The Story of Aline

Aline the Thaumaturge

A short write up by Aline's player, Lucinda.

Aline comes from a fairly cosmopolitan and urbane town. Her parents were both half-Sylvan artisans making a comfortable, but not wealthy, living. Then they had six kids and there wasn't enough money to go around. At about the time #5 came along, Aline was 14 and showing distinct signs of magical abilities - setting woodstacks on fire, tricking her friends with shocking handshakes, that sort of thing - so when a representative of the wizards' college offered her a scholarship to study there, she and her parents agreed that it was a good idea.

Aline studied more or less diligently at the college for about 6 years but grew frustrated at the slow pace at which knowledge was doled out. There was some element of having to prove your dedication before being admitted to eldritch knowledge, which is annoying, and as at any university, what you get to learn is determined to some degree by who you know. She hungered after knowledge but did not have the charisma or patience to play politics well.

One day, she was reading a tome in a seedy off-campus tavern when she saw an old classmate roll in. Her classmate had left the university a couple years before. She regaled Aline with tales of hardship and near-death - but also of encountering wondrous magics, accruing enough gold to afford more spells for her spellbook than her scholarship had allowed and being refreshingly free of the academic hierarchy. They went out to a farmer's fallow field and she showed Aline a couple of the advanced spells she had learned. "Well fuck this then," said Aline. She returned her library books, mailed her few important possessions back to her parents, and headed off to Swallow. The rest you know. She does not take naturally to hardship the way some of us do, and would rather sleep in an inn than a cave any day, but she is learning so much nifty stuff that it's worth it. She is super excited about all the various ways there are to make things explode.