Ixilplith

Ixilplith is a bastard. Born to an innkeeper’s daughter, he never knew his father. He was raised well by his mother and grandparents but, as he grew
older, whenever he asked about his father he was only met with silence. He grew up around the inn and learned how to serve and cook. He was a quiet
and polite boy who loved to spend his free time wandering the nearby woods.

As Ixilplith grew, he developed an interest in learning to read. His grandfather knew basic literacy due to his need to place and received orders for
the inn and to keep the books. Ixilplith learned fast. One day Tyrone, an older man who was a regular at the inn, offered to loan him a book. It
turned out Tyrone had a great many books and Ixilplith was always eager for the next. He spent many an hour sitting in the sun out in some glade
reading and enjoying the cool afternoon breeze.

One day Tyrone gave him a special book. It was a book containing minor cantrips of the type used by hedge mages and town healers. Ixilplith was
fascinated and spent days roaming the countryside learning to identify, name and collect many of the local herbs, plants, and other items called for
to cast these spells. This also inevitably led to many mishaps or small explosions in the inn kitchen, until Ixilplith was finally forbidden from
performing any further extracurricular activities in the kitchen and had to learn to perform his experiments over a campfire out of doors.

His family was tolerant of his odd little trials and errors, as he performed his chores and duties diligently and because he seemed to have a natural
knack for learning these things. They also occasionally came in useful. Then one day a mysterious stranger appeared in town. He came to the inn and
stayed for a week. Everyone in the town avoided man except for old man Tyrone, who met with him every night at the inn and shared private
conversation with him by the fire. At the end of this week, the man approached the family. He was a member of a guild of mages from the city of
Skywatch and he wanted to bring Ixilplith back with him to become an initiate of his guild. When the family said they could not afford such a thing,
the man assured them that it was not an issue. The family was loathe to give up Ixilplith, but knowing how great an opportunity this was they could
not say no. So it was that Ixilplith found himself packed and gone the next morning.

Ixilplith spent the next few years studying at the guild. His knowledge of serving and cooking served him well in earning his keep, though some of
the other initiates, who had obviously come from richer families, mocked him occasionally for having this knowledge. He had new forests to explore
and new plants and items to learn the names of. Ixilplith was happy and regularly wrote to his family. He found he had a particular predilection for
learning air and wind related spells and upon his graduation from initiate to guild member he was given the name Windrunner. He decided he would
become a wind elementalist mage. Soon after his graduation, he was called before the guild elders. The guild had historically had good relations with
a group of rulers known as the Sword Lords who were attempting to explore and colonize an area known as the Stolen Lands. In order to maintain good
relations with the Sword Lords they had agreed to send a young mage to be part of one of the groups tasked with this exploration. Due to Ixilpliths
love of the outdoors and air elementalist focus, they thought he was the ideal candidate to fulfill this obligation. They would expect regular
reports from him, especially noting any contact with or evidence of the Fae in the area. Ixilplith embraced this opportunity to learn, adventure, and
prove his abilities to his guild.