Aniebyth G'Yergen Aklee

(a.k.a. Anie)

Obsessed with the potential of gunpowder and firearms, Aniebyth G'Yergen Aklee always has her trusty four barreled hand cannon, Mercy , near to hand. She is constantly tinkering with her ammunition to improve it and try crazy new theories on the possibilities of gunpowder technology.

Description

Aniebyth is short and slight, even for a gnome. Her hands, arms, face, and clothing are constantly marked by powder-burns. Her black hair seems to have an otherworldy lustre to it that causes it to seem to glow. Her skin is a deep tan, except where the bright white lines of scars crisscross it. Because of her constant work with black powder and alchemical cartridges, her eyebrows are typically burned off, leaving her wide set eyes as startling red pearls in the middle of two black patches of skin.
While Aniebyth does not fanatically follow any religion, she does respect the followers of Vildeis, and considers herself one - typically maintaining a fresh burn in the shape of Vildeis' scarred shield on her right bicep. This symbol is usually covered by the sleeves of her black leather duster which contains most of her assorted alchemy and black powder projects.
Underneath her black duster, she wears a bandolier across her chest containing all of her completed firearm cartridges and Mercy causes the right side of her duster to hang oddly. If she isn't focused on something in particular, she will idly flip one of her alchemical cartridges through the fingers of her left hand.

Personal History

Aniebyth was born to the heads of the Aklee Gnomish Caravan, a large clan of traveling gnomes who use the sights and adventure of the caravan life style to stave of the bleaching. The Aklee caravan has run a route from the Chelaxian capital of Egorian to the Druman capital of Kerse on Lake Encarthan for the last hundred years. To other gnomes this apparent stability is bizarre, especially since the members the Aklee do not appear any more susceptible to the bleaching than other groups of gnomes.
Almost as soon as Aniebyth could walk she was fascinated with mechanical contraptions; making "improvements" to the suspension of the clan's wagons was a favorite past time in her youth. Roughly 40 years ago a wanderer from the mana wastes signed on as a guard with the caravan. Aniebyth was immediately entranced by the loud, exotic weapons he carried. Her interest in the mechanisms of the world shifted towards the alchemical from the mechanical, especially related to gunpowder.

Scars are our lives' stories

— Aniebyth G'Yergen Aklee

Aniebyth probably would have continued to focus on the destructive potential of gunpowder if it weren't for a brazen group of bandits in Isger who attacked the caravan 5 years ago. The bandit group was large and well organized. They waited in the Chitterwood the day after a heavy rain storm for the caravan to become mired in the muddy track that passed for a road. When the lead wagon wallowed out in the mud and the majority of the caravan had become engrossed in extricating it, the bandits struck. Every man of the 50 bandit raiding party loosed an arrow or a crossbow bolt at the densely packed group of caravaneers before charging in through pre-scouted routes of dry land with swords, axes, and hammers raised above their heads. Three of Aniebyth's uncles fell in the first flight of arrows. Her father and mother, the caravan leaders, rallied the remaining Aklee clan around the mired wagon so that when the bandit force charged in they met a shaken, but cohesive defensive front. Aniebyth stood atop the wagon shooting so quickly that the three barrels of her prototype pistol glowed red before the fight was done.
The bandits fell back after several minutes of fighting, routed by the sturdy caravaneers. Aniebyth stared out over the horror of the skirmish, her hands shaking in the aftermath of her first shots fired in anger. Her glazed over eyes fell upon her three downed uncles. One was beyond saving, but the other two still lived, with too bright blood running from sword wounds and amputated hands or feet. She dropped her tri-barreled pistol and half-scrambled, half-fell down the side of the wagon to her uncles. The caravan's medics were working their way through the aftermath of the battle, but they wouldn't arrive in time. Lacking any other way to stop the blood loss, Aniebyth packed the wounds with gunpowder, and then ignited it - cauterizing their amputated limbs, but preventing them from bleeding out.

Healing without leaving behind a scar is erasing that story

— Aniebyth G'Yergen Aklee

For nearly half a year, Aniebyth avoided her gunpowder and alchemical experiments, shied away from her injured Uncles, and required chores to be assigned to her to contribute anything to the caravan. The gnomes of the Aklee clan grew concerned that she would succumb to the bleaching shortly after her majority.
This was not to be however; Aniebyth was taking care of the chores assigned her, something that gnomes did not usually have to worry about, when she overheard her uncles Fetxwyllece and Saobhyn sitting at watch atop one of the wagons discussing their amputated limbs and startling cauterization scars. Aniebyth was surprised to find that they were telling each other the story of the attack, and her saving their lives, using the scars as visual aids. Something about this lodged in her mind and slowly over the next month, she began to notice all the scars - big and little, physical and mental - that everyone had and what they told her about their lives. She became obsessed with finding out the stories hidden behind the scars of the people she met.

Law without compassion = evil, Good intentions without guidance = chaos
- The ethics equation

— Aniebyth G'Yergen Aklee

Her new found obsession drove her to meet new people. Where she used to focus on her inventions, only meeting new people as they interacted with the caravan, now she sought out new people and new scar-stories at every stop along the caravan's route. She took to carrying her newest prototype pistol with her, as she found the most interesting scar stories in the least reputable places. Dive bars in the harbors of Kerse and Egorian, Pesh dens in Elidir, and especially underground fight rings in every city they visited. These all had interesting and unusual stories to tell her. These places also had something else that she had not encountered before; discontent at the status quo. In Druma, this discontent was a passive thing - simply the complaints of the lazy, but in Isger and Cheliax, these complaints were whispered secrets burning with passion. Following these whispered secrets and the scar-stories of those who told them led her to meet a woman who didn't whisper discontent with Cheliax - she radiated it. This is how Aniebyth discovered the movement for freedom inspired by the success of Andoran in resisting Cheliax. She developed a series of contacts with the agents of Andoran that sought to spark a revolution in Isger and Cheliax. Unexpectedly these contacts led her back to the Aklee caravan. Upon learning that she had become involved with the Isger Liberation movement, her parents brought her into the secret of the Aklee caravan - in addition to being a successful caravan, it was a conduit for the Isger and Chelaxian resistances and Andoran agents to move freely between the three countries. For the last three years Aniebyth has contributed to the success of this pipeline through her alchemical creations and the weaponry she is so adept at making. Recently, though she has begun to suspect that not every member of the Aklee clan is loyal. Several rendezvous with members of the resistance have been interrupted by the timely arrival of Chelaxian or Isger patrols. As the caravan passed through Wolfpoint in Isger this time, she decided to leave the caravan in search of answers as to where the leak is coming from.

Intro

The usually calm meadows on either side of the trade road were riotous with life after the heavy spring rains yesterday. Birds were continually diving into the tall grasses for the worms that had been driven out of the earth by the rainwater. Water still dripped from the few scrub oak scattered in the meadow. The sound of a rain fed creek burbled brightly over the creak of the caravan's wagons. In the lead wagon a middle-aged gnome held the reins for the six draft ponies that pulled the large wagon. Next to him a much younger gnomish woman was excitedly gesticulating at a device in her other hand. The device was composed of three metallic tubes mounted to a wooden handle. Frequently, the woman would become extremely excited by some point she had just made and gesture at her elderly father with the device. Each time this happened he would duck with more flexibility than expected of a man his age.
As the caravan of several dozen wagons continued along the road, it dipped down. The rains from the day before had left this section of the road little better than a bog. The drover of the lead wagon flicked his reins to drive the ponies into a faster pull, probably in hopes of using the speed to bull through the boggy patch. His wagon wallowed towards the end, but managed to pull out of the muck. The wagon behind though had to slow to avoid running into the wallowing lead wagon and became mired in the rain soaked road. The caravan boiled over with gnomes hopping out of numerous spots in in all the wagons as they converged on the mired wagon to unstick it and return to their travels. What the gnomes lacked in natural leverage and strength for moving the mired wagon, they more than made up for in ingenuity, with at least 3 different methods of unsticking a wheel being employed depending on who was working on it. To the untrained eye the mass of rapidly working gnomes seemed like chaos. To Zuruvockir-Zizonox Aklee's drover's eye though, the chaos was a complex symphony of intelligent innovation.
Aniebyth had leapt from the drover's seat to help unload the stuck wagon. Zuruvockir-Zizonox's aging bones though required a slightly slower descent. By the time he reached the ground around the swirling knot of working gnomes, she had climbed up on top of the stuck caravan and was quickly evaluating cargo for whether it could be easily unloaded or not.
Zuruvockir-Zizonox checked on the front wheels first. His brothers Fetxwyllece, Saobhyn, and Gos were gathered around the right wheel eagerly trying the float lift they had been developing for the past year; and surprisingly it seemed to be going well. He continued around to the left side of the wagon to check on progress there.
Aniebyth stood up from leveraging a large crate of silks from Egorian out to the waiting group of gnomes and wiped sweat from her brow. That simple action probably saved her life as she was the first to see the arrow and bolt shafts flicker through the leaves of the chitterwood 100 ft away. She yelled a warning to the milling gnomes down below and then crouched down next to the clapboard wall of the wagon's cargo bed, snatching her prototype gun off of the back of the drover's seat as she went. Her hands flew through the well-practiced motions of loading the barrels of the gun as the dull thuds of arrows hitting her family sounded, interspersed with the sharper sound of shafts hitting the wood of the wagons.
In the seconds that took for the arrows to land and for her to stand back up, a horde of tall humans dressed in a motley collection of armor had already crossed half the distance from the chitterwood to the caravan. She took careful aim and pulled the trigger three times in rapid succession. Three bandits of what seemed like 100s dropped into the tall grass. After that one clear image, the next several minutes were a blur of the explosive concussion of her weapon, frantic efforts to reload, and the splash of blood as the bandits charged into what had quickly solidified into a defensive circle around the mired wagon.
Eventually the sound of battle stopped, and Aniebyth stared at her gun's barrels. Two of them were actually misshapen and melted from the heat of firing so many bullets, and all three glowed as brightly red as her eyes. She blinked and focused on the crowd of gnomes around the front right wheel below her. Three familiar forms lay in the mud, one of them face down in the much while the other two quivered in pain and turned the mud a deep red with the blood spilling from their amputated legs, amputated arms, or just regular deep cuts. She leapt down into the muck next to Fetxwyllece's writhing form and stared for a full second at the trauma her uncle had suffered. She looked up for the healers that should already be working on the wounded. They were still at the back of the wagon; Fetxwyllece and Saobhyn wouldn't live long enough to benefit from their ministrations. Her pistol hissed in the humid air and she quickly pressed it to Fetxwyllece's arm where his hand had been, stopping the bleeding. Fetxwyllece's blood quenched the metal and when she reached Saobhyn she had nothing left with which to seal the wound. Cursing her obsession with the alchemy of gunpowder, she searched through her pouches for anything to treat Saobyn's wounds. All she had were a few bullets and a few charges of black powder. Saobhyn's leg ended just below the knee and continued to pump bright blood into the black mud of the bog. She grabbed her powder horn and doused the leg in gunpowder and then held cocked her gun and dry fired it, the flintlock releasing a spark onto the blood soaked gunpowder which ignited in a bright, quick flash of incandescent whiteness and a thick cloud of black smoke. When the smoke cleared, Saobyn's leg was no longer bleeding, although it was puckered from the heat of the powder.

Species

Gnome

Year of Birth

4658 60 Years old

Gender

Female

Eyes

Red

Hair

Glossy black, tied into a no nonsense ponytail

Height

2'10"

Weight

30 lbs

Known Languages

Common, Gnome, Sylvan, Draconic, Dwarven, Elven, Giant, Goblin, and Orc

Statblock