Zelara, 'Zel' The Planeswalking Tiefling

[Thorin Thunderpants]

Sigil is a city with a bit of an identity crisis.

This is putting it mildly indeed, for one might live there tens of years, and never see two planeswalkers floating, sliding, teleporting or simply slithering along the streets that looked quite the same. This stems from the fact that Sigil is the middlepoint, a kind of a crossroads, in between thousands of different planes of existence. It explains why you might see a beholder and a githyanki bargaining hard on a scroll while some traveler beside them suddenly vanishes into another dimension. All this also makes it loud and smelly, and more magical and occult than most could tolerate. However, as with all metropolises, it also enables one to find their true calling. Almost anything is possible in Sigil, or at least almost anything is within arms reach, provided you do not actually reach out to grab it. Unless of course you're prepared to have a myriad of unpleasant arcane things happen to the limb in question.

So, as one might guess, growing up as another street urchin in a city the size and extravagance of Sigil did not exactly lend itself to a life of leisure and creativity. Food was mostly stolen, sometimes found, and at worst times hunted. Magical trinkets and magic itself though, was abundant. It was not long after her fifth birthday that Zel cast her first cantrip, lighting up a dark alleyway to keep the shadows at bay. Perhaps magic was in her blood, the taint of the underworld passed on from her demon father, perhaps it was the old mage robe she used to sleep under that bled the arcane into her mind, but there it was. At nights she would tell stories to the other gutter rats, enhancing the drama with small magical lights, sounds and illusions.

Of course, it being Sigil, it wasn't exactly uncommon. She didn't really think much of it, merely used it. She was always much more interested in people and their stories than dusty old tomes or even shaping the reality to her will with spells. It was also what drew her out of the gutter, and into the thriving underworld (gravity in Sigil is not quite uniform, so it could also have been the upperworld, but bustling and dangerous it was nevertheless). After being forced to look in to every nook and cranny and sneak into every crevice of the city in search of sustenance, none knew its inhabitants as well as Zel, and no one could catch a hiding criminal like her. This soon caught the attention of the different organizations and figures in the city, and Zel obliged their requests (and demands, and threats) of finding whoever they wanted to find with great success. Things were going great, and she had even gotten a name, the Planestracker, as a sign of how good she was at finding people who didn't want to be found. Not that she knew anything about tracking, just had a knack of getting into the good graces of diviners, invisible stalkers and air elementals.

Then one day, she found an old ring in a room. That room was not exactly a room she was supposed to be in, but it was precisely that reason that had gotten her there. The Illithid that had vacated the room some time earlier could not catch her on account of being dead as a doornail, and a little extra income before her employer came to loot it would not hurt. So she saw the ring was magical, pocketed it, and climbed out the window to the street. And felt a strange sensation as the familiar dusty brown streets of Sigil blurred and melted in front of her, to tall green spikey organic formations, a lush green carpet, and a stone wall with a gate that read Baldur's Gate in the tongue of the Prime Material Plane.

Template For Character Creation Reward:

First Name: Zelara, or just Zel
Last Name: Uh. Planeswalker?
Appearance: A tall tiefling with a bloodred mohawk and extravagant clothes
Race: Tiefling
Age: 17
Height: 5'10''
Weight: A skinny gutter rat
Eyes: Strikingly blue
Hair: A mohawk the color of old, dried and tainted blood
Facial Hair Style: none.

Personality Profile:
Zel could be described as an extreme case of ADHD, except that her mental faculties are just fine. It's just that living in Sigil means you've seen literally everything, so she will change her focus in a heartbeat if it strikes her fancy and alleviates the eternal boredom she faces in the prime material plane
General Health: Decent, though the years of living in the gutter have not left her with an iron fortitude
Deity: -
Initial Alignment: TN
Profession: A spy, informant, tracker and a gutter rat
Base Class & Proposed Development: Bard/swashbuckler, possibly rogue, maybe some spellcaster prc
Habits/Hobbies: Using magic for mundane tasks, getting bored of things
Languages: Common, Infernal
Weapon of Choice: Rapier

Goals: Zel is a very flexible personality, and is too adaptable to feel strongly about anything, but it's conceivable that some day she will find a cause she wants to join on the Prime Material Plane. However, she might join their rivals the next day. She will of course always look after her own interests, and if those make her a spy for both the thieves guild and the flaming fist, so be it.

Possible Plot-Hook Ideas and Misc Facts:

She's a charismatic diplomat and a spy without bluff ranks. Go figure. Also, she is starting to find this whole swinging sharp sticks around to stab monsters -thing pretty cool.