Oscearo

Oscearo Stillwater
Status	Active
Race	Human
Gender	Female
Guild	Warrior Mage
Instance	Prime

About

Oscearo (Oh-see-AR-oh) was born on the 5th day of the 5th month of Uthmor the Giant in the year of the Bronze Wyvern, 400 AV, into an obscure offshoot branch of the Outcast Tribes. In Arhat 424 she left her home in the Velaka Desert, for reasons which she still generally declines to comment on, eventually making her way to Crossing in Moliko of the same year. Not long after arriving there she joined the Warrior Mage guild, and was taken on by Perune Nocarrain as his apprentice. For some time thereafter she harboured persistent dark misgivings that she was not a very good apprentice or warrior mage in general, but this may in part be accounted for by the words often used to describe her since her coming to Crossing, which include "somber," "dour," and "pessimistic." If asked, she would choose to replace these words with "thoughtful," "stoic," and, naturally, "realistic."

After less than a half-dozen years in Zoluren, Oscearo quite suddenly vanished from the face of Elanthia while on what was supposed to be a short sea voyage to Aesry. Being not the world's most gregarious person and also having already displayed a marked propensity for sudden disappearances, it was likely some time before her absence was remarked on. By this point she almost certainly had been dead for quite a while. However, due to the good (or, more likely, deeply nefarious) offices of Hodierna, with whom she had (unfortunately and not entirely intentionally) earned a great deal of favour in the lead-up to the Maelshyve raids, Oscearo was turned aside from endless oblivion and eventually returned to life, in the extremely inconvenient locale of a desert island some distance from where her unfortunate ship had gone down in a storm. After further misadventures involving desperate battles for survival, daring escapes, pirates, rescues, mistaken identities, and more daring escapes from former rescuers, Oscearo by some miracle managed to make her way back to the Crossing, from which point she has attempted to take up her life where it was so rudely interrupted. She can't help but feel this won't go well.

Description

You see Oscearo Stillwater, Warrior Mage of Elanthia, a Human.
She has a square face, close-set amber eyes and a straight nose. Her white hair is short and wavy, and is worn tied back in a thin braided tail. She has dark brown skin and an athletic figure.
She is short for a Human.
She is an adult.

She is wearing a sage-green cloth hair wrap dangling with a beaded eagle feather, a beige wool burnoose, a full-sleeved cinnamon broadcloth shirt with a drawstring neckline, some rugged leathers, a pair of brown leather sandals with cross straps, a wide cambrinth apprentice's armband in the shape of a pair of leucros, a pale jade bracelet crafted to resemble a water snake eating its tail, a bangle-style bronze anklet with an antiqued finish, and a sturdy canvas bundle.

Oscearo's Own Self-Portrait

Magic

Oscearo's primary affinity is to the element of water, with secondary affinities for earth and air. Her interests lie mostly in defensive and utility applications of elemental magic rather than in combat spells.

Having received an unorthodox training among her people as something more akin to a bard, Oscearo still perceives mana as music rather than visible streams. She also finds it challenging to cast spells by means of sigils rather than through song or some other vocalization, and as a result has devised for herself an array of vocal crutches which any self-respecting warrior mage would likely find deplorable.

Despite her handicaps and misgivings, Oscearo has finally scraped up enough competence with combat magic to be raised to the level of a full Warrior Mage in the guild. However slender an achievement this would be considered by any of her peers, she is proud of the accomplishment and has arrived at some acceptance not only of her limitations but of the fact that her strengths lie in those skills not so highly valued by most in the guild. Her greatest regret lies in her feeling that she failed her mentor Perune, whose example she still strives to follow. She draws some comfort from the example of Kigutaarnaq, patron saint of warrior mages, and the writings of Guildmistress Melear.

Familiar

Oscearo's familiar is a fuzzy calico guinea-pig who has taken the name of Pipsissewa. Pipsissewa considers herself a visiting scholar at Asemath Academy, having successfully graduated herself from a children's classroom in Arthe Dale. She is fond of her stubborn, proud, foolish mageling, but finds deeply regrettable her mageling's habit of referring to her as "Pips."

Religion

Like most others of her tribe, Oscearo's spirituality consists of a mix of beliefs drawn from various cultures, an eclectic blending which shows no compunction in appropriating and adapting religious traditions from anywhere under the sun.

Following the events of the Raid on Maelshyve's Fortress and the appearance of the unicorn avatar that spoke to her and others at the Riverhaven Temple, Oscearo has devoted herself with some ambivalence to Hodierna. However, her view of Hodierna conforms somewhat more to the traditional Kaldaran conception of the goddess than to that deity's representation among the Kermorian Pantheon. Oscearo also is an adherent of the pseudo-divine Huntress.

Besides these devotions, Oscearo tends towards an animist view of the world. She particularly sees her magical work with the elements as being an interaction between herself and some manner of sentience, rather than a manipulation of merely inanimate forces.

Miscellanea

Oscearo distrusts empaths and sorcery, detests necromancers, and has a horror of being touched by the opposite sex. She also tends to avoid like the plague the entire vicinity of Shard, having a not entirely unjustified paranoia of being persecuted as an Outcast. Things that she actually likes include history, poetry, teaching, and, since discovering the miracle of spectacles, sketching and painting. She also has a great partiality for flowers, hair ornaments, and dancing, which she probably hopes no one notices.