Karastina Arcanscape - @NatureAndMagic

 

Age: 28

Race: Wood Elf

Class: Wizard (School of Abjuration)

Alignment: Good

Personality: Kind, distant, jaded, protective

Home Region: Valara

Powers/Abilities/Skills: Protective magics

Other Associated Regions: None

Face Claim: ?

 

Karastina Arcanscape was known as "Rinn" as a child, assuming the name Karastina when she entered adulthood. She, like many wood elves, grew up in Valara, in a village north of Bastionshire called Brindale. She had two proud parents and a younger brother who she loved dearly, Fal.

 

Her village was home to several masters of the arcane, and Karastina studied with one of the elders, who taught her about the powerful powers of abjuration- protective magic. Very adept in her studies, Karastina was a fast learner, borrowing books from her teacher and pouring over them from the evening until the touch of dawn.

 

Young Fal was less studious. He would rather swing his wooden sword around than learn the ancient art of arcana. He learned a spell here, a spell there, but his heart was much younger and care-free. Karastina was fun-loving too, but she also found the pursuit of knowledge to be immensely powerful.

 

Bastionshire, one of the largest trading cities in the land, was a place she frequently traveled to, buying new books from the magic shop and admiring all of the staffs and wands that were far too expensive to buy herself. For now, her simple wooden staff would do just fine.

 

Her time wasn't all spent indoors- she was a wood elf, after all, and had a natural affinity to nature! She and Fal loved to roam the forest, collecting herbs, observing the wildlife, scaling trees... a perfect life.

 

Until the day it wasn't.

 

A band of strange creatures built of metal and wood crashed through Brindale. It wasn't their target, they wanted to get to the city of Bastionshire, but it was in their path, and these mechanized warriors had blood on their minds. They destroyed the town, leveling it, and slaughtering every person who lived there. Many fought back bravely, and some of the creatures (that would one day be known as warforged) were slain, the village was no match for the onslaught.

 

Karastina had been in the forest, studying in a tree, unaware of what was happening. She returned to the most horrifying sight she had ever seen in her entire life. Everyone was dead.

 

Her heart choked up. She couldn't think straight as she walked, trembling through the madness. Beneath the rubble, she saw him. Fal.

 

Although unconscious, he was still alive when she found him, his heart just barely beating. He was in her arms not more than a few moments when he slipped into death.

 

She couldn't handle it. Everyone was gone. She had to do something. And in that moment, she did. She leapt to her feet, and pulled together various mechanized parts on the ground, lining them up so they formed a body. One torso, two legs, two arms, and a head. Her focus had been abjuration, but her personal studies had also lead her down a different kind of magic. Alchemy.

 

Focusing all her energy, she released a torrent of energy from her want, pulling Fal's soul into the metal body. She saw the warforged eyes light blue, but they dimmed soon after. Again and again she tried, but each time, his soul wouldn't stick, it wanted to move on.

 

About to give up, a hooded figure approached her. An ancient elf she had never seen before put a hand on her shoulder and offered her a staff, a beautiful staff of elegantly carved wood and a beautiful, swirling orb at the top. He vanished as soon as she looked away. She never did see him again.

 

Trying one final time, she gave it everything she had, using the new staff as her focus. In a blinding flash of light, she looked down and saw that the warforged was alive. She didn't know it at the time, but she was the first wizard to fuse the soul of a recently dead with the body of a warforged.

 

It was him, Fal, but he had no recollection of his life before. He couldn't remember his own name. She saw on his breastplate the name "Kart-chin" and so Fal's name became "Faltchin," a fusion of his two identities. It was also this day, at the young age of thirty-three, that Karastina assumed her adult name. After what happened, she couldn't possibly pretend to be a child any longer.

 

She could never tell Faltchin the truth. He doesn't know who he was, or that Karastina is his sister. He believes she found him lying on the ground and that was the start of their friendship. She knows that telling him the truth might devastate him. What if he wouldn't have chosen this? He might never talk to her again.

 

They have both grown since then, and gone on many adventures together. For a while, they served the Raven Queen, helping her on a quest to thwart a great evil. In thanks for her service, Karastina was given an egg, from which hatched a gryphon, which she raised herself, naming him Apollo after the ancient god. He is a powerful gryphon, with a single purple feather on his left wing- the Raven Queen's mark. They communicate freely through telepathy, and he is her most trusted ally.

 

Karastina is still battling her inner demons. Her service to the Raven Queen is over, and she is trying to find her own path. Most often, she can be found traveling with Faltchin and Apollo, though ocassionally, Faltchin will leave to pursue his own adventures. Through her strong connection with him, she can usually sense where he is- a bond formed when she sealed his soul inside the warforgeds' remains.

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Recently, she has found herself separated from Faltchin. He yearned to go on an adventure on his own, and despite her own transgressions, she allowed it. She spends much of her time in the forest of Valara, frequently staying among the elves of the Aimhirghin Order.