Ragnhild "Reggi" Askaliel
Ragnhild Lark Askaliel (a.k.a. Reggi)
Reggi is an itinerant sword bard who is slowly turning into a softie. Don't call her Ragnhild, unless you're Petyr. In that case, don't call her Reggi.
Physical Description
General Physical Condition
Very fit and agile. Reggi is slender, strong, and flexible. She can jump real high.
Identifying Characteristics
A light crescent scar on the nape of her neck.
Mental characteristics
Personal history
Ragnhild “Reggi” Askaliel was born 27 years ago in the city of Dana Athi, to an elf father and a human mother. The Fey royalty Oberon and Titania attended her birth and allowed her to survive it; they made a bargain with her parents that Reggi would only learn later. Her father, Askal Danydion (lit. “son of Danyd”), serves in the honor guard for the goddess Aithinnia; he took the surname Avaletr after being formally inducted into the guard in 1863. Her mother, Åshild Evarsdattr, was a scholar and wizard who studied the history of the Paragons and whose ingenious retellings of folk stories let her enjoy unusual access (for a human) to the cultural institutions of Dana Athi.
Her father’s position and her mother’s talents meant that Reggi and her older brother, Patryk, were spared the full extent of the trauma many half-elves experience. Though they could not avoid the crescent moon brand, Askal was permitted to perform the branding himself. He did so gently and (Reggi suspects) with magic; she has noticed that her brand has faded significantly over the years and is flat to the touch. Both children were allowed to style themselves with the traditional elven patronymic (Askaliel, “daughter of Askal” for Reggi), though they were not given elven first names and will never be allowed to adopt Elvish surnames related to their chosen professions.
Despite her father’s protection, Reggi’s childhood was isolated and lonely. Her father gave her his name, but he rarely took her out into the world or introduced her to other elves; Reggi and Patryk have never met their paternal grandparents. Reggi and Patryck were seldom allowed within the walls of Dana Athi for the first years of their lives; instead, they lived with their mother in a small compound a half-hour’s walk from the city gates. Her father would come several evenings a week and spent most weekends with the family, though he was often frosty with Reggi and had little patience for what he perceived as typical human faults. Reggi did share one thing with her father: a love of combat. Askal began training her in archery and sparring at age eight; for the next three years, they spent long afternoons training together in the courtyard outside her mother’s home.
Åshild, Reggi’s mother, was as warm as her husband was cold. She alone could consistently make Askal smile, and she charmed those who would disapprove of her position as his wife. She educated Reggi and her brother on her own, since few tutors from Dana Athi would teach half-elves. Reggi was a poor student with a short attention span; she could never apply the patience she had for swordplay to complicated equations, and she often snuck out of the house to hike in the nearby hills or watch performers at the nearby roadside inn. Still, she loved her mother’s lessons, especially history and folklore; she would ask for stories of the great heroes and legends of the Paragons every night before bed, and then she and her brother would retell them in the dark.
At age eleven, Reggi’s world broke. Her mother was killed in a great lightning storm caused by Peyterel, last descendant of the L’ansaeye. Lightning struck the tower of the temple library where Åshild was permitted to conduct research. The cramped rooms and circuitous corridors of the old wooden structure were filled with old manuscripts and papers. It burned too quickly for anyone inside to escape.
This was the story Reggi was told, at least. She would discover the truth later: Oberon and Titania had taken her mother's life in place of her own. Before the lightning storm began, they lifted Åshild from the tower and she ascended to the Elysian plane. Before she went, she slipped off a gold bracelet engraved with her name in Elvish script. Months later, the temple librarian recovered it from the ashes and brought it to Askal. Reggi has worn it since.
Reggi’s father had revered the last of the L’ansaeye and had considered it his duty, however indirect, to protect and honor the boy. Before the calamity, Reggi knew of Peyterel by reputation; for her father, his name was shorthand for everything a young sorcerer and scholar should be. She wearied of hearing tales of the boy’s magical talent; even worse was the refrain, “If only you could be more like young Peyterel.” Askal never again spoke the boy’s name to his children after his wife’s death, though Reggi once thought she overheard it in his prayers. For a few years after, she was filled with rage at the heir; she threw herself into combat training, where it was easy to imagine that the straw dummy she used for sword practice was Peyterel.
Eventually, Reggi’s anger cooled and was replaced by a simmering resentment -- not at Peyterel, but at the Elvish and Dana Athi institutions that excluded her and her brother but allowed destructive magical ability to go unchecked. After their mother’s death, Reggi and Patryck moved in with their father, but never became full citizens of Dana Athi -- as half-elves, they were kept cloistered in their father’s home. Without Åshild’s influence, Askal grew more distant from his children; Reggi suspected that his love for his wife had been strong enough to overcome his dislike of humans, but his love for them was not. She later suspected that his distance, before and after his wife's death, was caused by the circumstances of her birth -- perhaps Askal could not love a child who wasn't fully his, who would take his wife from him and give little in return. He may have never accepted ithe bargain in the way his wife did.
Despite his ambivalence, her father still worked to educate and train his children so that they might prove their worth to elven society. Reggi’s brother complied, studying diligently to carry on their mother’s research and preserve her reputation; Reggi did not. Her father had long committed her to train as a Paladin when she reached adulthood, but the night after her 18th birthday celebration, Reggi left home. She tried to write letters to both her father and brother explaining her choice but gave up after a few failed drafts. Instead, she gathered her weapons, packed her finest clothes, and left a short note saying that she was sorry.
She went straight to the City of Lake Vernay to seek an apprenticeship with one of the traveling entertainers she’d admired as a child, but struggled to find one that would take a half-elf with no friends or mentors to vouch for her. The first few inns she stayed at overcharged her; a leatherworker who had promised to mend her armor stole from her, and the city guards laughed at her when she tried to report it. She couldn’t tell whether her bad luck was due to her background, or to the fact that she had virtually no experience with people outside her family and their servants and associates. She had vaguely understood that half-elves were treated poorly in most Avernay societies, but had hoped she would have an easier time outside of Dana Athi. She considered trying her luck in the Borrows, but there were fewer opportunities for an entertainer, and she was dismayed to see the shabby conditions and overworked, underfed people there. So she left to spend a fortnight with her maternal grandparents, human farmers outside of Svellavak.
A few weeks turned into a few months after her grandfather died in his sleep, then a few years as she fell into the rhythms of life with her grandmother. She continued to train, practicing and occasionally sparring with traveling fighters and putting on her first small performances in town. As her skills grew, she began to travel on a circuit with other fighters, putting on exhibition matches and performing blade tricks for coins in whichever city she could find work. She returned home between tours and often took breaks for months at a time to help manage the harvest or simply spend time with her grandmother. Her grandmother -- another Reggi -- was an amateur historian of the region and its peoples, and with her, Reggi resumed the studies she’d abandoned after her mother’s death.
Finally, Reggi received the opportunity she’d been working toward since she left home. After seeing her perform in a roadside show, the master fighter Haden Aline invited her to become his apprentice. She left the farm and traveled with him for four years, mastering the dagger, rapier, and light bow. At his urging, she also learned traditional bardic skills, becoming competent in a handful of musical instruments and mastering flashy spells. He taught her how to distract an audience with an illusion and how to enhance the drama of a fight with a well-timed clap of magical thunder. Over the months and years, their relationship became more personal; Haden never spoke to her about the things that happened between them on certain nights, and she never felt comfortable broaching the topic in daylight.
The only time they were apart during those years were when she had to return home at her family’s request: to her grandmother for sudden illnesses or injuries, and occasionally, to her father and brother for high holidays and once, the anniversary of her mother’s death. Visits to Dana Athi were always awkward; her father disapproved of her choice of profession and her human mentor, and her brother seemed to have forgotten how to talk to his younger sister. Worse yet was the anxiety of leaving Haden Aline. He grew impatient with her willingness to set aside her training for family obligations, and he warned her that he would not always be able to wait for her. He had to keep performing in order to maintain his popularity, he reminded her, and to perform meant to travel. Each time she left him, she worried that he would not be there when she returned.
It happened shortly after Reggi turned 26. Her grandmother broke an ankle; a short visit home to check on her turned into weeks cleaning the house and hiring new hands to maintain the farm. When she returned to Lake Vernay, Haden had gone, leaving no instructions for her to follow him.
Since then, Reggi has been touring on her own with moderate success. She lives comfortably now, buying new clothes when her old ones wear out, and staying at inns and boarding houses that would have turned her away earlier in her career. She last went to Dana Athi at an urgent summons from her brother. A group of travelers visiting the caves in the hills of Dana Athi had unleashed The Darkness, a malignant force related to the Paragons their mother had studied. Patryck was distressed by the chaos and destruction that had befallen the city, and troubled by the fact that he had been unprepared for the return of any of the Paragons, despite continuing their mother’s work. For the first time since she left home nine years ago, Patryck asked Reggi for a favor: help him recover an artifact related to the paragons in or around the town of Cecileti, and bring him any information she can about the travelers who unleashed The Darkness.
She met up with the travelers, who became her closest friends -- her first and only friends, really. With them, she traveled to the Feywild and learned her true heritage: there, she is Aithne, daughter of Titiana and Oberon and heir to a long-dead ruling line.
Sexuality
Straight, unfortunately.
Education
Not much! Reggi, unfortunately, did not pay very close attention to her mother's lessons. She can read, but doesn't particularly like to.
Employment
Self employed. Reggi travels Avernay as a bard, stopping at taverns and public halls on her way to larger festivals and showcases. Occasionally, she does longer residencies at the homes of nobles.
Accomplishments & Achievements
- Once juggled three scimitars
- Glitterbombed a crowd at Ceceliti
- Taught her BFFs how to do shrooms
- Made Damarius blush
Failures & Embarrassments
- Had to admit that Petyr isn't that bad after all
- Passed out during an exhibition match in Darkling Mountain
- Panicked and turned Xanthe into an otter, which then exploded
- Got beaten in combat by Damarius
- Used Shatter in a crowded pub
Mental Trauma
- Lost her mother at a young age
- Got dumped real bad by this jerk Haden Aline
- Saw Xanthe die and had to carry his body out of a worm's mouth
- Learned that her mother actually died for her sake
- Had to behead a spectral version of her mother
- Had a weird secret dream about Damarius and Petyr in a hot tub
Intellectual Characteristics
Let's just say she's more street smart than book smart.
Morality & Philosophy
Reggi always roots for the underdog. She doesn't trust people who want power.
Relationships
Shared Secrets
Any reference to a sparrow is their secret code.
Testimonials
"Should I know her?" ★☆☆☆☆Why is she appearing on my recommended PCs? I don't like this algorithm. - NotTheKing70
Alignment
Chaotic Good
Species
Age
27
Date of Birth
7 Sumnus, 1971
Circumstances of Birth
Saved from stillbirth by Titania and Oberon; she became their daughter, as well.
Birthplace
Dana Athi
Spouses
Siblings
Patryck Askalion
(Brother)
Children
Pronouns
She/her
Gender
Female
Eyes
Dark brown
Hair
Short, nearly black
Skin Tone/Pigmentation
Pale, with olive undertones
Height
5'11"
Weight
150
- Common
- Elvish
- The local dialect of the valley where her grandmother lives
Comments