Lalla Lovecroft -- Akadi's Softest Whisper
Posted: Sun Oct 09, 2011 11:23 am
First Name: Lalla
Last Name: Lovecroft
Appearance:
Race: Air Gensai
Age: 21
Height Average
Weight: Abnormally light.
Eyes: Like a couple of flickering silver stars.
Hair: Short, purple, and electric.
Personality Profile:
While most children of Air soar above the flock to scorn all those beneath them, Lalla continually has the wind taken out of her sails. Bookish, flighty, easily frightened, as hardened as a bowl of fresh cream and roughly as intimidating, the girl is not your consumate adventurer, nor even your average Windsoul. At least, not yet. Being young and uncertain, Lalla tends to try and hide what she is, concealing her szuldar beneath covering robes and her flickering, ethereal hair beneath a turban or helm. She is cast on the breeze, never in control of her own destiny.
And making friends is difficult for her -- being intellectual enough to anger people less intelligent than she is, and babbling just enough to irritate those who are. Weak-willed and unlucky, she has a tendency to fall in with people infinitely more dangerous and terrifying than herself. Sometimes for the better, but more frequently for the worse.
General Health: As a young woman raised in a desert monastery, Lalla is as trim and fit as she's ever likely to be. She can also pig down an entire tray of cupcakes and still weigh less than an infant gnome. I'm jealous, actually.
Deity: Akadi - a secret member of Akadi's Whisper. More on that in a moment.
Initial Alignment: Lawful Neutral. Lalla does what she's told. Frequently regardless of who's telling her to do it.
Profession: Lalla engages in a number of professions, always moving from one to the next as her interest shifts. Currently, she oscillates between astronomy, metacartography (the charting and prediction of temporary gateways and portals) and planar studies. Unfortunately, the niche of knowledge in all these cases was so obscure that the only people on this plane who cared already possessed knowledge far in excess of her own, and with double-rent due she was forced into common adventuring. Killing rats in cellars, collecting ten beetle legs.. you know the sort of thing.
Base Class & Proposed Development: Monk/Fighter, moving to Duelist/Tempest
Habits/Hobbies: Talking too much. That, and finding new ways to humiliate herself. She also likes to run, which is fortunate, as she has to do an awful lot of it.
Languages: Auran, Ignan, Terran, and Sylvan (since she wasn't paying attention and signed up for the wrong class when trying to get Aquan.)
Weapon of Choice: Twinned claw or kama.
Background:
(Warning: Lengthy)
A Bittersweet Blessing
Lalla Lovecroft was surnamed for a specific brand of wine, Lovecroft Garnet, that was exclusive to a certain Calimport inn. And her first name was Lalla, because those were her first words. Her parents remain unknown to the world at large, but I don't suppose there's any harm if we keep it between us. It's not much of a story: Her mother was a priestess of Beshaba (may she ever prosper,) and her father (long may his line endure,) was the exalted Eighth Djinn of the Searing West Wind of the Many-Jewelled-Calim. He knows about her, of course. He simply doesn't care. It's the nature of his kind not to care, especially about whatever misbegotten halfbreeds he sires from century to century. And it's probably the doing of her mother's patroness that Lalla turned out the way she did. Starting with her being abandoned in the Calimport Arms and named after a few infantile gurgles and a bottle of red wine.
So it's perhaps no surprise that Lalla was born a Windsoul, with a love for the desert and its howling storms, but also none that wanderlust whirled in her heart. The girl couldn't sit still, mentally or physically, frequently getting up in the middle of the night to race barefoot across the freezing sands under the silver moon. She changed her vocation as often as her underwear. Not precisely, you understand, that's a metaphor. She did it a lot, is what I'm saying.
Being an orphan, of sorts, her first job was as a slave. Unfortunate business, but, exotic though she was, even in the most debauched black market no buyer thought it anything but the worst kind of luck to buy a Windsoul slave in Calimshan. Until an Elven man, Teu-tel-quessir actually, an accountant of some kind, accepted her for little more than the promise of a tax break. A promise, incidentally, he immediately chose to forget.
And that was how little Lalla met Aurarch Anwynn Alishesh, of the Shrine to Our Lady of the Winds (Akadi, or Lady Aerdrie Faenya, if you're of a more cultured breed.) The shrine, a tiny thing of sandstone and clay in the midst of that long, white desert, that would be her home for the remainder of her upbringing. A dry, monastic affair. You don't want to hear about the details. A lot of sitting still, which we've established Lalla wasn't good at, and the food was consistently awful. Especially when it was her turn to cook.
The Whisper and the Roar
I should explain the faith itself, however.
The Akadian cult -- and it is a cult, never let them tell you otherwise -- is a distant, inscrutable thing, bearing two distinct denominations; The Whisper, which acts with subtlety behind the metaphorical curtain to bring about change, and the Roar, which acts with openness and force. Timid, unimposing and forgettable, Lalla was born for the Whisper. She's practically a sleeper agent, now, waiting for direction from her source. That would be me. Hello.
The whisper, you see, is the flap of the butterfly's wing, the imperceptible breeze that fans the eventual hurricane, the gust which stirs the pebble which spurs the avalanche, which buries the pass, which diverts the caravan, which delays the supply, which halts the advance, which undersupplies the army, which turns the tide of the war.
Perhaps a man is killed, for no reason at all - and I will confess that the cult's hands are, on occasion, red with blood, though rarely innocent. Blame is sought, conflict rises, two sides arm and prepare for battle, the peace of the valley in which they live, shattered on the anvil of strife. But then, before they clash, they see the dust on the horizon. An orcish warband, vast, advancing, swollen with bloodlust. A force that neither army could have withstood on its own, yet there they are, together, and ready to fight.
In the wake of their unexpected victory, truths are accepted. New oaths are sworn, treaties and friendships renewed. A valley torn by a cold war, now flourishes, prospers.
And as a consequence, production and quality of a certain brand of wine is tripled, even exporting as far as Calmport.
It is a web of cause and effect, invisible, pervasive and difficult to chart as the winds themselves. That, is what we do.
Once, Lalla was to infiltrate the library of the Balquis Occultarium and steal a specific book. The book, as it happens, was a treatise on an ancient Kara-Turi tea ceremony, bearing no visible importance whatsoever. When, after considerable efforts of stealth and evasion (hiding and running away,) she returned it to the monastery and asked what it was for, the Aurarch shrugged and replied that if she didn't want it, he'd give it to his neice.
Another time, she was told to run alone into the desert, a journey which took three days there and back on foot, carrying secret instructions within a conch shell. When she held it to her ear, a voice whispered that her orders were nothing more than to move a certain rock a few feet to the left.
She never did find out what that was for. Perhaps the others were simply making fun of her. Perhaps it was just a test.
Or perhaps the absence of that rock where it was once, and its presence where it once was not, would remake the face of the desert in a year's time. Perhaps the winds would change across the surface of the land, subtly, but inevitably, the sands slowy worn away with time, revealing a tomb, long-forgotten. And a destined hero might stumble across it as he staggered beneath the blazing sun, desperate for shelter until dusk. What would he find inside? What history would change because of it? A holy artifact claimed. An army raised from a broken people. A war. A conquest. A coronation. A total change in the political map. All for the motion of a single stone.
You're right. They were probably making fun of her.
There were other things Lalla wasn't good at, of course. I could list them, but the monastery doesn't actually have that much parchment. But that never stopped her trying. Threw herself at everything with awkward heedlessness.
She studied anatomy to work as a healer, learned every inch of the mortal body, but panicked at the sight of blood.
She worked as a courier, for awhile. She was swift, and light, and the wind was always at her back. But she couldn't keep her mouth shut.
She danced the gyre of six hundred bangles at the Calimport night market, but people left after bangle three hundred and seventy four.
She even tried to get into assistant politics, once. It ended in tears. Lots of them. All hers.
Eventually, she simply stayed and studied in the monastery, exercising and brewing tea, an art she had learned from a certain book on the ancient Kara-Turi tea ceremony.
Cause and Effect
I remember how brows were raised when it came time to teach her combat. The martial training of the body. To hone it into an instrument, as swift and forceful as the gale. It was before even the first year that her instructor, making a demonstration to the students, gave her one of his killing-claws and told her to attack. Oh, she didn't want to, practically on the edge of hyperventilating, as usual -- she doesn't need to breathe, and still she hyperventilates -- but he insisted.
Of the two of them, I don't know who was more shocked when she put that blade through his gut.
We healed him, of course. That's the benefit of being surrounded by clergy each and every day.
And it was no fluke. Lalla had the grace of a dancer, the speed of a hawk, the precision of a snake and the relentless momentum of a desert twister. Simply after watching her chop vegetables in midair during the festival of Atonement, during her brief stint as an assistant chef, The Hashishin, who knew good cutting when they saw it, attempted repeatedly to recruit her. The Burning Dead, that blood-soaked mercenary cult, promised her an afterlife of riches if she converted and served in their High Priestess's honor guard. After one particular incident in the night market, it was said Myrkul himself arrived and offered her a job. Completely untrue, of course, the girl would have screamed and fainted at so much as a picture of him -- but it illustrates a point; Lalla was very, very good at killing things.
She just wouldn't.
Zephyr Quroian of the Roar, himself a Windsoul, put it most succinctly.
"She's useless." was what he said.
Lalla met her exalted father, once, during a pilgrimage across the desert to old Coramshan, for he still manifests upon those sands from time to time. That was the moment my heart truly went out to the girl, I think, though I should never admit it. She so wanted to make him proud. To be like him. To make him smile. It was utterly pathetic.
I still remember this: The great Djinn grant wishes, he told her. Can you grant wishes?
Of... course she could, she stammered, practically biting her own fingers off. She could grant any wish he wanted to make. Anything at all, she'd find a way. She'd make it happen. For him. Her daddy. She could do it. She could do it. And so he made his wish.
He wished that she would go away.
A Farewell Breeze
"Lalla! Good news!" I told her, dumping her meager possessions onto the sandstone table, "You can't stay here anymore."
Her face lit up, then fell, as it all too frequently did. Aerdrie help me, I was going to miss teasing her, but I was acutely aware that I was the only one who did it out of anything resembling fondness. I'm not usually so sentimental, I swear it.
"Oh. But. Ah." - If you've ever heard her speak you'll be used to this - "Yes, that... that's... wonderful news. Isn't it?" she looked at me sidelong, desperate for a cue. "Yes. Very wonderful. Except the um. Part where I'm homeless and alone and starving and nobody loves me."
"Come now, Lalla, you've always been homeless. It's the first lesson we learn. Borne on the breeze, that's all any of us are. So! All packed?" I nudged the tiny bundle over the table toward her.
"But.. I don't.."
"You'll go to Candlekeep, I think. Place of learning, up by Baldur's Gate. You've always wanted to go to Baldur's Gate. Weren't you just telling me that the other day?"
"N..no. I've um. Never actually heard of..."
"Everyone wants to go to Baldur's Gate. Wonderful place. Apparently. Full of tieflings, too, so they certainly shan't bat an eye over you. There's an inn you can stay at inside the walls, run by an old disciple of mine, actually. He'll probably give you a fairly decent agreement on rent, if you drop my name and beg a little. Still have that book, by the way? Marvellous." It was a kindness, really. But those beautiful silver eyes were misting up, that lower lip was quivering.
"Rent? But I don't, um. Have any.. You know. Money. Because I have an ascetic lifestyle, and that.."
"--Not anymore you don't!--"
"...involves not having things, which is wonderful, truly, I don't mean to decry the philosophy at all, it's just that--"
"Good girl. Oh. Incidentally, whilst you're on the ship, it would be a tremendous help if you took a small brass key from the captain's cabin and dropped it off the port side at midnight on the second day."
"W..Wait! Midnight? Which side is p-" That was about the time I shut the door in her face. I could hear her out there, you know. Fidgeting, biting her lip, bouncing up and down on her toes, looking over her shoulder, never quite working up the courage to knock, like she wanted to.
Elves are good at listening. The older we get, the better we hear. And please believe me, it is a bittersweet blessing.
And that was how she left; with her father's scorn and my benign dismissal burning in her heart, and Akadi's silence, hanging above her like a void that could never be filled. Did the winds moan with a more mournful note than usual, as that evening came down? Perhaps I simply imagined it.
I confess it. Lalla is, as Quorian said, useless. A dilettante. She is a lost soul, a nobody, and will likely stay that way.
But a nobody, doing nothing, in precisely the right place at precisely the right time, can remake the face of the desert.
Thank you for listening to an old man's ramblings. I don't have much in the way of pleasant company, anymore, not since we sent her away. Ah well.
By the way, would you mind moving that rock slightly to the left?
------------------------------------
Goals:
Nothing and everything. Lalla's drive for learning and self-improvement is as ceaseless as it is fickle.
Possible Plot-Hook Ideas and Misc Facts:
Lalla's affiliation with the Whisper remains her strongest secret hook point. The cult's directives are frequently obscure, with consequences that may not become immediately apparent. And the great part is, you can justify making her do just about anything.
In between times, she'll lend herself to just about any scholarly quest or pursuit, having a special fondness for the scribes of Candlekeep and the priesthood of Oghma, rarely turning down a chance to be of help, learn something, or, more probably, get in the way a lot.
Last Name: Lovecroft
Appearance:
Race: Air Gensai
Age: 21
Height Average
Weight: Abnormally light.
Eyes: Like a couple of flickering silver stars.
Hair: Short, purple, and electric.
Personality Profile:
While most children of Air soar above the flock to scorn all those beneath them, Lalla continually has the wind taken out of her sails. Bookish, flighty, easily frightened, as hardened as a bowl of fresh cream and roughly as intimidating, the girl is not your consumate adventurer, nor even your average Windsoul. At least, not yet. Being young and uncertain, Lalla tends to try and hide what she is, concealing her szuldar beneath covering robes and her flickering, ethereal hair beneath a turban or helm. She is cast on the breeze, never in control of her own destiny.
And making friends is difficult for her -- being intellectual enough to anger people less intelligent than she is, and babbling just enough to irritate those who are. Weak-willed and unlucky, she has a tendency to fall in with people infinitely more dangerous and terrifying than herself. Sometimes for the better, but more frequently for the worse.
General Health: As a young woman raised in a desert monastery, Lalla is as trim and fit as she's ever likely to be. She can also pig down an entire tray of cupcakes and still weigh less than an infant gnome. I'm jealous, actually.
Deity: Akadi - a secret member of Akadi's Whisper. More on that in a moment.
Initial Alignment: Lawful Neutral. Lalla does what she's told. Frequently regardless of who's telling her to do it.
Profession: Lalla engages in a number of professions, always moving from one to the next as her interest shifts. Currently, she oscillates between astronomy, metacartography (the charting and prediction of temporary gateways and portals) and planar studies. Unfortunately, the niche of knowledge in all these cases was so obscure that the only people on this plane who cared already possessed knowledge far in excess of her own, and with double-rent due she was forced into common adventuring. Killing rats in cellars, collecting ten beetle legs.. you know the sort of thing.
Base Class & Proposed Development: Monk/Fighter, moving to Duelist/Tempest
Habits/Hobbies: Talking too much. That, and finding new ways to humiliate herself. She also likes to run, which is fortunate, as she has to do an awful lot of it.
Languages: Auran, Ignan, Terran, and Sylvan (since she wasn't paying attention and signed up for the wrong class when trying to get Aquan.)
Weapon of Choice: Twinned claw or kama.
Background:
(Warning: Lengthy)
A Bittersweet Blessing
Lalla Lovecroft was surnamed for a specific brand of wine, Lovecroft Garnet, that was exclusive to a certain Calimport inn. And her first name was Lalla, because those were her first words. Her parents remain unknown to the world at large, but I don't suppose there's any harm if we keep it between us. It's not much of a story: Her mother was a priestess of Beshaba (may she ever prosper,) and her father (long may his line endure,) was the exalted Eighth Djinn of the Searing West Wind of the Many-Jewelled-Calim. He knows about her, of course. He simply doesn't care. It's the nature of his kind not to care, especially about whatever misbegotten halfbreeds he sires from century to century. And it's probably the doing of her mother's patroness that Lalla turned out the way she did. Starting with her being abandoned in the Calimport Arms and named after a few infantile gurgles and a bottle of red wine.
So it's perhaps no surprise that Lalla was born a Windsoul, with a love for the desert and its howling storms, but also none that wanderlust whirled in her heart. The girl couldn't sit still, mentally or physically, frequently getting up in the middle of the night to race barefoot across the freezing sands under the silver moon. She changed her vocation as often as her underwear. Not precisely, you understand, that's a metaphor. She did it a lot, is what I'm saying.
Being an orphan, of sorts, her first job was as a slave. Unfortunate business, but, exotic though she was, even in the most debauched black market no buyer thought it anything but the worst kind of luck to buy a Windsoul slave in Calimshan. Until an Elven man, Teu-tel-quessir actually, an accountant of some kind, accepted her for little more than the promise of a tax break. A promise, incidentally, he immediately chose to forget.
And that was how little Lalla met Aurarch Anwynn Alishesh, of the Shrine to Our Lady of the Winds (Akadi, or Lady Aerdrie Faenya, if you're of a more cultured breed.) The shrine, a tiny thing of sandstone and clay in the midst of that long, white desert, that would be her home for the remainder of her upbringing. A dry, monastic affair. You don't want to hear about the details. A lot of sitting still, which we've established Lalla wasn't good at, and the food was consistently awful. Especially when it was her turn to cook.
The Whisper and the Roar
I should explain the faith itself, however.
The Akadian cult -- and it is a cult, never let them tell you otherwise -- is a distant, inscrutable thing, bearing two distinct denominations; The Whisper, which acts with subtlety behind the metaphorical curtain to bring about change, and the Roar, which acts with openness and force. Timid, unimposing and forgettable, Lalla was born for the Whisper. She's practically a sleeper agent, now, waiting for direction from her source. That would be me. Hello.
The whisper, you see, is the flap of the butterfly's wing, the imperceptible breeze that fans the eventual hurricane, the gust which stirs the pebble which spurs the avalanche, which buries the pass, which diverts the caravan, which delays the supply, which halts the advance, which undersupplies the army, which turns the tide of the war.
Perhaps a man is killed, for no reason at all - and I will confess that the cult's hands are, on occasion, red with blood, though rarely innocent. Blame is sought, conflict rises, two sides arm and prepare for battle, the peace of the valley in which they live, shattered on the anvil of strife. But then, before they clash, they see the dust on the horizon. An orcish warband, vast, advancing, swollen with bloodlust. A force that neither army could have withstood on its own, yet there they are, together, and ready to fight.
In the wake of their unexpected victory, truths are accepted. New oaths are sworn, treaties and friendships renewed. A valley torn by a cold war, now flourishes, prospers.
And as a consequence, production and quality of a certain brand of wine is tripled, even exporting as far as Calmport.
It is a web of cause and effect, invisible, pervasive and difficult to chart as the winds themselves. That, is what we do.
Once, Lalla was to infiltrate the library of the Balquis Occultarium and steal a specific book. The book, as it happens, was a treatise on an ancient Kara-Turi tea ceremony, bearing no visible importance whatsoever. When, after considerable efforts of stealth and evasion (hiding and running away,) she returned it to the monastery and asked what it was for, the Aurarch shrugged and replied that if she didn't want it, he'd give it to his neice.
Another time, she was told to run alone into the desert, a journey which took three days there and back on foot, carrying secret instructions within a conch shell. When she held it to her ear, a voice whispered that her orders were nothing more than to move a certain rock a few feet to the left.
She never did find out what that was for. Perhaps the others were simply making fun of her. Perhaps it was just a test.
Or perhaps the absence of that rock where it was once, and its presence where it once was not, would remake the face of the desert in a year's time. Perhaps the winds would change across the surface of the land, subtly, but inevitably, the sands slowy worn away with time, revealing a tomb, long-forgotten. And a destined hero might stumble across it as he staggered beneath the blazing sun, desperate for shelter until dusk. What would he find inside? What history would change because of it? A holy artifact claimed. An army raised from a broken people. A war. A conquest. A coronation. A total change in the political map. All for the motion of a single stone.
You're right. They were probably making fun of her.
There were other things Lalla wasn't good at, of course. I could list them, but the monastery doesn't actually have that much parchment. But that never stopped her trying. Threw herself at everything with awkward heedlessness.
She studied anatomy to work as a healer, learned every inch of the mortal body, but panicked at the sight of blood.
She worked as a courier, for awhile. She was swift, and light, and the wind was always at her back. But she couldn't keep her mouth shut.
She danced the gyre of six hundred bangles at the Calimport night market, but people left after bangle three hundred and seventy four.
She even tried to get into assistant politics, once. It ended in tears. Lots of them. All hers.
Eventually, she simply stayed and studied in the monastery, exercising and brewing tea, an art she had learned from a certain book on the ancient Kara-Turi tea ceremony.
Cause and Effect
I remember how brows were raised when it came time to teach her combat. The martial training of the body. To hone it into an instrument, as swift and forceful as the gale. It was before even the first year that her instructor, making a demonstration to the students, gave her one of his killing-claws and told her to attack. Oh, she didn't want to, practically on the edge of hyperventilating, as usual -- she doesn't need to breathe, and still she hyperventilates -- but he insisted.
Of the two of them, I don't know who was more shocked when she put that blade through his gut.
We healed him, of course. That's the benefit of being surrounded by clergy each and every day.
And it was no fluke. Lalla had the grace of a dancer, the speed of a hawk, the precision of a snake and the relentless momentum of a desert twister. Simply after watching her chop vegetables in midair during the festival of Atonement, during her brief stint as an assistant chef, The Hashishin, who knew good cutting when they saw it, attempted repeatedly to recruit her. The Burning Dead, that blood-soaked mercenary cult, promised her an afterlife of riches if she converted and served in their High Priestess's honor guard. After one particular incident in the night market, it was said Myrkul himself arrived and offered her a job. Completely untrue, of course, the girl would have screamed and fainted at so much as a picture of him -- but it illustrates a point; Lalla was very, very good at killing things.
She just wouldn't.
Zephyr Quroian of the Roar, himself a Windsoul, put it most succinctly.
"She's useless." was what he said.
Quorian had been in a foul mood that day, mind you. His second wife hadn't been able to find any of her favorite wine, a fine vintage from a certain valley in the Dales, and he had borne the brunt of her frustrations. Everything is connected. When you follow the winds, you learn that sort of thing."I find her sweet." replied Aurarch Anwynn Alishesh, with his customary smile.
"Sweet." the Zephyr snorted, "Yes. Cloying, even. It's enough to make you gag. Perhaps she can choke our adversaries to death."
"She's young, Quorian. You were young, once. She did move that rock for us..."
"Sod your rock. Let me be perfectly clear. I have no use for an assassin who will not kill, no stomach for a spy who stops in the lobby and asks politely which room the secure documents are kept in, no patience for a provocateur, who apologizes all over herself. Furthermore, Alishesh, this tea is cold."
"Piquant, though." mused the Aurarch, swirling his cup thoughtfully.
"And cold. Get rid of her."
"Permanently?" The elven man asked, in his kind, soothing voice. The question hung in the air, like the blade of a guillotine.
"No." Quorian said at last, his tone turning somber. "No. Useless or not, our bloodline is sacred. Her exalted father may think her just another of his bastard leavings, which, by the way, she is -- but she remains a child of the Aether Queen in her soul, and I do not murder my Goddess's children like common royalty. Just get her out of my sight."
"Mm. We could use an eye along the Sword Coast... How long shall we exile her, then?"
"Until she understands what she is, Alishesh!" The Gensai stomped out of the chamber, a roiling breeze billowing the tapestries as he went, "Until she grows the hells up."
The elf leant over his ledger, double-dipping a quill and murmuring as he penned a note in the margin. "In... definitely."
Lalla met her exalted father, once, during a pilgrimage across the desert to old Coramshan, for he still manifests upon those sands from time to time. That was the moment my heart truly went out to the girl, I think, though I should never admit it. She so wanted to make him proud. To be like him. To make him smile. It was utterly pathetic.
I still remember this: The great Djinn grant wishes, he told her. Can you grant wishes?
Of... course she could, she stammered, practically biting her own fingers off. She could grant any wish he wanted to make. Anything at all, she'd find a way. She'd make it happen. For him. Her daddy. She could do it. She could do it. And so he made his wish.
He wished that she would go away.
A Farewell Breeze
"Lalla! Good news!" I told her, dumping her meager possessions onto the sandstone table, "You can't stay here anymore."
Her face lit up, then fell, as it all too frequently did. Aerdrie help me, I was going to miss teasing her, but I was acutely aware that I was the only one who did it out of anything resembling fondness. I'm not usually so sentimental, I swear it.
"Oh. But. Ah." - If you've ever heard her speak you'll be used to this - "Yes, that... that's... wonderful news. Isn't it?" she looked at me sidelong, desperate for a cue. "Yes. Very wonderful. Except the um. Part where I'm homeless and alone and starving and nobody loves me."
"Come now, Lalla, you've always been homeless. It's the first lesson we learn. Borne on the breeze, that's all any of us are. So! All packed?" I nudged the tiny bundle over the table toward her.
"But.. I don't.."
"You'll go to Candlekeep, I think. Place of learning, up by Baldur's Gate. You've always wanted to go to Baldur's Gate. Weren't you just telling me that the other day?"
"N..no. I've um. Never actually heard of..."
"Everyone wants to go to Baldur's Gate. Wonderful place. Apparently. Full of tieflings, too, so they certainly shan't bat an eye over you. There's an inn you can stay at inside the walls, run by an old disciple of mine, actually. He'll probably give you a fairly decent agreement on rent, if you drop my name and beg a little. Still have that book, by the way? Marvellous." It was a kindness, really. But those beautiful silver eyes were misting up, that lower lip was quivering.
"Rent? But I don't, um. Have any.. You know. Money. Because I have an ascetic lifestyle, and that.."
"--Not anymore you don't!--"
"...involves not having things, which is wonderful, truly, I don't mean to decry the philosophy at all, it's just that--"
"Good girl. Oh. Incidentally, whilst you're on the ship, it would be a tremendous help if you took a small brass key from the captain's cabin and dropped it off the port side at midnight on the second day."
"W..Wait! Midnight? Which side is p-" That was about the time I shut the door in her face. I could hear her out there, you know. Fidgeting, biting her lip, bouncing up and down on her toes, looking over her shoulder, never quite working up the courage to knock, like she wanted to.
Elves are good at listening. The older we get, the better we hear. And please believe me, it is a bittersweet blessing.
And that was how she left; with her father's scorn and my benign dismissal burning in her heart, and Akadi's silence, hanging above her like a void that could never be filled. Did the winds moan with a more mournful note than usual, as that evening came down? Perhaps I simply imagined it.
I confess it. Lalla is, as Quorian said, useless. A dilettante. She is a lost soul, a nobody, and will likely stay that way.
But a nobody, doing nothing, in precisely the right place at precisely the right time, can remake the face of the desert.
Thank you for listening to an old man's ramblings. I don't have much in the way of pleasant company, anymore, not since we sent her away. Ah well.
By the way, would you mind moving that rock slightly to the left?
------------------------------------
Goals:
Nothing and everything. Lalla's drive for learning and self-improvement is as ceaseless as it is fickle.
Possible Plot-Hook Ideas and Misc Facts:
Lalla's affiliation with the Whisper remains her strongest secret hook point. The cult's directives are frequently obscure, with consequences that may not become immediately apparent. And the great part is, you can justify making her do just about anything.
In between times, she'll lend herself to just about any scholarly quest or pursuit, having a special fondness for the scribes of Candlekeep and the priesthood of Oghma, rarely turning down a chance to be of help, learn something, or, more probably, get in the way a lot.
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