Helia Baihu

## Appearance

Helia Baihu is a tiny woman, taking more after her Tian mother's figure than her Ulfen heritage. Her hair is a ruddy red color, darker than Varisian red, the auburn color typical of some of the Ulfen tribes, and her eyes are crimson and luminescent with sorcerous energy. She dresses light, with whatever outfit she can throw together to preserve her modesty, and travels just as light, with only a pack and a satchel no matter how far her travels take her. Despite her tiny frame, she's incredibly strong, and can tap into her magic to make herself even stronger for brief instances of time; when she does, the glow from her eyes intensifies, and flickers of telekinetic force lash out at the environment around her, damaged magic leaking from her body like water from a sieve.

## Personality

Thanks to her arcane malady, Helia has a bit of an unstable personality, one she tries her hardest to keep in check. She's extremely strict on herself, holding herself to high standards of behavior, though she isn't a normal, law-abiding, civilized individual. Having spent most of her life being tortured and the rest on the run, Helia takes an odd view of personal property, and food in particular. She's a thief by necessity, albeit not an indiscriminate one. She sees nothing wrong with taking food, as, in her mind, if someone needs to eat, nobody has any business stopping them. With any other form of property, she takes only what she needs, and only from people who she believes can spare it; her thievery as a whole would probably die off if she had any other way to provide for herself.

When she gets upset, she has a tendency to lose control of her emotions; yelling at the top of her lungs isn't uncommon when someone's managed to irritate her. In a fight, it becomes an even more pronounced shift in attitude; far from her normal, quiet attitude, on the battlefield Helia Baihu is a raging beast similar in comportment to the tiger her family name evokes. She throws herself at whatever creature has earned her wrath with reckless abandon, pummeling it with magically-enhanced fists until it stops whatever it was doing that set her off.

## History

Helia Baihu is the daughter of Hedran Wolfstooth, an Ulfen shaman, and Kaya Baihu, a Tian witch. Her parents were not the kindest of people, only bringing her into the world as part of a deal with a particularly twisted Rakshasa. In exchange for more power, they let the creature feed on the child's soul. For most of Helia's life, the monthly visits from the nameless *thing* were something she dreaded; with two powerful magicians for parents, Helia had quite the impressive potential for sorcery, but all that availed her was a lifetime of having her spirit fed upon by a strange creature from another world.

She wishes she could say she fought her way free of the Rakshasa and escaped with her own strength and wits, but escape was hardly something she could contemplate for most of her life. The feedings only stopped when Hedran attempted his lifelong goal of hunting a Linnorm to earn the title of Linnorm King. The power he'd bargained for, trained with, and cultivated for 16 years availed him nothing, and he died in the belly of a dragon. Kaya, mad with rage at the seeming betrayal, banished the Rakshasa the next time it appeared, and it has not shown itself since.

This did not mark a sudden upturn in her parenting skills, however, and over the next few months Helia would occasionally overhear her mother summoning devils, attempting to bargain for the return of her husband in exchange for Helia herself. The offers changed with each thing the woman called; her heart, her magic, her life in servitude. Always something of Helia's, never Kaya's. After a few months of not being fed upon, Helia's magic began to lash out in her anger, and it was during one of these fits of sorcerous fury that she managed to escape, smashing through the window and surviving the sixty foot drop into the canyon below, her broken bones slowly mending over a couple of days instead of a couple of weeks.

From there, Helia just started walking away from her home. South to Kalsgard, first, and then, when she heard word of her mother looking for her, further onward to the Grungir Forest. From there to Jol, where she stole a map of the Inner Sea from a merchant, then across the hostile lands of Varisia to Riddleport. Riddleport served as a home for a time, until the Sczarni marked her as an unaffiliated thief and everyone started making her life harder. She stowed away on a ship to Magnimar, then another to Kintargo, where she passed two whole years of her life living in the slums. She fled the city along with several others when Barzillai Thrune took over the city, surviving on her own in the Whisperwood until she came to Senara, where she worked for passage on a trader ship to Absalom.

Freshly arrived in the city, Helia hopes only to find her footing and carve out a life for herself here in Absalom, half a world away from the Land of the Linnorm Kings and her mother.

### Ten Years Later

Helia was not among the group of adventurers who vanished into stasis in the wake of Rovagug's assault on the city. Instead, she spent that time training, honing her body and skills into a more durable instrument. Precision wasn't really in the cards for her, given the nature of her power. Her adventuring career has really hit its stride recently, though. She's seen Dragonhawks and Moon Beasts in the same week, and even claimed a fallen feather from the first and, oddly, a saxophone from the second. She, Morgan, and other allies even cleared out a dilapidated in the Coins district that was infested with vampiric mimics, which she calls Baihu Manor now, and is remodeling to suit her desires, reveling in truly having a space of her own.

## Interpersonal Relationships

### Allies:

Morgan Dekyuper: He's a wizened adventurer with whom she gets on well, and runs a very nice bar.

### Enemies:

Kaya Baihu: Helia's mother, and a witch of some power and influence. As far as Helia knows, the woman's halfway across the world, and that suits her just fine.

The Rakshasa: She never learned the name of the thing that savaged her soul for 16 years, but it's still out there, and Helia has nightmares about it coming back to finish its meal.