd. She caught on to trends in herself. Phases. She went through one where she had to exchange something (money or toys or books) with a person an undetermined number of times before the pressure in her head subsided. She was compelled to climb trees with forty-nine branches. Touch shoulders that had armor on (mercifully brief, that one), and more. She caught on to other trends. She’d gotten good at spotting them. Every third week or so, a man or woman would pull up outside of the orphanage in a finely-wrought carriage and select three or four girls to go with them for the afternoon. They returned with ale on their breath and tales of odd jobs, bragging of roughing up store owners and moving crates and filching money off theater-goers. They let other things slip, too. This was normally when they had their boots on Bel’s throat, shoving her out of the play yard, and scraping horse dropping across her clothes. They said, ”We got magic in our blood, you hear? They told us so. You better watch your mouth weirdo or I’ll fry you someday.” They started calling themselves The Clutch. Bel and a few of the other ‘normal’ girls were their prey. Their games grew crueler. When they opened their mouths to yell down at her, she saw the flames dancing behind their tongues. When they kicked her seven times in the ribs, her brain made her plead to make it eight. An even number, ordered, tidy. She lived in the orphanage library to escape their wrath. Read book after book on what they might be. Stories about them. Bloodline, dragon, fire breath. Words she’d never seen or heard before. Part of it was hatred that drove her, but most was jealousy. Why them? Why not her? It drove her to pull at every book, read every page, but one day when she was pulling books off to read, she heard a click and a rustle, and found a secret entrance behind the bookcase, a stairwell leading down. And there she found the most glorious, shining hoard of gold she had ever laid eyes on. Nothing even in all the stories she’d read could compare. The lanterns on the walls of the circular wood room (shaped by some form of magic) caused the pile of gems and gold pieces to shimmer. She reached out to touch it, but heard a voice behind her. ”Why you—“ said one of the Clutch. Juil--the meanest of them. She had a scar down the right side of her face where a knife had connected a year before on some unspeakable job. She brandished her own knife now. Held it up high so it caught the light. ”Now we’ll see if you bleed sideways like the weirdo you are.” Bel stepped back and her foot caught the edge of a gem and she fell into the hoard. The coins scraped deliciously across her skin. The knife came down, slashing at the pile she was in and cut her, but a few of the coins provided enough resistance for the cut to be shallow, ineffective. Bel kicked out, smashed her heel into the girl’s knee and bent it back. The girl staggered, grabbed a lantern to steady herself and ripped off the wall. The fire spread quickly. Bel saw her opening. She gathered as many of the coins and gems as she could in her arms and fled past the girl to the door. She heard laughing from the girl behind her, still in the room. Bel found her backpack, stuffed the gold into the bottom and fled. She felt a thrum of excitement pulsing in her head, similar to the compulsions, but different. A connection to the gold. Ancient energy. She ran away, intent on finding her own way. She thought she might finally become special too now. ---- Bel twirled the coin between her thumb and index finger, the familiar metal on her skin. The one that stopped a dagger for her. The one that still sent chills of power and dreams that weren’t dreams into her as she slept. She heard the sound of bootsteps in the hall outside her office. One of her colleagues to tell her about a new job, no doubt. She slipped the coin in her pocket and went back to work.
Appearance & Mannerisms:
Beldraim stands slightly taller than average with long, steepled fingers and bony shoulders. She wears simple traveler’s clothes most of the time, but walks with an air of authority. A scar adorns the underside of her chin. She angles her head so as to keep it in shadow for those she does not know well. Bel has a number of peculiarities. If she is given currency, she must exchange it 1d4 times with the person before finally accepting it. She loves to squeeze the wrists of those she meets, feeling the cartilage work beneath the skin. She jumps at any chance to increase her hoard. She relishes debilitating her foes with her hexes. She frequently remarks at how any land she is traveling through will someday be ruled over by her. ”A ruler must know her lands,” she says, ”And what better way than to survey them?”
----- Beldraim de Codice
Spell Hoard:
All 0-level spells 1st
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