Elrieth Saffronvale - Transmutation Wizard

Name: Elrieth Saffronvale
Race: High Elf
Role/Class: Wizard Level 8 (Transmutation School)
Appearance: Elrieth Saffronvale looks like a man who belongs in a marble tower, not standing ankle-deep in mud beside a forest spring—but he’s been out here long enough that the forest is starting to cling to him. Tall and slender with the effortless poise of high elven upbringing, he carries himself with the slightly stiff posture of someone who’s spent most of his life hunched over desks, not dodging brambles. His skin is pale with a faint golden undertone, lightly freckled across the nose and cheeks from more sun than he expected to see in his career. His hair is a soft honey-blond worn in a low tail, though strands inevitably escape to fall over his brow while he works. His eyes are a sharp, clear amber that tend to flick to whatever looks like data: water levels, plant growth, the precise amount of sludge on your boots.

He dresses in layered scholar’s garb adapted for the field: a muted saffron-colored tunic under a dark green longcoat, the hems carefully protected with oil to repel damp. A reinforced leather alchemist’s apron covers his chest and midsection, peppered with loops and pockets holding quills, vials, tongs, and measuring rods. Fine silver filigree patterns—alchemical circles and transmutation symbols—decorate his cuffs and collar. His hands are ink-stained and burn-scarred in equal measure. A polished wooden case at his hip holds his field spellbook; a bandolier of carefully labelled glass vials crosses his chest, clinking softly when he moves.

Backstory

Elrieth grew up in the shining halls of a great elven city of learning, where knowledge was currency and reputation the coin you spent it with. As a young prodigy in the alchemical arts, he devoured everything from basic herbal remedies to complex transmutation theory. He wrote his first treatise on mineral solubility at an age when most of his peers were still debating music vs. poetry. Professors praised his mind, and journals began to print his work; a neat, prestigious career in the upper terraces of academia seemed inevitable.

Then a colleague brought back a single stoppered bottle from a journey through the Ardent Woods: clear water that, when ingested, sped natural healing, soothed inflamed minds, and left drinkers with dreams of peaceful forests. An anomaly, they thought. A curiosity. Elrieth tasted it, studied it, and became quietly obsessed. The sample bore signatures of potent, stable magic—divine, fey, and elemental traces woven into a single, elegant matrix. It wasn’t just “good water”; it was a miracle waiting to be either weaponized or wasted.

Tracing its origin led him, through rumors and half-reluctant guides, to a small forest village built near a cluster of springs. What he found was not a temple or a research facility, but a humble community treating the springs as part of the land’s natural grace. The locals used the water for medicine, ritual, and modest trade, aware it was special but disinterested in turning it into a commodity. To Elrieth’s academic mind, this felt like watching priceless manuscripts stacked under a leaky roof.

So he stayed—first “for a season,” then “until the study is complete,” then longer. He set up a modest field laboratory near the springs, methodically cataloging their effects, interacting with local healers, and sending carefully edited reports back to his contacts. Over time, he saw the other side of the equation: the dangers of exploitation, old stories about what happens when outsiders take too much from the woods, and the quiet warnings of elders who have watched “discoveries” burn down lives before.

Now Elrieth lives in a constant, private tension. If he publishes his full findings, he could transform medicine across nations—and paint a target on the village and springs that have become home. If he withholds them, he protects the people before him while potentially condemning distant thousands to diseases these waters might ease. He has run the calculations a hundred times. The answer still refuses to resolve.