Warning: the following is very much stream of conscious. Please comment, correct, advise, negate, or otherwise butcher at your leisure

Now that my massive amount of work is behind me, I'm now starting to try to catch back up in my games. As far as this game is concerned, I've decided on an elf alchemist named Calathon Amradi (Please, call me Cal). He's a bit of a savant at whatever he attempts (high Int) but due to an unfortunate incident, he's a terribly burned alchemist and as a result has a love/hate relationship with his alchemy and specifically fire.

I've taken the "Burned" drawback to explain his horrific scarring. He has a healthy fear of fire, stemming from an accident that left his face, right arm, both hands, neck, and right side of his torso burned wickedly. He will, as a result, be constantly offering to make sunrods for the group, as he would rather have no torches anywhere near him.

But, in a twist of fate, because of his constant exposure to fire from his experimentation and learning the finer points of alchemy, he's developed a physical tolerance for fire as well, resulting in fire resistance 5 in terms of game mechanics. (This was received as a result of the alternate elven racial trait. I just refluffed it to be explained by his alchemy versus the region in which he grew up) So while he really doesn't take that much damage from fire anymore, most of his concerns are mental in nature.

Also, as a result of his somewhat obsessive behavior with alchemy, he has "taste-tested" too many liquids (before learning safer methods) that turned out to be acidic, and so the tip of his tongue and lips have largely burned away or scarred over, so he speaks with an unintentional lisp. Couple that with his appearance, he has a hard time getting people to talk to him for a long period of time or to look him in the eyes.

Despite his low Charisma, I envision him as being fairly personable, if not a little excitable about some of the more scholastic pursuits (history, alchemy, archaeology, etc) but he has a hard time carrying a long conversation with folks simply because he's not used to people being willing to converse for a long time with him.

Since he's considerably older than everyone else in the group, my thoughts are that he served as an "advisor" to Vershab's (Rob's character) parents in terms of Osiriani history. History is his other passion. He's fascinated with Osirion's tombs and artifacts and the ancient pharoahs and civilization of old. I envision him being an amateur archaelogist, and uses his alchemy to preserve history scrolls and texts, clean artifacts, reveal hidden writing, and any number of other similar needs. So, to complete the picture, Vershab grew up with Cal around and in the last few months of their lives, Vershab's parents made Cal his godfather or something along those lines. (Rob and I had talked about this in chat...you might have seen it)

Gwynfrid, if there's a museum that he could work for, or the government as a minor historian or an alchemist's guild that he serves as an assistant curator of historical goods or something along those lines, that'd be awesome. I'm thinking that Cal was born in the Mwangi jungles to the southwest, and in his formative years (ages 1 - 40ish) he learned to use the standard elven weapons, but Kelesh slavers captured him and his parents. He got separated from them early on, and learned to adapt (as savants do) and realized that all he needed to do was bide his time for his owners to simply perish...which they did. Kelesh law provided for his freedom at that point. He hasn't seen his parents since and there's a latent desire to follow up on that...at some point. His former owner had business dealings with an alchemist, of which he'd heard a lot of their conversations. Upon his freedom, he offered that business contact his service as an apprentice or employee.

Turns out that the businessman/alchemist, Malakeh Amradi, was an Osiriani merchant. Cal ended up traveling to Sothis to study with Malakeh at around the age of 80ish. It was during that time that he developed his love of Osiriani history as well as finding his niche as an alchemist. I have in my mind that whatever accident that caused him to get burned also resulted in the death of one or more people, which caused his relocation to Wati to make a new living at around 110 years old. He would hire himself out as a sage or researcher, and a few years later an adventurer that hired him was Vershab's father. Continued hiring and a shared love of history ensured their eventual closeness and friendship, and when baby Vershab came into the picture, Cal would occasionally babysit or go on minor excursions into archaeological sites with them.

Now, at the age of 143 he is Vershab's godfather and mourning the loss of not only his own parents but also Vershab's, but also has a respectable job as [insert Gwynfrid's suggestion of employer and profession]. But when Vershab heard about the city's contest and excitably contacted some of his friends (whom Cal had encountered from time to time), Cal was delighted at the opportunity.

So...thoughts? :) I'll have a sheet available soon. It's partially finished but it's well past my bedtime and I need sleep.