Veliata Eründalis
Though Veliata Eründalis was once one of the most well-respected members of the Foard of Maesters, her visits to the College of Elbion are now infrequent at best, and the majority of the current batch of short-lived humans on the Foard no longer even remember her existence. These days, she makes her home near Minaris in the Isles of Sheketh, where she toils to uncover the long-lost secrets of the ancient ruins of the Entombed City and the ythenite relics found there.
Appearance
Those who have the dubitable honor of meeting Veliata Eründalis rarely forget the experience. From the very first, her appearance is at once both striking and intimidating: her eyes, dark and ebon-hued like those of a hawk, miss nothing. Her face, adorned with a simple but well-made monocule clipped to a small nose tastefully placed in the center of said face, is both angular and severe (the uncharitable would say haughty) and framed by a semi-orderly tangle of hair that gleams like burnished silver.Veliata's garb and accoutrements further reinforce this impression of overawing expertise: her flowing robes of cerulean, black, and white are trimmed in gold and adorned with pleated stitching and embroidery in abstract imitation of curling vines and elaborate runes. The chains and jewelry that encircle her and hang from her clothing, fashioned from rare materials ranging from simple gold and silver to genuine starglass alloys and tempered ythenite cores, serve much more significant functions than mere embellishment: they are arcane tools, their motions and activities attuned to her every whim.
Nor are the Maester's posture and presence any less striking. In her, that captivating grandeur inherent to all Elvenkind borders on an aura of arrogance. This, however, is not the empty arrogance of pretentious officials or bumbling would-be sages; it is the unconscious air of competence that surrounds someone who is at once older, wiser, and more powerful than most anyone, and knows it. Everything about Veliata bespeaks centuries of magical experience at a glance; this is not an individual to trifle with lightly. But then again, most of the younger races aren't exactly known for their critical thinking ...
Skills and Abilities
Arcane Artificer—Veliata's academic focus in magical research has always been largely upon artifacts and magitechnical constructions. As such, she has an almost instinctive ability to understand the workings of magical artifacts, even those of indecipherable origin; comprehensive knowledge of magical artifacts both documented and legendary; and considerable experience in both refurbishing artifacts and fashioning her own.Encyclopædic Knowledge—A thousand years of magical studies have their benefits. There are very few scraps of arcane literature, magical history, and metaphysical trivia that escape the scope of Veliata's memory and knowledge; in fact, she probably even personally knew many of the most renowned scholars responsible for authoring some of it.
Metaphysical Precision—After so long spent honing her magical talent, Veliata has perfected her efficiency and control, and can perform magic that most would blanch to even consider with relative ease and work complex spellcraft at stunning speeds. However, as a consequence of her metaphysical "muscle memory," she has some disproportionate difficulty in embracing entirely new techniques.
Ythenite Attunement—Since the primary focus of Veliata's research has always been on the potent magical properties inherent in ythenite and the various means of manipulating and tempering it, it only follows that she should be extremely practiced in its use. The vast majority of her accoutrements are constructed about ythenite cores, allowing her to manipulate them directly at the merest nudge of her whims (assuming that the cores are charged, of course).
Personality
At first glance, one might expect Veliata to possess a certain deep-rooted arrogance; the sort of casual dismissal that implies others are beneath her notice. This is not, however, strictly true; the Maester, while certainly well aware of the (considerable) extent of her own capabilities, and admittedly perhaps a bit overly willing to refrain from holding her tongue regarding the imperfections of others at times, nonetheless displays a certain genuine (albeit subtle) interest in enlightening, observing, and at times even (grudgingly) interacting with those around her.Admittedly, she can be both gratingly impatient (particularly with ignorance or impulsiveness) and painfully patient and stoic, sometimes even in the same breath; moreover, she makes no secret of her ridicule for those who aspire to unearned heights, particularly those who claim power without knowledge. But beneath that stubbornly arrogant exterior is a mind that is far too keen to be inflexible: it may not seem it, but Veliata listens carefully to all that is said and is more willing than one might imagine to offer help to those brave enough to ask; and once someone genuinely earns her respect, she will stand with them with a fierceness unparalleled—sometimes even in the same instant as relentlessly criticizing them.
The Maester has a frighteningly keen mind, and an understanding of magic that comes from centuries of careful, focused study. She lives firmly by the ideology that, with enough critical thought and application of intellect, any concept can be understood and any problem solved. Certainly, she applies this ideology to her own single-minded devotion to her research.
While this at first seems a purely positive (if perhaps exhausting) outlook, it can at times be deeply frustrating to those around her; particularly since she believes not only that anyone can devote that sufficient level of academic effort if they merely try hard enough but also that they, in fact, should do so, and that failure to do so borders on moral failing. But by the same token, all that is needed to earn her respect and aid is to genuinely put in that effort, regardless of whether the effort is met with success or failure: it is effort, not results, that she values most.
Biography & Lore
To those members of the College of Elbion who still remember her, Veliata Eründalis is something of a living legend, for her name numbers among those of the very founders of the College, and it is said that she even personally knew Lord Ganfritz Elbion himself. Though the specifics of her reasons for arriving at his castle (much less remaining there rather than returning to her birthplace in the Falwood) have been lost to time, some historians have posited that she—like so many others—likely fled there to escape the attacks of the Templars during the Second Schism, and since Veliata herself has not seen fit to disabuse anyone of this notion, it has become the story that most believe.Regardless of the details of her early life, none can deny the impact she had upon Elbion College in its formative years. Gifted with a startlingly sharp intellect, an encyclopædic memory, and an inborn talent for artifice, in addition to the (less direct, but no less important) advantage of existing in an age before the anti-nonhuman sentiments of the College had begun to take shape, she quickly rose to prominence, not only as an accomplished mage but also as a skilled administrator. Countless precedents, regulations, bureaucracies, and documentations owe their collective existence to Veliata, and even now it is not so uncommon to encounter her signature on documents circulating through the College over the course of its day-to-day logistics.
Nor were Veliata's academic accomplishments any less outstanding: specializing as she did in artifacts and the arts of arcane artifice, she was largely responsible for such achievements as organizing the first editions of the Compendium Arcænum (an exhaustive, multi-volume compilation of research on the histories, attributes, and locations of every known magical artifact that is still being updated to date), discovering various potent alchemical alloys such as starglass, spearheading various early forms of arcane and aural resonance theory, and—perhaps most impressive from a purely academic standpoint—authoring the notoriously opaque Unabridged Theory and Practice of Innervative Transætheric Stoichiometry (With Practical Analyses on Autogenous Cyclical Innervation), a tome that is still widely regarded by many as a necessary—albeit arguably torturous—rite of passage on the path to studying advanced forms of artifice.
Her most significant contributions, however, were undoubtedly those made to the body of research surrounding ythenite. The rare cerulean mineral—found almost exclusively in the most dangerous regions of the volcanic Isles of Sheketh—was highly prized even then for its inherent metaphysical malleability and resonance, but thanks to Veliata's studies, its use allowed both directly and indirectly for leaps and bounds forward in all varieties of magical study.
As the years grew longer, however, the elf began to tire of her role embroiled in the center of college politics. More and more humans came and went, and with them, they brought their petty prejudices and short-lived convictions. The College started to be more and more distrusting of nonhumans, and Veliata's work became more and more bogged down in tangles of meaningless controversy (not to mention the fact that she had little opportunity in those days for hands-on study, as her own work took precedent over travel).
Eventually, she elected to leave the college and travel semi-permanently to Sheketh, where she set up a tower for herself on the inland edge of the Minaris outskirts, though remaining somewhat aloof from the settlement itself (to the occasional grievance of its inhabitants, perhaps, but in time, most grew accustomed to their mysterious, eccentric neighbor; self-sufficient as she was, she left them alone, and they were more or less happy to reply in kind), as well as a joint observatory and laboratory further inland, near her primary research site at the edge of the Entombed City.
While at first Veliata still traveled to and from Elbion with some relative frequency, giving lectures and aiding in a few small administrative capacities, the gaps between her trips gradually lengthened, and the visits themselves grew shorter. The College learned to function without her, and her rivals gradually fought (though with fairly limited success) to push their elven contemporary out of at least the surface of institutional memory. Nowadays, she only returns once every few decades, and her old office waits, silent and dark and gathering dust in the back end of a disused subterranean hall.
But woe betides those who have forgotten her entirely when she makes her infrequent returns ...