Chamilienne Spectrana
Tiefling
Chaotic Evil
Fighter-Necromancer
Portait at:
A Luskan native, born Chamilienne Spectrana Malannan, "Chami" was born at midnight of the winter solstice in the harsh winter of 1292 DR, to Lady Serpenienne Spectrana, then one of the most cunning and influential wizards of Luskan's infamous Hosttower of the Arcane. Not only a fearsome mage in her own right, Lady Serpenienne was also wife of Lord Harkon Malannan, a high captain of Luskan, and one of the most ruthless and powerful at that. (Historical note: One of Lord Malannan's servants, the elf Cylilia, mothered in 1262 DR the now-infamous bard Cyri, best known as a "heroine" numbering among the six credited with averting demonic and barbarian invasions of the Ten-Towns of Icewind Dale in 1281 DR; and it is speculated that Cyri's human blood is Harkon's; although Cyri herself is known to say that all she learned from once asking was of the back of Harkon's hand.)
Chami as a young girl was close to her mother, who encouraged her daughter's early and eager, almost obsessive, dabblings in arcana; and the girl even spent much time in the Hosttower itself from her infancy on, and it can only be wondered what things she might have seen - or partaken in. Lord Malannan, little better a father to her than to his servants' children (of which there were quite a few), spoiled but neglected her, engendering or at least exercising the paradoxic blend of passionate covetousness and cold detachment that would grow more a hallmark of Chami as she grew. Harkon's interest would grow along with her, for the worse, for when the girl reached her teens and her friends (or agemates, at least) were just beginning to show signs of womanhood, Chami exhibited additional characteristics, such as thin fangs among her secondary teeth, a slightly forked tongue, and a dry, scaly texture to her fair skin.
It would be then that Lord Harkon would learn, upon inquiring about this to one of his own "friends," a Hosttower warlock and adversary of Serpenienne, that the Lady had, the spring prior to Chami's birth, engaged in an obscure summoning ritual that may have gated into her Hosttower quarters none other than the demon Incubus, a fiend of a fiend indeed. Without a word to his wife, Harkon conspired with the warlock, and in less than a fortnight, the woman was found dead in her own lab, having apparently burned to death horribly after mixing the wrong spell components during an relatively simple experiment.
Harkon next turned his attention to the daughter whose tiefling lineage would soon become publicly noticable, but his falling sword went astray when he was inexplicably blinded midswing, and felt his daugter's venomous fangs in his neck. Rather than face the wrath of her half-brothers (the eldest of which actually turned out to be less than grieved at his father's passing), Chami that moment gathered her few dearest belongings and fled into the streets of Luskan, knowing not where she'd go in a city of pirates that would find one and only one inevitable use for an orphan girl like her. Still she ran with some instictive course, and indeed it was her heritage leading her straight to a little-known planar portal in the city.
Chamilienne then found herself in the Sigil, an other-planar city that was completely unfamiliar, barely comprehendable, and many times as dangerous. However, the Sigil also offers many times the opportunities, and she soon made her way, earning further education and a few coins to spare under the wing (literally) of a harpy necromancess, and there she began to develop a particular, almost addictive, interest in the deathly arts. During this time she found a good friend in a fellow tiefling girl, the rogue Chyrel'Dalis, and when her apprenticeship ended, she moved in with Chyrel and joined the eclectic "troupe" run by the girl's older brothers, the bards Jakk, Seth, and Haer.
Chyrel worked largely as a cutpurse, and Chami found her niche using her arcane and alchemic knowledge, or an outright divination now and then, to appraise what Chyrel and the other pickpockets and burglars "found," using her Hosttower-garnered lore to fill in the occasional gaps in Chyrel's brothers' extensive knowledge. This work led to many extended discussions with Haer in particular of the multiverse's many facts and tales, which the canny bard was always overflowing with and eager to dispense, telling her among other things that her serpentine features (which he confessed to adoring, even fetishizing) were the mark of "snake-blood" - a yuan-ti somewhere in her ancestry, and not from Incubus (whom Haer knew and even let slip that he had some sort of running wager with, but never said more) - though the fusion with fiend-blood had apparently brought out whatever her mother Serpenienne had carried.
As Haer filled her ear, he spilled into her heart, and the cold-hearted young necromancess's penchant for the occasional burst of obsessive passion was sparked for the bard, who perhaps sensed this and quickly professed his own deep, mad, and undying love for her. A torrid, all-consuming relationship ensued, despite Chyrel's occasional and private warnings to her friend regarding her older brother's fickle history, and Haer took his new girlfriend on all sorts of vacation-romps across the Planes - gold-dust-downhill-skiing on Mount Celestia, extravagant shopping sprees in Bytopia, romantic, secluded camping trips in Arborea - though Chami found that the more she learned, the more she regarded most of existence with detached interest, and so few things with any love.
She found it easy to embrace her boyfriend's Doomguard ethics, despite its contrary nature to the necromantic arts; and this rift would in due time prove to be Haer's staging point for his explanation of why they simply weren't meant to be together after all. Chami nearly killed him with her bare fangs and now-clawlike nails in her ensuing fit of rage, but the bard scampered away with five parallel claw-scratches down his chin, and a fang slash along each cheek, not to be seen again for some time. Seth and Jakk quickly banished Chami from the troupe in hopes of luring their brother back. Chami cursed the skald and the jester for the injustice, but as she took her leave, Chyrel found and soothed her by expressing mutual disgust for her three brothers' behavior, and the two decided to cool off with a jaunt to the Prime, specifically the beaches, gardens, and shops of Neverwinter, before finding some new line of work (like thievery) together.
There they heard about the call for mercenaries in the besieged far North, and made their way up to Luskan, where Chami found the Hosttower now run by the warlock who had slain her mother. Swearing vengeance for the loss of one of the few she had ever loved (and, for the loss of the other, still promising herself eventual revenge against him and his brothers, a thought she opted not share with Chyrel), Chami's desire to become a great and terrible wizardess, and a fearsome swordswoman if necessary, solidified her decision to become an adventurer, alongside Chyrel, bound for Icewind Dale.
Tiefling
Chaotic Evil
Fighter-Necromancer
Portait at:
A Luskan native, born Chamilienne Spectrana Malannan, "Chami" was born at midnight of the winter solstice in the harsh winter of 1292 DR, to Lady Serpenienne Spectrana, then one of the most cunning and influential wizards of Luskan's infamous Hosttower of the Arcane. Not only a fearsome mage in her own right, Lady Serpenienne was also wife of Lord Harkon Malannan, a high captain of Luskan, and one of the most ruthless and powerful at that. (Historical note: One of Lord Malannan's servants, the elf Cylilia, mothered in 1262 DR the now-infamous bard Cyri, best known as a "heroine" numbering among the six credited with averting demonic and barbarian invasions of the Ten-Towns of Icewind Dale in 1281 DR; and it is speculated that Cyri's human blood is Harkon's; although Cyri herself is known to say that all she learned from once asking was of the back of Harkon's hand.)
Chami as a young girl was close to her mother, who encouraged her daughter's early and eager, almost obsessive, dabblings in arcana; and the girl even spent much time in the Hosttower itself from her infancy on, and it can only be wondered what things she might have seen - or partaken in. Lord Malannan, little better a father to her than to his servants' children (of which there were quite a few), spoiled but neglected her, engendering or at least exercising the paradoxic blend of passionate covetousness and cold detachment that would grow more a hallmark of Chami as she grew. Harkon's interest would grow along with her, for the worse, for when the girl reached her teens and her friends (or agemates, at least) were just beginning to show signs of womanhood, Chami exhibited additional characteristics, such as thin fangs among her secondary teeth, a slightly forked tongue, and a dry, scaly texture to her fair skin.
It would be then that Lord Harkon would learn, upon inquiring about this to one of his own "friends," a Hosttower warlock and adversary of Serpenienne, that the Lady had, the spring prior to Chami's birth, engaged in an obscure summoning ritual that may have gated into her Hosttower quarters none other than the demon Incubus, a fiend of a fiend indeed. Without a word to his wife, Harkon conspired with the warlock, and in less than a fortnight, the woman was found dead in her own lab, having apparently burned to death horribly after mixing the wrong spell components during an relatively simple experiment.
Harkon next turned his attention to the daughter whose tiefling lineage would soon become publicly noticable, but his falling sword went astray when he was inexplicably blinded midswing, and felt his daugter's venomous fangs in his neck. Rather than face the wrath of her half-brothers (the eldest of which actually turned out to be less than grieved at his father's passing), Chami that moment gathered her few dearest belongings and fled into the streets of Luskan, knowing not where she'd go in a city of pirates that would find one and only one inevitable use for an orphan girl like her. Still she ran with some instictive course, and indeed it was her heritage leading her straight to a little-known planar portal in the city.
Chamilienne then found herself in the Sigil, an other-planar city that was completely unfamiliar, barely comprehendable, and many times as dangerous. However, the Sigil also offers many times the opportunities, and she soon made her way, earning further education and a few coins to spare under the wing (literally) of a harpy necromancess, and there she began to develop a particular, almost addictive, interest in the deathly arts. During this time she found a good friend in a fellow tiefling girl, the rogue Chyrel'Dalis, and when her apprenticeship ended, she moved in with Chyrel and joined the eclectic "troupe" run by the girl's older brothers, the bards Jakk, Seth, and Haer.
Chyrel worked largely as a cutpurse, and Chami found her niche using her arcane and alchemic knowledge, or an outright divination now and then, to appraise what Chyrel and the other pickpockets and burglars "found," using her Hosttower-garnered lore to fill in the occasional gaps in Chyrel's brothers' extensive knowledge. This work led to many extended discussions with Haer in particular of the multiverse's many facts and tales, which the canny bard was always overflowing with and eager to dispense, telling her among other things that her serpentine features (which he confessed to adoring, even fetishizing) were the mark of "snake-blood" - a yuan-ti somewhere in her ancestry, and not from Incubus (whom Haer knew and even let slip that he had some sort of running wager with, but never said more) - though the fusion with fiend-blood had apparently brought out whatever her mother Serpenienne had carried.
As Haer filled her ear, he spilled into her heart, and the cold-hearted young necromancess's penchant for the occasional burst of obsessive passion was sparked for the bard, who perhaps sensed this and quickly professed his own deep, mad, and undying love for her. A torrid, all-consuming relationship ensued, despite Chyrel's occasional and private warnings to her friend regarding her older brother's fickle history, and Haer took his new girlfriend on all sorts of vacation-romps across the Planes - gold-dust-downhill-skiing on Mount Celestia, extravagant shopping sprees in Bytopia, romantic, secluded camping trips in Arborea - though Chami found that the more she learned, the more she regarded most of existence with detached interest, and so few things with any love.
She found it easy to embrace her boyfriend's Doomguard ethics, despite its contrary nature to the necromantic arts; and this rift would in due time prove to be Haer's staging point for his explanation of why they simply weren't meant to be together after all. Chami nearly killed him with her bare fangs and now-clawlike nails in her ensuing fit of rage, but the bard scampered away with five parallel claw-scratches down his chin, and a fang slash along each cheek, not to be seen again for some time. Seth and Jakk quickly banished Chami from the troupe in hopes of luring their brother back. Chami cursed the skald and the jester for the injustice, but as she took her leave, Chyrel found and soothed her by expressing mutual disgust for her three brothers' behavior, and the two decided to cool off with a jaunt to the Prime, specifically the beaches, gardens, and shops of Neverwinter, before finding some new line of work (like thievery) together.
There they heard about the call for mercenaries in the besieged far North, and made their way up to Luskan, where Chami found the Hosttower now run by the warlock who had slain her mother. Swearing vengeance for the loss of one of the few she had ever loved (and, for the loss of the other, still promising herself eventual revenge against him and his brothers, a thought she opted not share with Chyrel), Chami's desire to become a great and terrible wizardess, and a fearsome swordswoman if necessary, solidified her decision to become an adventurer, alongside Chyrel, bound for Icewind Dale.