Saetra Pharei
Appearance
Birthplace: The Pharei estate on High Thay.Race: Thayan Human (Mulan).
Age: 30's.
Eyes: Cyan.
Hair: White, neatly styled.
Distinguishable Marks: Thayan tattoos on the scalp and the outer edges of her arms and legs. Most are of geometric or runic designs.
Skin: Light, spotless.
Handedness: Right.
Posture: Dignified, elegant. She moves with a fluid grace.
Hygiene: Usually perfect or at least seeming to be by illusion. Her clothing on the other hand can be either clean or dirty, depending on her mood.
General Health: Saetra is not particularly sickly, but she is weak of frame.
Physical Description:
Saetra is slender and delicately curved, and she glides as she walks, her gait of a practiced and elegant grace. She could almost be mistaken for an elf if not for the roundness of her ears and the distinct accent of a Thayan noble. She favors smooth silks and satin for attire, though the quality and design of these fabrics can vary from richly pompous to intentionally weathered and stained. Saetra prefers silver for jewelry, notably the silver chains at her ears which hang from tip to lobe.
Saetra's appearance is however distinctly unnatural. Her pale skin is contoured by the grays and blues of a corpse, and it is polished with a sheen that makes it appear more like marble or bone than true flesh. Her eyes as well glow red in darkly lit areas, and the tiniest wisps of fog creep out from under her clothes. Most notable is her left arm, which appears desiccated and withered. The skin on her fingers has pulled back to reveal sharpened claws, and though most of the limb maintains a covering of flesh it hugs tightly to the bone.
Saetra's hair is short but present. She occasionally sheds it entirely to reveal arcane tattoos beneath, but she does not feel beholden to being clean-scalped as a general rule.
Personality
Accent: High Thayan.Initial Alignment: Chaotic Neutral.
Profession: Red Wizard Researcher.
Base Class & Proposed Development: Abjurer/Red Wizard/Pale Master/Frost Mage.
Languages: Common, Draconic, Elven, Halruaan, Mulhorandi (Celestial and Infernal dialects).
Weapons of Choice: Staves, wands.
Magic of Choice: Abjuration, necromancy, illusion, cold spells.
Favored Deities:
Like most Red Wizards, Saetra is not particularly religious. She gives respect to Mystra and Oghma for their governance of the Weave and knowledge respectively, and she has taken Azuth, the god of spells and wizards, as her Patron, but Saetra rarely engages in devotional activities. Other than the gods of magic and knowledge, Saetra also favors Leira and Mask for their dominion over things of guile and deceit--areas very important to those who engage in the sometimes deadly politics of the Red Wizards of Thay.
Habits/Hobbies:
Saetra is devoted to magical research first and foremost. Though she certainly enjoys the practical uses of magic (and the material benefits that arise thereof), Saetra engages in the study of magic for its own sake. Abjuration is not her specialist school for reasons of paranoia and defense but instead for its role as the school that learns how to break magic apart at its roots. Knowledge is power, she argues, and where divination is knowledge of the world, abjuration is the knowledge of magic itself.
Outside of magic, Saetra favors playing with appearances and expectations. She is frivolous with her wealth, as inclined to surround herself with finery as she is to intentionally tear and ruin her dresses or don uncouth accessories. She cares little for what is proper--indeed, the more appropriate something is the more likely she is to discard it in favor of something that will make her stand out.
Personality Profile:
Saetra's mannerisms range from dryly sarcastic to arrogant and isolated. Regardless of which, her emotions run cold; she treats life with a distant and at times dismissive air. To say she comes across as superior is an understatement. In this she is quite like many Red Wizards, though Saetra lacks the inclination towards pointless cruelty or reckless ambition that many of her peers have. She also cares little for the fierce national pride that many Red Wizards have. Her feelings on her homeland is like her feelings on most things: Mild disappointment. She sees a land that has wasted its shot at freedom (the "Free Nation of Thay" is anything but), thanks to allowing power to to yet again fall to capricious fools who throw about their authority and magic like an orcling with a club. She views the new enclave initiative as an improvement in things, but is fully expecting it to crash and burn before it can amount to anything of note.
Saetra is cares for foreigners about as much as she cares for her Thayan cohorts. In practice this means Saetra comes across as more civil than the average Red Wizard, as she has no particular scorn for those from outside of Thay. True, they are often simple-minded, but no more than her Red Wizard cohorts, and if one has reasonable things to say and does not instinctively disregard her for her own heritage Saetra is willing to give the time of day and then some.
History
Background:
Saetra comes from a Thayan noble house with a relatively short lineage, stretching back only a few generations. She was one of several children to the lord and lady of the house, both Red Wizards of moderate power, and was brought with the expectation of continuing to further the house's ascension through Thayan politics.
For her part, Saetra wanted nothing to do with this, though for many years she did fight for their attention of her parents in the hopes of proving herself worthy of their love. Her efforts would enable her to grow into the magical prodigy of the family, but as she aged it increasingly became clear to her that she was only loved so much as she could be the chief pawn in her parents' schemes, valued only as much as her magic could make her.
With the knowledge that love was something she could not find, Saetra turned to spite. She used her position as the crux of her parents schemes to unravel them. She grew her hair out and draped herself in red cloth, rebelling until she had thoroughly made herself the family embarrassment. She was saved from a quiet "accident" only by the patronage of her tutor, who valued his apprentice's skills more than her manners (of course, he had the benefit of not having her family name tied to his).
In the years since, Saetra has become a capable young wizard, specializing in the school of abjuration. She's mellowed out after the break from her family, as the fallout has followed at her heels ever since and she's been forced to recognize the reality of the precarious world in which she lives. She's endured the loss of many burgeoning friendships at the hands of family agents, and sabotage of her own projects has put her life in jeopardy several times. She's begun seeking means of putting as much distance between herself and the Thayan homeland as she can, and the Enclave experiment has represented the best option.
For all of her issues, Saetra remains Red Wizard. She's fallen firmly within the Researcher faction, and like most Red Wizards she has her own ideas of what she would do were she to win greater influence over the nation.
Goals:
Magical research is Saetra's principal pursuit at present and where she spends the majority of her time. While she enjoys picking apart the mechanics of magic, she also engages in the philosophy of magic. She is especially concerned with what she views as unnecessary regulation; she opposes such nations as Mulhorand and Amn but also much of the rest of Faerun for its intent on limiting certain fields of magic for moral concerns. She is as much opposed to her own peers though, for she sees in Thay a betrayal of the freedoms the original Red Wizards fought for in its replacing of god-kings for mage-kings.
Possible Plot-Hook Ideas and Misc Facts:
Saetra moves more cautiously now than in her youth, but she still has her own schemes to hatch. She is not impressed with the current state of either her homeland or Faerun at large and can be considered something of a revolutionary at heart.
Specific hooks:
- Saetra is on the wrong side of her family. Though she's sought out the Enclaves in order to evade their agents in Thay, their reach could follow her west.
- Saetra is a supporter of the Researcher faction of Thayan wizards. This naturally puts her at odds with Imperialists, and she's likely to get involved in Researcher plots and schemes if they arise.
