Ellys Anceyn
Description
Just another traveller through the Swordbelt. This one seems anxious and quick to bluster. A young woman of mixed Chondathan ethnicity, she has green eyes, fair, freckled skin, and long red hair.
Perhaps you have glimpsed her around town, anxiously avoiding the crowds and clutching her handbag closely. Or maybe you have seen her within the Murann Alchemist's Guild, where she currently serves as an initoste, learning the fundamentals of their traditions. Rarer still, she might have even been seen struggling with a heavy bag of camping supplies and adventuring equipment, eager to make herself useful on the long roads and deep woods of the countryside, trying to keep up with a group of adventurers.
Unusual for both a Chondathan and someone who has grown up in Amn, Ellys is a travelling hedge wizard. Those familiar with their tools and working methods could recognise her practice at a glance. The distrust afforded her kind in these troubled times could explain her reluctance to talk to strangers.
History and Background
Ellys was born and raised in her family's holdings on the outskirts of Esmeltaran. Her parents, Andalren and Circerria Anceyn, were former adventurers who, after their early retirement, invested in a vineyard and winery. For a time, their family lived in luxury. However, much to their chagrin, the young Ellys never learned the guile that a young merchant would need to continue their family's new way of life.
Throughout her childhood, Ellys floundered in social situations. No matter the training and rehearsal, she always struggled to hold meaningful conversations or maintain eye contact with others. From there, her education faltered. Amnian culture's focus on wealth and the acquisition of social standing did not engage Ellys at all. When she came of age, and it was time to make her commitments to the Lady of Gold and the Lady of Love at her mother's behest, Ellys managed only lip service through the ceremony, feeling no connection to the traditions of her people.
Instead, Ellys was enraptured by a deep, unspoken fascination.
Magic.
Her mother, Circerria, was a practising sorceress and adventurer before retiring to a life of luxury. She was very conflicted by Ellys' fascinations. Circerria often tried to quell young Ellys' interests and guide her into safer and more socially accepted avenues, wishing Ellys would be spared the dangers of adventuring the realms she had been subjected to. Her father, Andalren, overlooked Ellys' eccentricities—loving her all the same—but he, too, always hoped she could grow to embrace their way of life.
Those whom Ellys could call friends were few and temporary, owing to her anti-social nature. One of the few people with whom Ellys was able to form a personal connection was the Elf Sythraen Cinnanath. Affectionately named Cinnamon by a young Ellys, Sythraen was a refugee of unspoken horrors in the woods that Ellys could only guess at and held a similarly unspoken connection to Circerria Anceyn's history as a sorceress. Despite Ellys' envy for the time afforded by her mother to Sythraen to speak on matters arcane, Ellys and Sythraen soon became close. Eventually, Sythraen even took on a caretaker's role for the young Ellys when they were out in Emseltaran, helping as Ellys struggled with day-to-day social affairs she needed to attend to as the sole daughter of a new merchant family.
Unfortunately, the relative peace of Ellys' younger years did not last. With the Time of Troubles and the Longest Year, Esmeltaran and the Anceyn estate grew unsafe. First, trade abroad was disrupted. Poverty and rising petty crime spread. Then, when the Weave failed, the magical items from the Anceyn family's past adventures and the sorcery that Circerria wielded both faded to nothing. Ellys' father, Andalren, despite being a notable warrior at a younger age, had lost an arm at the end of his dungeoneering career. Without his enchanted accoutrements, he could no longer guarantee their protection from the growing dangers in Amn.
Soon, the estate was patrolled by guardsmen at all hours, their strange faces ever intimidating and anxiety-inducing for Ellys. This, combined with magic fading from the world, caused Ellys to fall into deep despair, eventually transforming into a single-minded obsession.
In her naivety, she wanted to fix magic itself.
Rather than letting the family's treasures collect dust, Ellys carefully and secretively gathered the most interesting pieces into her own quarters and fell into isolation and study. Ellys used all her allowances to acquire what were now assumed to be useless texts on magic from abroad to learn more about them—a secret confided only with Sythraen, who helped Ellys gather the resources she needed.
Soon after the close of The Longest Year, Ellys had a great secret. At a prodigiously young age, she had developed the components for a spell when all around her still seemed numb to the arcane.
That first spell came from tracing the designs in an old codex—one that Ellys first believed to be a spellbook of her mother's but later determined after a childish investigation to actually be something uncovered in a forgotten corner of Amn.
The book was bound in leather that had been worn smooth by time and dust. Its pages were filled with dense script in a language Ellys could not decipher. She would later learn that this language was Auld Thorass, an ancient and obscure tongue.
Amidst the indecipherable script, she found annotations in Elven, penned with a delicate hand that wove through the margins like ivy. These notes were interspersed with translations into Common, clearly added by the same scribe. The fragments translated into Common were selective, emphasising passages that seemed of paramount importance, but without the full context of the original text, their meanings were frustratingly elusive. Yet Ellys remained convinced that this text contained the key to unlocking the magical power that she needed.
Growing up with this secret, developing it further without her family knowing, became young Ellys' life. Outwardly to her family, she seemed to have turned a corner. A lack of focus and an inability to interact with people had been replaced by a dogged determinism. Ellys forced herself to talk to people, and although she was often found stuttering and rambling in her conversations, she earnestly tried to appease her parents.
Andalren and Circerria knew well how Ellys struggled. They could see Ellys trying to mask her lack of understanding of people and work hard, yet attributed it to a need for validation in her teenage years. With Ellys encountering people more frequently, her parents allowed her hours of isolation each day to reward her hard work in her studies. All of this time was spent cultivating her potential magic.
Years passed in this manner. Then came the sacking of Amn by the Ogre-King Sythillis and Balura Ironprow's pirate fleet, culminating in the collapse of Athkatla. With Esmeltaran's rise as the new capital, nearly all traces of civility and luxury in their family home were taken by changing circumstances. The swell of mercenaries and displaced refugees saturated the region and changed the very foundations of life in the lakeside city.
For the first time in her life, Ellys felt personally threatened under the heel of the monstrous and barbarous reaches of the mountains and the seas. It steeled her resolve. Months of quiet planning came to fruition. Unbeknownst to her family, Ellys had prepared to venture abroad to find scholars who could teach her both combative magic and ancient languages. When the day finally came, she surprised her parents with a sudden announcement.
There could be no more waiting, no more delay, no more hiding, Ellys claimed. Surprising and bewildering her parents with a sudden display of wizardry, Ellys announced that magic had to be restored to the realms. Only then could humanity hope to possess the strength and the power to fight back the dark forces of the world and render the land safe again.
With only her old friend Sythraen by her side, Ellys ventured South, following the news of disaster and threat—naïve and filled with the belief that she could find a way to restore peace to the land. It was this journey through the newly opened passage through the Small Teeth mountain range in pursuit of guidance that brought Ellys to Murann, and its infamous guild of alchemists...
Notable Deeds
Associates
Sythraen Cinnanath
Sythraen Cinnanath
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