[ElvenStarr]

Gabriella Le'moure

Gabriella’s existence was, to her parents, an accident. It’s easy to see why when you look at her parents: Her father was a travelling bard who had seduced her young and naïve mother, the only living child of a family of lesser nobility. The father fled from town shortly after their union, and her mother was locked away to hide her infidelity. Gabriella was promptly given away to the town’s orphanage, which would for some reason, begin receiving a small donation from the very same family.

For the early parts of her years, she would be taught how to tend the gardens, wash the various pieces of clothing of the orphanage, help with cooking, and to clean, all in an attempt to teach her the very important life skills that would hopefully lead to her adoption by a family in the future. Unfortunately, Gabriella was too inquisitive for her own good – opting to skip out on most of these ‘lessons’ and seek fun elsewhere outside the orphanage, specifically the local Tinkerer and Alchemist shop owned by an aging Gnome magician known as Temlin.

Temlin would entertain Gabriella for her short stints at shop over many months, intrigued with how the little human would rather pull apart the toys he would supply her with to figure out how they worked instead of playing with them. He would eventually adopt her just for the sake of satiating his own curiosity at her own curiosity. Temlin would go on to teach her the ins and out of his tinkering and the basics of alchemy over the next few years until he caught her ‘cleaning’ his study. While Gabriella never had shown a true interest in the tinkering or the alchemy themselves past the study of ‘why does this do that instead of this?’, she showed an increasing interest in the various tomes he had hidden away from his earlier days of adventuring.

Allowing her to borrow them, Gabriella immersed herself into the world of books and tomes. At first, Gabriella was entranced with the stories of heroes rescuing princesses captured by dragons. Over the years as Gabriella would begin reaching her mid-teens, she began asking questions about these stories – if they were true, why did the princess get captured, what really is a dragon, is the magic in these stories the same as Temlins magic? Temlin did his best to offer knowledge in that regard, even going so far as to set Gabriella up with little course in introductory practical magic. Unfortunately, he wasn’t the best teacher, but even so as Gabriella reached adulthood, she would have the ability to cast Cantrips and a select set of first tier magic.

It wasn’t long afterwards that Temlin became bedridden, likely from his advanced age, and unable to care for himself or run his shop. Gabriella stepped into that role willingly, although not as talented as Temlin in either tinkering or alchemy, she was able to make just enough from repairing the various items he had made previously and using a little bit of magic when she couldn’t repair something the old-fashioned way. On his deathbed, Temlin would make his first and only request of Gabriella. The request being that, upon his passing, to visit their longest lasting Patron – A matron of one of the towns lesser nobility – in order to sort his estate so that she may have enough coin to travel onwards to Conch and enroll into the Nebular University.

Her adoptive father would then pass on, the following night, leaving Gabriella to mourn the loss of her father over several days. Following this event, she would honor Temlin’s request and make her way to their shops largest Patron and met her directly for the first time. Unbeknownst to Gabriella, this would be her real mother watching her from afar for most of her life and their first in person meeting. The meeting went well and the two discussed various things in a private manner, mostly with them reminiscing about Temlin and his creations and what he had done for the town in the past. They also spoke about what Gabriella would want to do and stated she would go to study at the university if she had the funds.

It was determined that anything Gabriella didn’t want to take with her could be sold off – to include the shop – to help finance her trip and studies to the University with the stipulation that she would either eventually return to the house as a court mage until the extra money was paid in full. Agreeing to this, Gabriella set off the next day towards Conch via Caravan to begin her studies.

Arriving and enrolling into the university, she opted for classes specializing in the schools of primarily enchantment, conjuration, and evocation, with a small dip into necromancy just to learn enough about what it truly is. She chose these three schools to specialize in after thinking about Temlin and all the little toys he would make, figuring these three would help her the most with creating magical artifacts that could possibly withstand the test of time.