Annie

Official image of Annie, drawn by @grace.pptx on Instagram

### Class

* Draconic Bloodline Sorcerer (1), Evocation Wizard (14) (Arc 3, Annie and Charles Day of Fun)
* Draconic Bloodline Sorcerer (1), Evocation Wizard (4) (Arc 3 Flashback)
* Draconic Bloodline Sorcerer (1), Evocation Wizard (16) (Arc 8)

### Level in Arc

* 15 (Arc 3, Annie and Charles Day of Fun)
* 5 (Arc 3 Flashback)
* 17 (Arc 8)

### Age in Arc

* 24 (Arc 3)
* 20 (Arc 3 Flashback)
* 54 (Arc 8)

## Appearance

### Hair

* Bright red
* Bowl cut (Wintersummerschool)

## Connections

### Affiliation

* Arc 3 party (member)
* The Arcane Academy (ex student)
* The Arcane Academy (professor) (Wintersummerschool)

## In Podcast

### Portrayed by

* Gus (PC)
* Gus (NPC)
* Owen (PC)

### Episodes

* Arc 3
* Arc 3 Flashback
* Annie and Charles Day of Fun
* Wintersummerschool (NPC)
* Arc 8 Episode 6 (NPC)
* Arc 8 Episode 7-8 (PC)

Annie is one of the player characters of Arc 3 and played by Gus. She was the character that called for the adventuring party to regroup and defeat Kalazar once again.

## Description

Annie is a pale skinned halfling whose face is scattered with freckles. She has bright red hair that is pulled back in a half-up, half-down style.

For her clothing, Annie generally prefers function over form. Usually, she is wearing Goggles of Object Reading. Her magic item is Brimstone, a small stone planchet that helps her find fiends.

She lives in a tiny, cluttered apartment with a single window in the middle of the downtown area of Tyle. It is cramped, has small windows, and has very little security, which Annie says is because everyone who could understand the high level magic in her valuable books would not be stopped by security.

## Personality

Annie is a rather serious, straightforward, and ambitious person who focuses a big part of her life and free time on the collection of knowledge and news. Because she loves to learn and know things, she likes listening to Fey's gossip, but rarely has any gossip to share back, which is not a problem for either of them.

She is a very ambitious student and was a good friend with all her professors at the Arcane Academy, especially to Professor Rustcap, who she managed to build a close bond with. This helped her to get a classroom where she can present the results of her research to her friends in Arc 3. While she helped other students, she did not make any friends with them, though, and some of her classmates did not even know her name.

Her brain is going unusually fast, which means that she has to cut out every little disturbance by her surrounding in order to be able to fall asleep. When she fails to organize her thoughts in a presentable way, she can get frustrated.

Previously, Annie used to be a happy adventurer, until the fateful battle against Kalazar in the adventure two years before Arc 3. During this battle, Lathe, the party's Paladin, died trying to save her. Since then, Annie has felt guilty about it and holds to the belief that the mission was not successful because a successful party is a surviving party.

Sometimes, Annie struggles with self-care, and regularly has to be reminded by her friends to take care of herself or to not speak badly about herself.

She used to want to go down in history and be known and written about as a successful adventurer, but since that first battle against Kalazar she has felt too much shame and does not want anyone to know about her anymore. Because of that, she does not agree with Fey telling their stories and making them known, but she also doesn't argue about it with her.

Annie cares deeply about her friends and just the thought of them being in mortal danger leads to her having a breakdown.

## Background

Annie discovered at a young age that she had magic in her blood, but instead of just letting it happen and enjoying the comfort of being born with magic, she still went to magic school where she did really well, finishing a six year program in four years.

Before joining the adventuring party four years prior to Arc 3 as a fresh graduate, Annie did not have many friends, so she was very eager to get close to everyone in the party, which worked quite well. Her best friend in the party was Lathe, the Paladin. During their battle with Kalazar, Lathe died saving Annie from a Disintegrate spell.

After the battle, the party split and Annie went to Tyle, where she got a little apartment. She focused on keeping up with the news around the kingdom and collecting information to make sure that she would know whenever anyone would try to open a door to hell again. She even sent out a quarterly newsletter to the party members she could reach by post, keeping them updated about her research. Because of this research, she was able to connect the dots when the preparations for another hell raising started and sent out letters to get the party back together again, starting the events of Arc 3.

Before sending the letters to the party, Annie hadn't really reached out to her friends except for the newsletters, which were all business (except for a big heart at the end). She did, however, almost always say yes when someone reached out to her. She did not manage to go to every of Fey's performances, but she did go to one every couple of weeks, where she made awkward smalltalk with Jim, who was often sent by Bombyx.

## Character Arc

### Arc 3

A very important development for Annie happens during Arc 3 with her relationship to Charles, her small owl familiar. While at the start, Annie despises him for his optimistic, happy go lucky personality and showed little concern for his feelings, she grows closer to him and starts to respect him as a part of her magic. She starts opening up to him, and they speak about Charles becoming an emotional support familiar for her.

Starting the arc off, Annie stresses about everything. The portal to hell, her party coming back, everything. She summons Charles to do a task and then gets rid of him as soon as his task is over. She even goes as far as to say that saying goodbye and such doesn't matter because he's just a part of her magic, showing the audience just how little Annie thinks of herself.

In episode 3, Diarmad and Aldrum come back to Annie's apartment badly wounded after a task that was supposed to be a quick and easy scouting mission turned into a dangeorus fight. Annie, seeing her friends barely being able to stand, has a full breakdown. She is scared of losing yet another friend, or maybe even all of them, but at the same time knows that they have to do this to save the world.

Annie is a very pragmatic person and not a big fan of royalty, or people carrying titles just because their ancestors did, although she is not always as outspoken about her political views as Bombyx. Still, she shows the royal family the appropriate amount of respect. She does not, however, refrain from stealing from Count Michael, not because she actively has a problem with him and wants to hurt him, but because she knows that they need his magic items more than his secret vault does.

After Bombyx brings up the idea that Charles could fill the role of an emotional support familiar for her, when Annie finds herself alone one night questioning her choices, she turns to Charles for help. She summons Charles and confesses her fears, which is a big step for Annie, who does not want to rely on other people at all, even to get help. They start doing some magic together to calm down and destress.

After the events of Arc 3, Annie plans to be kinder to herself, leave the apartment more, and to get to know Charles a little better. She hopes to be able to undo as much as possible of what the past two years have done to her.

### Annie and Charles' Day of Fun

In the months after Arc 3, Annie has mostly tried to relax and spent a lot of time reading about magical history, or adventurer's history. Fey helped her decorate her apartment with plants, and she has spent some more time with Charles, but still regularly needs some time for herself without him.

The day of fun turns out to be a bit more stressful to her than Bombyx anticipated. Annie fears that Bombyx might be in danger, and is very protective of Charles, making sure he doesn't accidentally make any deals with creatures from the Feywild. As she generally prefers to be prepared for things, all of the unexpected changes and puzzles stress her out a bit. Still, she makes sure that she actually takes time for Charles, and appreciates the little things he does and his developments in learning.

After the day, she admits that while she always wanted to be an adventurer, the adventuring life might not be the right choice for her anymore, and that she instead could imagine becoming a professor. However, she did enjoy the day with her friends.

### Wintersummerschool

As of 136 AE, Annie is a professor at the Arcane Academy in Tyle, and polarises the student opinions about her with her erratic and strict teaching style. She now wears tiny little reading glasses, and fantasy blazers.

Despite her strictness, she still appreciates and praises her students even for their accomplishments outside of the classroom, and asks them whether they have slept and eaten enough before an exam. She is assisted in her work by Charles, who not only helps her set up model simulations, but also grades tests and anything else he can get with smiley faces. Furthermore, Annie is still in favour of stealing from those that can afford it as long as the thief has a better use for the stolen item.

She stands up against the current rules of the Arcane Academy trying to make melee fighters be allowed there, with little success as of the time of the oneshot. Her goal is to have her students actually be prepared to go adventuring, instead of just handing out adventurer's licenses for exams that were passed under unrealistic conditions.

As part of her exam, she creates the fictional city of Rune Circle, in which students have to help the simulated townsfolk deal with their bigger and smaller problems.

### Arc 8

As of 163 AE, Annie has saved the world a third time, although it is left open how or from what, and reached level 17, from which 16 are Wizard levels. She is now approaching middle-aged, and wears her still bright red hair pulled up into a bun. Her glasses have thick frames that fill up half of her face. Still, she is opposed to the royal family as well as their guards, and is not on particularly good terms with Queen Lilliana, who, according to her, has not treated her very well considering all she has done for the kingdom.

In Arc 8 Episode 6, Annie gets called to the Ember Keep on very short notice, which especially surprises her since she doesn't keep her opinions about the monarchy a secret. Since the Prime Lord Wizard cast a very powerful ritual on Sybilla just the night before to remove any effects of Diarmad's healing magic on her, it would be a conflict of interests if he also were to investigate whether there is any magic affecting her, and so, Queen Lilliana calls in Annie instead. Annie investigates Sybilla and her magical items, and then questions her about her motives to become the next monarch while casting Detect Thoughts on her, following the notes and outline the Prime Lord Wizard gave her. She concludes that Sybilla feels like she is owed her title, but that she also has the best intentions and puts others before herself. In her assessment of Sybilla, she says: "If you all insist on this being how we choose what individual person has full fucking control over our lives, then Sybilla is not a bad choice", which is high praise coming from her.

During Annie's assessment, Sybilla also informs her that Sir Up Ton might plan a coup, and that the situation will likely become dangerous. Because of this warning, Annie offers to stay in the castle and wait together with Isadora to help should it be necessary. The coup actually happens shortly after, while Annie is on the balcony atop Keep's Canyon with everyone else except for Sybilla, who is talking to the Prime Lord Wizard. Annie immediately runs back to protect her together with Isadora and Helga, and the three of them manage to save and protect her from Loroy as well as Sir Up Ton. As Sybilla uses her Divine Sense on Sir Up, she realises that there is something off with his sword, and gives it to Annie for investigation and safekeeping. Annie realises that a fragment of the soul of Lucius Pinn is inside the sword, and takes it with her. Before she leaves, Sybilla asks her to take the Deck of Many Things hidden in Isadora's room with her as well and destroy it.

After Annie has left the Ember Keep, Sir Up uses his Pact Weapon abilities to summon the sword back to him into jail, and then hides it in a demiplane, removing it from Annie's possession.

Since Annie is not present during Sybilla's coronation, the Prime Lord Wizard shows up again, and uses his chance to murder Sybilla with a Power Word Kill spell, which no attendant of the coronation is able to stop.

## Trivia

* Gus is unusually attached to Annie, which does not really stop him from putting her into dangerous situations.
* Annie is the first ever multiclass character on the show.
* Annie's free expertise is in History. She has read every book about adventuring parties she could get her hands on and followed every news story she could find.