Lark Bellin

Lark Leyla Bellin is a human cleric of Mahalia that cares for a makeshift "temple" in Rinova. She is a local healer and takes in many of the orphaned and abused children that live within the city. She later becomes a temporary medic for the Celtan Army.

Appearance
Lark is a human woman with long, earthy-golden hair that falls down a little bit past her lower back in the typical fashion of Mahalian clerics. Two loose braids are pulled from the front of her hair and lie across her shoulders and chest. Her skin is pale with soft, rosy undertones, and light brown freckles lightly dapple her face and shoulders from sun exposure. Her face is soft and youthful, with a small button nose and large eyes. Her eyes are a dark, tawny brown. They are soft and kind, but carry a deep tiredness as well. Her voice is quiet, but carries a commanding tone without being harsh.

Lark wears a long, cream skirt that falls around the ankles and simple brown sandals. She wears a wide, brown leather belt that sits high around her torso, decorated with a simple rose design pressed into the front. The belt fastens to a long, forest green strip of fabric that falls down the front of the skirt, functioning as a makeshift apron. Several small bags and pouches attach to the belt as well. She wears a long sleeved, sandy brown shirt that reveals her shoulders and collarbones. A small glass vial containing a yellow/green liquid is strung on a leather cord that she wears around her neck at all times. At times she will wear small, white flowers and leaves on her head in a crown-type weave. She wears no other jewelry.

Personality
Lark is a kind, motherly figure who will put others before herself without exception. An empath caster, she can be emotional to a fault, not considering her own needs in her attempts to help others. A member of the Order of Mahalian Clerics, she takes pride in the fact that she has never caused harm to another. Her oath to heal and protect means that she has never turned away someone in need, including people that would be considered criminals or villains to others. She maintains that she has no right to judge others, treating everyone as equally worthy of kindness and compassion. She is a motherly person, and despite her relatively young age, she cares for several children throughout Rinova that need a safe home. She cares for them deeply and is often seen a mother to any one in the city who needs one.

Lark is charismatic and endearing, making it easy for her to make friends and allies in even harsh and otherwise uncaring individuals. Because of this, she is considered one of the city's greatest treasures, and in a place filled with criminals and villains of several sorts, she is seen as a light of kindness and hope in the dark.

Despite being deeply loved by the people in the city, Lark is a remarkably fearful individual. She will always put aside her fears to help someone in need, but finds it incredibly difficult to do so. Another individual being in danger is often the only thing that can force her through her fear. While she takes solace in knowing she is protected by the existence of so many allies who would protect her, her fear of people from her past follows her constantly and leaves her paranoid. This, coupled with the constant stress of looking after the city, makes her very tired, which can be clearly seen in her eyes despite her best attempts at hiding it.

Childhood
Lark was born to a prostitute named Lydia Bellin, who hid her existence from her dangerous and violent biological father, Tybalt Kliewer, who worked with the Rinovan Thieves' Guild. As a young child, she lived on the streets with her mother, who had to leave her alone at night to work to support them both. Despite this, her mother spent the days teaching her to read, write, and do basic mathematics, as well as fostering in her the kind and sweet personality that shone through even as a little girl. Even as a child she could see just how much her mother sacrificed to give her a better life, and it motivated her to do her best to make her mother proud.

As Lark grew older, Lydia eventually managed to save enough money to buy a small, one room home in the shadier inner city. While not much, the two girls spent many years building a home together, her mother even helping her build a small shrine to Mahalia as her devotion to the goddess grew and flowered into a passion. She began to show signs of developing clerical magic, which they hid from others in fear that she would be approached by the Thieves' Guild and forced to use her magic in ways she didn't want to.

Young Adulthood
When Lark was a young woman, Lydia became aware of Tybalt's betrayal against the Thieves' Guild that he worked with. She attempted to go to the leaders of the Guild, but was stopped by Tybalt, who killed her to keep her silent. After her death, the Thieves' Guild sent a small amount of money to Lark as compensation, which alerted Tybalt to Lark's existence. Incorrectly believing that Lydia shared that information with Lark, he attempted to attack her as well. In a move to protect herself, Lark revealed her clerical ability to the Thieves' Guild and promised them equal access to her healing magic if they would protect her from Tybalt. They agreed, and Tybalt fled the Guild.

Now alone without her mother, Lark finished turning their small home into a makeshift temple to Mahalia, offering her healing ability and care to everyone in the city who needed it. After several years of offering her services to people, she was able to move into a slightly bigger home and began creating another Mahalian temple.

Adulthood
Living in the temple, Lark is known for taking in orphaned and abused children, giving them a safe place to stay and food to eat. She doesn't charge for her healing, believing that it should be freely given to anyone who needs it, which means that she supports the temple entirely off of donations made by others. While Rinova is known as a criminal city, she receives enough donations to live meagerly and still support the many children she looks after. Over the years, there has been a slight decrease in the level of crime in the city, and she is proud of the small changes that she has been able to make.

When the Celtan army moved through Rinova, she volunteered herself as an army medic. This led her to making several allies in the army who, in turn, helped financially support her and the children she looked after. It also led to her meeting a young, ex-pirate tiefling woman named Verra who helped her take care of the temple during the Siege of Rinova. The two of them fell in love and were married a few years later. They now live together in the temple and look after the city alongside each other.

Tybalt Kliewer
Tybalt Kliewer is the biological father of Lark. He was not aware of her existence or birth until she was an adolescent, after the Thieves' Guild voiced concern about the child of a prostitute he was involved with after her death at his hands. Lydia Bellin had information on his crimes against the Thieves' Guild which was his reason for killing her, and he considers Lark another enemy to remove rather than a daughter. He has repeatedly attempted to harm her, only prevented from doing so by her allies in the Rinovan Thieves' Guild, who he once worked alongside.

Lydia never shared the information she had on Tybalt with Lark, as she knew that it would put her in danger. Despite this, Tybalt has not relented in his attempt to kill her, believing that she does have that information, and is the only thing standing in the way of the evidence of his crimes being lost forever.

While they have only met face to face on a handful of occasions, their lives have been heavily intertwined since the beginning, and never for good.

Lydia Bellin
Lydia Bellin is the mother of Lark. Having become pregnant from Tybalt while working as a prostitute, she hid the existence of the child from him, fearing that he would force her to kill them. When she was born, Lydia continued working to support her, raising her to be a kind person, unlike many within the city. While she never considered herself a spiritual person, she supported her daughter's dedication to Mahalia, fostering the gentle spirit that grew from it.

Lydia worked hard to eventually afford a small, one room home that she and Lark shared for several years. Despite the growing danger of being involved with the Thieves' Guild, she continued to work for them to support them both, until learning too much about Tybalt's betrayal against the Guild. He killed her, leaving Lark by herself to turn their home into a makeshift "temple" to the goddess Mahalia.

After Lydia's death, Lark used her blood to craft a vial of Hangman's Bane, and keeps it with her at all times. She considers it her mother's last act of protection over her, having given up everything--including, ultimately, herself--to secure a better future for her daughter.

The Rinovan Thieves' Guild
Lark is under the protection of the Thieves' Guild in Rinova. While she doesn't approve of their actions or their direction, she would never withhold healing from those who need it, and the Thieves' Guild knows that she is the one to turn to for someone who will treat you like a person and not ask any questions. Knowing that she's a genuinely good person who will look out for them just as much as anyone else, the Thieves' Guild is protective of her, both as an organized group, and as individuals who consider her a friend.

Goals

 * Lark wants to do her part to turn Rinova from a criminal city to a good, safe place for those living there, especially the children. She does her best to help others and address the root problems that lead to people entering into crime, especially by providing a safe place for children to live and grow, where they might otherwise turn to the various criminal organizations to take care of themselves.
 * Lark wants to avoid detection by her father, who has made his goals of harming her clear.
 * Lark wants to involve herself more heavily with the Order of Mahalian Clerics, though is faced with difficulties relating to her location and isolation from others. Being the only Mahalian cleric in Rinova, there are no chapters for her to join. Because of this, she wants to create a chapter of her own in Rinova that can be officially recognized, and is beginning to teach a number of people clerical magic in an attempt to increase the number of clerics that reside in the city.
 * Lark wants to help people however she can, ultimately believing that compassion and love for others is the defining part of being alive.

Notable Items

 * Hangman's Bane: This potion is commonly used in criminal organizations to avoid losing members to execution. Adding a drop of blood from a dead individual to the base will create a potion that, when consumed, will allow the drinker to survive one otherwise fatal blow from whoever who killed the person whose blood was used to create the potion. This effect lasts for 24 hours. The "killed" individual enters a state of unconsciousness indistinguishable from death for six hours before returning to consciousness. The body will heal itself of whatever injury caused the death. Deaths from causes such as illness or poison will not be prevented, regardless of the person who infected the victim or administered the poison to them. Blood from individuals who died in these ways, or blood from a living person, will destroy the base potion, rendering it useless.

Abilities

 * Mahalia's Blessing: Lark is able to use this ability, as all Mahalian clerics can. This allows her to give her own health and vitality to others, but is limited by her ability to remain conscious. She is unable to give away any more of her own health once she reaches at the threshold that would lead to her losing consciousness.
 * Empath Casting: Lark's spellcasting ability is that of an empath caster. She is highly in tune with emotions and mental states, both her own and others', and uses this to work her magic in a specialized, personal way. This increases her effectiveness at healing magic, but also limits her mana pool to her own ability to stay calm and collected.

Quotations

 * "There are heroes yet left in this world, though not always in the shape we were made to believe. And if we are unable to find them, then perhaps it is up to us to become one."

Trivia

 * Lark was moved to become a healer as a child, when a dog was injured in the street outside the home she shared with her mother. Unable to help, they were forced to ignore it. The animal's cries kept her up that night until finally stopping for good. She was so upset by the event that she made a promise to do whatever it took to be able to help people or creatures in pain.