Karin of the Scarlett Flame
Scholar and Social Instigator
A middling mage and uninspiring scholar, Karin turned few heads during her years at the School of Pure and Applied Thaumaturgy. She could, as one of her professors once said on an evaluation "barely light a candle with a cantrip." All of that changed a few years after her graduation. Unemployed and with few prospects beyond guard duty with a merchant's caravan, Karin thought that a bit of controversy might make her a bit of gold. With her last coins she renewed her alumni membership and disappeared into the library stacks, spending many nights dozing between piles of scrolls.
In the end, she was determined that she found something just scholarly enough to pass academic muster and just controversial enough to sell. When she first presented her Treatise of Gifted and Mundane to the publishing committee she was shocked at the reception. She suspected, as she wrote in her journal later, that they liked the work because it made magi special, more important than the mundane. It was published immediately.
And it sold. Underclassmen spent hours scribing additional copies to keep up with demand. The public gobbled it down. Within a few moons, everyone in Eldoria seemed to have read it. Karin collected her royalties and returned to Prydith to retire quietly. Local villagers burned her at the stake at the height of the Mage Wars , barely a decade later.