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Jolánka is a frail-looking Varisian woman of average height, with pale skin that easily burns and dark hair. She ties her hair up to keep it out of her face, where her cheek bears a prominent scar. She dresses in practical, but well-made clothes designed in the Ustalavic style for desert travel, with light fabrics and a wide-brimmed hat to keep the sun off her. This is, unfortunately, somewhat mitigated by the old-fashioned hauberk she wears, with a heraldic badge of a howling wolf silhouetted by the sun. A plain rapier hangs on one side, while a heavy-looking tome hangs from the other, bearing an ornate clasp that resembles a metal scarab with a Pharasmin spiral on its carapace. On her back is a backpack stuffed with gear and scrolls that looks too heavy for her, like she's making every effort to keep from losing balance and falling backwards. Everything about her form and manner suggests "impoverished noble playing at being a scholar."

A proud daughter of House Graydon-in-exile and graduate of the University of Lepidstadt, Jolánka tries to carry herself with dignity and gravitas. Whether she succeeds is another question entirely. Despite this, she has a brilliant and curious mind, and a strong moral core to go with it. She cares very deeply about loyalty and integrity, almost to a fault, and in regards to keeping secrets, she prefers to declare she is saying nothing instead of lying. Her sense of noblesse oblige can make it hard for her to relate to people who work for a living, even as she lived a much less privileged life than most of Ustalav's nobility, but she reacts to being told off for her ignorance with apologies rather than indignant arrogance. She likes to use her family's motto, "Guardians of the Dawn," as a battle-cry.

While she is the child of a Margrave of Barstoi, Sturnidae in specific, Jolánka has never set foot in her home county, having lived in the Palatinates since she was born. Her father, Margrave Cilas Graydon, had denounced his liege-lord, Count Aericnein Neska, as a tyrant in the aftermath of War Without Rivals, before going into self-imposed exile ahead of the Count's wrath. Jolánka grew up in relatively modest luxury, barely above middle-class, as her parents maintained the remains of their family fortune with various investments and the generosity of distant relatives. Much of her childhood was spent moving from manor to manor, being put up for a few months and moving on when they'd overstayed their welcome. Despite this, Cilas instilled a strong sense of honor and integrity in young Jolánka. That the loyalty of a Graydon was absolute, and that in commanding him to commit atrocities doing the War, the Count had been the betrayer of that loyalty and no longer deserved it.

Around the time she came of age, Jolánka's parents scraped together enough money (and enough letters of recommendation from their relatives) to send her to school at the prestigious University of Lepidstadt. A classical education from there would earn her some prestige of her own, and she could then begin redeeming the Graydon name. She was an curious and diligent student, earning scholarships to supplement the tuition she was barely affording, joining one of the university's many dueling clubs and earning her Lepidstadt scar, and spending her spare time in the Treyes Museum of Antiquities, exploring and cataloguing the artifacts within on behalf of her professors. This sparked in her a passion for archaeology, specifically Osirionology, which did not go unnoticed.

During her senior year, Jolánka was invited by one of her professors to a meeting, with strict instructions NOT to mention the appointment to ANYONE. Remembering her father's words, Jolánka followed the instructions to the letter and her professor escorted her to a secret chamber in the Museum, where several other faculty members and students were gathered. Her professor donned an ornate vest, an amulet in the shape of a flying scarab and a fez and explained that he and his associates were members of an ancient and noble fraternal order, in fact the very founders of the University: the Esoteric Order of the Palatine Eye. Because of her passion for knowledge and her ironclad integrity, the Order had decided she was an ideal candidate for membership. Jolánka accepted without hesitation, and after a call-and-response ceremony in the Osiriani tongue, she achieved the first rank in the Order's hierarchy.

Membership in the Order doubled Jolánka's workload, studying history and science during the day, while shifting to magic and occult ritual at night. Upon graduation, she felt exhausted but triumphant...but that didn't stop her from throwing herself back into work, now conducting independent research and preparing for the possibility of joining the University's faculty herself (though this was largely a cover for her work for the Order). Around this time, however, she received a letter from Lozeri, where her father had currently been staying. He'd received a serious injury from a werewolf attack, and his health was in a deeply precarious state. In this state, he was unable to manage what was left of the Graydon family finances, and as a precaution, he had transferred ownership of it to Jolánka, though at the moment he retained the title of Margrave, so there was less urgency for Jolánka to assume leadership of the family. Almost immediately, she began receiving a flood of letters from relatives offering condolences, requesting money, or claiming to be long-lost relatives as a prelude to request money. Frustrated, Jolánka made preparations to leave Lepidstadt and move across the country to Caliphas. At the capital, she figured, it would be easier to manage the failing fortunes of House Graydon and establish contacts with the members of the Order who called it home.

Jolánka only stayed in Caliphas for few months, as shortly after her father's incident, it was revealed that Margrave Cilas had been saved from death by a band of adventurers, and those adventurers were pursuing a developing crisis unfolding across Ustalav. Jolánka, and the rest of the Order in Caliphas, offered what knowledge they could to aid them. In the aftermath, Jolánka grew concerned. This crisis had nearly blindsided her and the rest of the Order, and had the adventurers not intervened it would have been a disaster. While the Order had gotten its act together in time, it had been too close a call. Jolánka concluded the Order had been lax in its duties, and they needed to step up their efforts in opposing threats like the Whispering Tyrant. Seeking inspiration, Jolánka began poring over many of the Order's oldest writings and scrolls, quickly finding there were missing fragments and passages referencing other passages that lacked contexts.

She began a feverish campaign of letter-writing, to other members of the Order, to her old professors, to Dr. Beaurigmand Trice of the Havenguard Asylum asking for information from the Pathfinder Society's vast network, to the Pharasmin church, and she received reply after reply and hit dead end after dead end, she wondered aloud if Aldus Canter, the Order's founder, had ever felt that frustration. An epiphany struck. Canter had been inspired to found the Esoteric Order of the Palatine eye from an allegedly divine encounter while exploring in Osirion. The Order's rituals were steeped in iconography and symbols from that ancient culture. If Canter, a so-called "gentleman-adventurer" (a term Jolánka herself associated with "amateur") could bring back something like The Lost Gospels of Tabris, surely she, a student of the most modern archaeological techniques and literature, and a Silvered Throne of the Order, could find the information needed to fill in the blanks. Scraping together what little funds she had left, she bought whatever equipment she could gather on such short notice and charted a boat to cross Lake Encarthan, make her way across Druma, Isger and Andoran, before booking passage on a ship in Almas to take her to Absalom and from there to Sothis.

In Sothis, Jolánka began trying to establish herself in the booming industry of Osirian artifacts and studies, meeting with local scholars, nobles and Pathfinders, hiring herself out as a guide and using her education in Osirionology to advise and identify the dangers of the tombs and ruined temples they searched. But she quickly became disgusted with the adventurers who hired her, solely interested in taking treasures and selling them for profit, things she believed fully belonged to the Osiriani people. As important as the lore of the Esoteric Order was to her, knowledge was not something that could be taken or owned, but more importantly it could be recovered without desecrating tombs and offending Pharasma! She stopped getting people willing to hire her as her reputation for being a stick-in-the-mud spread, and native Osiriani treasure hunters were reluctant to trust the expertise of a foreigner.

Her money running out, and Sothis becoming increasingly unfriendly, Jolánka began making her way south, to Wati, where other expeditionary groups were gathering, fully believing this would be her last chance...