Clementine

Clementine

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Relatives	Sortia, The Swamp Witch (Caretaker) Mad Maureen (Caretaker) Palid Penny (Caretaker) Hector Adelaide(Father) Jewl Adelaide (Mother)
Affiliations	Firefly Coven
Aliases	Clem
Marital Status	Single
Place of Birth	Spider Swamps
Date of Death	deathdate
Species	Hexenkin
Gender	Female
Height	5'5
Weight	Healthy
Eye Color	Emerald

Clementine "Clem" Adelaide is Hexenkin Bard currently adventuring during the Fantasial Freeze.

Physical Appearance

Clem is young woman that stands at about 5 and a half feet of height. She has a mop of ginger hair that seems to be laced with swamp moss. She wears bright colors that accentuate her freckled skin and is never far from her trusty guitar.

Personality

Clem is incredibly friendly and loves meeting new people. She's quick to charm others with her bright attitude and southern twang. She often tries to talk or deceive her way out a troublesome situations which often leads to even more trouble. She has fierce sense of loyalty, if some one helps or saves her, she will find a way to repay them for their kindness.

History

Clementine(“Clem” to most) was born during a thunderstorm that drowned the skys, deep within the murky veins of the Spider Swamps of Amusa. Her birth was a tragedy: her mother, a woman of named Jewel, died bringing her into the world. Her father resented her for this, and moved forward with his plan to give Clem away.

Within two weeks, Clem was delivered to the Firefly Coven, a trio of ancient swamp hags, infamous for their cruelty and strange bargains. Rumors where that Clem’s father had won her place there through a wicked gamble. The coven was bound to raise her, not out of compassion, but out of obligation.

At first, the hags tried to drive her away. They ignored her cries, cursed the air when she laughed, and tried to frighten her with illusions of monsters and shadow. But Clem, with her bright eyes and musical giggle, clung to the dark with unusual ease. She strummed broken strings of old instruments the hags had forgotten they ever owned. She sang to the shadows and played lullabies to the fog. And slowly,  she softened their hearts.

The Firefly Hags came to love her, not in a gentle way, but fiercely, like thorned vines wrapped around a heart. They taught her not their usual brand of hexes and horrors, but the strange and wild “old swamp magic”. Earthly, melodic, and alive with secrets. Clem learned to weave spell and song together, binding magic to melody and emotion. Where other bards might learn in taverns or colleges, Clem learned from whispered secrets beneath lily pads and lullabies traded with will-o'-wisps. Clem never learned her father’s name from her new family. They only told her that he carried the weight of guilt in his eyes and the scent of rot in his soul.

On her sixteenth birthday, the hags gave her a gift: a small, slightly dazed caiman as her familiar. He wobbled when he walked and often forgot which way was forward, but he adored Clem and she him. She named him Rudicus Patooticus, Rudy for short, and declared him the finest companion in the whole wide swamp.

For a time, life was calm. The swamp was dangerous, yes, but it was home. Clem played music that made even the trees sway, and Rudy chased bugs with determination. But happiness, in stories like hers, never lasts long.

After an encounter with a yellow spectre, A strange affliction began to settle in her soul, magic that twisted and knotted itself within her spells. Her music began to echo with something alien. The hags tried everything, drawing runes in moss and smoke, but the curse would not lift. Eventually, they realized this was no natural malady, but something seeded deep in her fate.

Clem, heartbroken but resolved, left the swamp to find a cure. She journeyed across kingdoms and coasts, seeking out anyone who could help, seers in mountain top temples, hermits in cavern cathedrals, professors of arcane theory. Most failed her. One, an old wizard with ink-stained hands, succeeded only in revealing the origin of the curse: a cult known as The Court in Yellow.

The Court in Yellow, she learned, targeted those who channeled their magic through music—marking them, branding them, breaking them. As she delved deeper, following whispers and half-burned records, she discovered the truth that shattered her: the man who marked her, the one who cursed her… was her own father.

Devastated and pursued, Clem fled that town. A kind cleric found her collapsed in the road and, upon hearing her story, offered divine intervention—not a cure, but a suppression. The curse was pressed down, like a weed buried beneath a large stone. It still pulses in her dreams, and sometimes in her songs, but it no longer controls her.

Now, Clem wanders, Rudy perched on her shoulder or swimming in  her pack. She performs in village squares and grand halls, hiding her fear behind cheerful tunes and a saccharine smile . She searches alwaysfor knowledge, for allies, for a way to finally rid herself of the curse. And in the back of her mind, she wonders if one day she’ll face her father again, and whether she’ll be strong enough to break the chain he forged.

The Court in Yellow watches.

Firefly coven

Deep in the heart of the Spider Swamps, where the fog clings to the water like cobwebs and the will-o'-wisps whisper secrets to the moss, lives the Firefly Coven—a triad of ancient hags whose names are spoken in fear, awe, and the occasional drunken tale. Bound together by dark pacts and older memories, they have existed for centuries, feeding on secrets, sorrow, and the swamp's forgotten magics.

They never wanted a child. But fate, as always, is a fickle trickster.

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Sortia, the Swamp Witch

Title: The Root-Witch, the Mudmother

Appearance: Towering, bent-backed, and cloaked in layers of wet moss and woven reeds. Her skin is bark-like and cracked with glowing green veins. Her eyes are pupil-less, a pure golden hue, like fireflies in the dark.

Magic Specialty: Nature-binding, bog alchemy, curse weaving through roots and bloodlines.

Role in the Coven: The leader, the most ancient of the three, and the one who ultimately agreed to the cursed deal that brought Clem to them.

Relationship with Clem:

Sortia was the last to warm to Clem. For years she saw the girl as a symbol of a bad deal and wasted power. But over time, she came to respect Clem’s resilience and curiosity . Especially her intuitive grasp of the "old music" that echoes through the swamp. Sortia taught Clem how to sing to roots, how to coax secrets from animals, and how to infuse spells with the mighty weight of the earth. Clem is one of the few beings Sortia speaks to gently.

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Palid Penny

Title: The Lantern-Lurker, She Who Counts the Bones

Appearance: Thin and unnaturally tall, her skin pale and glowing faintly, stretched too tight over her bones. Her mouth is too wide, often smiling. She wears dozens of firefly lanterns woven into a netted cloak. Her eyes constantly shift around, never resting.

Magic Specialty: Necromancy, ghost-speech, memory magic, illusions.

Role in the Coven: The collector. Penny gathers knowledge, secrets, and whispers from the dead. She is the most curious of the three and the one most likely to meddle in affairs outside the swamp.

Relationship with Clem:

Penny was the first to take a liking to Clem. Though her idea of affection was deeply unsettling at first (like teaching Clem lullabies made from lost souls’ final words), she showed genuine fascination with Clem’s music. Penny helped Clem develop her ability to weave emotion into spellcraft—how to pull notes from the air and make shadows dance to a dirge. She often calls Clem “my little echo”

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Mad Maureen

Title: The Cackling Moon, Mistress of Frogs

Appearance: Wild white hair like a dandelion on fire, eyes milky and bulging. She wears a patchwork dress made from frogskin, snake scales, and baby blankets. She smells like fermented honey and mildew.

Magic Specialty: Chaos magic, enchantments, dreamcraft, toad-related divination.

Role in the Coven: The unpredictable heart. Maureen is both the most dangerous and the most tender—her madness gives her bursts of profound insight, but her actions are rarely explainable.

Relationship with Clem:

Maureen treated Clem like her own daughter from the moment she waddled into the coven's den. She bathed her in swamp water under the moon, fed her candied frog legs, and taught her how to trick nightmares into becoming sweet dreams. She made Rudy the caiman for her (possibly using bits of dreamstuff and a chunk of her own soul). Clem often found herself in Maureen’s dreams, reliving old memories or dancing with impossible beasts. Maureen calls her “Clementiny-pie” and once insisted that Clem would one day eat the moon (no one has ever figured out if that was literal).

Discovering Clem’s Curse

Clem was about fourteen, already wielding the early glimmers of her bardic magic. Sortia, Pallid Penny, and Mad Maureen had grown protective of her, though they masked it behind grumbles and threats of boiling toads. They were reluctant to leave their swamp, but trade with a local village has drawn them away. Little did they know this trip would uproot Clem from them.

A fog-laden village called Grackle Hollow, built on stilts over sinking mudflats, had gone deathly quiet. No music, no laughter, not even birdsong. Stranger still, several children had gone missing, all of them known to sing or play instruments.

The hags feared something otherworldly, a dissonant presence.

In Grackle Hollow, the townsfolk were mute not out of fear, but literally incapable of speaking. Their throats vibrated faintly, as if trying to hum a tune that wouldn't come. Sortia performed a ritual and discovered a sonic interference from below the town, something was vibrating the very bones of the swamp.

Following muddy tracks and whispered rumors, they discovered a collapsed church once dedicated to an unknown god of song, now buried beneath vines and muck. Underneath the ruin, a stone staircase led to a long-forgotten amphitheater carved into the earth.

At the center of the subterranean space was a podium of bone and gold, half-sunken, and surrounded by ancient, dust-covered instruments. In the silence, Clem heard something the others didn't: a faint melody, melancholic and slow, calling her to the stage.

Against the hags’ warnings, she stepped onto the stage and instinctively began to play a lullaby on a waterlogged lute they found nearby. Her music echoed unnatural, each note became two, then four, then a chorus of invisible voices.

That’s when the air shifted.

The walls began to hum. The instruments moved on their own. A shadow of yellow silk appeared, amorphous, faceless, like a figure between two curtains. It spoke without sound, its words pressing into their brain’s  like pressure.

“There you are” it said floating down to clem.

it sang a single, vibrating note directly into her soul and Clem collapsed.

The coven used their magic to banish the spectre but they could not remove whatever curse had been laid upon Clem’s soul. After the Banishing the spirit. They found the children and returned them to the village, even though mad maureen wanted to cook one of them.

The Court in Yellow

The Court in Yellow is an esoteric, semi-immortal cult that worships a mysterious being referred to only as the Lord in Yellow, a figure draped in tattered golden robes who is said to speak in music that devours the soul. Some say he is a fallen god of beauty and madness; others believe he is the echo of a song so powerful it broke reality. Whatever the truth, the Court believes in one thing: music is magic, and music belongs to Him.

Doctrine and Practice

The Court believes that certain bards and musically-inclined sorcerers are “Echo-Bearers” born with fragments of the original, divine melody from which the King was cast. These Echo-Bearers are seen as both sacred and dangerous, and so the Court seeks to either recruit them into their ranks or mark them, binding their magic in twisted service to the Yellow Lord’s long-forgotten purpose.

They operate in the shadows, never in the same place twice, communicating through dream-hauntings, cursed sheet music, and golden-masked emissaries. Their members wear veils or masks of yellow fabric, stitched with runes only visible under moonlight. The deeper one is initiated, the less one speaks—because true devotion is not spoken but sung.

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The Curse of the Golden Mark

The curse placed upon Clem is called The Golden Dissonance. It causes a bard’s music to distort unpredictably: sometimes sweet, sometimes horrifying, always tinged with unease. Over time, it warps both spell and spirit, turning even healing songs into dirges, illusions into nightmares, and their laughter into sobbing.

The longer it festers, the more the bard becomes an unwitting conduit for the Court’s power—until, eventually, their soul is consumed, and their body plays on like a hollow instrument.

The Court in Yellow – Power Structure

They are especially focused on bards, musicians, and sound-wielding spellcasters. They seek to convert, curse, or control those who unknowingly tap into what the Court sees as “ancient echos”

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The Conductor (Cult Leader)

The enigmatic and terrifying leader of the Court. Said to wear a featureless golden mask shaped like a theater mask or opera visor, and speak only in perfect cadence. The Conductor never touches an instrument, believing their will alone orchestrates reality closer to the Lord’s vision .

- Commands through gestures, silences, and vibrations.

- Believed to commune directly with the Lord in Yellow

- Known to “rewrite” individuals who disobey, unraveling their minds like tangled string.

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First Chair (Second-in-Command)

The most accomplished and loyal servant of the Conductor. The First Chair leads the Chamber (see below) and acts as the cult’s military and ritual commander. Each First Chair is a virtuoso of a specific instrument, and their weapon and spell focus is often a warped version of that tool.

- Only one First Chair at a time, chosen through ritual “auditions” (often deadly).

- The current First Chair is a violinist who wields a bow that slices through anything.

- They are the only member besides the Conductor allowed to compose new “movements” for the cult.

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The Chamber (Inner Circle)

A group of elite agents, enforcers, and ritualists, each bearing the title of a specific instrument or vocal range. They act as lieutenants, inquisitors, and teachers. Members of the Chamber are considered “harmonized”—fully attuned to the Court’s harmonic frequencies.

Inner circle types::

- The Clarinet – a hypnotist and memory-thief who whispers lullabies that erase thoughts.

- The Timpani – a brutish enforcer who causes localized tremors with each strike of his war drums

- The Soprano – a ghostlike assassin whose high-pitched notes cause hallucinations or madness.

Each Chamber member wears stylized ceremonial garb corresponding to their “part,” often designed like twisted concert wear or formal uniforms from a bygone age.

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The Librettists (Prophets and Scribes)

These are the keepers of lore, writing and interpreting signs from the Lord in Yellow and the Yellow Canticle, the cult’s sacred book of songs. They are part priest, part archivist, often blindfolded, and write in notation, riddles, or humming chants.

- Often accompany high rituals.

- Capable of summoning magical effects by “reading the page.”

- Some are said to have been composers in their past lives, driven mad by forbidden chords.

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The Orchestra (Rank-and-File Members)

Common cultists who are still learning to “attune” to the Court’s harmonies. Many are former musicians, bards, or even listeners who heard the wrong tune at the wrong time. They wear yellow sashes or veils and are organized into Sections (e.g., Percussion Section, String Section).

They may:

- Act as spies in bard colleges or music halls.

- Conduct “performances” in public to spread subliminal messages.

- Harvest cursed instruments or magic objects that resonate with unnatural pitches.

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The Rest Note (Executioners / Enforcers of Silence)

Feared within the Court itself, the Rest Notes are silent killers—agents who are called when a “part” must be ended. They carry no instruments, only blades tuned to cut magic. To be targeted by a Rest Note is to be “cut from the symphony.”

Current Court Agenda

- Find Clem. They believe she is approaching full resonance with the Lord's echo and may soon unlock higher aspects of her magic

- Punish Hector. The Court doesn’t forget traitors

- Recover Echo-Bearers. Bards, sorcerers, and singers are vanishing across the land—whispers suggest they’re being taken to the Court’s stronghold, an impossible amphitheater that moves between realms.

Clem's Mother.

Jewel Adelaide was a hedge witch of uncommon grace and power not tethered to any circle or court, and was wholly at home in the forgotten corners of the world. Her magic was subtle, woven into the thread of daily life: the right herb at the right time, a whispered word to calm a storm, or a charm stitched into a newborn’s blanket to ward off colic and curses alike.

She lived alone, in a vine-covered cottage perched where the forest met the edge of the Spider Swamps, a liminal space where things lost might still be found. People from nearby villages sought her out not with demands, but with offerings—honey, songs, hair braided in tokens.

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Magic and Practice

Jewel’s magic was deeply intuitive. She didn’t cast spells so much as nudge the world toward its kinder outcomes. Her garden grew plants that shouldn’t thrive side by side. Her teacups never cracked. Animals followed her like pilgrims on a path

There were whispers she had Fey blood, or perhaps had made a pact with the old spirits of the swamp. Jewel never said. She believed some truths, like seeds only grow when left unspoken.

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Love and Deception

Jewel met Hector Durrow during a blue moon festival in Amusa when he wandered into her glade singing songs of cities and stars. He was charming, clever, and handsome in a wounded sort of way. He told her he was tired of running. She didn’t trust him—but she was lonely, and his music made even the frogs hush.

He stayed with her for several weeks. In that time, they made music, merry, and eventually a child. What Jewel never saw, or perhaps only saw too late, was the guilt and fear in Hectors eyes. She didn’t know he was hunted. She didn’t know the child they made was part of a prophecy in yellow.

When she realized she was pregnant, she was overjoyed. But the pregnancy was strange. Her magic became erratic. Plants around her died without reason, and some nights she would wake with music in her ears and blood on her lips. She told Hector. He fled the next day.

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Her Death

Clementine’s birth was violent and painful. Jewel died moments after seeing her daughter’s face, smiling, despite the black curling in the corners of her vision.

There are signs her spirit linger, not as a ghost, but as a protective force. Fireflies often gather near Clem when she’s grieving. Dreams sometimes bring her the scent of rosemary and woodsmoke, and the memory of a lullaby she never learned. Rudy the caiman, though not terribly bright, occasionally stares into the fog and growls—perhaps at nothing, or perhaps at something guarding just beyond sight.

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Legacy and Influence

The Firefly Coven never spoke ill of Jewel, despite their usual scorn for humans. In fact, it was rumored that Sortia and Jewel knew each other, perhaps even traded spells long ago. When Clem asked about her mother, the hags would fall quiet and offer only this:

It’s possible that some part of Jewel’s essence remains within the spell that still protects Clem from the full force of the Court in Yellow. A deeper enchantment, triggered only when all else fails.

A mother’s final gift.

Clems Father

Clem’s father, known now as Hector Durrow, was once a bard himself—brilliant, proud, and selfish. In his youth, Calven played for kings and criminals alike, his lute as deadly as a blade. But he always wanted more: not just adoration, but immortality. He wanted his songs to outlive kingdoms.

The Bargain

Hector encountered the Court when he stumbled upon a forbidden performance of the court in yellow —an “invisible opera” that only those marked by fate could hear. Entranced He, followed the sound and found himself in the presence of a golden-masked cultist who called him “an unfinished chorus.”

They offered him immortality through song, not life unending, but a legacy eternalized. He agreed. But the price was terrible: he had to offer a child born of his blood, marked from the womb with song-touched potential. And so he seduced Clem’s mother, a hedge-witch with no knowledge of his past or plans.

When Clem was born, her mother died—possibly due to the Court’s curse beginning to manifest. Calven, wracked with guilt but too far gone to turn back, refused to give the child to the Court. Instead, he made a desperate gambit: he wagered a soul-bargain with the Firefly Coven, forcing them to take the child and hide her in their mist-veiled domain. This bought him time, but it also earned him the cross-shaped scar on his cheek—a brand burned by a cultist's blade for betrayal.

Now, Hector  is a marked fugitive of the Court. He serves them reluctantly, hunted by their enforcers but still tethered to them by a golden thread of magic. Whether he regrets his decisions is unclear—perhaps he does, but more likely, he sees Clem as a failed chance at salvation.

Clem’s Curse Was No Accident

When the Court finally located Clem years later, they didn’t capture her. They branded her. The Golden Dissonance they placed on her was meant to activate slowly, drawing her back toward them like a tuning fork held to a distant melody. They believe she is one of the Echo-Bearers, maybe even a Key to completing the Lord’s Reawakening.

Clem’s father may have been the one to mark her directly, under duress—or perhaps he thought by controlling the curse himself, he could protect her from worse fates.

A chance encounter with clem

After years of wandering and investigating the origins of her curse, Clementine found herself chasing rumors of in ruins in the hills east of ravel. A sudden  storm forced her off course, seeking shelter in a rundown inn known as The Quiet Tankard, a place of mud-soaked travelers and whispers. It was here, entirely by chance, that she would cross paths with her estranged father, Hector Durrow.

What followed was a tense, private conversation held just outside under the inn’s broken awning. There, Hector Durrow finally revealed himself as Clementine’s father—a bard once lured into the service of the Court in Yellow, a cult that twists music and memory into tools of domination. Hector confessed to her  having made a pact to trade her for favor in the court, but he could not follow through with it.

Following Jewel Adelaide’s death during childbirth, and fearing the Court would take Clementine, Hector delivered her to the Firefly Coven through a binding wager, forcing the swamp hags to raise her in secrecy. He has been living in obscurity since, working against the Court in his own way, and watching his daughter from afar.

Shortly after their conversation, a Rest Note (a silent, string instrument using assassin employed by the Court) descended from the rafters of the inn to eliminate Hector. A brief  skirmish followed, with Clementine assisting in driving the assassin away.

When the dust settled, Hector had vanished. Just leaving behind a tuning fork pendant that seemed to have protective qualities

Time in Ravel

During her travels, Clementine found herself amid a strange, unnatural arctic freeze sweeping across the land. Seeking shelter and answers, she and Rudy journeyed to the city of Ravel, where they stumbled into the C3 Café for warmth, food, and refuge. While chatting with the café’s owner, Savile, they were suddenly attacked by a horrific creature that had transformed from a local seer named Pietro. The fight was intense, and Clem nearly lost her life until Savile and a stranger named Tessa came to her rescue.

In the aftermath, she met several others who had joined the battle: Luv, Kara, and Seven. Quickly bonding over shared danger, they agreed to take on a mission together—to hunt a large, unknown monster. Unfortunately, they became lost along the way and encountered a massive beast... though not the one they were after. Still, they managed to defeat it and recover proof of its existence, which they delivered to the Onomancers. As a reward, Clementine was taught a new spell—her first gift from Ravel's magical community.

Later that evening, while performing at an inn, a mysterious figure tipped her with an ornate reliquary containing a single piece of bread. Upon examining it, she discovered it might be an ancient relic—a never-ending loaf of bread. Though unproven, the reliquary continued to intrigue her.

The Unravel & The Flame

Clementine’s time in Ravel took another strange turn in the entertainment district, where she witnessed her friend Seven—now calling themselves Six—being interrogated by the thieves guild called The Unravel. They accused Six of involvement with a dangerous flame cult. Clem, caught off guard and unsure how to help, had originally intended to compete in an acrobatics competition that day, but quickly shifted gears.

Thinking fast, she created a distraction to protect her friend. A tense standoff ensued, ending only when her new ally Clover intervened. Reuniting with a growing circle of companions—including Clover, Ben, Kudzu, Six, and Red—Clem helped defend the Xeo Estate from an unexpected assault. The attackers were vampire spawn, and worse still, a member of the Lacroix Dynasty—a powerful vampire and son of Lacroix—joined the fray.

In the aftermath, Red revealed a troubling truth: Xeo, their host, was a secret follower of Keeun, the cult of flame. Concerned for everyone’s safety, Clem, Red, and Six decided to smuggle Xeo out of the city to the Bastion at Manquel.

Return to C3 Café & The Firefly Vigilante

After wrapping up her work in Manquel, Clementine returned to the C3 Café, where she and the wizard Quimbleton Fiddleford made an incredible discovery: her bread reliquary could regenerate itself after being consumed. Clem’s curiosity turned toward a new mystery—a masked vigilante known as The Firefly, who had been stealing from the market district.

Driven by a personal hunch that the vigilante might have a connection to the Firefly Coven who raised her, Clem persuaded the group to track them down. The confrontation, however, was poorly planned. Clem jumped off a building in the hopes of crossing to the vigilante. They soon discovered that the Firefly was none other than Captain Kezzeryn, who had been stealing parts and materials to retrofit her ship for a daring purpose: to cut through the frozen sea surrounding Ravel.

Instead of turning her in, Clem and her companions convinced Kezzeryn to stop stealing. They even helped her forge a fifty-foot-long axle for the ship’s new ice-breaking arms. With the final piece in place, the ship was ready to sail and a path through the frostbitten world beyond Ravel was now open.

Battle of the wendigo's and the end of the cult

Shortly after upgrading the ship, Clem met up with clover to help gather materials for the Manquel bastion, when a massive swarm of wendigo's attacked them. Luckily they were not alone, other heroes like Kara, Tessa, Annabelle Belladona, and (Jacob's character) were there to help. Though there were several close calls in the fight, with blades, wit, and magic the team was able to put a stop to the wendio uprising threatening Ravel and its citizens. Their victory was short lived as a paladin named "X" had come to collect the bounty on Kara. Using powerful ice magic, He incased Kara in a icy prison. However, Clem layed on her spider swamp charm and got him to leave kara alone and focus on the real cult. After some romantic tension between the two, The paladin left Clem and the others.

After this, Clem convinced the other to go help X with the flame cult. They seemed to have a powerful crown of fire magic. Kara found out that the crown was one of 4 elemental artifacts in Quelmar that could lead to godhood. They also deduced that the paladin carried one as well. After a rest and shopping for potions, the team made thier way to the xeo estate, where they led an occult assualt on the cult(say that ten times fast) where they discovered the crown was a fake. after this the paladin invited clem up north, where another lead on the crown is. She accepted and wonders if she could use the crown to empower her self against the court in yellow

Languages

Common, Elvish and Hag.

Powers and Abilities

Clem is a magically inclined bard who weaves spells and enchantments across the battlefield. She uses her music to help allies or uses her hag magic to lay vicious curses to inhibit her enemies. She loves illusions as they are very versatile.

Attacks and Weapons 

Illusory flocks of birds

a dagger

Rudy

Garlic

X Add worldbuilding credits now!