Kirielle "Kiri" D'Vadalis
Kirielle d'Vadalis ('Kiri'), Human (True Werewolf) Female, Neutral (some chaotic tendancies) Good, Artificer 8/Duskblade 1
A tall young woman, roughly 20 years old, with brown eyes and brown hair cut short. She is both pretty and well-built enough to attract a fair amount of unwanted male attention, which she ignores as much as possible. She normally wears greens or browns. She is reserved, and a trifle shy. In lupine shape she is quite large. Her coat is dark grey on the back, shading to lighter greys and cream on the belly, with white streaks marking scars - scars that match those on Kiri's human body. Her right foreleg has the pattern of her dragonmark glowing green-blue in the fur. Her eyes are amber. Her hybrid form has the wolf's fur, head, tail and claws, with her human body shape.
Kirielle is a scion of House Vadalis. Her personal view of her relationship with the family is that she is an embarrassment to the House, and she has left to make her own life. She makes sure that her family know she is alive and well, and certainly feels no hostility towards other members of House Vadalis, but she limits her contacts with them, and, given her reasons, the House as a group respects her wishes. Her mother's name is Celeste Maran, and her father Karal, both members of the House by blood. She has two older brothers, Klain and Cydus, and a younger sister Kristabelle. She has recently learned that her oldest brother, Klain, was murdered by an unknown assailant. Her mother and siblings are all true werewolves, her father is human.
House Vadalis bears the Mark of Handling. Caring for and breeding animals is in their blood. Kirielle was expected to follow in the family trade, but from a young age it was apparent that this was not likely to happen. She is violently allergic to nearly all animals. In the cradle she sneezed around cats and dogs, and as she grew older, the reaction became more and more violent. By adolescence, mere proximity to animals could leave her choking for breath, while being near people who had contact with animals left her coughing painfully. The best that House Jorasco healers could do for her was to provide a herbal remedy that suppressed the most dangerous symptoms, limiting her reaction to 'just' painful coughing and sneezing. To add insult to injury done to her by life, she manifested a least dragonmark on her right arm, granting her power to calm animals. Unfortunately she couldn't approach anything close enough to use it without a coughing fit.
The result of her allergies was that while Kirielle did well at theoretical studies in the House business, her mastery of the more practical beasthandling skills expected of a scion of House Vadalis was non-existent. And since even too much proximity to those who worked with animals could become painful and debilitating, it became clear in her own mind that Kirielle would be best off finding a different path. She chose to become an artificer, and to travel, leaving home shortly after her dragonmark manifested when she was 16. Eventually she ended up at Caer Shadowfast after a disastrous trip into the Mournlands where she and her friend Tasha were betrayed by their companions. In Shadowfast she rented and later purchased a workshop, and officially makes a living both as a tinker and by selling potions she brews to adventurers. Unofficially she now one of the Watchmen, and is sometimes doing work for them. She has accompanied groups into the Mournland on occasion, but doesn't trust most of the parties foolish enough to head into the wasteland in search of loot. She is something of an artist, and items she crafts usually have an animal motif. This is exemplified by her homunculus iron defender, which is sculpted to resemble a miniature wolf made of steel. She calls it Clangor.
While she has been traveling under her real name and the records in Caer Shadowfast record her identity and House affiliation, Kirielle is generally just known as 'Kiri' to the locals. She is noted for being a trifle short with druids and rangers - most people attribute this to some sort of hostility, rather than the real reasons, the reminder they pose to her of what she would have preferred her life to be like, and the risk that she might wind up choking from her allergies to animal companions if she spends too long in their company.
During her time in Caer Shadowfast, Kiri took part in the defense of the town against the lycanthropic attack, during which she was scarred by one of the werewolves. In the aftermath of the battle her dragonmark grew to Lesser status, granting her the Greater Magic Fang power. It appears slightly different to the normal Lesser Mark, and Kiri recently has learned it is called the Mark of Twelve Moons.
In the recent defense of the village of Rose Quartz from the Blood Claws and Twelve Deadly Gods, Kiri took part in the attack on the enemy base, her first action after being recruited into the The Watchmen by Cassius. Her planned role was to attempt to avoid direct personal combat, while placing magical explosive charges to do as much damage to enemy personnel and equipment as possible. Unfortunately she was forced into combat against Keltis Dorran, one of the Twelve. Miraculously Kiri not only survived but left Keltis for dead, his throat torn out as Kiri underwent a lycanthropic transformation for the first time. Keltis survived his injuries, escaping after Kiri left, and Kiri expects him to return for vengeance in the future.
Kiri spent some time trying to deal with what she did to Keltis, and how she felt about having killed hundreds of bandits, regardless of necessity. She eventually dealt with the issues by using a magical amulet which forced her to confront them through visions. As a result she has accepted the fact that she is a werewolf, and the fact that necessity can demand harsh actions. How much of the latter is due to her more predatory lycanthropic instincts is open to question...
Since then she has encountered another resident werewolf in Caer Shadowfast, the Umbragen Delake. She considers Delake a friend, and on an instinctive level, packmate. Kiri has also become close to Thelia Vulpes, and considers her a good friend.
To date, Kiri has done her best to conceal her lycanthropy from others, though with far less success than she would like. The visions she underwent indicated that she wasn't infected during the attack on Caer Shadowfast. That left her with the puzzle of how she was infected in the first place, but a cryptic message sent by her mother along with the news of her brother's murder hinted that lycanthropy runs in her family line, and thus that she might be a natural lycanthrope, rather than afflicted. This was confirmed when she was captured by the exiled Karrn Count Otto Von Blitzschlag, a thoroughly vile and mentally twisted ancient werewolf, who claimed to be her great great grandfather. The Count was killed by Kiri and her allies, she revealing her lycanthropy to them during the battle. Despite her uncertainty as to the truth of the Count's claims regarding her family, she took his signet and sword as proof of his death. In the course of rescuing her, one of her allies, Gerald Greywood, was infected with a magically enhanced and apparently incurable form of wolf lycanthropy, something which Kiri blamed herself for, believing that it was her presence which had attracted the Count's attention to them.
When Gerald lost control of the infection in the ruins of Stormreach, Kiri was one of those who fought to restrain him, revealing herself as a werewolf to the other Watchmen. So far she is uncertain whether Cassius himself knows of her, but a partially overheard conversation left her cautious towards discussing the topic. Her one attempt to talk the matter over with him was interrupted by a lycanthrope hunter deciding to sit in.
Kiri eventually contacted her family with details of what had happened to her, and the claims of Count Blitzschlag. When confronting her mother, she learned that the Count had indeed told her the truth about her heritage, but that her great-grandmother Aritha had spent most of her life hiding from her father the Count, refusing to be involved with his plans for her and her children. Despite her mother's invitation to return home to the Vadalis pack, Kiri has elected to stay in Caer Shadowfast with the Watchmen.
During the events surrounding the aborted rise of the Old Ones and the approach of Xoriat, Kiri's preferred close quarters weapon, an enchanted sledgehammer was destroyed. She fell back on using Count Blitzschlag's sword, but her lack of martial training made it extremely difficult to use. Since then she has been taking lessons with the sword and other martial weapons. Her artificer's training in magic allowed her to notice ways to create magical patterns from the motions of blade and body, which she has been learning to take advantage of. The result is that she has begun to learn the path of the Duskblade.
Recently she inadvertently drew two cards from Cassius' Deck of Many Things. While still unaware of what she did, she drew the Flames and Moon cards, the magic of the Deck combining them to grant her three wishes via the agency of [Moloch], an efreeti prince. Kiri used one wish to remove her allergies, the second to free the werewolf Jan from Delake's control and restore his free will, and the last to cure Gerald Greywood of his Lycanthropy. Subsequently kidnapping her as a slave, Moloch failed in his initial designs on Kiri when she demonstrated how sharp a werewolf's teeth can be on a very personal portion of his anatomy, and was thwarted again when she escaped from the tower chamber he had imprisoned her in. The Efreeti is one of the few things Kiri is genuinely terrified of, considering death a better option than recapture.
