Helma
Sentry of the Ohrder Helma
A child without a home, a warrior without a fight. Helma seeks understanding through the only route she knows: violence.
Physical Description
Identifying Characteristics
The Touched curse has begun making alterations to the skin on the right side of the face and body.
Mental characteristics
Personal history
I was brought to the cult against my will and do not remember my parents. I was Touched before I can remember; this may have some connection to why I don't know my parents.
I was groomed from a young age to guard/defend the next Chosen One on account of my beastliness. This turned out to be Altair, who I don't believe to actually be a Chosen One. In fact, I don't believe in most of what the cult talks about, however, I do enjoy my freedom to indulge in my chaotic/sadistic side as an alchemist.
When it was discovered I have a bit of magical prowess, I was sent away to a training camp, where I met Altair, Ishtar, Mori, and Ohri. Altair and Ishtar are childhood friends with Mori. We've all done quite a bit if training together as a group before our adventure.
My journey to becoming an alchemist began with the desire to rid myself of the Touched curse, to prove I was not the monster everyone believed I would become, but soon enough I gave up. Now my goal is to prove that I am a worse monster than they ever thought I could be.
Gender Identity
Female
Sexuality
Demi-pansexual
Education
Inquisitors' training camp; Alchemy lessons with Hakon (my father figure and first mentor) and Taelis (my second, cultist, mentor)
Accomplishments & Achievements
She has won many fights as a Sentry of the Ohrder; she was one of the best.
Failures & Embarrassments
Once, she was made to fight soon after getting food poisoning. She threw up all over her opponent just before getting her ass handed to her.
Mental Trauma
Never knew her parents. Taught to be a warrior at all times. Has difficulty with emotional attachments.
Personality Characteristics
Motivation
Freedom
Find either a cure for the Touched condition or a way to expedite the process
Social
Contacts & Relations
Hakon, the alchemist instructor
Family Ties
Unknown
Religious Views
None
Social Aptitude
Little
Honorary & Occupational Titles
Sentry of the Ohrder
Age
22
Date of Birth
Unknown
Birthplace
Unknown
Children
Current Residence
Jorun's Ship
Gender
Female
Eyes
Brown
Hair
Black
Skin Tone/Pigmentation
Olive/tan
Height
5' 9"
Remove these ads. Join the Worldbuilders Guild
Welcome to Iolas
May 11, 1325
We get to another island, the first civilization we've seen in a while. The island is called "The Shattered Island", Iolas being the name of the port town we've arrived in. The port master advises us that we get in touch with a man named Polok. Mori, Altair, Ishtar, and I walk down main street, and spot an odd-looking bear that has plants growing on its back outside an inn. We head inside; there's a group of unfriendly-looking folks talking to each other, and one guy on his own. The innkeeper asks us if we want anything to eat, I immediately sit down at the bar and start eating. I have to pick around the fish in the soup, though, because I'm tired of seafood. I hear Mori go over to talk to the loner, who was also washed up here by the storm, and lost all of his crew mates. Apparently, the bear belongs to him. We allow him into our group.
We head out to the general store to pawn some stuff and find some money. The man at the store tells me there's an alchemist that lives with the lord who acts as both alchemist and doctor down main street. First, though, we go see Polok at the pier.
Polok's skin appears to be made out of sand, but human for the most part. He has grey eyes, and beneath the skin he appears almost to be made of rock, that cracks and splits. We ask if he can fix our boat. He can, but it'll cost us 8,000 gp and take two weeks.
We head out to go find the lord to see if we can get jobs to pay for it. The lord's manor is a large wooden structure with a bell tower. There are two guards stationed at the front door, and a few more in the lawn toward the back.
The lord's name is Roland Gerrart (Lord Gerrart), he's rather young. The guards recognize us as the people who came in on the boat, and assume we must be looking for work. They say the bear must stay outside, but we can go in and see the lord. Inside, the lord is playing chess with one of his guards; we enter and get an audience, but stumble over ourselves while asking for a job, still he offers us three options: 1) Lost expedition (went to look for crystalline creatures, but not the same type that we've seen), 2) Research Site (accompany a visiting royal to an obelisk on the island), 3) Pre-Shattering Ruins (not for the faint of heart).
The lord's doctor is Dalyor; he travels around, but may be back by the end of the day. We head out to find the royal who needs an escort party. We go to the inn the lord suggests and find him there, ask him about his project and what we might be paid. We don't say yes right away, but aren't burning any bridges, so we plan to return if nothing else pans out.
We decide to set out for the lost expedition in the morning. I head back towards the lord's manor as my friends go buy stuff. I meet Daylor, and he takes me to his lab. He gives me an antipoison, three healing potions, and two oils for damage against crystalline creatures (available to apply to weapons). I take the antipoison and oils. He asks me to pick up flowers that are results of the Shattering, and shows me one in a jar to let me know what to look for. It looks like a lily that has turned crystalline. I must be careful to store it properly, also. I copy three first-level spells into my own formula book: Targeted Bomb, True Strike, and Shield.
Leoart and his family decide to stay on the island.
I learn I can make the sea blooms into potions of water breathing; but they also cost about 750 gp, so I could sell them. I'll decide later.
The Floating Island, Pt 1
May 10, 1325
Ohri has to teleport Altair, Mori, and I to the island, then I throw my javelin (plus rope) to get to the ship. Someone ties the rope to the ship so we don't lose it. The three of us explore for a while. I don't find a lot, but I do find one blue flower. The pedals of the flower are very large and flesh-y. I recognize the flower as a Seabloom flower, something that only grows deep below the ocean's surface. I harvest it right away. It can be used as an ingredient for marine-themed potions, and also as an enhancement for any potion. It's incredibly valuable.
The island doesn't look rather large. We continue climbing upward, and soon we reach a bluff where there are large tree-like structures with kelp on them. On the ground is a layer of dead, dry kelp. They aren't exactly trees... they're difficult to describe. They're almost bone-like. Mori expresses his worry about the potential danger of this place, and I shush him. What an idiot.
Phelo taps me on the shoulder. Huge iguanas are coming down off the trees... 5 of them. They don't seem super hostile to us, more curious. They're easily bigger than a human. They all begin to hiss, though, and we turn to find a giant mantis-like creature behind us. It looks like a mantis but with fins. The ground starts to shake and rumble, and we hear a deep oceanic rumble, and all the creatures start scuttling away, except for one iguana-like creature, a red one with orange stripes, which keeps looking at me and approaching me slowly. I try to befriend it, reach out to it, but it backs away, looks behind it and back to me, and then leads me deeper into the island. Mori and Altair want to get the rest of the group before we go deeper, but I won't leave the iguana. They follow me. We start descending toward the middle, and find the kelp grass getting a deeper pink shade. There seems to be a large crystal in the center of the island that the iguana is leading me to. I can smell a strangely potent smell. The hairs on our arms start to rise. I'm reminded of alchemical experiments of lightning. We reach the center of the island where there is a huge blue crystal, like a giant spike gowing upward, and my new iguana friend immediately scuttles away.
The crystal lies in the center of the clearing, it looks like there's some kind of light coming from inside it, moving. There's a scale-like pattern along the ground near the crystal, and it looks like the scale pattern has something to do with the crystal. There's a little crackle, and a bolt of lightening comes out of it, and hits a tree behind it. As I walk toward the crystal, I can see a pole or stick sticking out of the base of the crystal. My hair starts to stand more and more on end as I get closer, and I see that the stick is a spear, and there's a skeletal hand fused to the spearhead. I can imagine that someone may have tried to pry the crystal out of the ground, but got electrocuted.
Altair uses mage hand to touch the spear, and we hear an electric scream. An electric elemental comes from within the crystal. It hits Altair, and Ishtar heals him. I drink a dexterity mutagen and hit it with a bomb. It screams and wretches. Phelo comes up and hits it as well. Altair also comes in and deals damage with a scythe. It screeches, and launches into the air, sending bolts of lightening down and creating two more, smaller elementals. One trips me. Tumi comes to help. Mori celebrates a kill of the other small elemental. The medium elemental comes back down onto the playing field. We continue fighting, and eventually Phelo is the one who crushes the medium elemental. Now there's just one left, the one attacking me. Myself, Ishtar, and Tumi, can't kill it, so Phelo comes over and takes care of it. I spit blood at him, because I'm tired of getting saved by Phelo. He tells me if I'm so tired of getting saved by him, I should save myself next time.
I spit at him again.
The Sea, Pt 1
May 10, 1325
After the battle, we get hit with a giant wave that wipes out the mast. Leoart almost gets crushed, Ohriana takes the wheel, Ishtar gets wiped out and might be concussed. I throw her below decks and brace myself for the next wave. We're coughing up seawater and getting our bearings, and a third wave, larger than the others, is coming in the distance. As we recover, we look up, dreading more waves. But what we see instead is daylight, forming on the edge of the clouds. The daylight opens up, and we find that we are in the middle of a massive storm. Now that we are in the eye, though, we are in calmer waters. We see an island nearby, with seagulls circling, and decide to head in that direction.
Altair detects uncertain magic coming from the island in the exact middle of the storm. When I roll the magic dice, I get a 2, 3, and 4. I don't know how I feel about this island, but we head there anyway.
The greenery on this island is not actually green, there are many different weird colored plants... like underwater flora. I remember some studies from alchemy classes, some about where to get certain chemicals, one specifically about deep sea ingredients. There are a few ingredients that can be insanely potent, but every now and then a sailor can happen across floating islands where these flora and fauna can be found.
We've landed on a ghost story.
I'm wary of this place, but I just can't wait to get there and find a bunch of ingredients I've been missing.
The Day We Left that F*cking Hellhole
May 7, 1325
We are on Jorun's ship, headed out of the cult's island. We plan to meet up with him towards the South, but he was discovered by individuals that were hunting him. We leave without him, getting the small ship out onto the sea with sufficient ease.
The Island, Day 3
May 10, 1325
We go to the island, see some of the creatures' corpses from when they ate each other last night, and cross a river (I fall in saving Ohri, but the water isn't deep so I just wade to shore). We find Leoart's family on the other side in a hill cave. The mother and son eat, and we take them back to our boat. We sail away, and one of the headless creatures watches along the shoreline as we go.
The family tells us the story of how they left Facinus, the son was born with birth defects and the cult decided he was unfit for life, so the family fled before they could kill him.
We continue sailing North, toward the mainland. We discuss what to do with the family, and agree to keep them around until we reach civilization. They would like to be dropped off on the coastline of Thelem. Leoart advises that we stay away from the capital city, lest we be searched and questioned. We should head for a small town toward the East of the capital. It should be a two-or-so week journey.
I take another look at Altair's dice. Ohri and I catch some fish.
The dice are performing some kind of augury. The dice are predicting your fortune during some near events. Lower numbers are bad, higher numbers are good. Ohri, Altair, and Ishtar all roll 1, 1, 2. So does Mori. I actively choose not to roll them.
It seems there's a storm coming. There are no islands in sight. We have to ride it out. I get out on the deck and haul ropes.
11 creatures come on deck and attack us. I kill one with a flesh-eating bomb (it does no damage to the ship) and injure another. I kill another with my mace. I nearly die by another hit, but just before I can kill the creature, Phelo sweeps in and finishes it off. He calls me pathetic.
Leoart was brave during the fight, attacking one with a torch.
The Island, Day 2
May 9, 1325
We head toward the ruins of a ship not far from where we landed. I ignore a religious monologue by Mori and find inside it a set of unhinged doors, and a very heavy wooden door with iron bands, locked with a heavy padlock. I go up to inspect it, and there are lots of scrape marks around the door like the ones we saw in the village.
Phelo walks through the door and opens it from the inside. There is a desk, a journal, and the stub of a candle, and some kind of blood-soaked cot with a dead guy, holding a knife. I decipher that the dagger is slightly magical, it has a +1 bonus. I follow Altair who picks up three magical dice. I can't tell exactly what their function is. When Altair attempts to roll them, he gets a 4, 5, and 2 every time.
We head over to the spooky old tower along the upper shoreline. We find a small abandoned village here, about 400-500 years old. The old tower is actually on its own pillar, connected to land by a structure that used to be a bridge, but it would be incredibly dangerous to cross. We send Mori, who makes it across but creates a 10-foot gap behind him. We tie a rope across both sides of the bridge, so we can shimmy our way across. I make it across and Altair starts to cross before Ohri warns us all of five gribs in the tower. At that moment, Altair falls.
We kill or scare away all the gribs, but we nearly lose Altair in the process.
We head into the tower. There are a bunch of crates and a chest, and a place where a set of stairs used to be. Ishtar picks up a magical bracelet that I identify has a powerful shield spell. Mori continues annoying the shit out of me with his religious shit so I go stack some boxes so we can get up to the second floor.
There's a small table (appears to be a study desk), on top is a scroll case (ivory) and chalice (darkwood). We all leave and get back across the rope bridge to the mainland, and go back to our boat. We go around the island to find the family of the guy who tried to rob us, then wake him up when we stop offshore. He tells us a lot about the island, what happened here (the abandoned boat we raided had a monster on it that got loose), and his wife and son are there on the island. His name is Ohron. We promise him we will be back on the island tomorrow morning to find his family.
The Island, Day 1
May 8, 1325
We survive a storm and land on the South beach of a nearby island to the North. It's a spooky island and none of us really want to stay. We wait out the storm, rest another day, then prepare to set out on the water as soon as the tide comes up again.
I have to go rescue Mori from some gribs, and I give him a short lecture on going out alone. His familiar, Phelo, verbally berates him much harsher than I did. I don't much like this Phelo fellow.
The whole group heads into the village, and Ohri pulls a smile out of me for the first time that day. She encourages me to open up more to the group, noting my grumpiness earlier. I tell her I'm just not a morning person, but really I'm self-conscious about where I belong. I've been protecting and serving the cult and Altair for as long as I can remember; no one gave me a choice. I don't even know if I want to be doing it; no one ever asked. Yet I continue to do it even now, when there is nothing making me. I'm reflecting on my own free will, and realizing I may be more bound to my role than I thought.
We get into the abandoned village, and pick up a few items. We notice that most people had to leave in a big hurry, and obvious signs of blood indicating a person being dragged, bloody, from one corner of the room to outside the house.
When we leave, we see a human figure leaving our boat with a big bag of stuff. He very quickly gets spotted by the gribs and attacked. We chase after him and scare off the gribs. He's unconscious and barely alive when we reach him, so we stabilize him, and I carry him back to the boat so we can ask him questions. I realize he won't be getting better any time soon, so I leave the boat to find some specific ingredients at the top of the nearest mountain. It will be a 2-3 hour treck both ways, and the next tide comes in in 5 hours, so I have to hurry. Ohri follows me, concerned I won't be back in time, trying to get me to turn back and let the man die, but I won't. Eventually, the others join us.
After a 2.5 hour hike, we get high enough to find and collect enough ingredient with just enough time to get back to the boat in time for high tide. We get back to the boat and get it in the water. I start making the remedy and checking over the guy. He's middle-aged/old, probably 40 or 50, might have children. Clothes ragged, no shoes, belt held together by rope, has a ring on his finger that looks like a wedding band. Inside his pouch are a couple silver and copper coins, a carving knife, and a wedding ring with an inset gem. I also notice that he was trying to steal what appears to be 2 weeks worth of rations for a single person. I yell up to the crew on deck to stay alert for other survivors. Along the shoreline not much later, we find a lit campfire and a couple of survivors calling for help. We navigate farther upshore to stay the night. By now, I've done all I can to treat the man's infection.
I take second watch after Ohri, and the third watch. Nothing eventful happens. I wake Ishtar to complete the cycle.
When we wake up, she is obviously high, and so is her fox.
Comments