Elorin
Elorin is an energetic Halfling who never seems to have a clue what he's doing, yet usually winds up doing the correct thing regardless. He often has a monkey on his shoulder, and rides a roc.
History
Elorin and his brother Manus lived in a small remote village. Elorin worked as a healer, making healing salves while studying magic, as Manus protected the village, often recklessly charging into battle against threats. Yet, this would not last. When the village was attacked by a dark creature, Manus managed to repel it, but suffered a fatal wound in the process which Elorin could not heal. His mind raced, and just as Manus drew his last breath, Elorin completed the spell his divinations told him he'd need. Summoning up his magic, the fusion of transmutation and necromancy took hold, and Manus had become one with Elorin's monkey familiar. Though he'd lost most of his skills in the process, his mind was otherwise no worse off, and he was still bound by his loyalty to his brother and the oaths he'd sworn to his goddess.
Since then, Elorin has done all he can to fully restore Manus. While some of his skills have come back thanks to their constant training together, many of them are still missing, and Manus seems to forget some of them when not with Elorin. In his efforts, Elorin has tried to tap into any source of knowledge on familiars he could find, including witches and those sorcerers which naturally attract familiars. These efforts have greatly strengthened Manus, yet Elorin still is no closer to restoring his brother to halfling form, or even understand what actually happened when he cast that spell, all of his notes on it having become gibberish to Elorin and anyone else attempting to decipher the spell.
One of Elorin's early adventures led him to the nest of a missing Roc. While Elorin was trying to decide what to do with the sole egg laying in the nest, it began to hatch. At first, Elorin thought the baby Roc would try to attack him, but it instead seemed to have recognized him as it's mother. Training a bird twice his own size was a daunting task, but now Silex the Roc serves Elorin as a trusted mount.
There are few sources of arcane knowledge on the countryside however, and so Elorin journeyed to Babel to continue his research. And occasionally attack any evil he encounters without prior planning.
Since setting out, Elorin has gone on many adventures and helped stop multiple powerful foes threatening Etera. More recently, he has joined the leadership of Mirrandrar. While truly restoring Manus seems beyond even the most powerful of magics, the sizable arcane knowledge he has obtained while trying to find a way now helps enhance the lives of those in the kingdom of mages. His help was instrumental to turning Mirrandrar's capital Ardranach into a flying city.
Residence
As a powerful mage, Elorin spends much of his time in demiplanes. One of these is open to the public, accessible via portals near his house in Outer Eight or his residence in the flying capital of Mirrandrar. The massive demiplane contains a bountiful flora, the most notable being the acre-size farm of daily regrowing bananas. Near this, a giant lake of banana-flavored wine constantly renews and cleans itself, the wine enhancing the mental abilities of all that drink it for a week.
All are welcome to visit, drink from the lake, and take as many bananas as they wish, however troublemakers will quickly find that the many monkeys inhabiting the plane are far more powerful than they appear. The demiplane's ambient magic quickly heals the wounds of any who enter, and the lightened gravity reduces the effort needed to move around the plane.
In addition to the monkeys, while traversing the demiplane one may encounter animals made of various stones and minerals, or one of the rare crystal ponies trotting around. All of these inhabitants are highly intelligent, even more so than most wizards, and will gladly hold conversations with interesting visitors. The caretaker of the plane, Curunir, is the half-elven child Elorin adopted during the founding of Outer Eight who has grown to be a highly powerful mage in his own right. He usually travels alongside a reformed Tarrasque-spawn which has been turned to good.
While directly finding Elorin is normally difficult, the demiplane's inhabitants all share a mental connection letting them inform him of anything that would require his attention.
Adventures
Misery of Rayner
When Elorin heard of a haunted house where several people had gone missing, he was immediately interested. By the time the party arrived, it was already night time. Waiting for the next day sounded boring, so both the Halflings in the group entered immediately, the rest of the party facepalming as they followed.
Searching the mansion, the party eventually found a library, complete with a sliding bookcase, and several books of interest to Elorin. After avoiding a garden of poisonous plants and finding several standing coffins where the missing people had been entombed in while still alive, they finally found the one behind this: A floating skull with a large gem embedded in it, a creation of the ancient necromancer Rayner, controlling several skeletons.
Elorin immediately used mirror image to protect his brother, as Manus sent arrows flying directly at the skull. The rest of the party occupied with the skeletons which drained their life on contact, the skull tried to retaliate against Manus, its beams of negative energy instead striking the illusory duplicates. Manus responded with another two arrows, shattering the skull, its destruction also ending the animation of the skeletons under its control.
The evil gem securely stored in a box, Elorin got to work deciphering various notes found in the mansion. They revealed the location of at least one other similar item Rayner had made. More pressing matters called however, and so he decided to simply hand the deciphered notes and gem to a nearby church of Pharasma, and let them take care of it.
The Cloudy Flower
In this adventure, Elorin accompanied a half-fey elf with cute antlers up a mountain, so she could get the dragon at the top to make her a flower of clouds that doesn't dissipate, in order to obtain the approval of her true love's father.
Silex's flight came in very handy for finding a good path, and avoiding dangerous wolves and wild boars.
The mountain's peak was covered in a magical windstorm, warding off intruders, and making it more difficult to advance. Yet, the group persisted, and eventually found the entrance to the dragon's lair, buried underneath the snow. Inside was not an old silver dragon as expected, but rather his very young son. Though initially annoyed by the intrusion, he agreed to create the flower, to be delivered within a few days.
On the way back to town, as the party was just starting their rest, Elorin noticed a dragon soaring overhead. Upon arriving, the gate guard handed us a wooden package. Opening it, Elorin found a flower made of pure clouds, holding which gave a most peculiar feeling. Handing it to the one who hired him, the quest was complete.
Tower of Death
Elorin had already made it his mission to destroy any undead threatening innocents, so when the Tower of Death appeared, it was no surprise that Elorin immediately wanted to help. But what could a charming halfling with a pet roc and a monkey with absurd sniping skills possibly do?
Flying on Silex in what was probably the wrong direction to the location of a supposed anti-undead artifact he'd heard rumors about, something suddenly caught Elorin's eye: A group a skeletons exiting a hidden door in the side of a hill. This would have been odd enough even if it weren't happening in the middle of nowhere. Elorin was ready to charge right in, but Manus preferred a course of action less likely to end in their deaths, so Elorin instead dropped off Manus on the other side of the hill, relaying the skeletons positions via a Message spell while flying far enough overhead to not draw any attention from the skeletons. Manus put to use the skills he'd learned in their last training session, and sent arrows flying straight through the hill, phasing out of reality and re-appearing right next to the skeletons. The confused skeletons had no clue what was going on, and fell before even understanding what was going on. Yet their movements seemed to show a higher intelligence than would be expected of common skeletons.
Intrigued, and having completely forgotten his original quest, Elorin entered the hidden lair with Manus, leaving Silex to watch the entrance. Slowly clearing out the lair, each undead getting sniped before they could react, Elorin soon reached the final chamber, containing a Vampire which rose from his coffin the moment the door opened. A hail of arrows from Manus later, it was forced into mist form. Elorin knew it could simply reform if its coffin was not destroyed, but doing such proved more difficult than expected. At least, until Elorin found its weak point: A tiny gem, radiating massive amounts of energy when looked at via a detect magic spell. As Manus smashed it with his mace, the gem shattered, a potent wave of energy exploding outward. The vampire's mist form dissipated as the wave washed over it, while Elorin and Manus felt their power grow, their bodies absorbing whatever power was sealed within this gem.
Searching the lair for loot as all adventurers do, Elorin's slipped while next to the vampire's desk, grabbing on to it, and pressing a button which opened a hidden compartment. Inside it, Elorin found a book full of notes on holy relics the vampire knew could be dangerous to him. Paging through this book, a sheet fell out, containing a tattered blueprint from which the vampire had learned of one of these items called the Death Warden's Bandolier. Though not a crafter himself, Elorin was able to understand its function, and realized even one of these would be an amazing help. The power he'd gained from the wave of energy instinctually seemed to tell him how it could be used to activate the item once built, and how it could protect a large number of people for an entire day from the most dangerous effects an undead might use against them.
Taking the blueprints, Elorin flew back to town. Landing near the workshop of Elyn Dayne, his favorite crafter, he went to show her the blueprints. She agreed to craft the item for him, and the next day it was done. Letting anyone with mythic power use it on their team before they go to the tower would massively decrease the danger they would face, so Elorin immediately went to advertise that anyone wishing to protect themselves with its power could do so.
After getting it crafted, Elorin realized the amount of adventurers taking part was smaller than expected, and simply used the Bandolier on everyone himself each day. With Silex's fast flight and Elorin's invisibility spheres, they remained undetected as Elorin and Manus laid down ghost wards.
During the raid itself, Elorin went on the offensive, using Silex as a flying artillery platform from which Manus could snipe any foes that didn't get pushed out of the way by the ghost wards. In the tower, Elorin's supporting spells kept Manus safe while he stopped his fellow adventurers from getting overrun. Though he didn't get any items himself, focusing on attacking rather than looting, Elorin's mythic power increased from the fighting.
Tower of Necromancy
When Aer'drasil appeared, adventurers immediately rushed to help the druids explore the massive tree tower, and perhaps stop it from draining Etera of all its life energy. Elorin was not among the first to explore the tower, but his group was the first to complete the second level of the tower.
Upon arriving via a teleportation spell, Elorin was greeted by the druids. They explained the situation and offered the party something to eat, which Elorin accepted. The moss tasted rather peculiar. The druids also handed each of the adventurers an orb previous parties had brought back. Analysing them, Elorin found that each contained an absolutely staggering amount of positive energy, its power on par with a major artifact.
Heading to the tower, the group soon found the entrance and were greeted by a creature calling itself the Prime Mortician, seemingly the caretaker of the tower. While Elorin did not understand the talk about "new users", he understood that they needed to get to the fourth level to stop the tower's draining of Etera.
Inside the maze-like tower, they quickly encountered several guardians asking for an offering. Giving them each one of the orbs filled their rooms with positive energy, creating a wondrous feeling and strengthening everyone's bodies. Further exploring the floor, the group found several more orbs to replace the ones they'd given away, and Elorin picked up two more himself before finding the stairs up.
Entering the second layer, the group encountered a turret rapidly firing rays at everyone in the room. The group attacked it. Manus' arrows had some impact, but even their force couldn't bring it down. The close-range fighters being close to going unconscious, the group retreated and looked for another way forwards.
The other path led them to a tree within a tree, which drained everyone of the strengthening they'd gotten on the first floor, greatly weakened them, then trapped those in the room in a mass of brambles. Elorin was already outside the room at this point, and figured out how weak the tree would be to low temperatures. Another member of the group had plenty of cold damage, and used it to take out the tree... which let out a massive wail, as that of a banshee, as it died. A psychic shield protected almost everyone, except Silex, who could not resist and died. Elorin was not letting another creature he cared about die, not again, and pulled out an elixir of life to revive Silex before his spirit could depart.
Battered but not yet beaten, Elorin and the rest of the group pressed on, once again meeting the Prime Mortician. He thanked the group for taking out the tree parasite, and after a brief conversation was convinced to help any further adventurers that enter the tower to take out the one currently controlling it.
Seeing the next set of stairs, and having just barely survived the wail just a few minutes ago, the group decided to head back out to inform the druids of these developments, before the further challenges would permanently kill them. Elorin kept the two orbs of positive energy he'd found. It's unknown if he still has them, or if not, what happened to them.
The Rage of Kanaloa
When Elorin heard of the fire elementals coming out of the volcano on the island of Lalotai, he decided to help. Unfortunately, he had misheard exactly where this happened, and started making his way over towards Meita. Fortunately, Elorin is just as bad with directions as he is with names, and taking a wrong turn near Babel resulted in him winding up in Lalotai regardless with no delays and only minor confusion upon arrival.
Once the situation was explained to him, Elorin briefly stayed to cure the most severely injured with his alchemical healing, especially focusing on the healers left from the last attack so they would be able to take care of the rest. While his alchemical healing could even resurrect the briefly dead, the extremely short time limit meant he was too late for the victims of the previous attack.
After doing what he could for the people of Lalotai, Elorin took off on Silex in an attempt to stop the advancing army of elementals. At this point, Elorin realized a major problem: How do you stop an army? Manus could use Silex as a flying artillery platform and fire so rapidly he could take out a dozen elementals in the same number of seconds, or even a hundred if they were close enough together, yet none of that would matter when in that same time a thousand more appear.
After some time of pondering this, and futilely extinguishing some of the more threatening looking elementals, Elorin noticed one of the three magma giants he’d heard about heading straight towards the village, and it truly was massive. Flying within a few hundred meters, he could feel the heat of the giant’s fiery aura washing over him. At this distance, it was merely uncomfortably warm, yet being able to feel it at this range showed that anything getting close would be burnt to a crisp without sufficient fire resistance. Elorin quickly cast a protective spell to ward himself, Manus, and Silex, and flew further in. But even that was not a strong enough protection, the magma melting anyone and anything getting close. After flying a bit further away, Elorin decided on a plan. While the power of Manus’ arrows was exceedingly strong, it would not be enough to fell a magma giant. But perhaps it would be enough to hurt it, and more importantly, to distract it.
Sniping at the magma giant would be tricky. Its heat aura would vaporize any ammunition that got too close. However, in his quest to protect Elorin no matter what, Manus had been training to fight all types of foes, and those that could stop ranged attacks were no exception. Unleashing a deadly shot, the arrow cut through the very bonds of reality, bypassing everything between himself and the arrow’s destination. Reappearing right next to the magma giant, the arrow began burning, but the unblockable nature of Manus’ shots meant that the force of the attack could not be reduced, and it smashed right into its target. The giant, not having been harmed before this, roared in pain and launched a deadly stream of magma in Elorin’s direction. Silex, having picked up a few new tricks, let out a defiant cry and simply teleported out of the way, along with his passengers. The giant realized its ranged attack wasn’t working, and after another arrow to the face, started heading towards Elorin.
Quickly flying away while pelting the giant with arrows and teleporting out of the way of the occasional magma jets, Elorin led the massive magma giant on a wild goose chase. After several hours of keeping it away from the village, enough reinforcements had finally arrived to slay the giant.
Returning to the village triumphant, and in serious need of a cold drink, Elorin began to consider his next steps. Much as he preferred simply rushing in, that wouldn’t work if there’s no known entrance.
Unfortunately, he wouldn't get his chance to head into the volcano. Not too long after returning to the village, a massive earthquake struck the island. Elorin left the house just in time to hear a great crack as Kanaloa erpupted, spewing out massive amounts of ash and magma. Huge flaming rocks flying through the sky and hitting the island, one of them crushing the house he'd just been in, Elorin sprung back into action.
Manus quickly cleared away the rubble as Elorin began casting a Deathless emanation, ensuring anyone still alive in the house would not perish before he could save them. Muttering a quick thanks to Chaldira for the luck of not being hit himself, Elorin pulled out some salves and applied them to the natives who had been in the house, instantly healing their wounds.
Having finished here, but knowing a hundred more of the boulders had landed elsewhere in that time, Elorin quickly hopped on Silex and flew around to find any other impact locations. He found several, and went to the nearest to treat those injured there as well.
Kanaloa's eruption continued for quite some time, and by the end, Elorin had saved over a hundred civilians that had been critically injured by the flaming boulders, and reviving several who had been directly hit. It was only a small fraction of those harmed by the constant eruption, but fortunately there were also many others helping as well. With all of them together, people were being rescued almost as fast as the volcano's meteors were trying to bury them.
When Kanaloa finally stopped erupting, Elorin joined in on the resulting celebration. He was greeted by dozens of people he'd saved, and gladly chatted with them for a time. When Elder Nalani presented all the adventures who'd participating in minimizing Kanaloa's harm, Elorin felt a bit out of place among these legendary heroes, being simply a halfling doing what he can to help. However, he still gracefully accepted the token of Lalotai’s gratitude he'd been given with a smile.
City Founder of Outer Eight
This adventure started when Elorin accepted a rather odd mission from the Adventuring Guild. According to the anonymous request, an army of bandits were attacking a city. So far so good, except no maps showed a city there, nor even a town or village. Curious, and figuring the worst thing that could happen would be a fun trip to the countryside, Elorin accepted the quest.
The request mentioned an Airship which would be flying over the area. Flying on Silex might have been faster, but Elorin wanted to meet any others that had accepted the quest. They included a martial artist, a guide to the afterlife, and a commander with 50 soldiers. That last part would suddenly become significant when the airship's captain mentioned they wouldn't be landing near the city. After discussing several ideas, the guide to the afterlife opened a passage to the dead roads and led them safely to ground level. Meanwhile, Elorin hopped on Silex and divebombed at the ground, stopping just centimetres above the grass.
Heading into the city, the party discovered it to be utopian, with plenty of self-growing food, houses in perfect condition, and beautiful waterways. There was merely one thing missing: People. The town seemed deserted. That is, until they made their way to the town's church. Hearing sounds coming from within, the rest of the party pondered how best to approach. Elorin however decided to do as his goddess does, and simply walked in rather than planning.
Inside the church were the "bandits", mostly consisting of orphans and other runaways from nearby towns who'd recently found the empty city and taken residence in it. Although their leader was pointing a crossbow at Elorin, it was hard for Elorin to take her seriously, having faced hordes of undead and demons, giant elementals, dragons, and plenty of other threats. Talking to them, the party realized this town had seemingly appeared overnight, and decided to take the quest of taking care of the bandits literally, getting them to become regular settlers.
Elorin took one of them as an apprentice, a half-elf named Curunir, and picked a house to stay in. It had been a while since his village had been destroyed, and he hadn't had a proper house since. Still, he'd frequently travel between Babel and Outer Eight, and as one of the group who found the city, he became known as a City Founder.
Striking the Behemoth
The Behemoth had long cast a dark shadow over Etera, its raiding band wreaking havoc wherever it went. It didn't take long for Elorin to decrypt the coded message he received asking him to come to Meita in order to help in taking it down. Elorin had already been to Meita previously (even if he'd mistaken it for Lalotai originally), so he quickly gathered his things and teleported there together with Manus and Silex, leaving his apprentices in charge of his residence in Outer Eight.
Arriving in Meita, Elorin mounted Silex and flew over to the forest where the message said the meeting place would be. There, he found a large amount of camp sites, surprisingly well hidden considering the large number of people present, not being visible from above at all.
Walking around the area, heated discussions were going on all around about how to deal with the Behemoth, both in terms of if any of the raiders should be spared and general battle strategy. Elorin had no idea about either of those, so he kept walking past the commanders and went to talk with the regular soldiers instead to see how he could improve their chances.
The mage corps gladly chatted with Elorin about magic theory, and he let them copy spells from his spellbooks. He also taught the mages how to better evade pursuit in the air, getting a higher flight speed out of their aerial spells, and even fly in a way it resembles teleportation. Being able to delay hostile spells targeting them for long enough to get a spell off themselves was also a highly useful ability, though only a few of them managed to learn it.
Meanwhile, Manus the flying 6-armed monkey in a spacesuit helped train the soldiers using equipment Elorin had fabricated. He taught them how to properly shoot arrows at speeds which put a machine gun to shame, how to move their bodies so blows striking them fail to pierce their vitals, how to make even a rock bleed, and how to defy death to keep fighting. The soldiers picked some of these up, though they were unable to master some of the more tricky parts, such as sniping through a solid wall on the other side of the island.
Silex was left to his own devices, and decided the best thing to do would be to sit in the treetops pretending to be a normal bird, cute chirping included. If anyone noticed anything off about this, they did not show it.
After doing this for some time, Elorin went to find a commander not engaged in a shouting match - a feat which took way longer than it should have - and informed him of the technology he had which could be useful in the coming operation. The near-infinite amounts of sound based arrows would be going directly to the archers, but the long distance infinite teleportation and video surveillance would prove useful to what the leadership was planning. In what way, Elorin wasn't certain, but considering his usual plans involved following the example of his goddess Chaldira and simply charging in, that did not say much.
Library of Atlantis - The Sunken Island Country
A country rising out of the ocean might get people's attention. But having a divine barrier around the entire island, that gets peoples' interest. At first there was not much to be done, as the barrier remained inaccessible to all. After roughly two years it had finally weakened enough to allow entry to some. Unfortunately, "some" did not include Elorin. He instead took to trying to figure things out the old fashioned way, via books and divination magic.
The first attempt at gathering information failed, as there simply was no information to be found in written records anywhere on Etera. A lack of knowledge is still information however, and from this, it was easy enough to conclude that the country was far older than recorded history on the continent. Expanding his search, Elorin's magic soon found whispers of a draconic civilization tied to the surfaced country.
It was at this point in his research that a mindscape door appeared next to Elorin, decorated with dracon sculptures and featuring an ancient dialect of draconic. Deciding caution to be overrated, Elorin stepped through the door, finding himself inside a massive library with shelves spanning further than even his impressive vision could see. Around him, similar doors were opening. Through some came people he'd seem before, such as his fellow friend of monkeys Gibran, while others contained adventurers Elorin had not seen before, such as the extremely headpattable kobold Niko, the adorably cute Ellie Shadeflare, and the mysterious Xerxes. That was only a small fraction of the doors however, and through the vast majority of these mindscape doors came robed scaly creatures of all sorts, from lizardfolk to every known type of dragon to several unknown types of dragonoids.
The library itself was rather curious. Focusing on a topic would pull you towards any books on the subject, if you knew what you were searching for. The easy solution of looking for books on the sunken country failed, as Elorin had no clue what he was looking for. Spellbooks had the opposite problem, there were far too many in the library to get any usable results, and even the act of trying caused severe mental pain. Elorin decided to cut out the middleman, and just asked the library itself to give information on itself via his divination magic. For the most part this worked. The library revealed itself to exist only as a mindscape, as the dream of a dragon so ancient to have surpassed even the status of great wyrm. The dragon was still alive, but had given up the ability to ever wake up to preserve the knowledge of his empire. Unfortunately, at this point the library noticed the spell and decided it didn't like this unauthorized access, interrupting the divination and giving Elorin a severe migraine for several minutes.
Gaining authorization seemed the best path, so Elorin applied for a library card. Unfortunately the provided planar coordinates of Elorin's home world were too far in the future from when the library was built, a time when the empire had already fallen. The library did not like realizing this one bit, and its active functions stopped functioning as it seemingly went unconscious from fright. Not wanting to risk potentially losing the vast amounts of information contained in the library, he sent out several of his miniature drones from his pocket, returning them to normal size so they could quickly record the contents of any books that looked interesting. Elorin left the drones to do their work, heading with the rest of the adventurers to the mind of the library to try and re-start its functions. They succeeded by feeding it refined positive energy. The mind, having recovered from the shock, asked those it saw as living past its own end to help its remaining descendants. Having people from past its empire's demise was painful for the library, but it allowed everyone a few hours to gather what information they could to help them.
Rather than trying to read books himself during this time, Elorin instead used it to find as many interesting and useful books as possible, letting his drones rapidly take a picture of each page, storing them for future viewing. The drones also did the same for any books the others found, and Elorin spent some of his time handing out bananas to those that got hungry. Later categorization by Elorin's main AI found plenty of lore related to dragons and the ancient empire. The empire was from another world, and from what could be pieced together, its fall had to do with the horseman of death. The recordings also contained many spellbooks, though most were incompatible with the magic in use on Etera. Finally, there were the draconic cookbooks, as well as a book on eldritch basket weaving which would come in handy during the underwater basket weaving competition a few weeks later in Babel.
Like most information Elorin considered not inherently dangerous, he proceeded to share the contents of these books with anyone researching the risen country, as well as anyone else who might be interested.
The Horsemen - War never changes (WIP)
Lorem Ipsum (Key points: initial attack, radiant, final fight vs war)
Ghostlands - Shadow of the Fifth (WIP)
Lorem Ipsum (Key points: healing banana arrows, psionic nuke, army of monke vs undead on Incandelth Peninsula)