Her father gave her the hammer. Well, not really gave so much as she found it amongst the remains of his crushed head. It used to be Rolthus’ hammer, a gift to him on his adult day, forged especially by their father. Valqine seeks her brother to return the hammer with speed and with intent. She doesn’t know where her brother is, but she knows what direction. The tragedy soaked ino the hammer has warped and layered its magic. With heat and a drop of her blood, the hammer will float briefly and points towards where Rolthus last bled. Whatever other enchantments it might have had are subsumed beneath blood and hate. Valqine checks every night and every dawn. Sometimes she’s had to wait for months, stuck marking time until her brother loses even just a one drop of blood. She’s never got close enough to see him since the morning before their father’s murder.
The journey has been unpleasant, more so for Valqine’s lack of experience with the wilderness and long distance travel. Her three years of employment as a civil servant was a comfortable town hall desk job, where the places she now passes through were just names on maps. Traveling all the way across the Windgrass Plains, often going far from the roads on the straight route pointed by the hammer was an education by trial. She’s not made any friends on her travels. Her mournful countenance and the vengeful aura of her blood stained hammer makes for an unwelcoming first impression.
She used what savings she had to get herself equipped at the start of her hunt. She could have sold her father’s forge for a substantial amount of gold but she’s not willing to emotionally part with it. The forge is boarded up and closed until she returns. The little money left over was spent on hiring a Windgrass Ranger to teach her some survival basics after she barely got through her first week of cross country travel. She prefers to use her literacy and numeracy to earn coins when she comes across a settlement and needs supplies. She’s no taste for heroism and avoids the usual quest boards. She’s had to fight twice so far – once a wild predator and one a bandit. Though she prevailed she was badly shaken by the ordeals, particularly as she killed the bandit by accident with a blow to the head. Valqine doesn’t really know how to use that hammer in combat and is only just strong enough to swing it.
Valqine is currently working as an auditor at the library of Red Rose Abbey. The monks of Florarce may be very devout and good singers but they can’t organise their paperwork. The texts are in no discernible order and the accounts haven’t been touched in what looks like decades. There’s probably months of work here putting it all in order and Valqine is being given free room and board as she works on it. The abbey is a place of deep peace that is calming to Valqine but she is still checking her hammer each night. It was the hammer that brought her to the abbey, as it was the most recent place her brother lost blood. The monks say he passed through two months ago, but they don’t recall him bleeding when he purchased some supplies from them. The Grand Abbott seems to have taken on Valqine as a project and regularly attempts to persuade her away from her quest of vengeance.
Image Credit – Gray Tiefling by OhHeyItsKaylaK CC-BY-NC-ND-3.0