Wilfred

## Wilfred Seabottom

Wilfred is a small, gnomish wizard. Having spent all his young life as a scholar, he's pretty new to navigating Terca Mahres. He is one of the original members of *the Drunken Dragon's* crew.

To date, he has killed one human wizard, one small green dragon, a lot of skeletons, 21 stirges, 15 vegepygmies, 10 thornies, 1 vegepygmy chief, and 20 pirates of the Pirate Republic.

When Nix asked the party to speak aloud their goals, Wilfred said that he was searching for the truth behind the disappearance of his parents.

## Appearance

When he learned that Rumidian mage hunters were chasing him, Wilfred gave himself a makeover: he cut his hair short and shaved off his beard, as well as making a point of wearing hardy travel clothes rather than wizard's robes.

## Skills and Abilities

Wilfred has proven time and again to be a powerful abjuration wizard.

He began his adventure in the wilds of Terca Mahres with an excellent grasp of arcane theory, but limited practical experience - particularly with combat spells. Under the corrupting guidance of Wick the Hellchild, he learned the joys of fire-based magic.

Thus, the spells Wilfred studies in his own time tend to be one of three types: abjuration magic, as is his specialisation; control or non-lethal magic, the sort his spellbook was filled with before his adventures began in earnest; or destructive fire magic.

However, he's always on the look out for more spells, and will often add all sorts of things to his repertoire when given the chance.

## History

### Before *the Drunken Dragon*

Wilfred was picked up by *the Ramshod* as Captain Icke was heading to Crab Claw Cove, answering Driscoll's summons following the destruction of *the Cockatrice*. Wilfred had been badly hurt, but Clark was able to heal him without issue. When Icke had to pick able bodies to answer Driscoll's request, he opted to send Wilfred, since the gnome was the newest on the ship and thus fairly expendable in the captain's eyes.

### Part One: Driscoll's Gambit

#### Wilfred and Wick

Wick the Hellchild came to see potential in Wilfred over time. The gnome witnessed some of the impressive pyromancy she was capable of while he was aboard *the Matricide.* When he asked her to teach him some of it in Longreach, she decided to do so on a coin toss.

Following their raid of Mother Shandy's island hatchery, *the Matricide's* crew anticipated a huge fight waiting for them in the waters between the two pirate lords' territories. During their multi-day flight through the Night Isles, Wick trained Wilfred in earnest so he could aid against Shandy's blockade of ships. The halfling's methods were cruel and unforgiving, and mostly involved her throwing various fire spells at the gnome until he figured something out.

On parting with Wick, Wilfred reluctantly agreed to a death match at a time in the future when he had grown enough in power to be interesting.

### Part Two: City of Intrigue

While in Bisquay, Wilfred revealed to Clwyd that the item he was searching for answers about was the arcane focus he wore around his neck, a silvery, tear-drop shaped piece of metal. Until then, the wizard's *identify* spell had been unable to discern the true nature of the item; Wilfred had spent so long using it as a focus that the item had come to regard itself in that way too, shielding its origin from his divination magic. However, Clwyd specialised in manipulating magic for specific effects in her artificery, and as such she was able to combine her own *identify* spell's power with Wilfred's. Together, they discerned some of the arcane focus's original history: it had once been a part of a powerful, living creature.

#### Tortuga

Upon arriving on the turtle, the party were quickly shepherded into meetings with various figures across the shell, one of which was Alejandro au Garcias. He revealed to the party that Wilfred was a wanted man in Rumidia, and that he would be willing to spare them if they agreed to help Shandy kill Driscoll. Playing for time, the party said they'd consider the offer and went running to the Proprietor to ask for protection. The Shell Lord, through his frontman Kind, agreed, provided the party did something for him in return. From this agreement, Wilfred learned the *nondetection* spell and was sequestered in the Obsidian Villa for a number of days, keeping him out of the eyes of the watching Rumidians.

As a result of this agreement, the party fought in the Proprietor's Spectacle in the Garden of Sand - ultimately resulting in Vic being turned to stone in the fourth bout. Wilfred felt guilty about this when he later learned from the party what had happened.

When the party had dinner with Nix in the Broken Wing, Wilfred was taken by the man's polite attitude, and decided to trust him with his deepest secret. He presented the magical focus around his neck, asking Nix if he knew anything about it - even including that it had once been part of a magical creature. The cambion regarded the item for some time and eventually concluded to Wilfred that he thought it resembled a worn-down silver dragon scale. Though, he said, it would have to have been quite a large beast for one of its scales to be that size.

#### The First Night in the Telphousila Estate

Wilfred offered Nix a proposal. In his travels, he was bound to encounter all sorts of powerful people. Wilfred said he would point them in Nix's direction, provided the cambion reveal some of the secrets of the multiverse to him in return. Nix was sceptical about the offer, thinking that now that Clwyd was his ward, Wilfred was bound to help him and his cause by default. Still, 'as a measure of good faith', he told Wilfred and the party of the Blood War raging in the upper levels of the Hells, and said he'd see how useful Wilfred could be.

When he returned them to Terca Mahres, Nix presented Wilfred with the artificer recipe for a bracelet of nondetection, to aid him in hiding from the mage hunters. He made a point of giving it to Wilfred so that the gnome would have to go to Clwyd to eventually get the item - Nix said he wanted Wilfred to recognise the debts he was incurring.

### Part Three: Changes

#### Spring in Bisquay

Wilfred had been short on money for some time, such that Clwyd couldn't finish the bracelet of nondetection for him in a timely manner. Following the party's discovery of the panacea plants in Driscoll's territory, they were suddenly flush with cash and the bracelet was finished. However, it was too late.

Wilfred came face-to-face with a team of Rumidian mage hunters in Bisquay in the spring of 6277. They even went so far as to trick him into the depths of a shop-boat alone, just to announce their arrival and request he return with them peacefully. The three named mage hunters, Margear Wildwander, Eli au Leones, and Arren au Pazzi, had moved into Bisquay, and were content to just wait on the island for the time when Wilfred agreed to return to Rumidia peacefully, or until he left the island, at which point their hunt would begin in earnest.

He stood accused of failing to comply with imperial registration law, tampering with his registration materials, and stealing the secrets of the Circle by leading a life of lawless piracy with them. Further, they asked him where his old mentor, Lyra au Leones, 'the Lioness', was currently hiding. Wilfred, for his part, had no idea about any of this. It didn't seem like they believed him.

#### The Floating Carnival

After Nix gave his offer to sequester the party in the Hells for a year and subsequently replace Driscoll as their employer, Wilfred was one of the group who wanted to do right by Driscoll before they left his forces. He and Pyt, the only two members of the original crew that were left, took *the Drunken Dragon* to Quinn - the folding boat having originally been hers. They'd intended to return it, but she refused to accept, telling them they hadn't yet attracted a klabauter to live in it like they'd promised her they would.

### Part Four

#### A Year in Hell

Wilfred spent the first part of his year learning the Abyssal, Celestial, and Infernal languages. Then he turned his attention to learning to sail, making use of the estate's lakes. However, the constant torment of Volrath, the bone devil captain of the Telphousila ship he was aboard, his crew's relentless bullying, and the ever-present threat of the stupefying waters of the River Styx meant that as he learned to sail, he also learned to fear water quite a bit.