Ember
One of the members of The Treasure Hunters of Jesenreth, and a fire Genasi battle smith artificer from Pleus Scon. Ember is a graduate of the Academy of Magimechaniks, and therefore a journeywoman working towards her Master Artificer certification.
Ember is the daughter of human Mekeline Hasparat (formerly Herro Steelbreaker of Ploi Drajit), adopted scion of House Hasparat-Inveydo of Pleus Scon, the youngest of the houses, and Qaja al-Kadjar, daughter of a traveling efretti merchant from the City of Brass on the Plane of Elemental Fire. How that unlikely union came about is a story…
Decades ago, in the sprawling metropolis of Ploi Drajit, among the countless dirty, starving street urchins, was a boy named Herro Steelbreaker. That name was about all he remembered of his family. He knew he had had a mother: he remembered a beautiful, oval face and kind, dark eyes, but rest was an unhappy blur. But she had taught him his name, and he had always repeated it as a mantra. If he had a name, he was not nothing. Herro was a tall, ungainly youth, with black hair and olive skin, quick and clever, and like so many others survived mainly by theft and the occasional charity. He had been collected and put into orphanages a few times, but had always quickly escaped.
One day, when he was about 13 (he wasn’t sure of his birthday), Herro was looking for pickpocket targets among the patrons of the Dockside Market. A gleam of platinum caught his eye: the huge pocket watch of a fat, well-dressed foreign gentleman with odd dark skin and fire-red hair. He didn’t know what this man was, but he wanted that watch, though he didn’t know what a watch was. He just knew he could sell that for a week’s worth of food, maybe. So he followed the man. It wasn’t hard to keep out of sight as the man went around to a few shops, purchased several bags worth of goods, and had a servant, also a fire-man, carry them back to what appeared to be a private ship. How rich was this foreigner?
A crazy idea popped into Herro’s head: he would not only steal this man’s watch; he would rob untold riches from this ship! It wasn’t hard to hide here and there behind boxes or posts, and slip across the plank when no one was around. The crew of the ship, fire-people all, where a little more watchful, but Herro hid behind crates on the second deck, waiting for them to all be distracted, so he could jump out, stuff his holey pockets, and scamper away. The man with the watch was in sight, but lots of other fine good were. Then the ship drew anchor, cast off the ropes, and sailed away from port! He had not thought about this, and panicked. He had no wish to leave the city he knew so well, he friends, the last place he saw his mother. But there was nothing he could do: he could see through a porthole that the ship was out in the Bay of Ploi; if he did not stay hidden, surely they would throw him overboard, or just kill him. So he hid, as the ship sailed into the night. Crew members came and went, but no one had any reason to check behind these particular crates...
Until someone did. A fire-man sailor came rummaging around the next morning, check the crates for something, when he spotted the foot of the now-sleeping Herro. He grabbed the startled boy, held a dagger to him, and shouted for the rest fo the crew. Several others came, beat him, and dragged him to the main deck. Herro, through blood and tears, could see the open blue ocean stretching all around, and knew it would be his grave.
And it would have been, had not Jehny Hasparat, the then 11-year-old daughter of Lord Memlin Hasparat, the man with the watch and noble of Pleus Scon in the Genasi and Aasimar Confederation, ran up and threw her arms around his neck. A tender-hearted child, she had instantly decided she liked the poor human boy, and with loud invocations of her father, forbid his sailors from throwing the boy overboard.
Lord Hasparat came on deck, angry that his breakfast has been interrupted, and tried to reason with his daughter, one apprised of the situation. This boy was a dirty stowaway, a thief and a rat, and throwing him overboard was a mercy. But Jehny would have none of it, and insisted they’d have to throw her overboard as well. Herro looked at the girl as if she was crazy, but she whispered to him that everything would be alright. Lord Hasparat was never able to resist his daughter, and finally relented. Fine, if she wanted a pet, let her have it. She’d soon grow tired of it like all the other damn baubles he’d had to buy her, fer Brass’s sake…
Herro was given a cot made a ship’s boy, given all the worst, dirtiest tasks. Jehny helped him, however, and they became fast friends. She was the first to refer to him as her “brother,” (she had no other siblings, had always wanted one, and her mother had passed) and by the time, 3 months later, the ship reached Pleus Scon, the boy had even grown on Lord Hasparat, who gave in, again, to his daughter and initiated formal adoption procedures. This was unheard of and a scandal, especially among the other members of the House, but Memlin was the head, and his word was law. Herro, for his part, was pretty sure he had died, and this was only some sort of weird afterlife, but it was a pretty sweet one. He given a noble name, Mekeline Hasparat, though he still told and answered to his old one.
He was given a formal education and plentiful food and health care for the first time in his life, and soon grew tall, muscular and handsome, as well as showing a pronounced aptitude for the House’ main enterprise, artificing. Several its members were graduates of the Academy of Magimechaniks, and the rest worked in selling what those members made, accounting for the House’s wealth. The House was founded by Memlin’s father Hasburdin Hasparat, a middle-class tinker who, many years ago, saved the city from a sahuagin invasion with his inventions, and was given noble title for it. Herro, when he was 18, attended the Academy and graduated, eventually, with honors, becoming in time a professor there.
But it was an event during his early student days that lead to the birth of Ember. He had gotten in trouble for an event that is to this day kept secret, and temporarily suspended from the Academy. Being a rich young noble and thinking that he had been wronged, he decided to party and drink away his suspension. He did precisely that, leaving a story of debauchery and womanizing that even today is talked about behind his back. One late evening during this period, he was at a party thrown for the visiting Bright Lord of the High Council. Among of the guests at this party was a towering efretti merchant from the Plane of Fire, Husyan al-Kadjar, here to make deals, and his daughter, Qaja, here to sample the local man fruits, which her father strongly disapproved of, but could not stop her.
Mekeline and Qaja met, and were both attracted to each other’s exoticness. Though she was much larger than he, in the early hours of the morning they found a way to let nature take its course. When Merchant al-Kadjar found out, he flew into a fiery (literally) rage, and almost killed Mekeline for despoiling his daughter, but she and the Pleus Scon City Watch stopped him. He took her back to the Plane of Fire that same day, and Mekeline knew only that he had had a good time and one hell of story. He cleaned himself up, sat out the rest of his suspension, and went back to his studies.
One day nine months later, a pillar of fire descended though the roof of the Hasparat mansion, setting an intense fire. It was extinguished, and, laying in the ashes, was a tiny female child, squealing and naked. She appeared as a fire Genasi, though her blood was particularly pure and hot. Mekeline new instantly what must have happened, and who this child was. He picked her up, and fell in love with her instantly. Memlin and his sister Jehny were astonished, but admired him for accepting the child, and became her grandfather and aunt. The girl was given the name Ember, after what the pillar of flame which delivered her had left. No one has seen or heard from Qaja al-Kadjar since, but Mekeline still thanks her for having and saving the child now and again.
Ember grew up fast, demonstrating burning intensity of her mother’s people and the intelligence of her father, and well before attending the academy was inventing things. She blew through her academic training, choosing to label her inventions only with her first name, though when she needs a last name, she prefers her father’s original one. She left home for her journeyperson travels almost immediately, and has not seen her family since, though she is on good terms with them and they exchange letters from time to time. Her full name is Ember Ashes bint-Qaja bint-Herro Steelbreaker Hasparat-Inveydo.
