Elidiel Solumil

Character sheet

Description
As a changeling Elidiel is rarely in her natural form—a form that is, in any case, unremarkable. With pale blue hair and the same half-finished face as others with doppelganger blood, she’s rather hard to identify.

She has a few forms and identities she regularly wears. The first, Moured Firesong, is a young half-star elf man, perhaps a bit over forty, paler even than the norm for his race and sporting slightly curled hair the color of a russet apple. His face is all angles, with a chin like a chisel and cheekbones you could use to cut glass. Moured is a researcher through-and-through, and maintains cordial (if not particularly close) relationships with many scholarly institutions. He is quiet, stolid, and reflective, with very little resembling an independent streak but also with little desire for companionship. On occasion Elidiel will circulate one of her scholarly works that she’s either not quite sure of or that she doesn’t think is all that interesting under Moured’s name. In this way, she ensures that she has a persona that can move in scholarly circles with relative ease, but that will inspire little curiosity.

Wilibert (Wili) Plainfoot is a tallfellow halfling from Luiren and a traveller and adventurer. He left his family after a disagreement that resulted in his brother’s death. While he was blameless in the matter (well, perhaps not blameless, but guilty only of being a bit annoying), he decided the matter would strain relationships with the rest of his family. Tall, with steel-blue eyes and dark hair that he normally leaves tied in a ponytail, he carries himself with a sort of negligent confidence and whistles nearly everywhere he goes. He tends to speak extremely quickly, excising words he deems unnecessary and stringing the rest into one breath if possible. Elidiel took up this guise when she was researching hedge-magic in halfling communities of Luiren and comes back to it periodically, particularly when adventuring; while Wili doesn’t have the connections Moured does, Elidiel finds it much easier and more natural to be outgoing in this form.

Elidiel has noted a distinct tendency to pick male alter egos, but prefers not to contemplate what that might say about her.

Personality
Elidiel’s personality is primarily driven by the mismatch of changeling physiology and elven culture. While she reached physical adulthood only a few years before the elven children born around the same time, she reached mental maturity far faster and couldn’t bring herself to mimic their dilettantism. Though her parents never brought it up, it was plain from an early age that she had, at best, a fifth of the time on Faerun as her friends. In all likelihood, she would be dead before they ended their various fosterings and apprenticeships.

Because of this, Elidiel has never felt entirely comfortable in any skin. Seeming an elf felt like a comfortable lie, the kind parents might tell children about death. While her changeling shape feels more natural and less deceptive, she is acutely aware of the stares this inspires. And any other form lacks even the second-nature feel of elfdom. This has also resulted in a quite severe case of imposter syndrome, with a constant need to prove herself. Attempting to do so, unfortunately, frequently ends up being thwarted by the fact that she will then chalk these successes up to her alter egos’ personalities rather than her own work.

While not in her natural form, Elidiel tries to take on the personality of the character she’s inhabiting. Though not as skilled as many other changelings at this enterprise, she mostly succeeds in keeping her own personality and habits hidden, if not entirely sublimated.

In addition, this unusual upbringing has instilled a strong, steady current in her thoughts of seeking out ways to extend her lifespan. She quickly eliminated undeath and stealing life-force as practiced by Thieves of Life as being distasteful and likely to estrange her from her family (part of the reason she wishes to live longer than she will), and is hoping that some form of ancient magic or hedge magic will provide an answer—it is this that has led to her academic interest in folk-magic. One option she is quite interested in is the living zombie, which as she understands it usually involved enslaving elves or other long-lived humanoids but could be adapted to work on non-sentient creatures.

This has also led to Elidiel feeling a great deal of contempt toward those who would spend 	their days frivolously, wasting the time they had alive. This is especially the case with elves, whom she tends to hold to the standard of her parents—not an easy bar to clear. She herself spends as much time as possible doing something she considers worthwhile, whether this is study, a task for Aglarond, or a person she is fond of.

Elidiel is very cautious. She divines as often as she is able, and tends toward offensive magic that is tightly circumscribed in its targets so as to avoid friendly-fire. She is slow to trust (though in Wilibert’s shoes quick to feign trust) and unwilling to leave important tasks to others. This also translates into somewhat reduced scholarly output compared to some of her peers as she has a large backlog of manuscripts she could distribute if she were more willing to publish those with conclusions she cannot completely commit to.

Though she hasn’t returned in more than a decade, Elidiel is quite fond of her home in Aglarond. Because of their shared experience of being outsiders, she felt quite at home spending time with the half-elves of the Yuirwood (such as her master Lourdynn) and the rolling hills and sprawling farms of coastal Aglarond always brings peace. Though loathe to admit it, she appreciates the occasional chance to serve the Simbul’s government abroad, whether couriering messages, investigating, or participating in more clandestine activities.

Elidiel also has something of a mama-bear streak in her. She is extremely protective of people she is close to, particularly if they are younger than her. (That is, in a younger life stage; she would be especially protective of a young elf just leaving his apprenticeship even though he would likely be over twice her age.) Some of this has to do with her relationship with her son. As she was not allowed to be particularly involved in his upbringing she has displaced the maternal instincts onto others, though, of course, this doesn’t prevent her from protecting her son with exceptional zeal.

Background
Rarely does the birth of a child result in a wizards’ duel.

When Kerthariel Solumil became pregnant, she and her partner Aelor Elrylis were ecstatic. Their work as Olin Gisiae left little time for intimacy and they had thought their frequent exposure to hostile magics, both ancient and Thayan, to have rendered one or both of them sterile. They prepared for the child’s arrival in the usual way, converting some space in their shared house to a nursery, and prearranging fosterings for when the child reached ten. Toward the end Kerthariel’s pregnancy the expectation spread beyond family to the elven communities along the Aglarondan coast and even to some of the star elf enclaves in the Yuirwood.

The date—even the hour—failed to surprise. Aelor was practiced in divination, and Kerthariel wasn’t a novice in the school either, so they knew the day and had the midwife on hand. Elven labor is rarely easy, but the midwife’s magic made Kerthariel more comfortable and it was over relatively quickly.

It was when the midwife presented the wrinkled lump, swaddled in thistledown, that all of the Hells broke loose. The wrinkled lump was pale, with a short brush of light blue hair and only the faintest shadow of a face. She was a changeling, and that meant either Kerthariel or Aelor was too.

Aelor acted quickly with a binding spell, but Kerthariel was faster and erected veils of prismatic energy between them. Then Aelor tried to attack her with summoned creatures, but Kerthariel countered with barriers of force. This back and forth spell-tennis continued for some minutes until the midwife, screwing up as much courage as she could, stepped between the two dueling wizards. She calmed them, and convinced them to submit to examination by an impartial archmage.

It took much of the day to find an archmage with the appropriate spells, but they eventually did and he issued his pronouncement: neither of the parents was a shapeshifter. He also gave them a piece of advice he said had saved him many a trouble: trap their marriage bed with involuntary shapeshifting.

Once reconciled from their brief-but-deadly spat, Kerthariel and Aelor decided to rear the child, whom they named Elidiel, as their own. They tried, early on, to encourage her to use her natural form, but she quickly found that such only invited fear and shocked glances from adults and mockery and bullying from her peers. Before her sixth nameday, she had chosen a new name and a new body: that of Moured Firesong. Some knew of this deception, including her teachers and all of her parents’ friends, but it at least deflected most of the abuse. Out of love and respect for her parents, however, she acquiesced to wearing her own face at home and when their presence shielded her from most abuse from members of their community—one crosses a pair of Olin Gisiae at one’s own peril.

Elidiel’s parents were unwilling to foster her out as is traditional among elves. Aside from the fact that they were worried about the abuse she might suffer due to her form were they not by her side, they recognized that with her short life span each moment they could spend with her was precious. Even aside from this, their choice was a good one. With two devoted, intelligent, and educated parents, her natural intellectual gifts—which Aelor occasionally jested clearly came from his side of the family—flourished. They educated her especially in history (it being their specialties), but also most other academic fields and rudimentary arcane magic.

Come her fifteenth birthday, however, Aelor and Kerthariel decided that it was time to apprentice her to someone. Eventually, after a bit of haggling, they decided on an old friend of theirs, Lourdynn Aen. Lourdynn, a half-elf who split his time between Delthuntle and a tiny cabin in the Yuirwood, was a mage of rather indifferent talent but an expert theorist and exceptional teacher.

He was also very strict. Where her parents had been tolerant and encouraged Elidiel to follow whatever train of inquiry she fancied, Lourdynn demanded rigor, devotion, and a single-mindedness rarely encountered in teenagers. There were, as one might expect, a number of quarrels, a handful of which resulted in all-out fights. In fact, for a short period Elidiel ran away and lived with a street gang in Delthuntle.

Eventually Elidiel mellowed. Lourdynn was actually somewhat surprised at how quickly she matured, as his previous apprentices had been elves and so their adolescence had taken much longer. By the time she turned seventeen, Elidiel and Lourdynn had become very close. Despite the rumors a few gullible or malicious folk spread, Elidiel thought of Lourdynn in many ways: a teacher, a master, a confidante, a favorite uncle, and a mentor, but never as a romantic partner and Lourdynn never showed any interest in her. (Which is to be expected; Lourdynn’s tastes did not exactly run in Elidiel’s direction.)

As she grew older and drew closer to the end of her apprenticeship, Elidiel shifted her research focus somewhat. Now well-versed in magical theory and having long ago surpassed Lourdynn in practical magic, she began investigating the various ways of extending her life. She learned of—and rejected—a number of means of attaining undeath; aside from the distaste she felt, she was fairly certain that it would estrange her from her family, friends, and mentor, the very people that gave her the desire to live longer than she naturally would. She also encountered references to a few ways of extending one’s life by stealing others’ souls, a route she discounted immediately on both ethical and aesthetic grounds—draining the lifeforce of a helpless victim is the sort of thing a mad mage in an underground labyrinth would do and would be too gratuitously evil for anyone else to try.

Eventually she realized that the libraries she had access to simply did not have enough information on extending lifespans and resolved to leave Aglarond. Despite not having lived with her parents for nearly a decade, leaving the country where they lived (and thus making spur-of-the-moment trips back home impossible) was difficult and to her signified the end of her childhood. Over the next few years she jaunted from city to city, delving into libraries and picking the brains of other researchers. While interesting and edifying, this avenue fared little in the way of practical knowledge.

Around her 22nd birthday, she encountered a vague reference to a particular working of the Art that the Anagakoks of the Great Glacier that granted them extended life. With no particular commitments or obligations, she packed a bag and hired a Wayfarer Guide to take her to Ironspur in Damara and from there headed even further north into the bitter cold of the North.

Eventually, after some initial missteps involving a sacred caribou and the finer points of Iulutiun theology, she was able to make contacts in a number of villages who were willing to teach her what they could of the Anagakok tradition and pass her along to more. Eventually she was referred to an ancient master who lived alone in a grotto behind a waterfall, and over many months she lived with him, helping him and gaining his trust. It was during this time that she rescued a white fox from a hunter’s snare and, after he followed her around like a puppy for several days, bound him to her as her familiar.

Eventually she broached the subject: Was it true that Anagakoks knew how to extend their lifespans? He laughed at the question. In a sense, he told her, it was true; the fur that was the result of their rituals provided them with near immunity to exposure to the elements, but while no anagakok would meet an untimely death to hypothermia, neither would they live beyond any other Iulutiuns.

Needless to say, Elidiel was chagrined. More than a year, she thought, wasted on a fool’s errand. After a few days of steaming, however, she realized that she’d rather enjoyed her time on the Great Glacier. Not exactly for the climate or even the company, but for learning about the people, their rituals and their unique perspective on magic. Aside from its inherent appeal to her, she was fairly certain that very few scholars had spent enough time in the far north to learn what she had, and that was both exciting and ego-stroking. She could do far worse than spend time among other peoples few scholars had bothered to learn about. And, a little voice in her mind added, there were sure to be other esoteric traditions among the various peoples of Faerun. Everyone wishes they had more time on Toril; perhaps someone had found a way unbeknownst to the sages.

Having had more than enough snow to last a lifetime, Elidiel decided to relocate to Amn. Aside from the balmy climate, Elidiel knew that a friend of her parents’ lived there and had extended an invitation to her on occasion in the past. Indeed, he welcomed her with open arms and during the few weeks she stayed with him introduced her to a number of contacts in the city and helped her find an affordable apartment.

It was two chance meetings that led to the two dominating passions of Elidiel’s time in Amn. The first was an ebullient young priest of Hoar who was perhaps a bit too free with with his plans. Elidiel, under the guise of Moured, befriended him and joined the small cult he had accrued, ostensibly as a neophyte in the religion, but in truth to study them. She had never been particularly religious and mostly paid cult to Labelas Enorath in hope that such association might exert some subtle influence to bring her closer to her goal of an elven lifespan, so immersion in a religious community was fascinating. She actually grew to have a certain amount of sympathy for the Hoarites’ missions on behalf of their god. The first one she actually took part in, for example, resulted in the mysterious disappearance of a number of men who beat their wives (and a few who extended the brutality to their children), an action which she heartily approved of.

The other meeting occurred some months after she’d embedded herself into the Hoarite cult. In a bar with indifferent wine but interesting clientele a half-elf woman joined Elidiel (who was wearing Moured’s face) at one of the tall tables and began flirting with her. She had to do so repeatedly before her quarry realized what was happening. When Elidiel finally caught on she was intensely thankful for her complete control over her face’s color. When she thought on it for a moment, however, she couldn’t see any reason not to reciprocate. Having a lover in town would certainly make her more ordinary-seeming, and the woman was rather attractive.

The woman’s name was Arveene and the two hit off wonderfully. It wasn’t long, in fact, before they were living together in a small flat above a tobacconist’s. For two happy years they lived together, Elidiel working with and studying the Hoarites and Arveene working as a dressmaker.

It came crashing down when Arveene discovered she was pregnant. She was deliriously happy, but while Elidiel forced Moured’s face to express the same mix of heady joy and anticipation, she herself was spinning. She didn’t know if the child would end up changeling or half-elf, and what if the former? She doubted Arveene would react as her parents had, but it would shock her, and despite the deception their relationship was founded on she did love Arveene. So she revealed herself to Arveene.

About all good that can be said about Arveene’s reaction is that she slung no spells at Elidiel the way Aelor and Kerthariel did upon Elidiel’s birth. Horrible emotions played on her face—a face that, Elidiel was dismayed to note, still made her heart flutter—rage fading into disgust into shock and bewilderment, then back to rage. She began shouting at Elidiel, and, heartbroken, Elidiel left the apartment.

Elidiel was not there for her son’s birth. She wasn’t there for many of his milestones. Arveene at least would talk to Elidiel after she delivered the blue-eyed half-elf babe she named Evendur, but the anger and sense of betrayal never really left her. So Elidiel parented from afar, sending presents or bringing them from far away whenever she was able to stop in Amn. Several times she convinced Arveene to let her bring Evendur on various trips, and though Evendur loved her and she him they could never bond the way Elidiel thought a parent and child should. Half out of this emotional distance and half out of a lack of vocabulary, Evendur refers to Elidiel using her given name and describes her as his parent.

Since then Elidiel has undertaken a number of projects, some in search of a means of extending her life, some out of pure academic curiosity, and many out of a combination. She studied a pride of druids, clerics, and paladins devoted to Nobanion; halfling nomads around the Sea of Stars; the secretive genie-binders of Calimshan; even a cabal of Red Wizards; and many others.

Around two months ago Elidiel was perusing the private book collection of a halfling merchant she’d gotten very close to as Wili Plainfoot when she came across a reference to an object called the Heart of Gold. She’d come across the name before with only vague ideas about its powers, but one consistent thread in all the accounts was that it could extend its possessor’s life. Until that moment, though, she’d never heard even speculation about who made it or where it could be found. This reference, in an account of the bloody history of the Vast, mentioned in passing that something known as Aë Koruk—literally, the Gold Heart—had been created by the dwarves of Sarbreen nearly a millennia ago and that it likely remained hidden in the city when the orcs and drow destroyed it.

This was possibly the clearest clue Elidiel had found in nearly a decade and so she packed up her belongings and the half-finished manuscript on halfling folk-magic. Her abrupt goodbye probably left her merchant friend rather melancholy, but she was only barely attentive to her surroundings, let alone the people inhabiting them. She hired a caster more skilled in the Art than she to bring her to Sultim, and from there booked passage on a merchant ship headed for Ravens Bluff.