Althamar
Althamar is a human male wizard, whose age is unknown, but is clearly 'old' by conventional standards. A wandering scholar of gentle disposition and somewhat unkempt brilliance, he is known across the backroads of the world as a harmless hermit. A grey-bearded, robed eccentric, he is a collector, historian and wanderer.
Able to command magical forces, he has a particular fondness for transmutation, the divination of fate, illusion magic and the command of certain magical elements. His itinerant life is driven by an almost inexhaustible impulse to discover and explore the known, and unknown, world.
Appearance
Alathamar cuts a somewhat unmistakeable figure of an elder wizard, and fits neatly into what one normally suspects a man of his craft would look like. He stands stooped from age not infirmity, with a lean and wiry frame beneath layered travelling robes that have faded from once-rich colours into grey and dusty blue. The hems are frayed from countless miles of travel.
His beard is long and full, acascade of smoke-grey shot through with faint silver, reaching down his chest. It is rarely tidy, ink stains and dry herbs cling to him. His hair, equally grey and unruly, spills from beneath a tall, pointed, wizards hat: a venerable piece of attire whose brim has softened with age and whose surface bears embroidered sigils long since dimmed by weather.
Althamar’s eyes are a pale, clouded blue, bright with curiosity despite the deep creases surrounding them. When engaged in thought, they wander slightly unfocused, as if following invisible script only he can see. His skin is parchment-thin and weather-browned, marked with the dots and swirls of old arcane tattoos partly concealed under his sleeves.
His beard is long and full, acascade of smoke-grey shot through with faint silver, reaching down his chest. It is rarely tidy, ink stains and dry herbs cling to him. His hair, equally grey and unruly, spills from beneath a tall, pointed, wizards hat: a venerable piece of attire whose brim has softened with age and whose surface bears embroidered sigils long since dimmed by weather.
Althamar’s eyes are a pale, clouded blue, bright with curiosity despite the deep creases surrounding them. When engaged in thought, they wander slightly unfocused, as if following invisible script only he can see. His skin is parchment-thin and weather-browned, marked with the dots and swirls of old arcane tattoos partly concealed under his sleeves.
Skills and Abilities
Althamar possesses the broad and deep competence of a wizard who has spent a great many years seeking to refine his craft. His magical ability is not defined by raw destructive ability, but by an almost encyclopaedic and ever expanding grasp of the mystical arts. He focuses his skills into several key magical ‘schools’, the first being transmutation.
In this he shows an almost playful command, altering matter with the quiet ease born of long habit. When the right words are uttered, stones lighten at his touch, locks melt open like warm wax, and small creatures grow docile under temporary adjustments to their instincts. His illusionist magic is equally as deft, projections that are not truly there, spring into life at his command, voices answer questions nobody asked, and he can, it is said, even alter his own form.
His mastery of divination is where his age becomes most apparent. Althamar reads omens from the movement of clouds, the behaviour of insects, the tone of a stranger’s greeting or the passage of the stars. To him, the world is a manuscript constantly offering marginal notes, and he has learned how to interpret the handwriting of fate with uncanny precision. When necessity demands, he can reach deeper, drawing glimpses of distant places or events yet to unfold, though doing so often leaves him muttering half-formed warnings that only later prove meaningful.
Despite his gentle reputation, Althamar’s understanding of the more violent aspect of magic, and the evocation of elements, is formidable. He rarely unleashes its force unless pressed, but when he does, his spells shine with the clarity of a master theoretician: lightning that arcs cleanly between precise points, fire shaped into disciplined geometric patterns, and thunderous impacts tuned to avoid unnecessary destruction.
Outside spellcraft, Althamar demonstrates the polished observation and steady intuition of a lifelong scholar. He notices hidden doors, rare plants, odd dialects, and inconsistencies in a story with equal ease. His journals contain detailed anatomical sketches, herbal analyses, fragments of lost languages, and diagrams of magical phenomena, material collected over decades of travel and study. Though physically frail, he compensates with endurance born from long years on the road, and moves with the practised caution of one who has crossed many dangerous frontiers.
Above all, Althamar’s greatest ability is his unfailing curiosity. It drives his travels, shapes his work, and guides his decisions, turning every ruin, relic, and riddle into an opportunity to expand the vast archive he carries in his mind.
In this he shows an almost playful command, altering matter with the quiet ease born of long habit. When the right words are uttered, stones lighten at his touch, locks melt open like warm wax, and small creatures grow docile under temporary adjustments to their instincts. His illusionist magic is equally as deft, projections that are not truly there, spring into life at his command, voices answer questions nobody asked, and he can, it is said, even alter his own form.
His mastery of divination is where his age becomes most apparent. Althamar reads omens from the movement of clouds, the behaviour of insects, the tone of a stranger’s greeting or the passage of the stars. To him, the world is a manuscript constantly offering marginal notes, and he has learned how to interpret the handwriting of fate with uncanny precision. When necessity demands, he can reach deeper, drawing glimpses of distant places or events yet to unfold, though doing so often leaves him muttering half-formed warnings that only later prove meaningful.
Despite his gentle reputation, Althamar’s understanding of the more violent aspect of magic, and the evocation of elements, is formidable. He rarely unleashes its force unless pressed, but when he does, his spells shine with the clarity of a master theoretician: lightning that arcs cleanly between precise points, fire shaped into disciplined geometric patterns, and thunderous impacts tuned to avoid unnecessary destruction.
Outside spellcraft, Althamar demonstrates the polished observation and steady intuition of a lifelong scholar. He notices hidden doors, rare plants, odd dialects, and inconsistencies in a story with equal ease. His journals contain detailed anatomical sketches, herbal analyses, fragments of lost languages, and diagrams of magical phenomena, material collected over decades of travel and study. Though physically frail, he compensates with endurance born from long years on the road, and moves with the practised caution of one who has crossed many dangerous frontiers.
Above all, Althamar’s greatest ability is his unfailing curiosity. It drives his travels, shapes his work, and guides his decisions, turning every ruin, relic, and riddle into an opportunity to expand the vast archive he carries in his mind.
Personality
Althamar is most clearly defined by an unquenchable wanderlust. Though his manner is mild and unthreatening, his mind remains endlessly active, constantly testing hypotheses, recalling obscure facts, and drifting into internal debates that he often mutters aloud. These murmured fragments range from arcane equations to polite reminders to himself, creating the impression of a man holding several conversations at once.
He is gentle in temperament and unfailingly courteous, greeting strangers with the kind regard one might offer to interesting footnotes encountered in the margins of a larger manuscript. His eccentricities are numerous but harmless: he catalogues every stone, inscription, and odd smell he encounters; he pauses mid-stride to make hurried notes; and he treats even the most mundane object as if it might conceal some forgotten truth. Despite his age and learning, he shows little sense of superiority. If anything, he is quietly amused by the notion that wisdom grants authority, believing instead that knowledge’s only proper use is illumination.
Althamar’s vast memory and long life give him a reflective, slightly distant quality. At times he seems to drift like smoke, his thoughts carried to places far removed from the present moment. Yet when something engages him (an unusual herb, a half-remembered myth, a strange sound in the dark) he becomes sharply attentive, his focus tightening with startling clarity.
Though he avoids conflict whenever possible, he does not shy from danger. His travels have taught him to confront threats with calm pragmatism, tempered by the firm conviction that fear clouds judgment far more than age. Those who spend time with him quickly discover a quiet humour, dry and understated, often delivered with the absent-minded tone of a man who has only just realised he made a joke.
To most, Althamar is a kindly, rambling scholar. To those who know him well, he is a deeply layered mind, eccentric, wise, distracted, and infinitely curious, carrying centuries of thought behind a gentle smile.
He is gentle in temperament and unfailingly courteous, greeting strangers with the kind regard one might offer to interesting footnotes encountered in the margins of a larger manuscript. His eccentricities are numerous but harmless: he catalogues every stone, inscription, and odd smell he encounters; he pauses mid-stride to make hurried notes; and he treats even the most mundane object as if it might conceal some forgotten truth. Despite his age and learning, he shows little sense of superiority. If anything, he is quietly amused by the notion that wisdom grants authority, believing instead that knowledge’s only proper use is illumination.
Althamar’s vast memory and long life give him a reflective, slightly distant quality. At times he seems to drift like smoke, his thoughts carried to places far removed from the present moment. Yet when something engages him (an unusual herb, a half-remembered myth, a strange sound in the dark) he becomes sharply attentive, his focus tightening with startling clarity.
Though he avoids conflict whenever possible, he does not shy from danger. His travels have taught him to confront threats with calm pragmatism, tempered by the firm conviction that fear clouds judgment far more than age. Those who spend time with him quickly discover a quiet humour, dry and understated, often delivered with the absent-minded tone of a man who has only just realised he made a joke.
To most, Althamar is a kindly, rambling scholar. To those who know him well, he is a deeply layered mind, eccentric, wise, distracted, and infinitely curious, carrying centuries of thought behind a gentle smile.
Biography & Lore
Althamar was born in a quiet riverside settlement, the exact location of which he has long-since forgotten. However it was here that his early fascination with patterns, stars, and the muttered gossip of wind through reeds would mark him as a child touched by latent arcane talent. His gifts first manifested in harmless flickers of light and accidental illusions, drawing the wary attention of travelling scholars who still carried news of the College of Elbion, an institution founded by Lord Ganfritz Elbion to shelter and educate the magically gifted during the height of Templar persecution.
Althamar arrived at the College of Elbion as a young man, having walked the mountain roads alone with a pack full of notebooks and half-formed theories. He was admitted without difficulty; the Foard of Maesters had a long-standing tolerance for eccentric applicants, and Althamar’s early writings showed remarkable insight despite their chaotic structure. During his years within the august halls, he studied under several prominent Maesters, dividing his attention between Transmutation, Divination, Illusion, and Evocation. His unwillingness to specialise frustrated some of his tutors but amused others, and his tireless recording of lectures, experiments, and even mundane campus life became a familiar sight in those decades.
By the Age of Chronicles, Althamar had earned his place as a Maester of the First Order, a rank granted on the strength of his unusual breadth of study rather than any one discipline. In time, he was granted a permanent residency within the College, a small ‘suite’ overlooking the northern wall, stacked high with scrolls, curious stones, and half-finished treatises. Though the room remains his in official records, he has scarcely set foot in it for more than a few scattered nights across the last century.
Althamar’s withdrawal from college life was not the result of scandal or ambition but simply restlessness. Shortly after passing his final trials, he set out “to see how far the map stretches,” as he wrote in his journal. What began as a modest scholarly excursion quickly became a defining pattern of his existence. He wandered to forgotten border villages, remote monasteries, abandoned keeps, and regions scarred by the Templar War, filling volume after volume with observations. He inspected shattered portal stones, interviewed shepherds about local superstitions, catalogued extinct dialects, and attempted to reconstruct magical phenomena from faint traces left in the soil.
Over the decades, Althamar became a familiar figure on the old trade roads, an elderly wizard in a faded hat, muttering theories while digging in riverbanks for “historically significant mud.” He was present in the aftermath of the fire that ravaged parts of the College during Maho Sparhawk’s attack, being one of the first to arrive through a portal stone after hearing distant rumours of the disaster. His journals from that period are still occasionally consulted by modern archivists.
Despite his long absence, the College has never revoked his residency. The Foard of Maesters considers him a harmless eccentric whose writings occasionally prove alarmingly prescient. Within Elbion, tales persist of staff discovering new treatises mysteriously delivered to the archives, bundles of parchment tied with twine and left overnight at the gate, bearing Althamar’s familiar looping script.
Today, he continues his seemingly endless pilgrimage across Arethil. He drifts from valley to valley, from ruin to ruin, always in pursuit of some newly discovered curiosity. Though his name carries weight in scholarly circles, Althamar himself treats such recognition with polite bafflement. To him, life remains an open manuscript. Every path, stone, scent, and half-forgotten myth is a marginal note waiting to be deciphered.
Althamar arrived at the College of Elbion as a young man, having walked the mountain roads alone with a pack full of notebooks and half-formed theories. He was admitted without difficulty; the Foard of Maesters had a long-standing tolerance for eccentric applicants, and Althamar’s early writings showed remarkable insight despite their chaotic structure. During his years within the august halls, he studied under several prominent Maesters, dividing his attention between Transmutation, Divination, Illusion, and Evocation. His unwillingness to specialise frustrated some of his tutors but amused others, and his tireless recording of lectures, experiments, and even mundane campus life became a familiar sight in those decades.
By the Age of Chronicles, Althamar had earned his place as a Maester of the First Order, a rank granted on the strength of his unusual breadth of study rather than any one discipline. In time, he was granted a permanent residency within the College, a small ‘suite’ overlooking the northern wall, stacked high with scrolls, curious stones, and half-finished treatises. Though the room remains his in official records, he has scarcely set foot in it for more than a few scattered nights across the last century.
Althamar’s withdrawal from college life was not the result of scandal or ambition but simply restlessness. Shortly after passing his final trials, he set out “to see how far the map stretches,” as he wrote in his journal. What began as a modest scholarly excursion quickly became a defining pattern of his existence. He wandered to forgotten border villages, remote monasteries, abandoned keeps, and regions scarred by the Templar War, filling volume after volume with observations. He inspected shattered portal stones, interviewed shepherds about local superstitions, catalogued extinct dialects, and attempted to reconstruct magical phenomena from faint traces left in the soil.
Over the decades, Althamar became a familiar figure on the old trade roads, an elderly wizard in a faded hat, muttering theories while digging in riverbanks for “historically significant mud.” He was present in the aftermath of the fire that ravaged parts of the College during Maho Sparhawk’s attack, being one of the first to arrive through a portal stone after hearing distant rumours of the disaster. His journals from that period are still occasionally consulted by modern archivists.
Despite his long absence, the College has never revoked his residency. The Foard of Maesters considers him a harmless eccentric whose writings occasionally prove alarmingly prescient. Within Elbion, tales persist of staff discovering new treatises mysteriously delivered to the archives, bundles of parchment tied with twine and left overnight at the gate, bearing Althamar’s familiar looping script.
Today, he continues his seemingly endless pilgrimage across Arethil. He drifts from valley to valley, from ruin to ruin, always in pursuit of some newly discovered curiosity. Though his name carries weight in scholarly circles, Althamar himself treats such recognition with polite bafflement. To him, life remains an open manuscript. Every path, stone, scent, and half-forgotten myth is a marginal note waiting to be deciphered.
