Appearance

Mentality

Personal history

Tessele is an exuberant young Wizard. She has a wanderlust, a passion for living, a sharp tongue and a loyal Mastiff with sharper teeth. For the sake of survival she specialized her studies into Necromancy as she studied with her mentor among the ruins of Ulcaster's School of Wizardry. She rescued the mastiff when it was barely more than a pup when it was attacked by dread wolves that hunt Ulcaster's at night. Since then it has been a faithful companion.

When the local Tethyrian Noble Lord tried to collect an undue tax on the nearby village of Beregost, she was the only person able to stand up against the tax-man and his goons and instantly became a local Folk Hero. As she traveled she continued to stand up to the corruption of the nobility and her reputation have begun to spread.

Tessele's original spellbook is a scorched book, ravaged by dragon's fire, with the script of her spells barely visible on its pages.  She vowed vengeance on that Red Dragon Wyrmling and finally got her due payback last year when she and her friends managed to slay it.  The price they paid to end that marauding bastard was too high though.  And Tessele went back to her Mistress's tower to fill in her new Enduring Spellbook that she had bought from a vendor near Baldur's Gate.

Tess' Childhood home is in near the Amnite border with Tethyr near the Cloud Peaks.  The Merchant Lord there rules like a tyrant, demanding the lion's share of all trade and strangling the city's exports.  Tess joined several civil and not-so-civil bouts of unrest and protest and ultimately got her family run out of Tethyr.  The entire family crossed into Amn when Tessele was just twelve.

In Amn she met a half-tethyrian, half-elven boy named Randal and a brief infatuation turned into something more.  The two flitted around each other, never daring to go farther than stolen kisses until she was sixteen and he a broad-shouldered seventeen.  When their "adventure" into a ruin in the forest turned up an actual treasure, Tessele risked her life for it and claimed that decrepit spellbook as hers.  From it she learned everything she could and began to obsessively study magic.

The next year she fled during the white hydra attack.  After a year with the book she had begun to track down answers.  She and her boy-that-definitely-was-not-her-boyfriend got separated when the white hydra broke through the streets, and though she hoped he got away, she didn't know for a terrible seven years as she studied under the Sage Amafrey Lackman.  But merely being an apprentice wasn't enough.  She hadn't been with Mistress Lackman for more than a year before she stood tall for Beregost and stopped that greedy lord from taking another copper.  Mistress Lackman had been bemused, but still made Tessele suffer.  Tessele's actions did, however, cement a strong relationship between the mages and the people of Beregost.

Eventually, Tessele left her Mistress' Tower at the ruins of the magical academy and began adventuring.  Six years and a few repeated displays to the Lord's men had helped to spread Tessele's reputation, and Adventure came to her.  She fought other young mages and a red dragon, and earned a fair few treasures and bits of art.  But she always circled back to Beregost, and her mentor's tower.

Four years of scholarly duties interspersed with adventuring later she learned through correspondence with a friend from her time at Candlekeep that Randal had become a Warlock.  She used every favor to get ahold of Randal's contract just to examine it and learned Infernal specifically for that purpose.  Try as she might she never found a loophole or escape clause.  That devil had been thorough, and Tessele felt defeat.  But true defeat came when she went to meet the "one true love of her life" and he didn't even recognize her.  He said he never knew her.  Tessele returned to her mentor's tower near Beregost one last time, a broken and defeated woman.  Being home renewed her spine, but she remains bitter about all matters concerning hell, which has made her intolerant around Tieflings.

person.sexuality

Tessele is a very subdued and controlled person, sexually.  She prefers a lengthy romance to a quick romp, and doesn't flirt much, choosing her targets based on the frequency she'll see them.

person.gender_identity

Tessele identifies as a straight female.

Taboos

Tessele doesn't truck with devils, demons, or their spawn.

Known Languages

Tessele is fluent in Tethyrian, which she grew up speaking, and Common, which she learned early on.  Draconic was the language of the old tome she found in the ruin that led her to be a Wizard.
Tessele has since learned three other languages from her studies: Elvish, Gnomish, and Infernal.  She learned Elvish from one of her adventuring companions early on in her time as a mage, just weeks after that dust-up in Beregost, actually.  Gnomish was very slowly gained through long-distance correspondence with a friend from Candlekeep.  Tessele learned Infernal when she found out her childhood crush and long-time presumed husband-to-be had signed a contract for his soul and became an Infernal Warlock.

Personality

Social

Wealth & Financial state

Tessele lives a modest life and spends most of her coins on books, which she loads into her trusted mastiff's saddlebags.

Religious Views

Tessele follows a quartet of deities that she feels a personal connection to.

She prays to Myrkul, the god of death, to stay his hand and let some who might die stay on this plane a bit longer.  As a Necromancer she is kind and considerate, honoring Kelemvor as of the dead, always returning the bones of the dead to the nearest cemetery to their home and commanding them to bury themselves in their proper graves.  She does this to ensure that the families can honor their dead and that Kelemvor can see that these people are not finished in his service, hopeful that her efforts using them earn their souls a slightly better resting place.

Tessele worships Azuth, the god of wizardry, rather than Mystra, Oghma, and Deneir - as she prefers one god with a single purview than three gods whose broad concepts mean that they care little for her "trivial" matters. But Azuth knows the value of a spellbook lost, and her prayers for insight or aid have never gone unanswered. Thus she ignores the Goddess of Magic, the God of Knowledge, and the God of Writing and Language to pay her honor, sacrifices and prayers solely to Azuth.

Knowing the stories of the dead, and especially their magical secrets that they took to the grave, is important to Tessele and so she also pays homage and worship to Jergal, the ancient scribe of the dead. She honors him as the ancient Lord of the End of Everything as well as in his current role as the scribe of the dead by communicating with the dead and taking down their stories for posterity in one of her books.