 Picture by Masamune Shirow Born of a human mother and an elven father, Ezra Thalbor is generally high-spirited, with a strong dedication to her friends, and an even stronger sense of duty. Though not a terribly astute girl, she makes up for any shortcomings with a positive attitude and a lot of good fortune. | Character History:
Ezra's mother was Maia Thalbor, a human priestess to the Goddess of fortune and misfortune. Maia has never told Ezra of her birth or her father. Maia raised Ezra as any loving mother would. Ezra never met her father, nor has she ever desired to do so. Ezra grew up learning to take care of herself. Training almost continuously as of age 6, she learned to master the art of combat, besting many of the male warriors of her community once she was old enough to compete in the local tournaments. By Ezra's fifteenth birthday, the local magistrated gave his leave for her to compete in the king's Tournament of Knights. She faired well against all challengers except one. In the final round of the tournament, Ezra faced an emaciated-looking man wielding a short sword and a double-ended dagger. Waiting until the judges' backs were turned, he blinded her with a belt pouch full of sand. The sand damaged one eye permanently, blinding it. For several months, Ezra practically isolated herself from family and friends, as she relearned her fighting skills without the benefit of depth perception. After her recovery, she trained herself to fight blindfolded. When she finally emerged from her isolation, Ezra's attitudes towards life had changed. She felt that no amount of determination could assure any outcome of life, and began to trust more in the winds of change wrought by the goddess her mother worshipped. She spent less time training, and more time walking aimlessly about the town. While Maia worried about Ezra's safety, she trusted in the goddess to protect her daughter from harm. At 19 years old, Ezra took to adventuring. She developed a variety of survival skills, including a strong sense of direction. After several years traveling from town to town, working as a mercenary, she earned enough to set out on quests of her own choosing. She traveled alone or with small groups, returning to familiar cities only for healing and to renew her supplies, or to spend a night enjoying herself during festivals. Unlike the noble quests found in story books, or the self-serving missions undertaken by greedy nobles, most of Ezra's quests involved random wandering. Keeping a general feel of where she went, she felt most satisfied when she picked a direction at random, and walked until something happened or she got tired. Rather than seeking to fulfill a purpose in her travels, Ezra travelled to let purpose find her. Purpose seemed to find this arrangement agreeable, as it found Ezra quite often. Her wanderings led her to lost travellers on nearly a weekly basis. Every new town held a desperate stranger, and Ezra typically stood out from the crowd, either by her aimless wandering, or by standing around when everyone else had somewhere they needed to be. Generally trusting and always friendly, she never refused to lend a hand, and often ended up in the middle of the strangest situations. Wandering through the woods one day, Ezra found herself outside the mouth of a deep cavern. A faint voice echoed from within. Following cries for help, Ezra soon got lost in the cavern's maze of tunnels. Tripping over something in the dark, she discovered the body of a dead warrior, clad in fine armor, with a blade lashed at its side. She sized the armor by feel against her own heavily battered mail, then slipped it on, in the dark. The distant calls stopped soon afterward. After several days, she finally found her way out of the cavern, and realized what a spectacular find she'd made. She also found a note in the sheath of the blade, barely legible, which read, "If you find this note, please lead my ward to the light. This cavern has held us captive for weeks. I have no food left, and her magic has faded. Please, stranger, I beg of you, don this blade, that my ward may follow you." Only at this point did Ezra notice the shadow next to her own, that of a young lady, with no apparent source. The shadow has followed her ever since, providing her with silent guidance and whatever aid it could. |
| Origins of Ezra Thalbor:
It was the eve of the harvest festival, but Maia Thalbor could not feel joy. The high priest of the temple, an elderly man in whom she had trusted greatly, had passed away in his bed not two nights before. Sullen and confused, Maia decided to let her faith be her guide. She would trust in her Goddess to choose her fate. Hiding away in the temple's alchemy laboratory, she chose a variety of potions, and set them in a ring around the Goddess of Fortune's emblem: Two poisons, a love potion, a potion of wisdom, a potion of giant strength, an exploding vial, a potion of nymph's beauty, a potion of deformation, a potion of beast's rage, a potion of amnesia, two bottles of ale, and a bottle of water, in case the Goddess wished for Maia to decide her own fate in the end. Maia then stood in the center of the circle, and spun until she was too dizzy to stand. She stumbled out of the circle, tripping over one of the vials, and landing on her palms. The vial she tripped over rolled along the floor, coming to rest against her right wrist. Without even looking at the vial, she uncorked it, drank its contents, then walked out of the lab in a muddled daze. The next morning, Maia awoke in a local tavern. She was alone in a small room, her clothes strewn about on the floor. She felt nauseous, and dressed herself slowly. On her way out of the tavern, she went to the bartender to settle her bill for the room. The bartender said it had already been paid for, but he did not know the name of the elven gentleman that Maia had arrived with the previous night. Someone had cleaned up the alchemy lab by the time Maia returned to see which potion she had drunk. | Origins of the Shadow Girl:
Long ago, within the walls of an ancient temple, a dark cult practiced its arcane rituals. They sought to summon a great demon to their service, and use its power to conquor the land. The summoning ritual required the sacrifice of three virgin girls upon a stone altar, over the course of a three-night full moon. Each girl was to be beheaded on her respective night, using a steel scimitar bathed in dark energies. The summoning was ruined not by a band of crusading adventurers, but by a single roaming bandit, as vile in his heart as the dark clerics themselves. The night of the final sacrifice, he stole into the temple through a lofty window, under cover of darkness, seeking precious gems. When he found none, he settled for raping the teenage girl he found, already gagged and tied. The thief stole away just as the sorcerers came to fetch their last sacrifice. Not a mortal soul knew of his presence there. The dark clerics lashed the girl to the altar, and began their ceremony. When they struck the final blow to the girl's neck, a seering pain washed through all the dark clerics at once. Their ceremony had been tainted, and as punishment, the demon they summoned stole their souls before returning to the depths from whence it came. When morning came, the girl awoke to the dark scene. The temple had fallen to ruins overnight. All around her lay dead bodies, draped in black robes, some partly buried beneath the rubble. Then she saw herself, still upon the altar, with the dark blade that had cleaved her neck now fallen upon the ground. She went to reach for it, but her hand had no substance. She had become a shadow. She then tried to run, but found that she could make no more distance from the altar than the outer ring of the ruined temple, fifty feet in any direction. Her voice was naught but a whisper so faint it could not even form words. For days all she could do was wait, and weep. Finally a band of adventurers came. They sought to foil the cult's plans, but found naught left to do when they arrived. One, a strong but aging priestess with a love of nature and a curiosity for magic, found a runed scimitar beside a stone altar, where it appeared that the cult had sacrificed a virgin girl. She took the blade for her own, both to study it and to keep it from those who might use it unwisely. The rest of the adventurer party gathered what they could from the site. They took the amulets from the dark clerics, and agreed to each take one, and hide it away where no one would ever find them. A sacrifice such as this, they decided, should never again be allowed to take place. When the party began to leave, the priestess felt the blade offer a slight resistance to leaving the site. The shadow girl, however, felt herself irresistably dragged along behind. She was bonded not to the altar, but to the sacrificial blade. The party split up, and the priestess made her way to a complex of natural caves that she had found during her youth. She wandered into the caves, and made her way as deep as she could manage, far deeper than she had ever gone as a child. Then she heard the echo of a faint weeping, and decided to find its source. She wandered through the caves, but found nothing, and soon realized that she had gotten herself lost. "Where are you?" she finally called out. That is how the old priestess learned of the shadow girl, whom she had dragged all this way against any will of her own. They tried for countless days to find an exit, but in the end gave up. As her supplies dwindled the priestess spent what little time she had left comforting the whispering girl who served as her only company, and telling stories of brighter times. |
| FAERUN DEITY - TYMORA | |
| 3.0 LEVEL | 3.5 LEVEL |
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