Delphine of the Deep
So, how does a stuck-up, party-loving sea-elf find herself working (shudder!) as an attraction in a travelling circus known as The Wizard’s Caravan of Marvels? I’m so glad you asked.
Moraliel Wavedancer lived in the warm, shallow waters south of Bilit Island, the pampered—dare one say spoiled—youngest daughter of one of her tribe’s most respected members. Her life was a comfortable round of social engagements and entertainments, flirtations, the admiration of the youth of her tribe, and cozy fishing and trading expeditions with her six sisters and innumerable cousins. That tribe, like most sea-elf tribes since the coming of the Maelstrom, was nomadic, though they were tempted to settle near Araterre, in a new trading village. However, the recent, unexplained disappearance of one of Moraliel’s more annoying and less desirable suitors made the Elders wary of that vicinity.
One day, while swimming near the continental shelf, led there by a bit of boredom, rather more curiosity, and the desire to go further than anyone else, she happened across a group of shark men performing some bizarre (and incomprehensible) ceremony. Not only was their ceremony weird, they weren’t even supposed to be there; shark men hail from deep, northern waters, several thousand miles away, near a land called, by the humans, Sahud. She observed, fascinated, from a coral cave, trying to make sense of their bizarre language and actions. Unfortunately, near the ritual’s peak, she was spotted.
The shark men took extreme umbrage at Delphine’s presence, and they gave chase. They followed her through seaweed forests, mazes of rock and coral, and even through a cloud of stinging jellyfish. They would have killed her, if not for the intervention of a human mage. The man whom she would later refer to as simply “the Wizard” plucked her from the sea and floated her high above the surf with magic.
However, sitting comfortably in midair beside her, he foretold that they would never give up trying to kill her, for when shark men get a scent, they never forget it. In fact, they were circling still, below, as she could see. Furthermore, she would bring nothing but death on her tribe if she returned, for the shark men were mighty warriors, and no amount of elven trickery would prevent the deaths of many sea elves.
But he had a solution; there was one place they could not follow—dry land. He would provide a refuge for her and a job where she could use her obvious talents and good looks. All she had to do was sign this contract…Or, he said, “I could just leave you here, to the predations of yonder shark men…”
And so, she became Delphine of the Deep, a member of the Wizard’s Caravan of Marvels, performing feats of grace and dexterity for audiences full of dryfeet and complaining her way through what looked to be an insufferably long contract.
I decided it was time to play a character with no redeeming qualities, and I have to say it’s been fun. She’s modeled after Patsy in Absolutely Fabulous, only without the drinking, drugs, and casual sex. In fact, she doesn’t drink and is something of an ice princess; the slinking about is quite definitely only part of the act.
Her companions in the travelling life are Mama Quilla, a big-cat trainer and Kolokolo, her tiger; Cha-rool, a self-important, storytelling, sentient-eating pantherine sphinx with a talent for fire-magic; Boggs, a hobgoblin with a few tricks up his sleeve and ambitions of ringmasterdom; Affed, a belly-dancing Medusa; Hysterion, a genuine minotaur complete with temper and ability to massive amounts of damage; and Gregor, who has a lot of scars and will eat absolutely anything.
We’ve only had a couple of games so far, but the premise is that when the Wizars wants something, he sends a group of us out after it with minimal guidance and instructions. Our first mission was retrieve a particular book from a monastery. That went reasonably well, in that none of us got killed, nobody burned the bat-winged, black sphinx as a demon, and we got what we came for.
Our current mission is to get the Wizard a dragon; preferably live. We had to cross a border between two kingdoms, and naturally, with a war brewing, there was plenty of scrutiny. When the sergeant of the border guards was looking at the sphinx, he asked “Is he dangerous?”
“Yes,” Delphine told him. “He’s cranky, and has abominable taste in literature.”
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