Talingarde was once great. Their king worshiped The Fallen, and Qibys Daergel was his spymaster. When the true king fell, and the temples were razed, Archmage Daergel lead one of the splintered factions that still valued freedom and power. To her last, Qibys fought to wrest her home from the clutches of Mitra. She was captured owing to her pregnancy, and she gave birth to Wocket in a Branderscar cell while waiting to be drawn, quartered, and beheaded for high treason and sedition. Wocket’s presence wasn’t enough to stay the executioner’s hand, and the girl’s birth was induced, leaving her frail into adulthood.
Frail little Wocket Daergel was raised in an alchemist’s guild. At first, she learned the story of her mother’s plight through the lens of her victims. It kept her broken, thinking her mother was wicked. Carrying that around and feeling like she deserved to be oppressed killed a lot of the gnomish glee in her. Once she worked her way into an apprenticeship with the guild she was discovered by one of her mother’s followers, a tiefling fisherman named Akchar. It was the first time recognition was followed by a smile, and Wocket will always remember that smile. Akchar took Wocket from her life of sheltered oppression, and retold her mother’s stories in a new light: A kingdom lost, a fallen God, a legacy worth avenging. As an adult, just hearing that the story might have had another side brought back all of the childhood trauma she had innured herself to, and every insult, shove, and kick over four decades suddenly filled her with vindictive rage. She only had to mention a hypothetical plan to burn down the guild quarter once, and she passed through Talingarde’s justice system like greased lightning. Everyone present at her trial knew her mother, or had been raised on stories of her, and no one bought that Akchar had found her. Whether the accursed tiefling turned her in himself, she’ll have to discover after she’s done what her mother could not: escape Branderscar prison.
For now, frail little Wocket is back in Branderscar, reliving her mother’s martyrdom, and totally unaware of her father’s contribution to her talents. For Qibys was a spellcaster through study and intellect, with only minor dabbling with powerful outsiders, and Wocket is slowly discovering that she has talents of her own which suggest her father played more than an incidental role in her mother’s plans. As long as she can hold her mother on a pedestal, and fight for what she understands to be that legacy, then her life has meaning, and the gale that rules her blood will grow to a tempest which will swallow Talingarde whole.
