Madame Tsura's page

+2 to Intelligence.
Bonus Feat.
Skilled: +1 Rank at 1st and +1 Rank at every level.

Weapons and Armor Proficiency: Proficient in all simple weapons.
Witch's Familiar: Female Raven, "Morrigu". Speaks Varisian.
Witch's Patron: Not sure, either Occult, Venegance, Enchantment, or Healing if need the heals in group.
Cantrips.
Hexes: Misfortune, Cackle. DC 15.

Starting Gold: 105gp
Crossbow, heavy [50 gp, 8 lb.]
Bolts x50 [5 gp, 5 lb.]
Club [nil, 3 lb.]
Dagger [2 gp, 1 lb.]
Explorer's Outfit [1 gp, 5 lb.]
Scarf, pocketed [8 gp, 1/2 lb.]
Spell component pouch [5 gp, 2 lb.]
Flint and steel [1 gp, nil]
Backpack [2 gp, 2 lb.]
Blanket, winter [5 sp, 3 lb.]
Waterskin [1 gp, 4 lb.]
Whetstone [2 cp, 1 lb.]
Worn-out Deck of Harrow Cards [nil, nil]
Twine x50ft [2 cp, 1/2 lb.]
Entertainer's Outfit [3 gp, 4 lb.]
Sewing needle [5 sp, nil]
Candles x10 [1 sp, nil]
Bell [1 gp, nil]

Total: 39 lbs (medium load)
Carrying Capacities: 33 lbs or less / 34-66 lbs / 67-100 lbs
Remaining gold: 24 gp, 8 sp, 6 cp

Spells per day: 3/1(+1)
Spell DCs: 14/15
Spells Known - (* = memorized)
Cantrips: arcane mark, bleed, dancing lights*, daze, detect magic*, detect poison, guidance, light, mending, message, putrefy food and drink, read magic, resistance, spark*, stabilize, touch of fatigue.
1st Level: burning hands*, cure light wounds*, obscuring mist

To a true Varisian, there is no other life than that lived upon the road. Unbound by land and unsullied by stagnation lays freedom of choice, freedom from unjust laws and corrupt dictators, the freedoms to live as you will it. Into such a proud clan of Varisian people was born Tsura. It was by her father’s easy laugh and her mother’s brilliant smile that Tsura learned the ways of her people but it was truly by her grandmother’s wisdom that she learned the ways of the world. Countless stories and anecdotes were woven into rich tapestry that would become Tsura as she grew from just a child into a beautiful young woman.

Tsura would become the treasure of her clan with her father’s laugh and her mother’s smile; the lithe dances of her aunts and fearlessness of her uncles; the compassion of her grandfather and the fathomless knowledge of her grandmother. She took to the Harrow early on, pulling fate from the cards as easy as a fish breathes water, and was in line to be her clan’s next fortuneteller once her grandmother passed into the Boneyard but as often as these things happen, her peoples’ ambitions were soon slain by the power of ‘true love’.

It was a cool autumn morning, only a few weeks after her fourteenth naming day, as her clan’s wagons were readying to leave a small town in Ustalav when Tsura made her plans. In the days proceeding that morning, she had met a handsome young man named Henri, the son of the mayor, and had fallen head over heels in love with him. Feinting sickness as they were about to head out, Tsura retired to her family’s wagon-home and created a fake mass on her pallet using blankets and pillows. Afterward, she slipped unseen from the back door of the wagon and into the woods nearby as the caravan got underway on to the next stop. Miles down the road by the time her presence was missed, Tsura and Henri had eloped, wed at the local temple of Pharasma. Henri’s father was not thrilled by his son’s choice in wife, but indulged the boy as he always had in the past.

A few days later, after discovering her disappearance and turning around to look for her, Tsura’s family returned to the village in a frantic search for their daughter. What they found was a happily married young woman who did not wish to leave her new husband even through the barrage of tears and angry words that arose as her clan tried to convince her otherwise. It took the threat of violence by her new husband and other men of the village to finally send Tsura’s clan running which did break Tsura’s heart to see the looks of disgust and sadness mixed upon her peoples’ faces as they left, giving up the girl to her new home.

Weeks passed with Tsura soon forgetting her painful separation from her clan by rejoicing in the new wonders of being a bride. It was not very long before the signs began pointing to the growth of their first child that had taken root in Tsura. A little time passed in happy bliss as Tsura embraced her new life with as much vigor as she had her old one but troubles soon appeared about a quarter through her pregnancy.

On a ride to the next village to assist the locals with building a bridge, her husband vanished without a trace. Search parties found little beyond Henri’s frightened gelding roaming the nearby woods while Tsura fretted day and night that they would find him dead in a ditch. A month passed with no sign of Henri and by then the villagers had given up searching for him. There was a memorial service held for him which Tsura was unable to attend due to being bedridden from exhaustion coupled with her pregnancy.

The day following the one month anniversary of his disappearance, Henri stumbled into town in the same cloths he wore the day of his vanishing if but more ragged and disheveled. He seemed to be in a daze as his neighbors, friends, and family welcomed him back. When asked about what happened to him, Henri’s face would screw up in concentration which turned into frustration as he replied he had been lost in the woods, that he could not find his way out.

To say that Tsura was overjoyed was to put it mildly and the stress of the disappearance followed by the excitement of his miraculous return was almost too much for her taxed body to stand. She fell into a fever-induced sleep that lasted over a week with the village doctor fearing for both her and the baby’s lives. Upon awakening, Tsura was remanded to her bed until the baby was born. It was in these months that Tsura noticed that her husband didn’t seem to be all there anymore. He had grown cold and distant to her, taking to drink hard liquor for long hours at the tavern every night, and seemed to wander the town late at night, lost in his own thoughts.

When it came time for the baby to be born, Tsura’s health was in such a poor condition that the labor was long and dangerous. After twenty hours, Tsura’s daughter came into the world, her body and voice as weak as could be imagined. The doctor did not think she would last the night. It was that first night that the change happened. The next day, the doctor announced the baby had somehow made a recovery in the night and was no longer on the cusp of death. He also remarked how odd the child’s eyes were now as he swore she had blue irises the day before and now had one green and one grey. Tsura did not care as she was glad that her daughter was healthy and alive. Henri grew more distant after the arrival of their daughter, coming home more and more often drunk.

Disillusioned now with her life with her drunkard husband, Tsura found solace in raising their daughter, who she named Zarina after her own grandmother. The child grew up as carefree and of good humor as Tsura did in her old life yet Zarina unnerved their neighbors all the same with an otherworldliness that hung around her like an aura. It was Zarina's ninth year of life when Henri fell from his horse and broke his neck, ending his life. The doctor said it was the ale in his belly that lead to the mishap but the villagers began to gossip what once had only been idle whispers, that Zarina had somehow spooked the horse after a bad argument between her mother and father that lead to bruises and a retreat to the bottom of the bottle in both respectively.

The true breaking point in the goodwill of the villagers would come the next year though when several other children playing with Zarina in the woods nearby didn’t return for supper that evening. Everything from foul play to talk of Zarina being some form of shape shifting monster was tossed around in accusation when worried parents and angry villagers confronted Tsura and her daughter. Tsura had witnessed one such mob before back when she traveled with her clan and did not need to have any pictures painted for her of what the villagers would do if they got their hands on Zarina. She took her daughter and what few possessions they could stuff into a bag and fled the village. For months they walked, scrapping together any food they could from their meager supplies and what Tsura could earn telling a few fortunes. It wouldn’t’ be until they found another clan of Varisians that Tsura felt safe enough to stop putting distance between her daughter and the village.

Tsura begged the clan’s elders to admit herself and her daughter under their protection and they were welcomed into the clan as if long lost cousins. Once more on the road, Tsura remembered all the things she had missed about her people and tried to instill that knowledge into her daughter. Years once more passed in relative peace until Zarina’s fourteenth naming day when the ‘voice’ as her daughter called it began to speak to her in both dreams and the waking world. For weeks, Zarina struggled with the tantalizing whispers to come seek her true destiny before eventually giving in to the suggestions. Tsura panicked when she discovered her daughter had run away from the caravan so she set off in fast pursuit but somehow was always a few days behind her daughter’s quickened pace.

It was the night of the autumn equinox when Tsura finally caught up with Zarina only to discover her daughter deep in some sinister ritual with a hideous hunch-backed old woman with skin a sickly shade of green. As the ritual reached its apex, Tsura attempted to stop it and break her daughter out from the evil hag’s control. Zarina looked at her mother with a moment of sadness creasing her young features before whispering into her ear, “I love you, but you are not my mother,” then with freakish strength, her daughter shoved Tsura backwards. Tsura went tumbling away from her daughter and the hag, bounced against a tree that rattled her head before slipping over the edge of a small ravine and into the small but swift flowing stream. By the time she regained her senses enough to pull herself from the waters, Tsura was a mile down river from her daughter and the hag. She returned to the site as soon as she was able to find nothing but cooling embers from the fire and obscene sigils carved into the nearby trees. The wail that crawled forth from Tsura’s maw was such that the birds of the forest took to wing in a flurry of feathers.

In the following months, Tsura never gave up looking for signs of her daughter. She turned to the Harrow cards for answers and when those failed her, she turned to the occult, immersing herself in magic and lore gleamed for her years of study under her grandmother as she tried to harness the very mysterious powers of the world to her own ends. Her quest for knowledge has somehow lead her to the land of Cheliax, where the infernal devils rule through proxy. Seeking power to find her daughter, Tsura is nearly ready to make a Faustian deal if it means she would be one step closer to her goal. Her quest lead her to the city of Whitecrown and its mysterious shadow creatures that prowl the night.

In another day, a lifetime ago, Tsura was the very description of vibrant. Her smile, her laugh, her kindness, all came easy and were given freely to all those around her. But life over the last few years has worn her down and where once a laugh bubbled forth on a velvet voice now is only a cold, humorless cackle. A gaze that once could set the heart a flutter in many a man now threatens to losen the bowels of many who meet it.

Tsura has the dark-skinned, voluptuous curves and lithe grace which native Varisians are reknown to possess. Dark auburn locks sweep down full and free from atop her crown to frame her sapphire blue eyes. While no longer a young woman as she appears around the age of thirty, her beauty has done little to diminish over the last decade. The only blemish upon her heart-shapped face are the deep smile lines upon each side of her lips and the newer worry lines spread across her forehead. Her voice was once velvet wrapped in silk but now has a hard quality to it. Her blouse and skirt are the normal colorful garb of the Varisians, enchanced by brilliant sashes and baubles bedecking her form.