Èlodie Beaulieu

Elf / Bard

Submitted character story

Èlodie (Ay-lo-dee) stands in about five foot five inches with voluminous wavy auburn hair that falls down to just a little below chin length/just above her shoulders. She has pale blue eyes the color of the sky on a clear day. She has a few faint scars cutting across her face from shards of glass from a broken bottle. If asked about these, she'll usually give a vague non answer along the lines of "oh those, long story. Don't worry about it."  She doesn't talk about the man who gave them to her, so if pressed further, she'll give some vague half truth about broken glass without mentioning his name or how it happened

She was raised primarily by her grandparents, who loved her just as they had loved their own children. It was her grandfather who fostered her love of music. He would play for her to soothe her to sleep from the time she was just an infant, and she can still remember the first time he let her play his lute. She can not remember her exact age at the time, but the instrument had been nearly as big as she was as he gently helped her to find the correct position to hold it in. As anyone is when first learning to play, though first few notes were far from sounding good, but she fell in love with playing from those very first patient moments as her grandfather helped her to learn the different strings and the notes they each played. It was not long after that when she soon learned to play her first song, a lullabye her grandfather had played for her as a baby. 

She went on to study music throughought her formal schooling, eventually becoming a music teacher at the local secondary school in Waterdeep. She primarily taught music, and she loved what she did. Watching the kids learn to express themselves through music, in ways that words could not always made it worth it. It was somewhere along this path, after she had been teaching for a great many decades that she met Étienne, her now ex partner. Life with him was a nightmare for longer than she cared to admit. It was only when she found out that she was pregnant that she finally worked up the courage to say enough was enough and leave him. 

Fast forward five years, and life was looking good. Really good. She was still teaching at that same school, and she had a happy little townhouse where she and her son lived, free from the nightmare of the home her son would never know. She was on her way home to relieve the sitter who was watching her five year old little boy after staying late to grade one of the written exams she was required to adminster to her classes and stopping by the market to stock her pantry back home when she heard the nautiloid overhead. Amongst the little group of fellow unlikely tadpoled adventerurers, she is definitely the caretaker, always looking out for the wellbeing of everyone around her. She can often be found up late at night, making sure that everything is ready for tomorrow's  travels, or negotiating to ensure that they have enough supplies to keep everyone fed and comfortable on the road. Her own wellbeing is often pushes to the back burner, but even on a rough day, she's rarely seen not smiling as long as there is someone who might need her.