<div class="floatleft">(https://67.media.tumblr.com/ed0c1c51b6662cda0ef7f92a4c723980/tumblr_odm1t15VXw1utyn51o1_1280.jpg)</div><strong>Name:</strong>Sella Lampwick<br/><strong>Class:</strong>Bard 3<br/><strong>Race:</strong>Half-Elf<br/><strong>Age:</strong>25<br/><strong>Orientation:</strong>Bisexual<br/><strong>Background:</strong>Cloistered Scholar<br/>Sheet (http://www.myth-weavers.com/sheet.html#id=942611)<br/><br/><div class="spoiler_container"><div class="spoiler_header" onclick="hideSecond (this);" role="button">Wordy-ass History befitting a bard</div><div class="spoiler_body"> Sella's got twelve different stories for her early years, but they all have a common point of origin; a half-elf foundling, with naught but swaddling left on a doorstep in the cold of night. Where that babe came from is anyone's guess, since the town of Arles had seen maybe five elves in as many decades, and not a one of them recently enough to have dropped off their child. Nevertheless, she was taken in by a kind old couple who figured having raised twelve children already gave them a head up on a thirteenth. From there it's your typical story of a precocious, bright young girl being trapped in a little farming village. Well, no, maybe 'trapped" isn't the right word. Sella loves her hometown, and most of the people there. She loves her parents and her relations, old Merle who runs the feed store and always had a spare sugar cube for a pleasant child or a tired horse. Big Hugh whose heavy farmboy hands were as rough with ungentlemanly out-of-towners as they were gentle while dancing. Maltilda, the seamstress who could weave a story like she wove a rug - and they were damn fine rugs when you consider Maltilda was stone blind. Pretty Lacy, who could out-fight any of the boys but got bashful and quiet when she spoke to Sella. And she loves all the little towns across the realm just like it. No, "trapped" isn't right, but she was always out of place. It's a hard thing, being a skinny, dark-haired girl with pointed ears in a town full of big burly towhead farmers and frowning farmers' wives. Sure there's a certain level of pride to be had for hosting the province's hog-calling champion for fifteen years running, and a-yup the weather sure is innerestin' this time-a year, <em>but...</em><br/><br/>But Sella knew there was so much more out there beyond Arles, and Chambord, and Thunne. The old guitar her Da had bought back from the fair in Chambord the year she was sick smelled of cinnamon and had the mark of the Brille Luthier guild on it. The dusty trove of books Miss Lynne kept in the inn ("Lynne's Inn" as it was named, or "Lynne's Den of Sin" as that old puckerface Rebecca Warsh liked to tut about it)  talked about wizards and trolls and had crumple-old maps of places that sounded too made up to be real, but <strong>were</strong> real. Every year or so, the Little Folk came with their caravans and jugglers and gossip from all over the realm. And when she was fourteen, Sella decided she was going to see it all! She was no fgool, she packed for travel, left a note for Ma and Da, and made sure she had enough of her own coin to pay for a spot with one of those caravans. And they say "wisdom of youth" sarcastically! <br/><br/>What all happened between there and her arrival at the door of The Academy at Byrthewood, barefoot, bald-headed, and smelling strongly of nutmeg with four silver selmarks in hand is anyone's guess - there's another dozen stories in there, and if you buy Sella a glass of wine, she'll spin you a yarn as fine as any. The point is, she dragged her bedraggled ass to that academy, and through three of her four silver coin and a wit like a whip, managed to gain admittance. The last silver went towards a bath and a decent dress; her classmates still remember Lightfoot Lampwick treading barefoot through the library like some sort of deranged scholastic fairy. Oh, how she devoured those books, too. Scribe Poulun was astounded and mildly offended by a girl with "the dialect of a birthing donkey"who  could write her own name, much less read his library.  For several years she managed to scrape up tuition and survive both the schedule and scholomancy.<br/><br/>Even so, she wasn't exactly what you might call... scholar material. She was certainly a bright student, but could you really see Sella content to transcribe books forever? Can you see her penning treatises about the finer points of the arc of a magic missile? Who would ever want Sella as their court apothecary? No, she was too restless, too eager, and - let's be really honest here, being smart and being <em>wise</em> are very different things, one of which Sella lacked in. But still she was learned, and she was talented... So when the Heroes of Destiny stopped by to research their Great Foe, it was no difficulty for the faculty to get them to accept a tagalong. And since Sella certainly wasn't suffering a shortage of brains, she saw great opportunity to take on the world on her own terms. or at least, something near her own terms.<br/><br/>She fell under the wing of High Archmagus Tander Xavien Albercroff, the group's high wizard. he wanted someone to manage his books. What he got was a bright-eyed minstrel who loved writing songs about his exploits... but was still too damn good at keeping his scrolls in lien and his inkwell supplied to dismiss. Sella maintains that he didn't <em>entirely</em> hate her songs. Well. he actually did hat the one about how he defeated the rogue Silver Dragon Sandelizostros... and the awkward moment when a year and a half later, she came into the camp and presented the newest member of the Albercroff family line to everyone, <em>but that was just one song</em>. And everyone else loved it (all the more because it was true. And Tander was mostly annoyed at the dragon for gossiping about him in the first place...) She was halfway through penning the biography of High Lord Champion Barbarian Guy (if you think kings have lots of names, talk to a barbarian chieftain.) when, well... <em>that</em> happened. <br/><br/>Sella refuses to believe that the Archmage was defeated by Geology ("it's barely even a real science!" was her first reaction) and holds that there is something much deeper working afoot.<br/><br/>She's been so busy since that she's actually forgotten to write back home to Ma and Da in Arles!</div></div><br/><br/><div class="spoiler_container"><div class="spoiler_header" onclick="hideSecond (this);" role="button">Personality</div><div class="spoiler_body"><strong>"I've read every book in the best libraries in the world... or at least like to <em>say</em> I have...</strong>"<br/>Sella loves learning, truth be told. She would LOVE to thumb through all those libraries. She'd cut the tips off her ears if it would get her there, in fact. But that's not the point. No, the point is to know enough that you can say you've done this, and people believe it. A good story is worth the weight of every man and woman telling it after all, and enterprising bard that she is, Sella isn't above or beyond dropping rumor and gossip that lead back to her. Or embellishing things that come her way. Just because she's not a great hero <em>yet</em> doesn't mean that she can't lay the foundations of greatness beforehand. The same goes for her companions! Of course, caught face to face, Sella will just smile and duck her head and talk about her life as a potato farmer's daughter, and, well, it didn't exactly happen <em>that</em> way, it was more like <em>this</em>, and there was a prince from Orphalos that the story left out...<br/><br/><strong>I'm willing to listen to every side in an argument before I make my own judgement"</strong><br/>Sella learned the value of diplomacy even before she left with that Halfling caravan; a small town like Arles, you have to get along with people or there will only be trouble. She went to the townsmoots with her Ma and Da, saw how things were handled, and even then was often surprised by how wrong initial assumptions could be. Her short adventures with a luckless troupe of halflings who saw the world <em>very</em> differently than a village of farmers was further enlightenment, and her time in the debate-heavy environment of the Academy just sealed the deal. Sella has principles and opinions and all of that, but she's not one to just brush away differing viewpoints or opinions; if nothing else you learn something about the other person, after all.</div></div><br/><div class="spoiler_container"><div class="spoiler_header" onclick="hideSecond (this);" role="button">Ideals</div><div class="spoiler_body"><strong>"The path to power and self-improvement is knowledge:</strong><br/>Sella always strives to be learning. about anything. She's a bottomless pit for knowledge. And the more things you know, the more you can influence the world around you; how difficult life must have been before the first elf (because of course it was an elf) discovered the lever. How <em>fascinating</em> languages are! Of course the ambassador from Vant is actually a spy from Orphalos, Orphalenes count three with their thumb! Et cetera. Knowing things is the key to <em>doing</em> things - and even if you don't know what you need to do for a given situation, odds are you know what to do for something similar, which at least gives you a place to start.</div></div><br/><div class="spoiler_container"><div class="spoiler_header" onclick="hideSecond (this);" role="button">Bonds</div><div class="spoiler_body"><strong>"I've been searching my whole life for the answer to a question"</strong><br/><em>Several</em> in fact. Nagging at the back of her mind must be what bothers every foundling - who are her sire and dam (she knows who her <em>mother and father</em> are, but that's different.) The mystery there just makes that question sharper - how <em>does</em> a half-elf babe come to be on the doorstep of a town where the most exotic visitors are the occasional ginger-headed halflings? That's a tough one to crack for her, made worse by how small it is in the great scheme of questions you can ask; How odd that it's likely more possible to find a god's secret name for a forgotten paramour, than to find the man and woman behind a screaming baby left on a porch! So it's only natural that Sella has focused on those bigger, yet still easier questions.</div></div><br/><div class="spoiler_container"><div class="spoiler_header" onclick="hideSecond (this);" role="button">Flaw</div><div class="spoiler_body"><strong>"I can't keep a secret to save my life, or anyone else's"</strong><br/>...of a sort. There's secrets, and then there's <em>secrets</em>. That is, some secrets are meant to be unraveled, they're mysteries, games of knowledge that you create in the hopes that someone does pick and weave t heir way through them to find the prize of knowledge in the middle of the knot. And then there are secrets that are meant to be locked up and buried. And sadly, Sella sometimes gets the two mixed up. One of the things about her role in the world is that she spreads news. Bards are a font of information wherever they go, full of news and gossip and rumor - And when you're in a tavern, telling a tale of something three towns over, maybe you say something. oh, you don't even know it, and maybe your audience doesn't know it either, but it'll pass around, from mouth to ear until it reaches someone who DOES know the secret... And then you've got trouble. In her efforts to build fame and reputation for herself and those she deems in need of it, there have.. .been a few missteps (that whole dragon thing, for instance. Great song. Wonderful bawd. Pissed off a powerful wizard and might have annoyed an old dragon. oops.)</div></div><br/><br/><strong>Adventuring:</strong>Despite her wide repertoire of skills and knowledge, Sella is pretty new to all this. She comes fro ma little farm village, and has spent most of her teen and young adult years filling her head with knowledge. She had only just recently joined the heroic entourage, and scant months into the campaign, mineralogy rolled a natural 20 and left everything torn and tattered. Sella has made it her cause to try to gather up as many loose ends as she possibly can to tie them all back together and get things "back on track"... but it's been hard-going.<br/>(That is, I kind of see her as one of the characters "closer" to the original "Heroes of Destiny" who is now sort of doing a recruitment drive to pick up hardy and willing people who can pick up the pieces. Trouble is... She's basically just an over-educated guitarist who can throw some cute cantrips, and probably hasn't been very convincing for the Mighty Paladins and Learned Wizards of the world... So it's up to the D-list adventurers!)