#flameskull

Flameskull

Flameskull (Adventures in the Forgotten Realms) - Xavier Ribeiro

Eleanor Lovepetal was born in the small town of Dead End to her parents, Oliver and Charlotte. Like most of the Halflings of the generation, she was considered a miracle. Many of the previous generation had mysteriously grown sick about twelve years prior, causing them to produce a thick black ichor and reducing the childbirth rate. But as mysteriously as it came, the sickness was cured.

Growing up, Eleanor’s family was upper middle class, with her father working as a town guard against the creatures that might come from the Blackgrove, and her mother working as a seamstress. Eleanor’s parents always stressed the importance of being a proper lady, and would often talk down to Eleanor about her intelligence and her appearance, leaving Eleanor with a lack of confidence in herself.

When Eleanor was a young woman, she was selling a few of her mother’s dresses at a town festival celebrating the harvest, when a handsome young halfling man travelling through Dead End approached her. He asked what she was doing in a podunk little town, and over the course of a few weeks, began to charm her. His name was Drake Flintbough, and much to her parents disapproval, Eleanor began to fall in love. Drake would tell her stories of his plans to see the world of Luster and Eleanor was swept up in his dreams of adventure, and his promises to bring her with him one day. She wanted to help, and so she spoke her only friend, a girl named Petunia, and got Drake work in town at her family’s farm, and Eleanor continued to work in her mother’s tailor shop so they could save gold to fulfill their dreams. After being together for a year, Eleanor and Drake were wed, only 17 at the time.

Eventually when Eleanor’s parents passed away from long-term complications that the black ichor caused, she took over the business and Drake quit the job at Petunia’s family’s farm, and helped Eleanor run the business side of the tailor shop. The two spent many years working together, but eventually their relationship began to sour. Drake started making more trips out to East and West Haven to try and sell their clothes out there, leaving Eleanor for a long time. His kindness and list for life that endeared Eleanor to him was gone, but Eleanor held on to that memory. The night before their 21st wedding anniversary, Drake came home with Petunia, and told Eleanor she had to leave in the morning because the two of them were having a baby. Eleanor was distraught, betrayed and went out into the night, having everything taken from her in a single moment. Her family home, her business and her husband all gone.

As Eleanor weeped in the town square, rain falling around her, suddenly she could no longer feel the cold. A tall figure completely covered in thick robes and a large brimmed hat held an umbrella over her asked her what was wrong, and Eleanor shared her story and talked for hours into the early light of morning with this stranger. Listening and nodding along, the figure asked her to trust him, grabbed her hand, and in an instant the two of them were high in the snowy mountains of Beory’s Spine, outside a cave, having teleported there.

LThe two entered a vast cavern littered with books and bones and arcan contraptions, and the figure revealed itself as a skeleton with it’s head encased in a chunk of frozen ice. His name was Khaz’azarius, the Monarch of The Frigid Heart, an ancient Lich that had spent the last millennia planning revenge on a king that had wronged him, only to emerge from his lair to discover the king, and his nation, had been gone for longer than history can remember. He had been travelling Luster in a disguise to see all that he had missed, And the two shared in their pain and loss of purpose. When they were talking about what they wanted, Eleanor wanted a fresh start and to see and do the things she never got to do after she was married. Khaz’azarius wished more than anything to become mortal once again. The two spent the next few weeks scouring over maps and tomes, performing acts of magic to find lost knowledge to discover the secret to achieve this, and eventually found a ritual that may do what they sought. A historian in a nation that rose and fell while Khaz’azarius was in his cave had written a theory on reversing immortality, and it required four magical components and the proper location. This nation was once called Qalora.

They came up with a plan. Khaz’azarius could not travel openly due to his undead nature and need to stay somewhere cold, and so he placed a fraction of his personality into a ring so that he could keep an eye on her, as well as reanimating one of his former vampiric generals, Idona of the Rotted Dreams, into an icy flameskull to keep her company. Eleanor set out to live life and find the materials needed to end Khaz’azarius’ immortality so that they can learn to live life together.

IMPORTANT PEOPLE

Drake Flintbough - Eleanor’s Ex-Husband

Petunia - Drake’s new wife and Eleanor’s former best friend

Khaz’azarius, the Monarch of the Frigid Heart - Lich best friend and Patron

Idona of the Rotted Dreams - Flameskull Familiar/ Life Coach