Description
Gwendolyn Genevieve, short Gwen, comes from a wealthy and successful family of wizards and is an extremely charming girl — was the Valedictorian of the Wizarding Academy until it was discovered she had no real understanding of formal Wizarding magic at all. She was secretly a Sorcerer using innate magic, and later made a pact with a celestial being to maintain her academic facade.
Ideals
Bonds
Flaws
Trusts people too easily and too deeply — confided her secret in her only friend Aron, which led to her downfall.
Personality Traits
Charming, used to being on a pedestal and admired without question; struggles with genuine friendship since most people only approach her for her status.
Motivations
Backstory
Gwen was born with magic interwoven into her soul — both her parents are powerful and experienced wizards. However, while Gwen could cast magic since she could crawl, she never bothered to learn to control it through formal Wizarding spells, despite her family’s high expectations. Her older brother and younger sister had no inherent connection to magic but learned the formal spells naturally, making Gwen the family’s “black sheep.”
Things changed when her parents forced her into the wizarding academy. She learned she still couldn’t draw a single magic circle correctly, but discovered she could fake the incantations and gestures while letting her innate sorcery produce the results her teachers expected. This made her, unintentionally, the star student of the entire academy — a fact concealed from the school (her unregistered sorcery should have been formally declared).
She was offered the chance to travel to Terra on behalf of her academy to “jump start” her career — planned right after her final exams.
Her only real friend was a fellow outcast named Aron, in whom she eventually confided the truth about her faked magic. Facing exams she could no longer bluff her way through as her classmates caught up to her skill level, Gwen broke into the academy’s restricted archive and made a pact with a celestial being — sacrificing her body after death (and any control over it for eternity) in exchange for being able to draw on the celestial’s power while alive.
The pact was discovered when the academy installed integrity-detecting crystals during an exam. Forced to use her celestial pact-magic to survive a summoned monster in front of the class, she was immediately expelled. Her trip to Terra was cancelled, but she talked her way onto a ship anyway and arrived on Terra’s shore with a mountain of luggage and no plan.
Relationships
- Aron — Former best friend at the Wizarding Academy; unintentionally caused Gwen’s exposure by asking a professor a hypothetical question about her situation
- Ambystoma — Fellow party member after arriving on Terra
- Thrum Stoneheart — Fellow party member
- Gizzard — Fellow party member
- Zander — Fellow party member (early sessions)
- A celestial patron (galaxy-themed, associated with a corrupted notion of “hope”) — holds a pact over Gwen’s body after death
Notes
- Pact details: after Gwen dies, the celestial receives her body to walk the mortal realm, gaining all her skills/abilities. In exchange, Gwen can use the celestial’s power while alive. The fine print: Gwen’s soul cannot leave her body after death — she would be trapped, conscious, while the celestial controls it.
- DM idea floated in source material: each time Gwen drops to 0 HP, her body could visibly shift toward the celestial’s physical traits (e.g., one eye becoming night-sky patterned) as a creeping visual indicator of the pact’s cost.
- Karen’d her way to free dinner for a week at the Iris Tavern early on.
- Was the only party member not exposed to crystal dust during a goblin camp stealth encounter (rolled a notably low stealth result but avoided the contagion radius regardless, per session notes).