Tura

Tura Fritaro

Tura's Journal

Journal - Tura - Session One

History

Tura comes from a well established merchant family, the Fritaro clan, who, in times long past, helped found the city of Caserta in the Napili principality.  Caserta and the area around it experienced several hardships in the years around Tura's birth and with this came a decline in the Fritaro fortunes.  Thankfully Tura was born with a natural aptitude toward magic and he was quickly recognized early on by local Wizards. Several of them tutored him in his early years until he turned 10 when they suggested that Tura be sent away to Latium to join a special Conjuration Wizards school.

Granted a full scholarship to this school, Tura spent the next decade being trained in the way of the Conjurer.  Throughout his studies he showed remarkable skill in learning his lessons and he proved to be a very adept caster and a passable scribe.  Tura traveled to many places on many planes, vociferously learning anything anyone would teach him.  He was not quite a teachers pet but he was a very enthusiastic student.  Unfortunately, this behavior, along with a small case of poor social skills and peer jealousy, caused Tura to have few friends.  Overall, Tura's time at the school passed as well as could be hoped and he was expected to leave the school and do great things.  Unfortunately, luck decided to play one more wildcard in his last year.

Since their first years, Tura and another student who started at the same time had been in a civil and mutually respectful, but somewhat intense, competition.  This student was working on a new spell and, in their last month of schooling, she wanted to conduct a final experiment on it.  In an attempt to one-up Tura and show off her prowess, the student invited Tura to witness this final test on the night after the next New Moon of Luna.  In the middle of the experiment something went wrong and, in a freak show of unconstrained magics, Tura was teleported away to an unknown place.  For two years the school tried to locate and bring Tura back, to no avail.  Four years after the incident Tura suddenly appeared in the very place he had disappeared, right in the middle of a class being lead by the same former student, now teacher, who caused the incident.  Tura looked to have aged four years older but could not remember anything from the time right before the experiment to just after reappearing.

Though he was thoroughly checked over, the other Wizards of the school, including the dean, could find nothing magically wrong with Tura, nor could any ciurgeon or barber find anything medically wrong.  Indeed, aside from the normal aging process and lack of memory of the missing time, the only thing different with Tura was that he could speak and read Draconic where he could not before.  Since nothing seemed out of sorts, the school allowed Tura to complete his last month of schooling and graduate.  Immediately after the graduation ritual, Tura went to Caserta to his parents to show he was alive, much to their joy and relief, and found they had almost completely recovered from the past tragedies.

Recent Fritaro Family History

The Fritaro family goes back generations as successful merchants from the city of Caserta in the Napili principality. A year after Tura's birth, Caserta suffered through a very hard time. First, the area surrounding the town experienced a four year drought which severely decreased the local farming output. This brought on a severe famine causing many people in the surrounding countryside to turn to banditry to get by. As the drought was coming to an end the city endured an earthquake which brought down many large buildings and wide swathes of the city wall.  This last event caused quite a problem with the walls being a primary deterrent to the rampant banditry.

In the days after the quake the citizens began voicing fears of bandit raids and further calamities increasing and the religious leaders saw their chance.  They began to claim the events were Vodan's punishments brought on by the corrupt and impious leadership of the wealthy families and aristocracy. They asserted to the masses that in order to keep more bad events from happening Vodan was demanding an increase in tithing, a return to more "old style" conservative teachings, and that the rebuilding efforts be paid for, and performed, by the upper-class households.

Luck frowned on the Fritaro family as, being one of the founding families and thus part of the wealthy upper-class, they were tasked with rebuilding a large portion of the city wall.  Given the security need for a quick rebuild, and the scale of the work, the cost of materials and manpower for this took a very heavy toll on the Fritaro fortunes. To balance out that misfortune the spirits of luck had seen fit to grant their eldest son, Tura, a natural aptitude toward magic and he was quickly recognized early on by local Wizards. Several of them tutored him in his early years until he turned 10 when they suggested that Tura be sent away to Latium to join a special Conjuration Wizards school called Avanzato Dimensione Scongiuri.

This was not only an elite school but a rather nontraditional school for a couple reasons. First, there was no single permanent building where the students would learn and live in, this school "moved" around to be among the subjects of study with classrooms in various places on many planes. Second the students would not go home at any point during their time as the school. In fact they were expected to give up their family name for the duration of their learning and would effectively become members of the school's family.

With the endorsement of the more prominent local Wizards, the recent hardships of Caserta and the Fritaro family, and Tura's natural aptitude, the school offered Tura's parents a full scholarship for him to attend. With the state of the family fortune, and the bleak outlook of area for the near future, Tura's parents agreed that this would be the best course of action for both his prospects as well as their own.

See above for the rest of Tura's story.