That's right. I'm destroying a character you've never met. This means she will never be in any of my books. She's hitting the Grey Void.
Why?
Because I'm a jerk of course! Actually, the real reason is that I've been stuck and unable to figure out why. I finally realized this character is the reason. I created her over a decade ago before writing "Rojuun". At the time, the world of Ryallon had elves, dwarves, tollomes (half gnome, half halfling) and other D&D style races. Those races disappeared when I sat down to write "Rojuun" and make it primarily human. That's changed to, but that's a different story.
So in this book, I planned on bringing the character Jenna into play. She's half human and half elven. The original concept for elves was that they would have opal eyes, be tall and skinny. She also ended up with purple hair and purple striations in her eyes. Her favored magic was purple too . . . Fans of the Willden Trilogy may recognize those traits. ;)
Again, why?
All of my leads in the Dralin and Wyvern Trilogies are female for one. And this character would just be Ebudae light. She's also commonly unique. By that, I mean that most characters in fantasy, mine included, have traits that make them special and different from everyone else. Jenna has them in spades.
What traits?
1. She's beautiful
2. She has purple hair
3. She is an exceptionally powerful mage
4. She's super smart.
5. She's loyal
6. She's super good
7. She's an orphan
8. She has super awesome magical clothing and jewelry.
9. She's too D&D.
Why is she all these things?
Well, I was playing D&D at the time and I specialized in writing character bios. It's a lot of fun to do. So I wrote a character bio for all my main characters (Including Pelya. Remind me to show you that one some day)
What's wrong with perfect characters?
Lots, really. There are all kinds of articles on it that I've read now. Most of them are irritating. But suffice to say, characters should be relatable to a greater or lesser degree. Perfect characters are annoying. Liselle is the most perfect character I've written so far and I've gotten a few bad reviews specifically about her. I've corrected that in certain ways with the latest book about her.
So this character is perfect?
Close enough. She's also too much like Liselle, Ebudae and Vevin. They probably took their traits from her to a degree. I have all sorts of female leads around Pelya too, and while I like that, I need to come up with something different to provide some contrast. So I'm going to create a male character (or two). I haven't decided who he will be yet, but I'll get to that as soon as I'm done with this blog post. She originally had a brother named Jolen too, but he's disappearing too for similar reasons. I'm thinking maybe troubled brothers for this or something.
Anyway, I thought you might want to meet Jenna before she gets carelessly tossed into the Grey Void. Keep in mind, I wrote this when I had different plans for the world. You might be able to see hints of the magic system and other ingredients from my books. :) Also, I haven't edited it. The quality leaves a lot to be desired. (Oddly enough, I think I did some things better back then)
JENNA of ZIMTH
Jenna about nineteen. She has a high level of maturity beyond her
years. She is a very beautiful
girl. The ears are only slightly smaller
than a full-blood’s. Her eyes are elven
with the exception of the purple taint.
Her hair is beautiful now, without being as bright as it had originally
been. She keeps it long and combs it
frequently. The human blood in her has
removed some of the elven thinness. She
has become very graceful and walks with a calm confidence that one would not
expect from an orphan girl. Jenna knows
eight languages in addition to most magic languages current and archaic. Her voice is normally very light. She pronounces all of her words with a
precision that comes from necessity.
Enunciation requires exactness when casting spells. When casting spells, her voice becomes strong
and firm. She can yell up quite a storm
when she feels it necessary. (Literally.) All in all, Jenna has a very strong and
confident personality. She is not
normally sociable but can be a very good and loyal friend once she gets to know
you.
The first thing that you notice
about Jenna is her purple hair (if she does not have it covered in her
hood). This was caused as a result of an
accident at the orphanage. One of the
more eccentric tollome professors was tinkering in his lab. To this day, he is still not sure what
happened. It seems that some fluids
mixed together over a couple of scrolls with magical runes and started
fizzling. The next thing he knew, the
whole thing was exploding in purple flames.
Jenna had been a favorite of Professor Klunkin’s. He would allow the poor orphan half-elf girl
to watch him work. As she grew older, he
began teaching her his lunatic (that’s what everyone else called them)
concepts, inventions, and ideas.
He came across the girl when she
was sitting in the corner of his hallway crying. This was when she was fifteen years old. That is the equivalent of a six-year-old
human. She looked so frail, alone and
vulnerable that he couldn’t help but take pity on her. Only when he picked her up, he found a sudden
place for her in his heart that could not be explained. Perhaps it was the fragile look in her opal
eyes that clenched an old tollome's chest.
It could have been the way she instantly seized him and held on for dear
life as if he were the only safety in a stormy sea. (You know, life really does seem like that at
times, I would imagine that the feeling is intensified if you are an orphan.)
No one at the orphanage knew who
her parents were. She was found
abandoned at a secluded place in the city park.
The guard was able to find no clues as to where she came from and who
left her there. The orphanages of Zimth
are known throughout Auropea for their compassion in taking care of lost
children that are usually left to lives of crime, poverty and misfortune in
other cities. It is said that parents
who actually care somewhat about those children that they abandon are left in
Zimth. It is very likely that Jenna was
one of those children, then again there could be an entirely different reason
for her being left in such a manner when she was ten (four, human). Whatever the reason, Jenna became an
unwilling inhabitant of the Felth Orphanage.
The Felth Orphanage was named after
Banba Felth. Banba was an unimportant
member of the Zimth city bureaucracy.
He was a treasury bureaucrat of medium rank. What he did have going for him is that he
controlled where the city’s orphanage fund went. The Felth Orphanage was named after him
because he approved the contractor’s bid, and it was part of the kickback he
received. Banba was fired shortly
thereafter due to a standard inspection of spending. It turns out that he actually took the
highest of eighteen bids, and was living quite well in a nice section of town. His name was never taken off of the home for
lost children because it was too poor of an orphanage for anyone else to
want.
Two hundred years later, it has
become even more run down and dilapidated.
The orphanage is in the poorest part of town. The children there do not always fare
well. Truth be told, some of the worst
rascals in Zimth come from this place.
The Downhill Flats of Zimth are notorious for their thieves and shady
characters. Everyone that lives in this
part of town has at least some knowledge as to the disreputable professions
available in the world.
The Felth Orphanage is
run by Gugga Dimt, the headmaster. Gugga
is a cruel sort of a tollome that really doesn’t like children. He calls them mean names and pinches and
pokes them, calling it all humorous joking around. Headmaster Dimt doesn’t seem to realize that
he is the only one laughing. Actually,
there are two others who laugh. Mistress
Ligga and Mistress Chooli. They are two
of the governess’ at the orphanage.
These two laugh at all of his pranks and encourage him with their own
mischief that tends to be even crueler.
Jenna has run afoul of the
headmaster and his two governesses a few times and the have been especially
mean to her. Mistress Chooli in
particular was harsh with the girl. The
Mistress’ real name was once Chooliinna, an elven name. She was an outcast from the Willden
Elves. It is not known in the orphanage
why she was an outcast, but a dark rumor seems to follow her about a dead
child, perhaps something she was responsible for. Chooli has the attitude of elven superiority
that leans some to treat half-breeds such as Jenna as scum on the world. And the Mistress had this attitude in
abundance. Whenever Jenna comes into
view, Chooli gets a look of hatred in her eyes and has even been known to run
after the girl in order to cause her pain.
The abuse she has put Jenna through goes beyond mischief. Mistress Chooli has beaten Jenna more than a
few times. It was shortly after one of
these beatings that Professor Klunkin found her.
The Professor has lasted a long
time at the orphanage for a few reasons.
To start with, he is a very good professor and his students learn a lot
from the old tollome. His brother was
the previous headmaster at the orphanage at a time when it was actually a
little less disreputable, though the brother was no saint either. The main reason he is allowed to stay it that
he gives the headmaster no choice in the matter. The one time Master Dimt tried to throw
Klunkin out, the old professor cast a few spells. Dimt spent a full six weeks in the infirmary
recovering. No one is stupid enough to
mess with the Professor now. His
quarters are actually a suite of eight rooms in the northernmost tower of the
orphanage. It takes up three levels of
the top of the tower. The uppermost room
is one room in which the professor keeps his most powerful magical items and
books. This is where he does most of his
work as well. The next floor down is the
living quarters with five rooms. This is
actually the ground level. Two of the
three towers in the orphanage are three story towers. The professor’s tower is two stories, and
considering that the rest of the orphanage is two stories high, it makes the
tower not very noticeable as a tower.
These five rooms are mostly cluttered with various books and
miscellaneous magical items of relatively low power. The lower level consists of two rooms that
the professor uses for experiments and alchemy.
The first room is a room that is
warded in such a way as to prevent stray magic from escaping. There are magic absorbents that distribute
magic so that powerful spells can be performed with a minimum effect. For example, if the professor were to be
trying to interpret a scroll, and wild magic, or a trap were to go off, the
result could be easily controlled. A
fireball would become nothing more than the flame of a candle.
The second room is filled with
tubes, bottles, and various ingredients used in alchemy. This room is where the professor mixes
various ingredients used in spells as well as potions and concoctions that are
for sell. The professor makes quite a
bit of money off of this side business; actually he makes quite a lot
considering that he mixes some of the most dangerous liquids available.
* * *
After five
years of abuse in the orphanage, Jenna wanted nothing more than to get away
from the hell that her life had become.
She had just received another beating from the Mistress Chooli. When the Mistress had turned her back to
speak to another orphan, Jenna ran. She
got lost in the large orphanage and ended up wandering down a long lonely
hallway. At the end of this passage,
there was a locked door. She tried to
open it, but had no success. She
collapsed in the corner of the hallway and burst into tears. Life had been terrible since she had been
abandoned and left to the Felth Orphanage.
She just couldn’t take being beat up anymore and didn’t know how to
escape.
Professor
Klunkin was a good five hundred and fifty years old. This was a very respectable age for a
tollome. He made his home in the Felth
orphanage for the last hundred and fifty years.
Klunkin is three feet, eight inches tall. He has bright yet dark blue eyes that are in
the teardrop shape of the tollome. To go
with that, he has pure white hair on his head and chin. He has had this color hair for all of his
life and it was commented at an early age that it seemed appropriate on him due
to his maturity and wisdom even early on.
Klunkin is usually messy and unkempt.
His clothes look much like his quarters; scattered and thrown
amuck. He has a wonderful sense of humor
and likes to smile. The only problem is
that he usually only smiles for the children and a few of his true
friends. Among the orphans, he has a
reputation as the nicest and friendliest professor alive. Among his colleagues and the clients that
wish to buy products from him, Klunkin has a reputation as a mean and fearsome
lunatic of a madman mage. In fact he has
even used that as a means to announce himself in social circles.
On this
cold winter day, Klunkin stepped out of his rooms in order to see an old friend
across town. He almost tripped over the
half elf girl crying in a bundle on the floor.
The professor looked down at the lass that now looked at him with terror
in her opal elven eyes. The tears had
been streaming down her cheeks, which looked as though they had both been
slapped more than a few times. The rag
of a dress was torn and barely covered the girl. She looked emaciated to a degree that
questioned whether she was being fed at all.
After just a moment of his scrutiny, she began sobbing terribly, and
curled up as though she expected the beatings to continue further. Klunkin reached down and tenderly ran his
fingers through her hair, making calming cooing noises. The shocked girl looked up at the old tollome
as he took into his deceptively powerful arms.
All of a sudden she desperately threw her arms around his neck and began
crying in earnest.
The
professor took care of the girl from that point on. He didn’t simply protect her, he moved her in
with him. Professor Klunkin gave Jenna
food and nourishment and within a few short weeks, she looked more the little
girl than a skeleton. He bought her some
clothes that fit her and had some color.
When Mistress Chooli came looking, the professor informed her that the
girl would be staying with him and he would turn anyone that so much as laid a
hand on her into a worm with five legs and promptly slammed the door in her
face. Klunkin took to teaching the girl
on his own. He did this in part to
protect her from having to go into the rest of the orphanage, which could be
dangerous to her despite his threats. He
also realized that he had no apprentices throughout his life and had not passed
on his knowledge to anyone. He did not
have an heir either. It wasn’t long
before he realized that Jenna was the one that he would be passing all of his
knowledge to.
Jenna
learned fast. No longer being abused and
mistreated, she was able to start understanding the things that were placed in
front of her to learn. She wished to
please Klunkin due to the fact that he was the only one that ever treated her
well. The professor began teaching her
how to read and write first. This she
seemed to take in almost immediately. As
she gained nourishment and became more and more healthy, she took in
information faster. Jenna seemed to have
an instinct for learning. Within the
first year, she caught up to the other children her age. In five years she could amazingly read and
write in three different languages.
Professor Klunkin gave her a balanced schooling, with such subjects as
mathematics, history, geography and many other basic teachings. Then he proceeded to school her in the arcane
arts of magic. He started her off on the
basics of magic, with theories and ethics of magic included. Jenna seemed to take to all of this knowledge
with a passion and joy that pleased the old man well.
Jenna
rarely went into the rest of the orphanage and then only with the
professor. In case of emergencies, she
was taught a few defensive spells early on.
Ones that would hold or trap a person that intended to do her harm, so
that she could get away. There was also
a wand that could be used in a pinch if necessary. The biggest disadvantage to this seclusion is
that while it kept her safe, it also kept her from becoming socially active or
knowledgeable.
Jenna did
not mind this really. There was the
occasion where she wished for a friend other than the wonderful old tollome
that had fallen for a thin wraith of a pitiful girl. There were always the books and the enormous
amount of information to be absorbed.
She felt that she could take on any amount of data and still want
more. To Jenna, being in the professor’s
quarters with all of these books was rather like any other child in a candy
store. The girl especially liked
listening to the Professor talking of magic and enjoyed learning how to wield
it herself. By the age of fifty years
(about sixteen in human years) Jenna was already fluent with basic forms of magic. She could wield many styles of magic and
understood most languages of the arcane.
In addition to this, she came to know alchemy and the specialty forms of
magic such as rune magic and weapon enhancing.
In truth, while next to Klunkin she was an apprentice, the girl could
hold her own as a master next to most mages in the world.
It was at
the age of twenty-two that Jenna experienced the purple explosion. While the professor does not know what
happened, Jenna does. You see; it seems
that a little scamp of a tollomish orphan somehow managed to get into the
professor’s tower. The boy was looking
around in areas that no one was allowed to be.
In the tower study, the professor was examining a special magical item
and had his various chemicals, scrolls and other ingredients around him. The boy was quietly sneaking around taking a
look at this and that, peaking into this box or examining that container. Jenna walked in about that time and noticed
the lad poking around. She was about to
say something when she noticed that the professor was involved in work that
simply could not be disturbed. It was
then that the boy noticed Jenna. He
dropped the box that he had been looking at and a wind came forth from it. This wind blew papers and scrolls about the
study. One of the scrolls, a
particularly powerful one with a wooden holder in it, knocked into a vial of
purple liquid used for identifying spells.
The liquid spilled out onto a few scrolls and mixed in with the
runes. Professor Klunkin began
frantically waving at the liquid trying to stop it from causing harm. At this point he suddenly remembered that he
was in the process of wielding magic.
This magic wafted around like a small mystical breeze fanning the liquid
drenched scrolls. This was a very bad
thing. Luckily for both the professor
and Jenna, they were wearing their warded necklaces that protected them from
such explosions that occurred next. The
boy did not need a necklace. In the way
of the truly mischievous, he ran at the first sign of trouble and was out of
the tower at the time of the explosion.
Jenna woke
up a few of days later. She had been
staring at everything that had happened.
When the explosion occurred, she was looking straight at it. The professor had had the sense to duck just
in time. Jenna however, was caught in
the full blast and not even her necklace was enough to save her. The half elf girl had three broken ribs and a
fractured wrist. The worst part of it
was that her hair was now a rich velvety purple color. The burst of color that was mixed in the
blast had even managed to put light purple striations in her bright opal
eyes. They weren't very noticeable for
the most part. Somewhat of a light
lavender to begin with. When Jenna gets
angry, they darken into lightning streaks of purple that flash throughout the
iris. This upset Jenna very badly for about
the first few years. Then she began to
realize that the hair made her unique.
And her eyes were quite intimidating when she became angry. These things set her apart from others and
gave her a little bit of a personality that she didn't have in common with most
other beings.
Though was raised as an orphan, she
became well off due to the fact that she assists the professor in the making of
potions and scrolls of magic. Many of
the items she makes herself. This has
increased profits for both of them. Due
to the fact that she now has money she is able to buy nice things for herself. Jenna likes to have nice dresses and will
spend a little more for them. She felt
very guilty at first until she realized that they could in fact afford such. As far as jewelry went, Klunkin made magical
pieces that were not only functional, but actually looked very nice. For Jenna’s fiftieth birthday he presented
her with a set of jewelry that had powerful enchantments on it. It included an ornate necklace, a tiara, two
bracelets that covered the entire length of the lower arm and ended in a semi
glove with a ring over the middle finger.
These bracelets looked like a metallic sort of lace. They have four rows of four amethysts down
the arm. These are magical conductors
for the bracelets. There is also an opal
on the back of the hand that is the primary power source and the gem that
communicates with the other pieces.
There are opals and amethysts on all of the jewelry. There are also matching shin guards that resemble
the bracelets.
