1. Characters

Katherine Buckler

Player Character
Childhood
A foundling, Katherine Buckler was found abandoned by the Crynann city guard. She was given up for fostering, and was ultimately adopted up by Nicholas Buckler & Margaret Buckler, kindly parents of good community standing and co-owners of 'Buckler's', a cabinet makers on Dial Street in Crynnan. Nicholas and Margaret had no other children, and adopted Katherine in their early thirties. Katherine grew up in a her parent's small live-in workshop and studied at a charitable church school while learning to paint designs onto her father's decorative carving. Despite a happy home life she suffered regular teasing as a child for being a Tiefling and was treated distrustfully by the pious adults of the school. Her social alienation made her standoffish and wary of authority, with a dislike of religious authorities and led to her regularly skipping school to paint quietly alongside her father. She never spoke about her difficulties at school for fear of disrupting her home life but became sullen and rebellious when the family moved house in 532UN (4130) to the apartment above the Dial street workshop. She always missed the cosy confinement of her early childhood and never felt quite at home again. Her childhood anxiety stared to spark unexpected occurrences of telekinesis. As she attempted to hide her own conflicted feelings, fires would be effected in the rooms she entered, changing colour subtly, dimming or growing without her control. Nobody every connected the occurrences to her, but she became increasingly conscious of it herself. 
 
Teenagehood
Katherine left the church school at 14 and joined Buckler's as a sign writer, apprenticed to a guild member who was often commissioned by her father's workshop. A highly adept student, the tasks she was set were easy to complete and she would use the extra time she often has to work on suppressing the uncontrollable magic that was manifesting itself around her. Despite finding relative peace and satisfaction in the cramped studio, she stormed out one day in a blaze of temper following a brief and ill-fated flirtation with the signwriter's teenage son and refused to return. At 16 she completed her apprenticeship and spend two years working on the docks with the intention of earning enough to buy her childhood home back from its new owners. 
 
Katherine is too proud to ask for work at her parent's business and her father doesn't put pressure on her for fear of creating more distance between them. After a two years of poorly paid freelance work for various dwarven businesses in Crynann, who invariably underpaid her on account of her race, she leaves the city to find better paid work elsewhere. Her relationship with her family had become increasingly strained on her part and they worried about her terribly, but her mother encouraged her father to give her the space she needed to explore the world. 
 
Adulthood
Immediately after her 19th birthday, following a warmly intended but awkward dinner with her parents she leaves Crynann in frustration seeking work as a sign writer, and earning her keep painting Inn signs for landlords on the road South to Aluram. She learns to weather the trials of the road - nights of poor sleep in hedgerows and days without proper meals. Sometimes she walks, sometimes she hitches a ride on traders carts but the malnutrition and tiredness wears down her self control and she struggles to suppress her increasing powers. Seeking a longer term solution she takes on bar work at a coaching Inn - The Wild Oak, North West of Aluram but leaves hurriedly after a fire in which the lacivious Inn keeper was injured. She arrives in Aluram amid inflated rumours of a devil-woman in the guise of a human who seduces and terrorises menfolk on the road. Finding little work in a climate of local hostility she is reduced to selling hand painted trinkets on the street until a tatty cart drawn by a shaggy brown and white shire horse stops by her regular street-pitch.
 
A wizened gnome of good humour, inscrutably foreign accent and worldly bearing engages her to paint a series of placards for his traveling museum for for a modest fee. The back of the wagon bears the legend 'The Grand Wunderkammer of Reignhart the Tall!' and opens out to present a deeply inset cabinet of curiosities. Reignhart is delighted at the workmanship of the signs and gives Katherine a full commission to redesign and repaint his entire cart and travelling show. The cart is stabled for a full month while she works on it alongside a mute carpenter of Reignhart's acquaintance, the two labouring under the Gnome's detailed instruction. Whilst he gives Katherine creative freedom with the imagery the subjects were very specific and somewhat mysterious - he waxed lyrical about stories of his travels and practices the semi-educational showmanship of his travelling show. After completing the cart Katherine realises that the town holds little of the promise she had hoped for. In exchange for food and accommodation in the surprisingly (mysteriously?) spacious cart she asks to enter Reignhart's service as herald to his traveling show - putting her unusual appearance to good use to temp keen children and curious onlookers to "roll up, roll up! Come hear about the wonders of the known world from the greatest traveler of the Northern Borders". She hones her charm on the crowds, earning a small commission for her troubles until, after nearly two years of travel the Gnome shakes her awake at midnight one night and beckons her to follow him. She follows him bleary-eyed into a dark wood at the roadside, heading deeper and deeper into the trees until they reached the mouth of a cave - he bids her to act as his eyes through the dark and they edge through a cave system until they came to a fissure in the rock. With an incantation he opens the fissure and draws out a chest which he opens to reveal a collection of strange artefacts - so it is that Katherine discovers the true nature of Reignhart's work. He is a collector and purveyor of occult talismans. Over the following week he confesses that their meeting was no accident - he had been at The Wild Oak two years ago and had witnessed her fiery confrontation with the owner. He tells Katherine that her powers are precious and that they should be nurtured, not suppressed. He offers to help Katherine control and understand them.  Katherine and Reignhart continue to travel with their traveling show; at night she joins him on his night time business where she act as a both apprentice and bodyguard. When they were far enough from settlements he helps her to channel the fiery energy of her temper into offensive spells that quickly disperse bandits on the road. In the towns they stop in he teaches her to manipulate the minds of others with the infernal power that now throbbed powerfully behind her horned temples.
 
Travel
Reignhart has been traveling a bi-annual circuit for several decades stopping at the same towns and villages every couple of years. He is well liked and parents who remember his show from their own childhoods bring their children to see him and learn a little local and national history, mathematics, astronomy through his allegorical tales. By her 25th birthday we had travelled the circumference of Pauviel three times, returning to see her parents every couple of years, improving their relationship no end. Her mother mischievously starts to tell her stories about her own early twenties while she chops vegetables to Katherines own surprise. Katherine meets friends and Buisness associates of Reignhart - sometimes taking meetings herself. She is happier than she has ever been, although her temper occasional jeopardises more sensitive deals and require them to leave settlements early on a couple of occasions - her own self-sabotaging behaviour in the casual romantic relationships she sometimes form remain a source of upset, anger and frustration for her.
 
Recent past
In 549UN (4147), searching for a particularly rare artefact on commission from a shadowy customer in Runelin the companions charter a small sloop to take them around the coast West coat of Theder to a series of small islands. The superstitious sailors grow edgier each day with Katherine's presence on board and eventually Reignhart suggests they put to port and that take on some work for the summer whilst he continued the search alone. With ample work for a sign writer in busy Lancetide Katherine reluctantly leaves Reignhart at the dock and on his instructions seeks out his old friend Sable Lawson for work and stabling for Rosy and the WunderKammer. 

Katherine is a sign painter from Crynnan. In 549UN (4147) she helped form The Hag Wranglers.