Mala's life has been a rather uneventful one. For a gnome that is. She can barely remember now a time when she didn't live in Absalom, but truly the city is all she's ever known. She remembers growing up on its streets vividly. The smells and sights and sounds, always something new and different, always a new adventure to be had as she dodged the guard or an angry merchant who seemed to take offense at her borrowing some bread. Ah those were the good old days. Sure there were times when she didn't eat enough, or couldn't find a good place to sleep... but that was part of the charm and mystique.
But then came the professor. A professor Lorrimar had found her and, apparently seeing something in her that she herself did not, sponsored her towards a post at the Academy. There she found a new kind of excitement and wonder, called books. She began work in the library and hasn't stopped in over fifty years. She has lost herself in books of every kind, but particularly histories. Early on she took to squirreling herself away with a good history book and reading it until she fell asleep, and then dreaming of the stories she read. It was so fascinating. The world was so big, and she didn't even need to leave her city to see it. She could see it all right there in that library.
Unfortunately it was this very obsession with the wonder of what could be found on a page that would have been her undoing. For gnomes are not meant to seclude themselves in the walls of libraries simply reading about the world. Luckily for Mala, she met two people who would perhaps save her life. The first was Sylvalia. Though she would not know it when she first met the elf, this woman would be instrumental in her life. Mala had met her in the library, the elf was a student and Mala had seen her around even before that, she was sure of it. Mala helped her when she could and the two developed a casual friendship that would really take off when another person entered their lives, the Pathfinder Shevala. Shevala took them both under her wing, seeing the potential that lay within them, and helped to cultivate their individual talents.
It was Shevala who saw the first minute signs of the dreaded Bleaching in Mala. It was under her urging that Mala began to consider life outside what had become an increasingly small realm. And it was from her example and with Sylvalia's companionship that she would undertake her great journey. Into the very depths that her new found mentor had herself ventured. The Red Redoubt.
