Lethe of Alkenstar's page

About Lethe of Alkenstar

Lethe was brought up in the Mana Wastes, and suffice it to say this upbringing did not last long. Her parents, two wandering Catfolk emmigrants from the decaying nation of Nex who were killed in a gnoll raid upon Martel before she was old enough to prime a rifle, left her with a deep understanding of the turmoils that life presented, and how to deal with them.

She accomplished such through study. Although the racist inclinations of some of her peers in the study of guncraft and manufacture would often jape at the "black kitty," she soon left each one of the gawking neanderthals in the dust, rising quickly in her study and gaining the admiration and envy of more than a few of her proctors. Her natural obsessive qualities allowed her to go into a deep meditative, and oftentimes dangerously exclusionry to the outside world, focus, working away many sleepless nights in the search of a solution to one problem or another, how to better rifle a barrel for greater accuracy, what alloys would best suit the makeup of the gun.

Her proficiency with the weapons themselves soon got her greater renown as well. A crack shot with the pistol, her obsessive qualities allowed for her to practice day after day at the range, and she soon won more than a few competitions.

She was amiable enough however, and at least tried never to let her obsessions come at the cost of her outside relationships, not that it always worked however.

It came a time however where Lethe was called upon by city merchants looking for some added counsel on trade with the border nation of Nex. On her way there her caravan was beset by a band of Orc Marauders. Each of her companions were slaughtered in turn, but, either through debatably good fortune or through sheer instinct, Lethe was able to barter for her life in exchange for her knowledge of guncraft.

She traveled for months with these newly turned Orc slavers, working her mind day in and day out searching for a method of escape, but the solution proved to her to be forever elusive. While she was highly supervised when she was made to work on the firearms, she did one day manage to hide a severely damaged pistol in the hem of her torn pants, but realizing the one pistol could do nothing against an entire horde of ugly green monstrosities she fell further in melancholy.

That was until the day the Orc chieften came back from a raid on a nearby town, holding a bounty of strange artifacts and magic lore, objects and concepts that were absolutely foregin to a girl who had spent her entire life in a magical vaccum, devoid of the very notion of magic. It was instantly insatiably enticing.
Every night from then on Lethe would sneak into the guarded tent where the loot was stored and every night she would pore through one tome to the next, absorbing and digesting every morsel of information.

Things on the outside were growing darker. There were murmerings of a power struggle within the Orc clan's leadership. The horde was beginning to splinter and soon the tension would definitely snap. Lethe realized that now was the last chance for escape, before the inevitably civil war where she would almost certainly be caught in the crossfire.

Lethe took her gun and immediately went to make her escape, but was confronted instead by several blood splattered, half crazed orcs back from a recent raid, and she could tell by the looks in their eyes they didn't just want to kill her.

So she held her gun up and fired.

A blast of energy erupted between her and the Orcs, sending Lethe flying back into a tent, but also setting off the numerous kegs of black powder around the camp.

The explosion was deafening, and it took nigh on a half an hour before Lethe could overcome the disorientation and make her way away from the Orcs, out into the desert, her newfound power brandished from her hip.