Kalmiya was raised to be the political and spiritual leader of a cult in an isolated, theocratic desert town called Sanctuary, consisting mostly of nonmagical humans. She was chosen for this divine duty because, at birth, she presented obvious physical signs of being descended from angels, bearing gold skin and silver eyes even though her parents were normal humans. Misunderstood and molded into an object of worship based on the assumption that a child of the angels was a gift directly from Sanctuary's god, Terin, Kalmiya found herself repressed, lonely, and crushed by the pressures of divine perfection and forced leadership. Many misconceptions surrounded her connection with the divine; she was assumed to have a direct line of communication to Terin himself—sometimes being referred to as his daughter—and her minor abilities to heal, create light, and cause destruction with holy energy were seen as miracles to the unknowing townspeople. This led her to having to keep up the charade of being their savior; this was a town where transgressive behavior sometimes led people to mysteriously disappear, and Kalmiya feared what could happen to her if she was discovered by Terin's zealous followers to be a false prophet.
After twenty years of being the Savior of Sanctuary, she eventually fled the town with only vague knowledge of the world outside, provided to her in visions through her one real connection with her Celestial lineage, an angel with whom she has a limited psychic link. She lived a brief life as a nameless vagabond, doing odd jobs and occasional petty survival-related crimes like stealing food or supplies, and making absolutely no friends in the process. This brief phase of wandering ended up with her stumbling into the Feywild (the plane of existence where the Fey originate,) where she got very lost and then met the fairy noble who granted her power and took on the name that would become her own: Kalmiya Longwillow. The deal they made was that Kalmiya would always entertain her patron in exchange for the power to secure her own freedom and live her own life as she chooses to.
Gifted with unprecedented magical ability and adventuring gear that hid her entire face and body, Kalmiya was empowered by this opportunity to take on a new identity and live a new life, though there was quite an adjustment phase of mistrust and not knowing her own strength. More than once, she grievously injured or killed people that she didn't mean to, and plenty of people that she did. Most of them foes, but some of them people who were just in the wrong place at the wrong time in a moment of panic. There were a lot of growing pains in her transition from aimless weirdo to wandering do-gooder, but eventually she found her stride as a bit of a mercenary, taking on low-level jobs and solving simple problems like predators menacing livestock, bandits robbing small merchant carts, and elderly shopkeepers needing something like 25 freshly-picked apples that they couldn't pick on their own.
She moved on quickly from all these people and places that she helped, unsettled by the idea of putting down roots and trying to build genuine connections with people she couldn't bring herself to trust even when they were kind to her. Still, so much exposure to the wonderful and different world outside of Sanctuary did wonders for her ability to interact with other people as equals and accept that she was capable of receiving kindness, even if it would take her a while to feel like she deserved it. After a year and some change of wandering mercenary work, Kalmiya craved more from her potential, and so she enrolled as a student in the University of Abrax, an adventuring school located on the same continent as the town of Sanctuary. She managed to complete one semester as a student there and grew her magical capabitilites significantly before the proximity to her awful hometown finally got to her. She fled the continent partway into her second semester, transferring to the Brightstone Institute on the Isle of Cyre, a good ocean's trip away from everything she was trying to leave behind.
Her immediate welcome to Brightstone was a bit fraught with the interpersonal conflict between members of the cohort that had been preestablished before her arrival. One of the party members with demonic heritage was being possessed by his fiendish father and acting out about it, and it was pretty much just a mess until they completed their first mission to kill his dad and Kalmiya had the opportunity to integrate more effectively with her new cohort, alongside a couple of other new classmates. Amongst the cohort, she also met someone else of Celestial heritage for the first time in her life, and the importance of this connection is what finally convinced her that maybe she'd found people worth staying with, despite all of her doubts and fears.
The trials of many missions, domestic life, and school-sponsored events have given compelling reasons both for and against establishing herself at the Brightstone Institute. On the one hand, she's surrounded by a variety of wonderful and interesting people who she has truly come to love. On the other hand, those people all also have terrible powers in their pasts, and Kalmiya's proximity to them has made her a target for a lot more than just wayward seekers from Sanctuary, and that sort of cramps her freedom-focused vibes. This is a struggle that came to a head over the course of their biggest mission yet, a venture to the frozen land of the Reave, a prison colony which had mysteriously cut off all contact with the outside world.
It turned out that an eldritch horror had taken up residence beneath the island and pretty much decimated its population with minor horrors like shapeshifters and mind flayers, best known as creatures that eat your mind until you die. Most of the party temporarily lost a lot of incredibly important memories in the conflicts with these psychic aberrations, and having forgotten her reasons for staying at Brightstone in the first place, Kalmiya nearly fled the island and abandoned her cohort before being convinced not to by the romantic partner she had forgotten. This was a pivotal moment in cementing her commitment to the cohort, as the entire mission left her incredibly disillusioned with Brightstone's disregard for the safety of its students and distrusting of all the faculty involved; the only people she does trust are the members of her party, and she'll die before she lets them be taken from her.
On the way back from the Reave mission, the party also took a little detour to see a wizard about removing a curse from Kalmiya, which she'd inadvertently taken on after freeing some conscripted assassins from magical tracking by their fascist government. Getting those literal demons out of her head was a lucky break, but supposed summer vacation following the trip to the Reave only brought more misfortune: the death of a former teacher in a conflict against a powerful swordsman seeking the hearts of felled gods; the resurrection and reappearance of a cohort member's murdered brother, back for revenge on behalf of the spy organization they'd both been part of; the discovery that one of Kalmiya's past accidental kills was a relative of someone in her cohort; the appearance of clergymen from Sanctuary searching for their Savior, now apparently outcasts from the town who had begun worshiping a new and more eldritch god after Kalmiya abandoned them; and the discovery that one of the party member's mentors had been kidnapped and was going to be executed in a political bid to prompt a war. A lot of things happened very quickly and pretty much all of them were terrible.
Being put into a position where she could no longer hide her origins from the party was a low point for Kalmiya. Sharing her truth with them not because she chose to in a moment of trust, but because circumstances necessitated it when she needed their help dealing with the apostates from Sanctuary, left her shaken to her core in a way that she's still recovering from. Their support was invaluable in getting her functional enough to complete the mission to save their friend's mentor, and she put on a big show of being the usual Kalmiya in the hopes that she could fake it 'til she made it. With mixed success, but at least the cohort finally got a break from awful missions over the next few months.
Instead life was filled more with interpersonal drama and a lot of relationship developments amongst Kalmiya's cohort, which was a little difficult to watch for her, as she'd had a bit of a dispute months prior with her romantic partner in the process of trying to figure out some less-monogamous aspects of her sexuality. It was frustrating to watch the rest of her party pursue those things so easily while she struggled both with her boyfriend and her religious upbringing, but eventually the couple was able to resolve the misunderstanding and Kalmiya was able to nab a girlfriend in addition to her boyfriend, which was a big step of both self-acceptance and general good fortune.
The slower months also included prom, Halloween Hallow's End, and Remembrance Day, a celebration of the lives of fallen friends and family. Many of these were Kalmiya's first time properly celebrating occasions with loved ones. Kalmiya's boyfriend and his best friend also had their own exclusive mission, an excursion to another campaign in the same universe a resort island also being targeted by evil gods and magical fascists, which went pretty successfully and resulted in her boyfriend meeting his long-lost sister.
Then, as the winter holidays approach and Kalmiya decides how to spend them with her cohort, she dreams of Sleep...
ABBREVIATED HISTORY
After twenty years of being the Savior of Sanctuary, she eventually fled the town with only vague knowledge of the world outside, provided to her in visions through her one real connection with her Celestial lineage, an angel with whom she has a limited psychic link. She lived a brief life as a nameless vagabond, doing odd jobs and occasional petty survival-related crimes like stealing food or supplies, and making absolutely no friends in the process. This brief phase of wandering ended up with her stumbling into the Feywild (the plane of existence where the Fey originate,) where she got very lost and then met the fairy noble who granted her power and took on the name that would become her own: Kalmiya Longwillow. The deal they made was that Kalmiya would always entertain her patron in exchange for the power to secure her own freedom and live her own life as she chooses to.
Gifted with unprecedented magical ability and adventuring gear that hid her entire face and body, Kalmiya was empowered by this opportunity to take on a new identity and live a new life, though there was quite an adjustment phase of mistrust and not knowing her own strength. More than once, she grievously injured or killed people that she didn't mean to, and plenty of people that she did. Most of them foes, but some of them people who were just in the wrong place at the wrong time in a moment of panic. There were a lot of growing pains in her transition from aimless weirdo to wandering do-gooder, but eventually she found her stride as a bit of a mercenary, taking on low-level jobs and solving simple problems like predators menacing livestock, bandits robbing small merchant carts, and elderly shopkeepers needing something like 25 freshly-picked apples that they couldn't pick on their own.
She moved on quickly from all these people and places that she helped, unsettled by the idea of putting down roots and trying to build genuine connections with people she couldn't bring herself to trust even when they were kind to her. Still, so much exposure to the wonderful and different world outside of Sanctuary did wonders for her ability to interact with other people as equals and accept that she was capable of receiving kindness, even if it would take her a while to feel like she deserved it. After a year and some change of wandering mercenary work, Kalmiya craved more from her potential, and so she enrolled as a student in the University of Abrax, an adventuring school located on the same continent as the town of Sanctuary. She managed to complete one semester as a student there and grew her magical capabitilites significantly before the proximity to her awful hometown finally got to her. She fled the continent partway into her second semester, transferring to the Brightstone Institute on the Isle of Cyre, a good ocean's trip away from everything she was trying to leave behind.
Her immediate welcome to Brightstone was a bit fraught with the interpersonal conflict between members of the cohort that had been preestablished before her arrival. One of the party members with demonic heritage was being possessed by his fiendish father and acting out about it, and it was pretty much just a mess until they completed their first mission to kill his dad and Kalmiya had the opportunity to integrate more effectively with her new cohort, alongside a couple of other new classmates. Amongst the cohort, she also met someone else of Celestial heritage for the first time in her life, and the importance of this connection is what finally convinced her that maybe she'd found people worth staying with, despite all of her doubts and fears.
The trials of many missions, domestic life, and school-sponsored events have given compelling reasons both for and against establishing herself at the Brightstone Institute. On the one hand, she's surrounded by a variety of wonderful and interesting people who she has truly come to love. On the other hand, those people all also have terrible powers in their pasts, and Kalmiya's proximity to them has made her a target for a lot more than just wayward seekers from Sanctuary, and that sort of cramps her freedom-focused vibes. This is a struggle that came to a head over the course of their biggest mission yet, a venture to the frozen land of the Reave, a prison colony which had mysteriously cut off all contact with the outside world.
It turned out that an eldritch horror had taken up residence beneath the island and pretty much decimated its population with minor horrors like shapeshifters and mind flayers, best known as creatures that eat your mind until you die. Most of the party temporarily lost a lot of incredibly important memories in the conflicts with these psychic aberrations, and having forgotten her reasons for staying at Brightstone in the first place, Kalmiya nearly fled the island and abandoned her cohort before being convinced not to by the romantic partner she had forgotten. This was a pivotal moment in cementing her commitment to the cohort, as the entire mission left her incredibly disillusioned with Brightstone's disregard for the safety of its students and distrusting of all the faculty involved; the only people she does trust are the members of her party, and she'll die before she lets them be taken from her.
On the way back from the Reave mission, the party also took a little detour to see a wizard about removing a curse from Kalmiya, which she'd inadvertently taken on after freeing some conscripted assassins from magical tracking by their fascist government. Getting those literal demons out of her head was a lucky break, but supposed summer vacation following the trip to the Reave only brought more misfortune: the death of a former teacher in a conflict against a powerful swordsman seeking the hearts of felled gods; the resurrection and reappearance of a cohort member's murdered brother, back for revenge on behalf of the spy organization they'd both been part of; the discovery that one of Kalmiya's past accidental kills was a relative of someone in her cohort; the appearance of clergymen from Sanctuary searching for their Savior, now apparently outcasts from the town who had begun worshiping a new and more eldritch god after Kalmiya abandoned them; and the discovery that one of the party member's mentors had been kidnapped and was going to be executed in a political bid to prompt a war. A lot of things happened very quickly and pretty much all of them were terrible.
Being put into a position where she could no longer hide her origins from the party was a low point for Kalmiya. Sharing her truth with them not because she chose to in a moment of trust, but because circumstances necessitated it when she needed their help dealing with the apostates from Sanctuary, left her shaken to her core in a way that she's still recovering from. Their support was invaluable in getting her functional enough to complete the mission to save their friend's mentor, and she put on a big show of being the usual Kalmiya in the hopes that she could fake it 'til she made it. With mixed success, but at least the cohort finally got a break from awful missions over the next few months.
Instead life was filled more with interpersonal drama and a lot of relationship developments amongst Kalmiya's cohort, which was a little difficult to watch for her, as she'd had a bit of a dispute months prior with her romantic partner in the process of trying to figure out some less-monogamous aspects of her sexuality. It was frustrating to watch the rest of her party pursue those things so easily while she struggled both with her boyfriend and her religious upbringing, but eventually the couple was able to resolve the misunderstanding and Kalmiya was able to nab a girlfriend in addition to her boyfriend, which was a big step of both self-acceptance and general good fortune.
The slower months also included prom,
HalloweenHallow's End, and Remembrance Day, a celebration of the lives of fallen friends and family. Many of these were Kalmiya's first time properly celebrating occasions with loved ones. Kalmiya's boyfriend and his best friend also had their own exclusive mission, an excursion toanother campaign in the same universea resort island also being targeted by evil gods and magical fascists, which went pretty successfully and resulted in her boyfriend meeting his long-lost sister.Then, as the winter holidays approach and Kalmiya decides how to spend them with her cohort, she dreams of Sleep...