Doctor Sage Blackwell, A history in detail
Home on the Hill
Leah, was a healer with magic and a keen understanding of herbs. Joris was an arcane researcher who dabbled in transmutation. Both were members of The Arcanum, but also new parents. Sage their new baby girl was born in a healer's bay carved from granite amid the noise and tumult of the Mountainfolk city, Dun Bok. Sage's mother enjoyed living among the Mountainfolk. She adored the culture, the food and the educational opportunities for their newborn daughter. Joris, however, longed for more open spaces and a home above ground. They both knew that being human wasn't expressly a problem in the city, however, they also knew that their positions in the Arcanum afforded them a large degree of privilege. Humans were usually dismissed as "surface dwellers" and seen as unintelligent children when compared to the dusty, elders that ran the city's many guilds. The new Abbot of the Arcanum in Dun Bok had recently come into his position and was making sweeping reforms. He was also one of the Mountainfolk . While overt racism was never truly expressed, the veiled threats and consistent dismissal began to wear on Sage's father. He was growing weary of all the infighting the new Abbot was causing with the city's mayor, and he was truly irritated at the new Abbots' constant interruptions to his research. Joris began working to convince Leah to relocate their family. A life away from the city and among simple people without political aspirations. After the new Abbot threatened to have Joris' research taken away from him Leah agreed and the two left the city with their infant daughter.No More Home
On her eleventh birthday Sage awoke in her bed, choked by the smell of smoke. The putrid clouds writhed through the floor of her second story room and she could feel intense heat beating through the floorboards. Her home was burning! She tried to escape through her door but it was stuck. Thinking quickly she opened her window and climbed down the shutters to safety. The villagers swept her away from the conflagration as they attempted to extinguish the house. They had formed a bucket line and furiously hurling water into her home. It was only after several villagers were pulled into the flames that people began to panic.
A bony figure draped in flame stepped from the house and rasped a laugh. This creature wasn't wearing any clothing, all its skin had burned away. Sage was not afraid. It had no eyes but she could tell that it was looking out at the terrified townspeople. Then its eyes fell upon her. Sage watched, rapt with fascination, the creature floated across the ground towards her. The hunters from the village stepped in front of her and the rest of the townsfolk brandishing bows and axes, but with a flick of its boney fingers the brawny men fell to the ground. People were screaming all around Sage, she had been dropped to the ground in the mayhem. Now she stood not ten feet away from the creature. Enraptured by its workings. It drew no breath and had no skin but it would not die. Fascinating! Then, as suddenly as it had appeared the creature vanished, snuffed out like a candle at bedtime.
The days that followed were confusing for Sage. Her parents were dead. Her mother's body was found in the wreckage of their house. Sage knew that she was sad, but her emotions warred within her. She knew she would miss her parents but she was so overpowered with fascination with the floating creature. How had it caused so much destruction? The fire didn't seem to hurt it at all, and with how her mother's body had changed in the fire, skin curling up like dry bark, Sage knew the fire had been intense. When they couldn't find her father's body Sage was conflicted again. The desire to lay her father's body to rest was equaled only by her disappointment that she could not see how the fire had affected his body.
After the shocking murder of her parents Sage's interest in death became a fixation. She would spend hours watching the village's tanner and butcher process the bodies of hunted animals. The adults in the village allowed this to continue as they saw no harm in her curiosity. However, when small animals would die in the village they would disappear. Nobody knew where. Until one night a hunter discovered a long abandoned shed with a candle left burning inside. Inside the collapsing structure the young Sage had begun depositing the animal corpses she collected. Sage had meticulously cut open birds, squirrels and other rodents. Taking time to carefully organize their organs and catalogue the injuries that led to their deaths. The villagers were aghast. They had tolerated the young orphan's curiosities, but this was a step too far.
Sage assured them that she hadn't killed any of the animals. They had been dead when I found them. Which was true. In addition to the discovery of her first laboratory, she kept another secret. Sage had been experimenting with the same magical structures that her father had taught her. Instead of transforming a cup into a candlestick she was able to make a dead chipmunk twitch its tail. Sage had even gotten as far as coaxing one of the dead birds to sing again using a version of her father's incantations, but it wasn't meant to last. The shed was burned and she was given penance to Izan, the god of death, by the local priest. The next few years for Sage were unpleasant. The villagers weren't cruel, but she was bored. She was apprenticed to the village washer, a spindly woman named Rosca. Weeks of toil in the smelly barrels of soiled clothes grated on her mind. When she discovered that different dyes Rosca used to fix clothing could also change hair color, Sage immediately set out to experiment. After a night in the laundry to herself sage emerged the next morning with her hair dyed a mottled purple. Rosca had been furious about wasting the dyes. Sage felt bad, she knew the dyes were expensive but still. She had conducted a successful experiment! Just like her father, just like the animals in her shed. Rosca pled to the village elder's circle to do something with the wild girl. Sage had no parents and her exploits with the animal corpses had pushed the elders to consider casting her out. However, they knew exile was too harsh a punishment for a child so young. Instead they sent a message to Dun Bok, to the Arcanum.
Among the Mountainfolk
After the Arcanum was sent to collect her from Crest Hill, Sage found herself adrift and dejected. The people of her home town had rejected her. Nobody stepped forward to offer their home as refuge to her. That fire creature had taken her parents and now that witch Rosca had taken her home. The Journey to Dun Bok had been short and the man who brought her was a snuffly old mountaineer with a dusty red beard who never spoke. Upon arrival in Dun Bok, Sage forgot her anger for a time. The underground city was wonderous. Torchlit alleyways around every corner made city's light seem to pulse the shadows in a constant dance. The soaring stone chambers that vanished into the dark above her filled her with wonder and dread. How could everything stay secure up there? Adjusting to a lack of day or night was difficult at first and she didn't sleep for several days. The acolyte's dormitory was an uncomfortable place. Row after row of stone slabs carved into the wall of the chamber she shared with twenty other people. She wasn't the only child in the service of the Arcanum tower. However she was the only one with purple hair. Sage didn't speak the language of these Mountanfolk. While she was the same height as most Mountainfolk adults her stick thin frame and odd appearance seemed to attract trouble at a breathtaking pace.The Arcanum tower was a beautiful building full of books and ledgers. She had never know that so many books could exist or that so many words had ever been written. Her parents had seldom spoken about their former lives in Dun Bok, but her father had always remarked upon how many books the building contained. Unfortunately Sage was not to see any of it. Her awkward appearance and lack of linguistic fluency meant she was bound to duties away from the library wing of the tower. She scrubbed pots, polished floors and burned garbage. Sage was bored again.
Mountainfolk were a bit of a curiosity. They were constantly focused on their lives through vocation. If she ever found a mountaineer who spoke Emserian Common she would find that they named themselves after their speciality. They had things like clan names or family names. Sage had never had a family name. She was the daughter of Leah and Joris, and as far as she knew they never had a surname. This cultural idiosyncrasy didn't mean much to her until her second year at the Arcanum. Her frustrations with scrubbing pots had reached its peak and the man in charge of her group was keen to make sure any, "independent magics" weren't tolerated. That meant any sets of books that Sage hid away in her footlocker were quickly discovered and returned to their shelves. When the time came for the acolytes to apply for promotion to an Arcanum order, she had to record so much information about herself. Yet whenever she came to the sections requesting her surname she left it blank. This proved to be a point counted against her as the order of Administrators refused to process her application, it was incomplete. Not to be deterred she redoubled her efforts. Instead of bringing any books back to her cot in the dreary stone dormitory Sage discovered several forgotten storerooms in the tower. These rooms became her office, and where she conducted her research in secret. Pilfering the cast aside remains of chickens and ground squall sage recreated her shed that had been so cruely burned in front of her. This time though, she knew to keep her research hidden.
Blackwell
Sage met with small successes in her new laboratory. During what little free time there was, she would repair small wounds on half eaten hog legs, make mouse skeletons prance and sometimes make a mess. Papers were constantly strewn along the floor. Experiments were never cleaned up. Once she had come close to being discovered because of the terrible smell coming from a decaying fish. Sage resolved to be more careful but her lack of time for experiments always left her 'office' in a bit of a mess. One day Sage returned to her hideaway to discover it clean. Nothing had been thrown away or discarded, far from it. Papers had been neatly stacked, labels had been affixed to jars, and samples had been carefully organized. In the middle of the floor lay a text that she didn't recognize. There was a note atop the cover: "Dear wayward researcher,I am impressed by all the work you have done. Truly a great amount of effort has gone into your study. I wish to offer my encouragement. But plTo the young, death is an idea you think about. To the old, death is a shadow over your shoulder. This should help you learn the differences." After proving her ability as a researcher and student of biology she accidentally ran afoul of that tower's abbot. It was decided that she was to be transferred to the Arcanum tower in Riverweld to assist with research on magical artifacts.
