Wendi Hammerfall

The Black Sheep of the Hammerfall Family

A person of interest on Annu Adabra's list, in connection with The Alizarin Woods.

Dwarfed By Greatness

Wendi has never had the best of luck in her life, from the minute she was born: her sister, Tilda, was already well on her way to being an exceptional blacksmith, following in her family's tradition. Wendi had some pretty big shoes to fill.
Perhaps because of the extraordinarily high expectations placed upon her ("your sister could do it; why can't you?"), Wendi never really took an interest in the Hammerfall family's traditional craft of blacksmithing. Instead, Wendi fancied the life of wizard and mages, casting spells to solve her problems instead of just trying to power through everything. She had hoped to keep this a secret, limited to just writing notes and drawing pictures in her journal, but the secret came out when her sister found the journal.
Of course, this didn't earn Wendi many friends in dwarven society, where many types of magic are frowned upon, but nobody took Wendi's rejection of the family's craft harder than Tilda herself. This wasn't so much because of the stigma against magic (Tilda couldn't care less). Rather, Tilda doesn't know a thing about it: there's no way that she could fulfill her sworn duty to protect Wendi from the dangers of this lifestyle. She often pleads for Wendi to come back to smithing, but this usually just strengthens Wendi's resolve to run away again.

Different Schools of Thought

Without the upbringing and cultural focus on magic that many other races have, and without a particular knack for craft, Wendi finds it quite difficult to keep up with her peers at the university, taking two or three times as long to learn the same spells and enchantments. It doesn't help that nobody seems to want her to succeed: the dwarves chastise her for pursuing magic, and the other races chastise her for being "too thick" to truly grasp even the basic concepts (nevermind the deeper ideas that even the best students have to work hard to uncover).
Fortunately, Wendi found support in Ashport's Scholars Guild, an organization founded by her mentor Baxton Mandrim to assist people like Wendi who are struggling with learning magic. The Guild believes that everybody should have access to the knowledge and abilities of magic (if they want it), and their acceptance has been a huge relief.
The Scholars Guild taught Wendi to focus on honing her strengths first, before trying to cover her weaknesses. Inspired by this, Wendi saw that she's a much harder worker than her peers, and she does tend to be a natural at making things with her hands. So, with the help of the Guild, Wendi decided to try making spell scrolls.

It's... a kind of magic

With some perseverance and a lot of help (at first) from the Guild, Wendi learned how to make her first spell scroll, "Detect Food and Water", by taking bits of other spell scrolls, scratching out some symbols, patching them back together, and so on.

With friends like these...

While the Scholars Guild helped Wendi improve her academic standing, she still often struggled to fit in with the social groups at the university. So when a group of students approached her with a plan to investigate the long forgotten ruins underneath the city, Wendi was more than happy to join up.
At first, Wendi got along with the group just fine. She was a little peeved that they only really seemed to pay attention to her when there was a wall to break through, but she figured that it's just because she was newer. But the group started to get into lots of trouble, taunting people outside the group, hurting animals, and causing a bit of destruction. Wendi brought this up with Baxton, who suggested that she keep an eye on them and try to keep them from getting into too much trouble, and to keep writing in her journal.
Their adventures eventually brought them to an abandoned laboratory, where they could do experiments with some slugs that they found, which had some kind of connection to Turmoil, without worrying about attracting the wrong kind of attention. This was too much for Wendi, and so she threatened to expose them if they wouldn't stop. This angered the group, who responded by kidnapping Wendi and imprisoning her with some sort of magical stasis spell.
With Wendi missing, Tilda feared the worst and commissioned a search party to find her. The party defeated her group of friends, rescued Wendi, and taking her to a church to heal.

Fool me once

After Wendi recovered, Tilda tried again to steer her off her path. Her "group of friends", Tilda said, were actually members of a dangerous cult, and so for all she knew, Wendi could have been "sacrificed" or something. Wendi wasn't happy with the "cult" label, but she agreed that she would be safer if she stuck to hanging out with dwarves, at least until she learned enough to be able to defend herself better.
With some investigation, Wendi learned that there was a dwarf clan in the city who were also magically inclined, like she did: the Rubymist clan. When she mentioned their name to Tilda, however, Tilda laid into her, hard: Wendi was, under no circumstances, allowed to meet with them. This was the last straw for Wendi: clearly, she felt, Tilda was being too closed-minded, letting her prejudice stand in the way of the pursuit of knowledge and enlightenment. Wendi said as much, and then stormed off to go find them.

Personality Characteristics

Personality Quirks

Wendi has always been big on books, and so she keeps a journal where she writes down her account of everything even remotely interesting that happens around her... and even lots of uninteresting things, when she gets bored.

Species

Dwarf

Age

~90

Quotes & Catchphrases

"Dear journal: I DID IT! I'm finally going to be a spellcaster!