Rosin is an owlin dhampir sorcerer from Amusa who lived in Galik for several years before adventuring with the Tempest Brothers Expeditionary Company.
History
Culture
Because the owlin of The Quelmar Realm are biologically related to Aarakocra, their origins lie in the Elemental Plane of Air rather than the Feywild. Having diverged from modern aarakocra before humans began recording Quelmar's history, owlin are biologically and culturally distinct from their cousins in several ways:
- Owlin experience greater longevity, commonly reaching fifty years of age
- Some owlin grow to be well over four feet tall (and so can be small or medium in size)
- While aaracokra communities tend toward a patriarchal social structure, owlin have traditionally been matrilineal and matriarchal for as long as their stories go back
While they can also be found in other parts of the realm, owlin communities thrive in moderate numbers in western Amusa, where Rosin's life began. There owlin live high in the trees in expansive family nests -- intricately grown over generations through the craft of arborsculpture or "tree training" -- with large groups of these extended family units forming neighborhoods where each nest lies within sight of one or two neighboring families. Some balance is kept between children staying to populate the nest and those venturing off, either to form their own such owlin "parliaments" or to live in the large city of Galik and other more populous localities.
Childhood
Rosin began life in 868 PR in a parliament several days' flight southeast of Galik. Life was generally quiet during her childhood until, when Rosin was 12, the dragon Jatil Jivelg rampaged though the region. He razed her small parliament with his acid breath -- and her extended family, excepting Rosin herself, was killed in the senseless attack. Although a few nests in her parliament were spared, and neighbors welcomed her to live with them once she was orphaned, she chose to face her grief and rage alone and set out for Galik.
In the city, she sought refuge in the church of Selûne where a human clergy member named Mia took her under her proverbial wing. Too proud to avail herself of the church's hospitality for long, she lived on the street, falling in with a gang of urchins of which she was the oldest other than the group's de facto leader, a 14-year-old half-orc who went by Wolf. The group squatted in an abandoned building in the same district as the church and visited it for free meals twice weekly.
She learned how to fend for herself as a cutpurse on the streets, sometimes spending weeks at a time imprisoned by the government when she was caught. Mia disapproved strongly of her lifestyle, but Rosin's earnest interest in the teachings of the church won her an open door policy and a position cleaning the building in exchange for frequent meals and an offer to live there full-time if she could give up her criminal ways. But Rosin never wanted to leave the urchins who had taken the role of family for her even more than the church had.
This changed when Rosin was 14 years old. Wolf had begun to treat the group as his personal servants, taking a portion of whatever earnings they acquired on the street. She wanted to stand up for the younger children, but was not able to wrest power from Wolf. She tried to fight him on two occasions but learned that she would not be able to best him physically. She took the youngest child, a halfling girl known as Candle, with her to the church and received Mia's permission for them both to make a home there.
Days later, Rosin returned to the pack and told Wolf his mistreatment of the children had to end and to ask them who would prefer to stop working for Wolf and start following the teachings of Selûne. Wolf chased her away, but she felt good about having planted a seed in the minds of the children that a different way of life was possible for them. Wolf came to the church to "teach her a lesson", but a half-elf parishioner called Pantorin happened to be visiting the sanctuary at the time and stepped in when she saw a fight beginning. She was combat trained and easily overpowered the angry youth who stormed out of the church with a "This isn't over, Rosin!"
The Change
The following night, a human-looking man appeared in the room where Rosin and Candle slept and set upon Rosin, sinking sharp fangs into her neck. Rosin struggled, and Candle screamed, but the attack rendered Rosin unconscious before any help arrived. When Rosin came to, she felt quite sick and learned that the stranger had disappeared, apparently with inhuman speed, when Mia entered in response to Candle's screams. Rosin remained weak and feverish for several days before being able to get out of bed, and once she regained her senses, she found herself forever changed.
Rosin found she was able to move faster, smell more acutely, climb more deftly, and hold her breath much longer than before. While she had always shown magical aptitude, such as projecting her thoughts into the minds of others, understanding unfamiliar languages, and moving objects with her mind, she now found that she was able to see magical auras, to instantly close her own wounds, and to drain the life from small animals at a distance with a word and a gesture. She grew more sensitive to light and found her canine teeth somehow developing into conspicuous fangs, requiring her to avoid smiling to prevent the inevitable questions. Most disturbing, she developed a nearly constant craving for raw meat or fresh blood and felt urges to feed on the humanoids around her. To resist the compulsion and ameliorate her cravings, she resorted to hunting rats and other animals under cover of night and drinking their blood, but her thirst was never sated.
Rosin knew what these changes must mean but had difficulty understanding how they had happened. How had Wolf been able to entreat a vampire to attack her? And now she wondered, if she continued to change, whether she could continue to be welcome in the church. Candle was already unable to hide her fear of Rosin, and the clergy had become standoffish with her. Eventually, she decided to spare Mia the hardship of having to decide whether to evict her, and she struck out on her own again.
Returning to living on the streets of Galik, Rosin was now more capable of standing up for herself than she had been the last time. When threatened, she didn't hesitate to use her magic to drain life from a would-be assailant, and she quickly discovered that she could restore a bit of a her own vitality by biting a creature that she had subdued and drinking even a small amount of its blood.
One moonlit night a few weeks later, she encountered Wolf and another street kid called Shadow, who took up fighting stances when they saw her. She immediately drained life from Wolf before he could close with her. He landed a blow while Shadow circled behind her, but before a second punch was thrown, Wolf fell to a second use of her magic, and Shadow fled in fear. She fed on Wolf and left him to die, certain the world would be better for it.
It wasn't long before Rosin killed again -- this time an adult criminal who she witnessed threatening the life of human woman walking alone at night. He told her she was dead if she didn't give him whatever coin she had. Rosin was thirsty for blood and took the opportunity to slake her craving, telling herself she was doing a service to the woman and the city. This sort of behavior became a pattern, and Rosin punished transgressors for lesser and lesser offenses over the course of the next few months until she was willing to kill preemptively when someone merely aroused her suspicion.
Reformation
When a parishioner of the church of Selûne witnessed Rosin attacking a stranger one night, word got back to Mia, who sought her out to address her ghastly behavior. Rosin grew angry at Mia's interference and told her to stay out of her life, but the encounter weighed on Rosin's conscious. Despite everything, she still wanted Mia's respect and approval, and once her anger abated, she decided to swear off killing humanoids and go back to subsisting on animals. She had no opportunity to speak to Mia, but visited the area of town where the church stood with enough frequency to see her and on some occasions to catch her eye and offer a repentant look, hoping Mia would understand that she was trying to return to living by a more positive code, even if she still made her living as a burglar and a cutpurse.
Rosin took this a step further and changed careers, at first joining the City Watch but, finding the strict regulation not to her liking, switching to independent contracting as an adventurer for hire. She took several local jobs, joining with arbitrary teams of adventurers and meeting with success, before she saw an advertisement for the Tempest Brothers Expeditionary Company and decided to leave Galik for a time to return to the wilds of Amusa in the hopes of better pay, and if she was being honest with herself, better sources of fresh meat and blood than the rats of the city.
