Duck See-Stone

Duck is a rock gnome wild magic sorcerer. She's cheerful, bright, and often struggles with common sense.

Origin
Duck used to go by a wonderfully intricate name, steeped in gnomic history and culture.

Now, she’s called Duck, because generally, that’s what gets yelled when she’s around. Duck has no idea why unexplained magic decided to manifest in her, rather than her neighbor or one of her many cousins. It overturned her future as an inventor, scholar, and tinkerer in her community of happily magic-free gnomes, and she quickly became known as a harbinger of disaster for an orderly workshop or flammable stack of papers, and a bit of an outcast for the unwanted attention she might bring to their heretofore unremarkable village.

Having grown up on the edge of Tedoria, in the annexed country of Thogland, Duck knows that unknown magic is often bad news, in terms of local relations. For years, she tried to keep it under wraps.

Unfortunately, magic just bursts out at all the least convenient times.

After one too many non-fatal but destructive magical accidents, Duck was unofficially banished from her home and told to “get it under control.”

Duck is now pretty experienced and quite happy with her ability to mostly control her magic, and even appreciates the usually non-fatal spark of variety her gift brings her way. She’s out, investigating ruins and rumors, and wondering how she ever managed to sit still at school.

Personality
Duck is an optimist and an excitable individual who trusts easily and whole heartedly. She often tries to make a stern and jaded first impression, knowing that most folk will underestimate her or assume that she’s easy to trick. This act rarely sticks, nor is it terribly convincing. She goes through life firmly ignoring the deep anger she feels at being banished and kicked out of her home, along with the tendency towards anxious attachment that this caused.

If you refuse to acknowledge any bad feelings ever, they essentially don’t exist, right?

Duck is cheerful and can be stubborn, though she will happily run from danger if it comes to that. Her goal is to figure out why she has magic and where she can eventually fit in, if she doesn’t ever feel like she can go home.

Meeting the Coronah Boahs
Having gotten a look around at other cultures, Duck was less self-conscious about the origin of her magic. She’d recently been following some noise about another gnome caster, hoping to compare notes on their magic. Unfortunately, her quarry was elusive, so she settled for continuing to seek out old ruins and learn as much as she could about magic, and assumed that things would eventually work out somehow. Against all odds, it did work out, and Duck, while following rumors of an entrance to the Underdark, ran into the Crew of La Victoire, spying on Lanthay Gruber and his men at the entrance to Kirn Dorul. Duck promptly lied about everything about herself, hoping to meet the approval of these cool, tough heroes.

The illusion was promptly shattered when Jean-Marc relieved himself on Gruber's bedspread and Edward stole Gruber's pajamas. Though slightly thrown off-balance, Duck was nevertheless fascinated by their willingness to defy the Tedorians, who she had lived in fear of her whole life.

Kirn Dorul
In Kirn Dorul, Duck assisted the Coronah Boahs with their investigation of the empty city under the mountains. When it became clear that Gruber intended to take all the loot and plunder Willem's ancestral home, she joined the crew in standing up to Gruber and Father Whatshisname, revealing her favorite skill: shattering people's faces from the inside with her magic. The others similarly revealed their hallmark abilities: Willem calling up his ancestors, Jean-Marc sharpshooting people, Edward killing people then stealing their souls, and Drendlas using his cool firesword. Realizing they were outnumbered, however, she grabbed Father Whatshisname and threatened to kill him if the Tedorians didn't drop their weapons.

The Tedorians tentatively surrendered, and Jean-Marc, regaining control of the situation, ordered them outside, where it became clear that the Tedorians had stolen weapons and treasures, as the stone golem dwarf guardians began to turn the Tedorians into snowy jelly.

The blood-bath of the Lanthay Gruber fight notwithstanding, Duck felt good about her choice of loyalty and followed the gang further into Kirn Dorul, where they found another friend: the grung George Washington. In the depths of the great city, they began to uncover a horrifying truth, but Duck was more preoccupied with keeping her magic under control. It didn't always go so great. She almost one-shotted a possessed Ed via lightning bolt, kept setting her hands on fire, and at one point aged 7 years all at once.

All that aside, however, she was enjoying herself. She met Bippleboop, learned that Pippin Bouldermount was trying to steal everyone's soul a la Fullmetal Alchemist, and helped the gang kick some drow butt. Unfortunately, her habit of stretching the truth came back to bite her, and at Willem's prodding, she revealed that she maybe, possibly was here not just to research dwarves like she'd said, but to find an entrance to the Underdark and try to understand what was causing her magic.

Below the archives, they faced a fiendish spider and a spidrow (drider), and faced several trials. Willem bested his drinking game, trial, barely managing to keep down his mofud's special. Duck successfully passed her trial by being too scared to cheat. She very much appreciated Drendlas' tale of Bananaman, though the tale did not pass muster in any way, shape or form, and Drendlas failed his task.

As a result, she and Willem received boons from Moradin, one of the dwarvish gods. They returned to find that George had slept through the whole thing for reasons as of yet unknown.

They descended further into the tunnels, met Bippleboop's deity/mother, and visited Willem's hold, now home to a bunch of Drow. Confronted by the spider, creepy nature of the drow, not to be anti-drow or anything, Duck decided that her magic probably didn't come from the Underdark. She witnessed the death and failed resurrection of Drendlas, assisted with the assassination of the two Drow princes, Ruakoth and Ilgoth, and met a new "friend," Jaravan Criost, a Tedorian paladin with the unusual ability to hide his sword in his own buttcrack without cutting his cheeks.

Jaravan seemed capable, but Duck was always a little leery of him, as she'd not yet met a Tedorian who was comfortable with her magic. Most made it clear that Lathander, their deity, and, as a result of colonialism, the official deity of Thogland, found her magic-type despicable.

He did assist them with getting the sewing needle of Sharindlar from Iymkin, the new drow Matriarch, however, and with freeing the captured Kuo-toa, which earned him some more trust from her. Back on the upper levels, they found Willem's father's skeleton and met several ghosts of lost souls, who confirmed their soul-theft theory.

She assisted with the defeat of King Dagmar Battlejaw II, then the defeat of the lich, Pippin Bouldermount. Destroying the phylactery, Duck felt the power of the souls that were freed, but didn't expect to go upstairs and find all of them waiting for Willem, ready to crown him king.

As Willem ascended to the throne of Kirn Dorul, the Coronah Boahs watched with pride, and Duck said farewell to the friend she'd spent all of like 5 days with. Willem gave her a ring of spell-storing, with a spell of mass cure wounds and remove curse already stored. Duck tried to use remove curse from George, but he either refused to be affected or intentionally continued announcing his presence. Ironically, she used the ring of spell storing exactly once. Curing everyone, then re-casting mass cure wounds into it, never to be used again.

On the Open Sea
Post-Willem's arc, she's found herself on La Victoire and going all in on her loyalty to the crew and their journey.

She joined the crew as they traveled to Le Peu and rescued Skwell and Issa's village and was delighted to meet Rolanth Tiramarn—a fellow sorcerer. Unfortunately for her, she didn't live long enough to really chat with him about dat sorcerer life.

The crew gathered for Issa and Salvador Patel's wedding ceremony, but as the party commenced and the crew got hammered, noise could be heard up above. In the midst of celebration, death rained from above. Explosives, then pods bearing enemies from a great airship above. The Coronah boahs flew up to meet the enemy head on, some on carpets, others empowered with a spell of flight. The boahs were ready to fight, but they were outnumbered, and quickly the strategic Aarakocra Preneusse sent key members hurtling off the edge of the ship. Duck, having not prepared mage armor, was downed quickly. As the crew tried their best to drive back the attackers and save the people of the village, it became clear that the situation was dire. Ed hurtled to the ground, caught just in time by Rolanth. Dorzos tried his best to catch up with the rising ship, and Jean-Marc was torn between helping his outnumbered crew on the ground and the three still in the sky. Duck stabilized in the crow's nest, as George Washington decided to solo the entire enemy crew. The Preneusse would not go down, as the power of her god brought her up again and again, and George Washington, through repeated strokes of luck, survived her onslaught through varying levels of invisibility and vomit.

With Rolanth, Issa, Ed, and Salvador handling things on the ground, Jean-Marc returned to the sky to back up Dorzos and retrieve Duck and George.

But as he swooped around to grab an unconscious Duck, Jean-Marc himself was downed, falling unconscious to shots from Aarakocra who believed he was the one who had killed the Preneusse.

Duck, in a last stand surged up, healed Jean-Marc, and thunder-stepped both of them and the carpet from above the ship to below it, where she promptly died.

Death
As the crew battled for their lives and ultimately fled, Duck found herself in a flat, grey expanse. Other souls had gathered, in a long line leading up to an unearthly city.

Duck and one of the Aarakocra crew members had arrived together, but Duck wasn't ready to just join a line. She ran in the opposite direction for a while, before circling back and heading to the gates, skipping the line to get a look at the walls, which seemed... strange.

But as she debated what to do and looked around for her friends, a strange figure approached, calling her by her given name: Amandine Cezanne-Le-Tresoir See-Stone.

With some ominous warnings that, one way or another the line is the only way forward, Duck rejoined the Aarakocra in the queue. She began to get nervous as the others in line spoke about their gods, who they expected to welcome them in.

In the faded city, the line stretched up to a great keep in the center. Inside a crystalline chamber sat a robed figure. The sharp edges and plans of the walls reflected Duck's face back at her from a multitude of angles, thousands of views and perspectives of herself.

The figure called her forward and asked her to proclaim her faith.

But Duck had no deity.

She gave up on her parent's faith when she left her village. Her parents worshiped Lathander, who they said rejected all wild magic. Since then, she'd refused to think about the topic, believing that the source of her wild magic would answer all her questions. But now, here she was—faithless in the eyes of the gods.

Maybe adherence to a deity should have been a little higher on the priority list.

But her fate was sealed—she was about to be sent to the wall, to wither away as a brick of soul matter forever. Until a claw reached out.

Blipdoolpoolp, the Drowning Goddess, had an offer.

Rebirth
Duck was given a choice: Salvador's soul for her life, or go to the wall.

Instead, she offered her own soul, as it was clear Salvador was the captain's favorite.

With that bargain, she was reborn. When she awoke, her powers were different, and she had the unsettling realization that maybe she had made a mistake, in the grand scheme of things. But she was alive, and reunited with her friends, thanks to Dorzos, Salvador, and Jean-Marc Patel.

Now with strange powers and a seagull familiar named Boots, Duck rejoined her friends with a healthy new dose of existential terror.

But Bippleboop expressed appreciation for her, and Dorzos reassured her that the elemental plane of water is actually quite nice. Even so, Duck couldn't shake the vague feeling that the bloodthirsty Blipdoolpoolp might not have an afterlife that would be tolerable to a chaotic good, now-warlock.

As the crew headed towards a final show-down with Francois, Duck regained some of her spunk, and even had Jean-Marc threaten to cut her tongue out after she was caught Tides of Chaos-ing his lies to the wingless bird-man.

In the net few days, Duck would meet Bizarro-Ed, fight inside a chapel to Umberlie and discover the power of Eldritch Blast, have a great feast, witness one man turn from general unbiased to severely kobold-ophobic, and almost get eaten alive by a giant, fleshy ship.

As the gang took on Francois head-on, Duck's new powers proved to be quite helpful, though her giant Bigby's hand was, per usual, dreadful.

Francois's magic arms and spectres proved to be no match for the Crew of Jean-Marc.

Epilogue
After Jean-Marc's coronation as Le Grand Preneur de la Cavalcade, Duck wasn't sure what to do with herself for a while. But eventually, she went on to explore the world, hoping to find out more about Blipdoolpoolp, enhance her healing magic, learn more about the peoples of Torrovion, and eventually earn her soul back.

She soon became known to those who carried stores like hers as Duck Far-Seer! Which is a cool, fricken name, goddamn.

Eventually, she returned to Kirn Dorul to assist Willem. There she went on to devote herself to Sharindlar, though how Blipdoolpoolp felt about that is as of yet unknown.