Syrene Randwyr

The Blathering Banshee, The Devil and the Fiddle, Syrene Randwyr

Art Credit: "woops it's Yagi again !" by cy-lindric https://cy-lindric.tumblr.com/post/185824860943/woop-its-yagi-again/amp

Physical Description

General Physical Condition

Syrene is a tiefling with lustrous scarlet skin that catches and reflects light in a dazzling display, only adding to the enthral of her performances. She is thin with a muscular tail almost as long as she is and has two horns that bend backward over her scalp. She is also sometimes described as lanky, with elongated limbs and a sheltered, square torso that heaves and retreats whenever she breathes. She is also still young, and many who have studied with her or adventured by her side say that, for her age, she is among the most powerful magic casters in the world. She also bears a noticeable scar around the bend of her neck that was received in combat during the Flare, a scar she tends to hide with high-collared clothing.

Apparel & Accessories

Syrene has carried her fiddle with her since the night it was gifted to her by the strange traveling showman. In her time at the College Cliore, she learned a litany of other instruments, but her trusty fiddle is the one she is most comfortable with and has the most experience using. It has been damaged and worn through the years, but she is meticulous in maintaining its playing condition, replacing wooden knobs and strings whenever they show the slightest signs of disrepair. In addition to her fiddle, she carries a long saber she calls "Polyphone", which can be used as a powerful weapon but is most often utilized as a bow for her favorite instrument.

Mental characteristics

Personal history

Raised in Kingcardine, Syrene Randwyr was born to unknown origins, left at the doorstep of an orphanage as a two-year-old baby with a note hung around her neck. The note had only a single word written on its surface, "Loud". In retrospect, it didn't even begin to do her justice. Gifted with an incredible voice and a complete inability to quell it, perhaps she was destined for greatness. Her home was the Greenwood Children's Ward, a place for displaced and otherwise unlucky youths to gather and receive training, all so that they could become productive members of Kingcardine's bustling industry. When Syrene arrived in 1054 Y.E., the Head Madam was a woman named Uleena Randwyr, a strict but nurturing halfling that oversaw all 99 of the children living in the Ward. Syrene was the youngest and the most animated of them by far, a quality that caused her and Uleena to butt heads often. Whenever she would exercise her voice, or even speak out of turn, she was reprimanded quickly and publicly to prevent any of the other children from acting out of line. As she grew older and the feeling of suppression grew stronger, she began her lifetime career of rebellion and raucous misbehavior.
Syrene would routinely sneak out of her room in the late night and early morning, attending concerts, festivals, and spell fairs. She was especially drawn to anything that had music, fireworks, and performances by Bards. One evening, a traveling showman, an astonishingly handsome man of swarthy skin wearing resplendent, stylish clothing, queried the crowd to ask if any would join him on stage for a performance of the Cardianian national anthem. Although many were eager, none could match the bellow that Syrene produced. She was brought on and given a fiddle and began bowing along clumsily with the performer. He remarked that she possessed a natural ability, but would need to temper and train it before making any use of it, and allowed her to leave the stage with the fiddle as a gift. From then on, every excursion from the Ward was to a private place away from prying eyes where she could hone her skill and resume practice. As she developed her talents deeper and more thoroughly, she stayed out much later, sometimes until the sun had already risen. It wasn't long until Uleena took notice and, one night, decided to tail her. When she discovered the truth, her first reaction was to grab the girl by the arm and reprimand her for breaking campus rules, but then she heard Syrene sing.
The traveling showman was right, and she had spent the following six months honing not just her fiddle, but also her voice. She made beautiful, mournful music that combined solemn strings with a doleful voice decrying the loss of childhood and the feeling of walls shrinking in on her. Uleena stayed through every song, hiding around the corner and listening in on the private concert, weeping through the night. Her songs were decidedly melancholy, covering a variety of topics from the uncertainty of the future, abandonment in the past, stifled potential limiting the self, and forced conformity, among others. The most tragic of them all was her finale, a song sung at barely a whisper, describing how her new home robbed her of her voice. When Syrene concluded and turned the corner, she was overcome with both guilt and embarrassment, and Uleena quickly apologized for the breach of privacy. The songs deeply affected her, bringing back old memories from her childhood that she thought she had forgotten. The two returned to the Ward with a closer understanding and a much better relationship than ever before, Uleena even turned a blind eye to Syrene's late-night sessions. Six years later, when Syrene came of age and was soon to be dismissed from the Ward, Uleena adopted her to keep her in stable housing where she could continue practicing music.
Many of the Bardic colleges in Kingcardine maintained strict application requirements, including automatic dismissal of anyone who came from a background of "increased risk for failure to provide education funds", a category that Syrene fit comfortably under. Although any who listened to her would conclude that she was highly talented, she was self-taught and had no academic backing, scholarship, or recommendations. In essence, she was before an insurmountable obstacle that the systems of her home seemed designed to preserve. She continued her self-guided education for years, even becoming an amateur adventurer along the way, playing songs of support and healing for a variety of guilds. But she did not truly make a name for herself until The Night of the Winter Flare. The unit she was dispatched with suffered immense losses to an unknown force that concealed itself within darkness, slowly and gruesomely killing each of her guildmates one by one. The sight was traumatizing in of itself, but her role as healer and battlesong created a feeling of deep ineptitude and uselessness. She could feel the force bearing down upon her, death only seconds away. In that moment, something deeply buried screamed to the surface, and Syrene summoned her voice from within. She emitted a shriek that shook the ground and snapped boulders down the center, a bellow so powerful that the creature stalking her and her allies briefly lost the ability to cloak itself. She looked it in the eye and steeled herself, finding the courage to face death and overcome it, and then played the most beautiful song she had ever composed--to this day she even, she says it has been hard to outdo the emotions that spiraled during the Flare. The night was won by a combination of many forces from Kingcardine, Harthwater, and Colum, and she became something of a celebrity adventurer among the east of Terisirae. In her home, she was even given the opportunity to become a guest lecturer at several universities and higher education institutions. Students and faculty alike loved her so much that, in 1091, she was offered a spot as a permanent Professor of Eloquence at the College Cliore, one of the most illustrious institutions in the country.
Alas, it wasn't meant to last. After only five years at the College, she had built a reputation as an unserious professor, one who sent students to study by themselves more often than they would practice in class. Theory and standard template meant little to the girl who taught herself how to speak the language of strings. She did learn much from her time as a teacher and continues her education in the field as a full-time adventurer with the Rune Runners. Her peers and colleagues remark that she is an amazing Bard, one of a kind in her talent and inspired in her music. They contend that she is worth far more than the B-rank that has been fitted onto her. But Syrene remains disinterested in bureaucracy and paperwork, instead preferring to test her mettle at the edges of Ob-2 or perform free benefit concerts in the area around her hometown.

Age

88

Pronouns

She/Her

Sex

Female

Gender

Woman

Presentation

Feminine

Eyes

Polished Bronze

Hair

Short Sable

Skin Tone/Pigmentation

Bright Scarlet

Height

5'4"

Weight

117 lbs

Belief/Deity

Oghma