Donimah Southlander's page

0: Acid Splash, Arcane Mark, Bleed, Dancing Lights, Daze, Detect Magic, Detect Poison, Disrupt Undead, Flare, Ghost Sound, Light, Mage Hand, Mending, Message, Open/Close, Prestidigitation, Ray of Frost, Read of Magic, Resistance, Touch of Fatigue
1st: Enlarge Person, Feather Fall, Grease, Long Arm, Mage Armor, Magic Missile, Magic Weapon, Protection from Evil, Shield, Snowball, Touch of Gracelessness, True Strike
2nd: Bull's Strength, Frigid Touch

1. Donimah is an apprentice wizard of Riddleport's infamous Order of Cyphers, unusual among the organization as an indigenous Shoanti woman.
2. Tall like most Shoanti, Donimah is unusually thin and wiry compared to her people's average. She keeps her head shaved, as she was raised, and wears sturdy, plain robes and travel-clothing, preferring yellow for the majority with blue and sea-green accents. Across her skin are a number of different tattoos, including Thassilonian runes, more conventional sailor icons and marks familiar to the Axe Clan, or Shadde-Quah, of the Shoanti. Most prominent is a small broken circle of runes around her left eye, which correspond to the runes on Riddleport's Cyphergate, as well as a prominently-placed rune of The Precious Gleam in the gap. These runes begin glowing yellow with arcane energy whenever Donimah casts a spell.
3. Donimah's father was born a member of the Axe Clan, but was banished from his quah for a crime or betrayal he refuses to speak of. He took baby Donimah with him to Riddleport, using the swimming and seafaring skills he had learned among his people to support himself and his child as a whaler, fisherman and later dock-hand. This has given Donimah a very mixed view of her heritage: her father still has pride as a Shoanti and raised her in as many traditions as he could remember when he wasn't at sea, but Donimah still knows that this same quah cast him out and feels like they refuse to live in the modern world. The reason she uses "Southlander" as her last name is because she has not come of age among a Shoanti community, never earning an honorific to be called by.
4. Like most Cyphermages, Donimah is fascinated with the history and magical power of ancient Thassilon, whose ruins dot Varisia. She has noted how many of her people's totemic icons share similarities with Thassilonian runes, so in addition to her power and knowledge she feels her studies are a way to reconnect with her heritage in a way the nomadic quahs are too stubborn to even consider.
5. A very goal-oriented and ambitious woman, Donimah seeks Thassilonian lore and secrets that could put her ahead of her fellow apprentices. She has a tendency to hoard, whether it's wealth, power or secrets and is reluctant to part with what she considers hers, a habit she developed growing up in Riddleport. Her father wanted to give her a better life, and together they scraped together enough money to pay for Donimah's tuition, and she now seeks to return the favor and give her father a comfortable life in his old age. She is somewhat awestruck by the ancient Thassilonians, regarding them as nearly godlike in their command of magical power, hoping she can match them in some small way, proving herself in a world where she feels the Harrow Deck was stacked against her from birth.

1. Donimah has come to Sandpoint following some leads her research has uncovered, and is looking to coordinate with local scholar Brodert Quink to investigate further. She hopes what she uncovers from this will make her a full-fledged Cyphermage.
2. Something I want to explore through Donimah's character is her coming to learn just how awful Thassilon and especially its Runelords could be, and doing some soul-searching to decide whether that's a path she still wants to pursue.

1. Donimah's experiences with the Cyphergate began long before she actually joined the Order and she has developed a hypothesis that it may not be an arch at all, but a ring.
2. To be discussed between us and the GM if Donimah is recruited!

1. Ahdak Dives the Deepest, Donimah's father, was born to the Axe Clan of the Shoanti, but was banished for reasons he never speaks of. His honor already thrown away, he decided making a living in Riddleport, a city his quah loathed as a den of untrustworthy criminals, wouldn't make things much worse. He made a living on various whaling and fishing ships that sailed out of Riddleport, leaving Donimah in the care of whatever sailor's wife would take her in while he was away, scraping together enough money to pay her tuition with the Cyphermages, allowing her a more permanent home and an opportunity to build a better life than he could provide on his own. As he's gotten older, he finds himself going out on ships less and less, now instead helping them load and unload at Riddleport's docks.
2. Elias Tammerhawk, the current Speaker for the Order of Cyphers, is a man Donimah regards with equal parts awe and fear. She is an eager student of his, in the times he deigns to teach between his dealings with Riddleport's underworld, if only to curry favor with him. But she also regards him as something of a flighty dilettante, more concerned with his political status in Riddleport than serious academic achievement, and not truly committed to learning the deepest Thassilonian secrets, given his arcane methodology as a diviner rather than following the Thassilonian Specialist practices Donimah embraced.
3. Fiaro Belagrossi is an older member of the Cyphermages who Donimah has had as a teacher for several years. He and Donimah have had many spirited discussions about their respective heritages as well, since Belagrossi claims descent from the oldest of Varisians, and he's helped her see some of her father's point of view in having pride in a heritage that may not have treated him best, especially since all of Donimah's understanding of the Shoanti came from him and she's never really encountered other Shoanti herself and been able to form her own opinions about them. Recently he has departed Riddleport to pursue the Order's interests in Magnimar, bidding Donimah a fond farewell and encouraging her to visit him should her travels bring her there.

1. When she was a child, Donimah often scavenged flotsam in and around Riddleport's docks, competing with packs of goblins and beggars for the best scrap and junk to pawn off so she and her father could have some extra money. She was always more daring than some of them, accepting dares to swim out into the harbor, dodging the hungry fish in search of items stuck down in the brown water. It was on one such dives that she swam all the way out to the edge, and down to try and touch the base of the Cyphergate. When she did, she thought she'd spotted something buried in the muck and despite all her instincts telling her to resurface for more air, she attempted to dig it out with her bare hands, and discovered the base of the Cyphergate didn't just stop at the dirt of the harbor, but continued beneath it, bending back. She touched the exposed rune and got a shock to her mind that made her open her mouth, letting all the air out before she blacked out in turn, strange murmurs and images swimming through her mind. She woke on the beach hours later, her father worrying over her as a few other scavengers watched over his shoulder. He sobbed as she woke up and made her swear on her blood to never do something that dangerous again. Ever since that day, those murmurs and images will return to her mind, and it eventually sparked her interest in wizardry.
2. The most significant memory Donimah has about the Cyphermages actually has nothing to do with magic: the day she and her father gathered up all the money they had scrimped and saved, the pay from so many voyages her father had sailed, the profits from selling salvaged sea junk and helping local fishmongers with their gutting, along with a few charitable donations from some of the families who'd taken Donimah under their wing while her father was at sea. Donimah had never seen that much money in a single place, and she worried constantly as they made their way to the Cypher Lodge that some enterprising cutpurse would target them. But they made it and Donimah never forgot how the mage who received them looked at her, a wharf urchin and a Shoanti-blooded too, like the idea that SHE could become a wizard was some kind of joke. But his expression immediately changed when her father emptied the purse out for her tuition. That uncertainty and contempt melted away almost immediately, and she was ushered into perhaps the cleanest and nicest rooms she'd ever seen and told this would be her new home during her apprenticeship, before she even had a chance to hug her father goodbye. She'd known money was important before, but this had showed her just how much power it gave, almost as much as magic, and she decided she'd ensure she'd have both in equal measure so no one ever looked at her or her father like that ever again.
3. A memory that Donimah actually looks fondly on was a time when she was bullied by a wealthier student. She'd seen how she dressed more plainly than the others, her shaved head and her battered, secondhand books and realized she must be barely able to afford the tuition and deduced her Shoanti heritage, not wasting any time before showering her with condescending cruelty. Offers of aid in studying as a way to lure her to her circle of friends for mockery, magical pranks to show her superior arcane skill and cornering her to lecture her on her meek barbarian brain. Dominah endured this treatment for weeks, her fellow students and even instructors not aiding her because generally the Cyphermages were a callous, competitive lot, and if Dominah couldn't handle this she probably wasn't cut out for it. But one aspect of her Shoanti heritage that Dominah did value was stoic resilience and stubborn pride. She endured the insults, knowing her bully was a coward and a fool, and when the time was right, she challenged her to a non-lethal spell duel. She couched the challenge in terms she knew her enemy couldn't resist, stroking the other girl's ego and suggesting this was her chance to prove her superiority to Donimah once and for all. Then when the actual duel came, Donimah protected herself with her own magic and whaled on the other girl with a barrage of telekinetic fists. She sneered at her former bully, and left her on the floor bruised in body and ego. She never dared cross Donimah's path again.