Raised in Westpool, Gwyn is the adopted daughter of a shipwright and a lumberjack, an only child in a poor family living in the miserable port town. Gwyn's young life was rough, as her family barely managed to afford food and housing, struggled to make ends meet between jobs, and constantly had to put Gwyn into hiding whenever events conspired to have them both out of town at the same time, for fear that if left alone and discovered their daughter would be hauled off by slavers, or executed for fear of the strange white scales that adorned her legs and hands or her ability to suddenly change into a half-snake person, a fear associated with the dreaded and loathed Yuan-Ti dwelling in the forests and swamps of the south. Gwyn - unawares to even herself - is not a Yuan-Ti, but rather one of their distant and estranged cousins the Naga, who dwell on the northern isles of the Senkaku Archipelago; her birth parents, visiting the lands of Stormwind, were caught in a storm and their ship was badly tossed in the winds, causing many - including both the visiting Naga - to be thrown into the hungry depths. Gwyn managed to be saved, but the ship's crew wanted nothing to do with the strange serpent-child and abandoned her in Westpool where her adoptive parents, by good fortune, found her and took her in.
When she was around 10, the ruler of Westpool, Mayor Tibalt Khrocini, was promoted to Vismargrave of Adivian Falling for his actions in press-ganging and forcibly enslaving ships and crews of enemies of certain families at court, and Gwyn's parents - Donovan and Quinne - decided this was the last straw. They moved to Westcrown, which at the time was no less corrupt but at least less aggressively so. Much of their work still took them northwest to the edges of the Sentara Woods, but by this time Gwyn was old enough to be left on her own, safe enough not to risk kidnapping every time she was solitary, and capable of performing basic tasks to make money for herself.
Around 15 she began manifesting the early signs of magical potential; a local magistrate had her tested and determined she might have an affinity for evocation, and advised she be sent to Port Haven for training at the earliest possible time. Her parents, still barely managing to make ends meet, could not afford such extravagance, but Gwyn was undeterred; she saved her earnings for the next five years and managed to cobble together just enough for her entry funds. She departed for Port Haven at 21, spent five years in the Marble Academy, and - to the complaints or reliefs of many professors - was officially licensed by the Collegiate shortly under two years prior. She's managed to keep knowledge of her serpentine nature to a minimum, for fear of retribution against the "Yuan-Ti mutant" she believes she is, usually by wearing long coats, dresses, or pants to hide the scales on her legs and long sleeved tunics and gloves for her hands, and almost never shapeshifting in public unless absolutely necessary.
She returned to Westcrown and took up a business as an investigator, helping local law enforcement from time to time as an arcane consultant. Most of her other cases are petty crime investigations, lost-and-founds, or kidnapping searches that have led to recovery of several items of considerable worth or lost children. She's not oblivious to the corruption on the streets of Westcrown, though, and figures it's only a matter of time before she crosses the wrong person....
