Mihaela Stellamaris's page

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DEFENSE
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AC 22 (24. vs evil), touch 16 (18 vs. evil), flat-footed 16 (18 vs. evil)
Fort +5, Ref +8, Will +9; +2 vs. enchantments, +2 vs. evil, +1 vs. fear
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OFFENSE
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Melee +1 starknife +18 (1d4+2d6+15/x3)
Ranged +1 starknife +18 (1d4+2d6+15/x3)

There are tomes, to be found in some sequestered monasteries of the Agathion Lady Shei, or in the vast libraries perched atop the improbable heights of the Tian-Xia mountains, which claim that the difference between man and object is that the former has a history, while the latter holds but merely a purpose. For man is thrown into existence devoid of meaning and aim, and must create his own path in life in a constant struggle for self-determination — while a tool holds only as much function and form as was imbued into it by its maker at the moment of its crafting, its essence predetermined and unchanging.

If we accept these elucubrations as truth, we must also conclude that the simple notion of Mihaela’s story becomes ipso facto a paradox of sorts, an oxymoron in the making. We shall strive nonetheless.

The very name she’s known by, for starters: if such thing a true, intimate name of things and people exists, that’s not hers. One of the many orphans growing up in the winding streets of Magnimar's lower districts (the result of a passionate tryst, whereas the long- and short-lived had found a measure of solace in each other’s embrace? A child conceived out of wedlock, given away to conceal the scandal? An unfortunate by-product of one of the City of Monuments' many houses of pleasure?), we know not which name, if at all, was bestowed upon her by her natural parents, and if any moniker had been given her by whatever congregation had tended to her worldly needs in the years of her childhood, its knowledge was lost in the subsequent horror which befell upon the Underbridge District in 4679 AR.

In other circumstances, one would say her 4 years of age were but an aggravation to the demented awfulness she came to be an unwilling part of (as any pious and decent folk would agree that any sin turns more grievous when witnessed through the eye of childhood innocence), but the case being what it was, it might not be too-fetched to call it a mercy, of sorts. For the blessed inability of the younger brain, not yet accustomed to the strict categories of causality and space, to piece together what unfolded before its very eyes might have very well been the only thing keeping it intact — of the Desnan inquisitors who blew the whole underground sanctum up before the ritual was completed, only those who didn’t stare directly at the THING retained enough sanity to report on what they had glimpsed: a hideous mass, made of scores of bodies grotesquely fused together (it would be later ascertained at least some of them had belonged to the throng of orphans, derelict, vagrants and vagabonds whose disappearance from the Irenspan-overlooked alleys of the Underbridge District no-one would have noticed) — apparently crawling not THROUGH the three-dimensions of known space, yet somehow BETWEEN and BENEATH them — surrounded by the droning chants of mindless, black-hooded acolytes: "IA-IA-SHUB-NIGGURATH! IA-IA-SHUB-NIGGURATH! IA-IA-SHUB-NIGGURATH!"

Among the debris a lone child was found, the would-be final sacrifice, the last piece to be fed to the THING before the star-portal truly opened. How it survived a pandemonium where far mightier had had their bodies — or their sanity — torn to shreds, it was anyone’s guess. Though a pitch-black monarch placidly fluttering her wings over the girl’s body was taken as a sign of the Black Butterfly’s favor by the survivors, who took her under their wing and gave her the auspicious name of Mihaela Stellamaris — both from the name of their deceased leader and an old term mariners used to call Cynosure, the Northern Star.

This would have been but the prelude of her story, but in our case, it must act as an epilogue of sorts. What followed were years of gruesome training and single-minded devotion to a cause, as if the experience of the Outer Terrors had forever suppressed the person she was to become and instead re-forged her into a living, breathing weapon with a singular purpose: to prevent something similar from ever again infringing the barrier between worlds. Indeed, years passed before she even uttered her first words in the presence of her newfound mentors, causing suspicions of feeble-mindedness to be raised and then promptly assuaged once she started devouring every dusty tome she could get her hands on; still, she remained laconic and soft-spoken throughout all her life, but with Silence being part of her Goddess’s portfolio, that too ended up being taken as a heavenly sign.