Document 1: Alma Perdida

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Alma’s Secret

It was  a typical morning for Izan Artigas. He had nearly completed a circuit of the local herb patches that ranged for over 3 miles around his home. He was almost finished gathering the astringent herbs he needed for a special healing tincture. The moisture from the last night’s rain still glistened on the leaves around him. As he was peering intently at one last large specimen, he nearly tripped over the leg of a young half-elf woman lying face down in the patch of red raspberry. Gently turning her over, he saw that her face was covered in mud from the puddle she lay in and she had some deep wounds across her back although he could not tell what caused them at first glance. Checking for a pulse, he discovered that she was alive – although just barely. Quickly conjuring up a simple spell of levitation, the mage lifted the woman and pushed her back to his cottage with haste. Luckily for the stranger, Izan had just completed several potions and salves that could heal her wounds and restore her vitality, although it would take time for her to recover fully.

Over the next 2 weeks, Izan used his extensive knowledge of herbology and a few minor magics to heal her wounds, restore her vitality and make her comfortable. When the pretty young woman finally regained consciousness, he asked her who she was. She looked at him like she did not understand the question. When he started to ask again, she said “I… don’t know.”

The young woman was healing well, but she had lost all memory of her identity and her past, including how she ended up near death in the middle of Izan’s raspberry patch. He told her that he would call her Alma Perdida, which means ‘lost soul’ in his homeland’s ancient language. Alma accepted her new name but was still intensely motivated to recover her lost memories. During a few magical probings of her mind, Izan discovered something surprising – Alma had innate magical abilities. He deduced that these abilities did not come from years of training and study like his, but rather were a part of herself. He trained her to focus and control these strands of magical power, but this kind of arcane magic was just not his specialty. She stayed and studied with the old mage for the next 3 months, but he knew that eventually she would need to seek out a new master to help her with her innate magic as well as someone who may be able to help her recover her lost memories. He gave her some gold and hired a local boy with a cart to take her to the city of Cassomir on the coast. When she arrived at the main gate, she introduced herself as Alma, but the guard misunderstood and gave her directions to the port and how to gain passage to the nearby city of Almas. Still confused about her past, but gaining more mastery of her innate talents she stepped foot in the capital of Andoran about a month ago to seek answers to questions that she did know how to ask.

The Reluctant Soldier

When she was just a child, her father, a burly human warrior, formerly one of the Druma’s elite Blackjackets who now lived a peaceful life of retirement near the Taldor city of Maheto named Kendrick Demetrias, put a short sword in her small hand and watched with a chuckle as the thin girl attempted to lift it. He knew that anyone living on the edges of civilization needed to know how to handle a weapon to survive and thought that it was never too early to learn. By the time she was 12 years old, she was able to wield a longsword with modest proficiency but her father still did not think she could save her own life. He had met his elven wife, Anabel many years ago while training with a group of local elves travelling from Kyonin to the Verduran Forest. Ana was a formidable warrior-mage who was able to gracefully merge her knowledge of magic and sword. Unfortunately, she contracted a mysterious disease which robbed her of her mental faculties and she died several years ago. Since Ana had been gainfully employed in the community as an alchemist and potion crafter, Kendrick had to fall back on his former profession as a soldier to provide for the both of them, taking odd jobs as either protector or enforcer. Being a soldier was all he knew so he passed that knowledge to his only child. She had the pretty, round but exotic features of her mother and an inner intensity that often surprised him, especially when he was practicing defensive moves with her. She was able to withstand blows that he thought would surely knock the wind out of her, but didn’t. Every so often, he caught his daughter using magical powers that she obviously inherited from her mother to help in minor ways. He decided that she should learn to wield both weapon and spell as her mother did, so when she reached the age of 16, he sent her to a proper instructor at the military school in Maheto. The school was well known as one of the largest suppliers of competent warriors for the border guards near Galt or the battlefronts of Qadira. The best of the best may even get assigned to the capital, Oppara. However, the young girl was only mediocre at best. She was able to hold her own, mainly due to the training from her father, but she found herself drawn more to her magical abilities. The battlemasters taught her all they could and sent her to guard the Galt border. It was there that she died within in the first 10 minutes of her very first border skirmish.

A gaunt gray-clothed man came along a few hours later and hauled her corpse into a pile with dozens more on a large cart. The shady man took his heavily laden cart to a clearing a few miles within the Galt border where he traded the bodies for a small bundle of pesh and 35sp (one for each corpse). He left the gear on the corpses as the bounty required.

The cultists of Uragthoa prepared the corpses that same night and all rose again as zombies the following day. Most of the dead arose as Skeletal Guards or Zombie Shamblers, but the cultists were pleased that the dead half-elf rose instead as a Plague Zombie. She now worked to wreak havoc with the small Verduran settlements and the border towns of Taldor, her old homeland! She was much more successful as an undead minion than when she was alive and spent the next 2 years terrorizing farmers, slaughtering them and their livestock and ambushing hunting parties deeper and deeper in the Verduran Forest. One day, the cultists and their undead horde finally met their end. A powerful warpriest and her druid companion were dispatched by the lumber consortium to put an end to these raids of terror. When they found the undead legion, they laid waste to the lot of them as well as their evil masters. The priest of Iomedae cast a spell of Cremation on the bodies to destroy their remains and allow them to reach their proper final destination redeemed. All of the bodies burned in the clearing except one. For some reason, the body of one of the zombies, who resembled a half-elf woman would not burn like the others. With a quick detection spell, the priest discovered that she had very powerful latent magic within her, yet unrealized. The druid nodded as the priest cast a powerful spell upon her form and beseeched the Lady of Valor to allow this woman to continue her former mortal life. In Her infinite wisdom, the goddess knew that knowledge of her undead state would cause serious psychic harm, so She agreed to bring her back but with no memory of what or who she was. The druid had an acquaintance at the southern edge of the forest who he trusted to find her and see that she recovered. So he used a spell to place her where he knew his old friend could find the newly-raised woman.

The now 20 year old woman was once known as Sertia Demetrias, daughter of Captain Kendrick  Demetrias, formerly of the Druma Blackjacket forces. Her mother, Anabel was an accomplished elven warrior-sorceress, alchemist and potion-crafter who sold her wares to locals as well as shops in Maheto. Kendrick still resides in the small house just outside of the forest, believing that his daughter had lost her life in service to the country as was reported by her commanding officer.