Spoiler: Backstory
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Elrembriel never knew her father. She grew up in an isolated wizard's tower, high in the Kodar Mountains - her mother's home. Tanieal never revealed to her daughter what had driven her from the beauty of her ancestral home in Kyonin, but from her mother's demeanor, the young girl think it more likely it was to escape the limitations elven society was placing on her thirst for arcane power. For power is and always was the primary driver of Tanieal's thoughts and actions. She did, nevertheless, have room in her heart for her little girl, and growing up Elrembriel never wanted for attention and love from her. Her mother was keen on her education, which she wanted, naturally, to involve mastery of the arcane arts. Elrembriel proved an able, if not overly eager student. Her mother was slightly disappointed that she didn't share her own passion for conjuring and binding powerful creatures from beyond, instead showing great talent in the field of divination and foresight. In truth, early on Elrembriel was slightly put off by the nature of some of the beasts Tanieal was showing her how to summon and control. She always argued that all the fiendish and loathsome things she was calling to serve her were no more than tools, evil used to combat evil, or just a way to learn about the things that lurk in the outside planes of reality. But still, demonic creatures frightened the young elf girl, and while she became competent in summoning, she would always prefer to learn about other things, such as what her natural curiosity would fancy: Left alone in the tower when her mother went away on her own errands, she toyed with many strange devices, teaching herself to gain control over them. She also befriended an animal, who had wandered through a window one night when she was just forty years old: A remarkably intelligent owl, who became her best friend. She named him Sruech'ul, or ""evening harmony"" in the Celestial tongue.
Tanieal also made sure her daughter wasn't completely isolated from the world even as she spent her early decades in a tower with only magical servants. Over the course of about fifty years, she used her great crystal ball to show Elrembriel a great deal of Golarion, from the great natural wonders all the way down to the life of common people. This allowed Elrembriel to see, hear and discover, although she never enjoyed true connection and friendship with actual people. As a result, she turned into something of a dreamy girl, imagining what her life could be outside of the tower - especially when she became able to use the crystal ball on her own to explore by herself.
This secluded life ended when Tanieal, for reasons she refused to give her daughter, decided to leave her tower and visit the Worldwound, of all places. She remained vague as to her motivations, only mentioning that she had found allies from whom she was hoping to learn much. They ended up in Drezen, a city populated primarily by demons and evil, deformed beasts. Nothing in her life had prepared Elrembriel for the horrible experience of the few weeks she spent there. She was protected by her mother's powerful magic, but the perversion and violence she witnessed threatened to break her mind and throw her into madness. She kept begging Tanieal to leave this horrible place, but her mother scolded her, each time less patiently than the last - and, looking at her frenzied eyes, she started to worry that Tanieal may have been going mad.
This all came to a head when, one night, she had a terrible nightmare: She was lying down, paralyzed and powerless as her own mother delivered her to the clutches of an eight-armed, twisted female monster! The demon stroke her cheek, slowly, with a burning claw - that's when she woke up in pain and terror. Looking at a mirror, she saw a dark mark on her face, that wouldn't go away, and still throbbed painfully. She understood with atrocious clarity that her vision represented a glimpse of her near future. Unable to accept such a soul-destroying reality, she got up and ran towards her mother's room. From behind the door, she heard her talking to somebody. She had loathed learning the horrid language of the Abyss, but the unpleasant work paid off on that occasion. The conversation was between Tanieal and one of her more frequently summoned allies: Indeed, her crazed mother was preparing to sacrifice her own daughter to some lord of the demons, in exchange for a trove of magical secrets. The gods must have been smiling on Elrembriel that night, because, when she flew away in terror, she somehow managed to escape the demons' notice and flee their city on foot, unharmed.
The terrified elf girl ran to the east, guided by the stars. When the day came, she found her sojourn among the denizens of the Abyss had changed her: She was able to see better at night, but when the sun came up, she found its light harmful to her shadow-accustomed eyes. That was both a boon and a curse, but she didn't care - she simply moved forward, prodded by some survival instinct working against her despair and pain. She trekked across the land, managing to find sustenance on the way thanks to her memories of watching forest people forage in the wilderness. After several weeks eking out a survival, she ended up in a human city: Kenabres.
Her return in the land of humanity didn't begin well. Like all refugees from the Worldwound, she was first and foremost a suspect, kept in jail for weeks to undergo strict scrutiny, as people feared she'd be a demon in disguise. The ugly charred mark on her right cheek, looking like a burn in the strange shape of a claw, didn't do her any favors either when interrogators believed it to be some sort of unholy symbol.
Finally, after two months of endless questions and divinations, she was let go. As she went out, it was evening, and for the first time since she had left home, her spirits were lifted: Sruech'ul, whom she had reluctantly left behind in Tanieal's tower months earlier, had crossed the great distance and come to join her.
Finding herself alone and penniless, among crowds of people for the first time in her life - few of which showing any sympathy towards her - she mostly wanted to hide. She wandered in the city, ending up in an abandoned house that seemed to her as good a refuge as any. Over the next few days, she survived by having Sruech'ul steal food for her. Out of boredom, she explored the house thoroughly, relying on Sruech'ul's keen senses and her own divination and detection powers. As luck would have it, she would a hidden passage in the cellar, leading to a steep underground tunnel. Stranded in a city that didn't want her, with all her bonds to her normal world painfully severed, she decided to go down in search of... she didn't exactly know what, but something else than this non-life.
After several days of exploring, sometimes fighting vermin, fleeing wandering undead and other monsters, she began to starve, unable to find enough food to sustain herself. Exhausted, she collapsed on the ground. She fell into a semi-delirious sleep, and in all likelihood this should have been the end of her story.
She woke up, however, and when she did, she found herself tended to by somebody unlike any creature she knew of. Her savior had the appearance of a woman, except for a sharp beak in place of a mouth and long brown feathers passing for hair. Her name was Trondaal, and over the next few days she brought Elrembriel back to health. The young elf now found herself a refugee, accepted in a community of strange people living in the underworld. These were mongrelmen, beings with misshapen bodies and a deep-seated fear of strangers - both traits eerily similar to her own situation, and this created a bond between them, as outcasts rejected by the world of humanity.
Over the next three months, Elrembriel developed friendships with Trondaal as well as other mongrelfolk, and started to pull her own weight by putting her arcane powers and alchemical talent to good communal use. It seemed she had found a new life, and started to get used to the idea of settling down here for a very long time.
Re: Bink's Wrath of the Righteous OOC
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