Part 1: Private Backstory

I went rattling through Elfwood and Renderosity looking for images to play with, and came up with the following five:

Human and mermaid meet underwater
Narwhal merfolk
Cratered post-impact seascape
Escher columns by the seaside
Fancy building with gates

Now then. I ponder a world, largely oceanic, with human populations (all worlds have human populations) on the islands, and other things in the seas. I decide that my character, who I will name Raindance, will be this mermaid, who is not human. Therefore I need to figure out why she's humanoid now.

The merfolk and the humans will probably be in contact. Two intelligent species with at least a few physical characteristics in common, after all. So there are human divers that come to talk with the merfolk. Trade regulations, exchanges, cultural discourse. What would drive the merkind out and onto the land, though? Perhaps something happened that made parts of the sea uninhabitable. All right then.

The surviving mer would have to get onto the land. Suppose a flux mage were to transform them, give them legs instead of a fish tail - a sufficiently powerful human mage might well be able to do that. I don't know what he or she would want in exchange, though. He'd probably have a very strange house to live in, maybe with Escheresque qualities. The mer would do things for him, maybe take up places as servants in his? Her? House, until one of them came to Roundwander, perhaps to work, perhaps running away, perhaps pounding on the door of some noble's country house looking for work or for asylum.

So. Raindance's background, fleshed out:

Raindance was born in Deepwash, a largely oceanic realm several worlds away from Roundwander. The merkind, of which she was one, had trade relations with the landwalkers, as they called them, the humans. This had been going on for centuries: the knowledges of various gods passed back and forth between the peoples, as well as trade in precious things, fish and meats and grains. When the gates were discovered, still more trade reached the deeps, and the mer became wealthy and strange, some of them. Raindance was the daughter of a minor noble in the court, and was out swimming the deeps when it happened.

It was uncertain whether it was a falling star or an act of magic that destroyed the capital - Raindance privately suspects some mage or other wanted to destroy her people, from some hints she found in her own knowledge of magic. The homes were uninhabitable, the water polluted with strange heat and stranger chemical smells - it was no longer possible to live in the homelands easily. The ones who survived scattered, some finding sheltered coves where a few mer could survive, others dying of sicknesses spread in the poisoned water. Raindance found her way to an island that held a mage.

This mage was a Flux mage. They were rare and legendary things in the deeps, Flux mages, the element of that magic being Fire. She waited until he came out, and struck a bargain with him: she would serve him for seven years in exchange for being transformed from mermaid into human. He agreed, and gave her legs, and her horn vanished.

She lived with the mage and did small chores and magical chores for some time. Over time, though, she began to wonder if he might not have been the mage responsible for the death of her people's capital - but she does not know for sure. When the term of her indenture expired, she packed her possessions and took the gates to Everway, bringing with her some trade goods that he wanted dealt with as her last service.

Raindance has established herself in the household of a lesser noble of the Gold family as a minor magician, and has accepted the name Outsider for now.

I consider this, and decide that the public background for Raindance is that she has been in Everway for a little more than a year, came from somewhere rather far away, and is diligent and quiet, spending a lot of time looking for information about magics. More aware people might know that she studies the destructive magics, but not to learn them - as she is a known minor mage, it is assumed that this is merely for her own edification.

As more information about Raindance's background becomes known to the people in the group, I will add to this.

For description, I note that she's a pale woman with a scar on her forehead, prone to wearing loose, flowing clothes. She has a fluid, pretty voice, though nobody has ever heard her sing; few have ever heard her speak; her accent is strange. She speaks in a language that is not the Tongue (the common human language) when working her magics.

Her long-term goals are: to find out if her former master was the one who destroyed her people's citadel, and why; if not him, who; to clean up the ocean so it is again habitable; to be retransformed and return home.

Hooks that would get her attention would be any leads about what happened or reasons such a thing might have happened, as an easy start. She would also be interested in finding out about the fates of any of her people; a mer in a tank shipped to the Gardens would draw her attention, most certainly. She studies not only her own magical path, but the destructive magics, trying to figure out what in particular could have caused that explosion and aftereffects.

Now, for numbers.

She had a unicorn-like horn, which has healing abilities. Perhaps if she still had the horn she could use it to heal other people, or do other things with it; as she only has its echo now, I'll give her the one-point ability that increases her healing speed, so a day of rest is as good as a week. That leaves me nineteen points. Her small magical knack is easy to pick out - water breathing. She's a middling competent magician, so three points into a magical path.

That leaves sixteen points for elements.

Her water score should be high. I'll start it at a five. Fire is opposed to water, and she's not much of a fighter, but on the other hand she needs to be energetic enough to deal with the sea, naturally, so I'll make it average, a three. That leaves earth and air. I could give her fours in each, but I don't see her as being particularly stubborn or tough, for earth, so I'm inclined to say three there, as water flows rather than stubbornly staying put. Five for air? She's not a genius, she's just bright. Make it four for air and put the other point in water, so her final stats are Water 6, Fire 3, Earth 3, Air 4.

Now I need a virtue, a fault, and a fate. As my fortune deck isn't handy at the moment and I haven't written up the reference, I shall wait on that, and consider my example more or less done.

Now, looking at the fortune cards resource, I pick, for Raindance's Virtue, The Fish, which means 'The Soul Prevails'. I see her as a spirital person, holding to her faith and searching out mysteries to try to restore her people.

For her Fault, I pick the Fool Inverted: Lack of Connection. She is separated from her people, separated from the waters that are her home, and as time goes by, she will become more and more forgetful of what her purpose was. Perhaps, in time, she will take up a life as a human unless something brings her back into the seas.

For her Fate, I pick the Cockatrice: Corruption/Recovery. Perhaps the death of the capital of her people will destroy her; perhaps she will restore it. Who knows?

And now I pick her specialties, the skills she excels in for each of her elements. Water is easy, I'll pick 'swimming' as a cross-specialty, though swimming is, as an activity, foten fire-linked; it's still somethign that fits with water. Her air specialty will be 'occult lore', considering the amount of study of magic she does. That leaves fire and earth. Earth governs resistances and stubbornness -- magical resistence, to go with the magical training. Fire is harder to consider, but I'll finally give her some special skill with a trident for fighting, expecting that the mer would need to defend themselves against sharks, and it's a skill she might have kept up to remind her of home and in case of emergencies, even if she is not much of a fighter.

One completed character.