Niamh Viernisadd's page

Any who know of Niamh's elven heritage can mark out her elven features, yet other than her ears, none of her elven features are prominent enough to mark her from other humans, though still making her undeniably beautiful, her angular facial features are softened by her human heritage, leaving the beauty of the slender features with none of their harshness. Although slender, she is not skinny, and her frame has filled out well as she begins to leave her late adolescence and enter adulthood. She keeps her yellow hair short to keep it from getting in her way when she spends hours bent over books, but long enough to still play with it as she reads. Her skin is fair by human standards, though dusky enough to elves, her eyes are a deep sea green flecked with bits of bright blue.

Niamh's parents were only briefly lovers. Her elven father abandoning her human mother, not being able to face the idea of her growing old while he remained in his prime. And so he fled, incidentally leaving her with his child in her womb. Niamh was an energetic child, but also gentle and compassionate, her only desire was to satisfy her ever-insatiable curiosity. Her mother did her best to raise the young half-elf, in a small village on the sword coast. But when her daughter's magical talents began to manifest, she packed the two of them up and headed for Waterdeep., hoping to find a wizard's academy that would accept her or a mage who'd take her as an apprentice, knowing that Niamh's thirst for knowledge would be pleased with a wizard's life, and knowing that it would be a better future for her daughter than anything she could give.

In time they found an academy that woul take Niamh. There she learned not only to control her magical abilities, but to excel at them, and soon she was studying with apprentices beyond her year. However in time her talent got her in trouble. many students were jealous of her skill, and indignant that she'd dare advance past her year(even though in reality it was no act of arrogance or ambition on her part, she was merely seeking to advance her own knowledge and magical skill, for it's own sake, ansd was uniterested in any praise or status). An overproud student, a nobleman's son and possessing no small skill himself, attacked her, challenging her to a spell duel that she had no choice but to accept, and both, each still being inexperienced in magic, were seriously hurt in the exchange. The other student was expelled, and the instructors, seeing similar but not as overblown jealousy in many other students, requested she seek her training elsewhere, but in reality it was a demand.

She ended up seeking the former Archwizard of the school, Tarathel Laeledross, an elf whom had far surpassed the other instructors, even the one that replaced him when he'd stepped away from his position years before, and had retired to recently reclaimed Myth Drannor(see Richard Baker's The Last Mythal series). So the young half-elf set. The journey was long, but in time she reached the great elven city and sought out the archwizard. At first he was unwilling to take her in. But she was resolute and waited at his door for many days, doing and moving little beyond studying her spellbook and staring at his door. Until he gave in, impressed by her dedication, and took her in as his apprentice. He grew even more impressed as he discovered for himself her great talents in wizardry, and was pleased to have had such an excellent student find her way to him. There she completed the basics of her wizardly training.

It was there that Niamh discovered the Elven heritage that her mother couldn't give her. She fell in love with the Seldarine(Faerun's Elven Pantheon), a devotion matched only by her dedication to the arcane. She soon entered the Elven priesthood even as she continued her arcane studies.

All was going well for her in the Great City, until she read the book. It was an incredibly potent magical text, borrowed by her Master from Araevin Teshur. It had been left out in her Tarathel's study in the open. She'd gone to meet him there, as was there custom, and s he hadn't yet arrived, she sat down to read it, as she often did with interesting texts while waiting for him. Only a great deal of magic was bound in those pages, and once she began reading, the magic urged her on and kept her from stopping as it led her through the ritual as it had led Araevin Teshur years before whe he sought the power to battle House Dlardrageth, as the ancient mages of Aryvandaar had before him to face the same house.

Her soul was led to Arvandor where she was met by a Ghaele Eladrin. The Eladrin saw her pure heart, wanting only to accumulate ever more knowledge, to ever improve herself, and to do right by the Seldarine and those she met, offered her the same deal that Teshur and the mages before him had. She took it, seeing it both as a way to become more like the direct servants of her gods, and for the benefit the power would grant to her arcane studies. It is important to note that it was only the advancement of her studies, and perhaps the ability to use it to further the Seldarine's goals and to help others, that the power interested her at all, was an important factor to Eladrin when it peered into Niamh's heat to see if she was worthy of the gift, for she was young and had no desperate cause that she needed the power for, as the others before he had. But she was deemed worthy, and much of her soulstuff was changed and made to be more like that of what an Eladrin's Soul(And body, since theirs are one and the same) was made up of.

Upon awakening from the ritual she had not changed visibly, though her physical and mental abilities had greatly benefited from the change, and there was an undeniable aura of freedom and goodness about her, or so said her mentor. Tarathel had come upon her halfway into the ritual but knew he could not possibly stop it without risking his apprentice's body, mind, and soul. He fully explained to her what had happened, explained that her newfound celestial power and intellect would effect the way she worked magic, only subtly, but enough to make learning by his hand more cumbersome than studying magic on her own, and would be much less effective than if she learned how to best use her magic on her own. He suggested that she travel the world, explore new magic, and although she was loathe to abandon the old elf, who'd become a surrogate father to her, she consented. A few days later she was off, with little more than her magic and her gods to aid her. She decided she begin her adventure's right there in Myth Drannor, for the city still had many places still in ruins, unexplored. Ther were few palces in all Faerun with such a concentration of magic. So, she reasoned, why not begin there?

Soon after, in her venture into the ancient parts of the city, she fell through to an ancient level of the metropolis, long buried, after some exploration she came upon a portal, which she managed to activate, despite it's age and fraying enchantment(which was a mighty one even then, being a near unique elven artifact that could punch through the barrier to the plane of shadow and past it into other cosmologies, though only for a one way trip, and it took decades to build up enough magical power for even one person to travel through, longer still with the enchantment weakening from it's great age). That's how she stumbled into Kaledun, though she found she could not return to Faerun. She has not been there long, and usually makes coin by serving as an assistant and some extent an apprentice to wizards in need of the help, or selling minor enchantments and healing. She fears she may never make it back to Faerun, may never see her mother or Tarathel again. But her gods still answer her prayers and comfort her, and there are so many new things to explore, so much magic to discover, and entirely too much fun to be had!