Citrine

 

History

Fourth Age

Born on 7 December 1171 in Ottawal, a small mining town in the southern part of Obran on the enormous island of Markeoy, Citrine’s early life was marked by the rugged reality of a land wrapped in centuries of conflict and territorial fracturing; sinks and slides from Mt. Vulas‘ eruption and the deep blue tsunami are still evident. Arisen and liches, horde raids and wars, and the conflict between the realm and the torch.

She showed an interest in the world around her that was greater than that of other children as soon as she could crawl. At an early age, she was identified as extraordinary. She descended from a lineage that combined the pragmatic and hardened Markian tribal stock with the inventive and structural minds of the Clowincaz. She matured early and grew up tall and perceptive.

Most likely it was the fact that Ottawal lay directly over one of the first earth nodes Elthuun planted in our world. As astral energies influenced living things, they also affected tainted resources and altered minds. One such energetic pulse is said to have embraced Citrine, shaping her as an empathic sponge, craving knowledge.

Thus, she not only spoke with elders and read books and scrolls. From these sources she learned an interesting fact about the Mt. Vula eruption in the distant past. It didn’t just spew ash or fracture the local ley lines. It also scattered highly dense, pressurised crystalline shards of raw thermal and kinetic mana deep into the bedrock of Markeoy.

The Clowincaz of old, before the rise of the Arisen, liches, and horde wars, often attempted to mine these volatile remnants to power their ancient infrastructure, while the Markians feared them as pockets of dormant, vengeful earth spirits. With Markians, Wanderers, Mermerants, and Common becoming dominant, this habit faded.

Thus, she also ventured into ancient ruins, burial sites, caves, crevasses, and the wilderness. The true turning point of Citrine’s youth came in the winter of 1195, during an uncharacteristic frost that gripped the southern borders of Obran. While exploring some jagged, iron-rich crags at the southeastern borders—shores historically scarred by the distant, ancient wrath of Mt. Vula—she entered a partly collapsed Clowincaz mining shaft.

Deep in the mine, she fell through the floor, tumbling down the natural shaft; she landed on her back on something warm. As it was not lava, searing and burning her flesh, she recalled reading about something very special. She rested against what the Skjalds call a Vula’s Tear: a highly pressurised, dormant shard of crystallised elemental mana trapped in the earth’s strata since the 1st Cataclysm.

She had read that should a common soul, a ‘living straw’, touch such a volatile node, it would mean instant evaporation, their leaking spirit violently torn apart as the mana rushed through them and dissolved them back into the Astral Sea. But Citrine merely lay there wondering, feeling the warmth slowly trying to embrace and penetrate her.

Although something from the old texts eluded her, she felt compelled to make a choice that most people would fear. She knew she most likely wouldn’t be able to climb and walk the world once more. She twisted and wriggled until she was facing the large orange shard. She placed both her hands on it.

The moment her fingers made contact, the ancient thermal pressure did not pass through her back to the astral; instead, it found a perfectly sealed, dense corporeal husk within her. The Ember of Vula’s Tear bonded with her aura, snapping shut like an iron vault. The fate seed inside her slammed shut her aura, which became like a pressure valve, sealing the cataclysmic heat within her.

Her internal pressure spiked to terrifying, suffocating degrees. For three days, she lay paralysed in the deep shaft, her skin radiating a blinding, blistering orange glow as her ethereal husk violently expanded and hardened to contain the ancient volcanic fury. Then, regaining her senses, the orange shard gone, she started clawing her way upwards.

When she finally climbed out of the pit and walked out into the freezing Obran snow, the frost melted for twelve paces around her with every step she took. She had not just survived the cataclysm’s echo; she had absorbed it, transforming the ancient world’s destruction into her own permanent, pressurised aura.

Her world had changed, and she noticed things she had never noticed before. As she travelled home, her radiating and thawing effect lessened, adjusting to the world. It had to be what she had read about, “living straws”, leaking energy back into the etheric winds of the Astral Sea, and the fate awakened heroes being able to control energies.

When she returned home, Citrine’s awakening had brought her energy beyond mortal capacity, and she began experiencing temper bursts. At times dreams could also manifest as a terrifying, feverish heat. One such nearly scorched her childhood home, forcing her to leave her beloved ones and begin to sleep outdoors.

Seeking to understand the massive internal pressure she had but didn’t command, she adored those who mastered their awakenings. She ventured into magic paths and studied mana manipulation on her own. For four years, Citrine was a danger to herself and her surroundings, her dense internal system perpetually on the verge of catastrophic overcasts and volatile miscasts.

In 1999, by her twenty-seventh year, she had mastered the core tenets of channelling and performed with her energies as marketplace tricks. Allowing her to spot and briefly study how others handled their awakening powers and emulating them led to her meeting Elu Frantzi.

As she crossed paths with the Elu, he did not see a traditional student; he saw her potential and the intensity of her unique orange aura, not a passive sponge, but as a dense vault of potential with containment walls dangerously thin due to the sheer pressure of the Vula seed. Recognising that a single uncontrolled magical discharge could rupture her corporeal husk, Elu began guiding her.

He focused entirely on the stabilising mechanics of channelling and taught her how to use her orange aura as a safety valve—venting small, controlled vectors of heat to prevent her internal reservoirs from hitting critical mass. Elu’s mentored her briefly, teaching her how to draw upon elemental vectors, then sent her to other, more skilled masters.

It was during these years, as she travelled through Obran in 1201, that she also met the wandering mentalist swordsman Tobiy Krown. Their meeting was short but striking; Krown’s calm, blue mentalism aura was a sharp contrast to Citrine’s bright, fiery orange presence, creating a mutual respect between two strong individuals who would not submit to local guilds or distant gods.

This period had a lasting impact on Citrine’s psyche. Because she struggled to control her own power, she developed a deep, subconscious awe of other heroes. Whenever she encountered those who had masterfully integrated their Fate Awakenings, she looked upon them not just with respect but with the starry-eyed reverence of a fan admiring an idol.

For decades, Citrine travelled and studied; her path intersected with notable figures of the age. In 1219-22 she explored the depths ofworld’s ley lines with Thōm Dūihol, refining her ability to tap directly into elemental forces. As the decades passed, Citrine’s journey became a chronicle of the island’s shifting geopolitical landscape.

And it brought her to the attention of the Skjalds; at first Astrid Friedrich, then Ulrich and Ed Huginn began studying her closer and listening to her tale-tellings. What surprised them most was the fact she hadn’t dissolved or, worse, become something abhorrent long ago. Her energetic releases were often wild and uncontrolled, resembling overcasts that could have torn apart a weaker shell.

Astrid was the first to confront Citrine about their concerns, and during this conversation, Citrine shared information from the ancient texts that described Vula’s Tear. Astrid had no clue at all, so they went back to the library, and there Astrid discovered that the text was a truename tome, with additional chapters about those unnamed Vula’s Tears.

A treasure quickly copied and distributed. This uncovering and sharing was the last straw needed for their council to decide. She was asked, recited flawlessly, and was initiated as a Skjald in 1223. The Skjalds also assigned their finest mana manipulators to aid her in gaining control over her energies.

Her new teachers marvelled not only at her internal powers but also at the clever foundational concepts that Elu had intuitively taught her in her youth. Treating her as a small world, with its ley lines, was most likely what had saved her. And it made it easy for masters and lords to teach her further.

As she walked the ancient, fractured trade roads alongside many other heroes, notable figures, and ragtags, she used her channelling abilities to stabilise her volatile residual mana pockets. She rose through Skjaldic ranks and found friends. Her longest friendship began in 1226 with the scholar Kazumix. The pair traversed the Middle Belt of the Isles, documenting almost forgotten lore.

In 1230, their research brought them to the dense, merchant-ruled city of Muldum, where they joined forces with an adventurer named Garrett. Deep beneath Muldum’s foundations, Citrine used her aura as a living lantern, breaching sealed cold vaults to uncover artefacts dating back to the 1st Cataclysm. This was done before anyone could seize or monetise the artefacts.

In 1238, after 12 years, she finally parted with Kazumix as he decided to travel back to Naldar. Another 12 years had passed when she, at the specific invitation of her old friend, in 1250 attended the High King’s Coronation. Kazumix had been appointed as the Royal Skjald, a significant honour—and he was to recite and record at the ceremony.

Citrine had spent twenty-seven years assisting the Skjaldic Order, so her heart was swelling with pride as her long-time companion Kazumix was elevated to the prestigious rank of Royal Skjald. Inspired by her dedication to truth, he used his firsthand knowledge of her archiving and securing ancient history to gain the fame he deserved.

This era of peace shattered in 1276 with the appointment of Yell’a’Beard as a Skjald. Yell’a’Beard was accepted into the order entirely due to information he brought from the Outlands—a region of unknown races, alien magics, and unmapped laws completely severed from the traditional scholarship of the Isles. To Citrine, the appointment was an existential insult.

After learning from Elu Frantzi that using magic without verification or guidance could lead to serious mistakes and damage, she saw Yell’a-Beard’s “Outlands Lore” as a risky and unstable addition to the historical records. Believing the order had compromised its structural integrity for the sake of exotic novelty, Citrine resigned her post in protest, refusing to sit at the same table as him.

When the boorish and politically compromised Yell’a’Beard, in her view, was unworthily elevated to the Skjaldic order, Citrine refused to let her lifetime of recorded truths be cheapened. After 53 years, she resigned her post on principle, withdrawing to the margins of Markeoy as an independent agent.

It was a fateful retreat, for only one year later, in 1277, Yell’a’Beard’s words proved true, and the sky darkened, the seals of the old world buckled, and The Great Invasion began—forcing the veteran Channeller to once again weaponise the immense internal pressure she had spent a century mastering.

With the world fracturing around her, the veteran channeller joined the forces of the 2nd Alliance. Her first act was a public apology to Yell’a’Beard, who merely laughed, grabbed her shoulders, and, as he yelled, “She, Citrine, was always about facts, but how could she have known?” Then, he embraced her in a warm hug.

They rode together a couple of times during the Great Invasion and the cleansing crusade. One laughing and shooting his pistols or sabre-cutting, the other melting foes with her amber-blasts. Her unique seals were notoriously complex, often incorporating solar alignment data and ancient Clowincaz glyphs to contain their extreme pressure.

Whispers in the archival circles suggest that during her long lifespan, she brought a child into the world—a lineage forged from her dense, Vula-shards-infused bloodline, making the youth a whispered candidate among the favoured eight.

“And the tear of Mt. Vula streamed once more, searing the flesh of our foes.”

Skjald Ulrich

 

Organisation

Citrine was never easily constrained by organisations, and she bristled at attempts by the Triad Traders, or locals, to harness her abilities for simple economic gain. However, she served for a time as an appointed Skjald-Adherent, using her vast knowledge of ancient energy to document and protect historical archives.

“You could no more pen her in a counting house than you could trap a volcanic eruption in a wooden chest. She served the truth of history, never the coin of merchants.”

Skjald Vinotis

 

Special

Citrine possesses a unique, intense, pressurised orange aura that can physically manifest her internal mana, such as searing heat rays or calming warmth over an area.

“To her allies, she was the gentle hearth that kept the bitter Obran frost at bay; to her foes, she was the blinding dawn that turned armour into slag.”

Skjald El Mary