Alton Stonehollow

The Stonehollow family owns a fair number of buildings and businesses in Stellavallis, the de facto capital of the High Dales, so Alton had few worries about money in his youth. His five older siblings had the traditional inherited jobs nailed down, so his parents really didn't have a plan for him growing up. Alton gravitated toward books for his entire life, as they gave him reliability and privacy that his chaotic family lacked.

He learned everything he could in town, from every variation of beer recipe, to a surprisingly short "complete" history of the Hominae Vitae. He wanted more. When his younger sister Frida lost her life to wolves, he knew that he wanted to protect everyone he held dear. He learned the arts of healing, determined to be prepared the next time one of his family got hurt. He knew he needed to find bigger libraries and deepen his studies.

He joined a trade caravan heading toward Fellport, the independent city on the coast with the magic college. He came and immediately applied to the College. He had very little experience and no sponsor, so he didn't make the cut. He worked at whatever jobs he could find, determined to not ask his parents for money. He took overnight custodial jobs in libraries so he could study, did guard duty for a month, and actually became a Liftwarden for a few months until it became clear that he didn't have the physical strength to help anyone on or off the Lift. His Liftwarden boss sponsored his third application to the College. He got accepted, and the path of his life changed.

Abjuration drew him in, so he declared his specialization early and started to work with purpose. He found the lack of Abjuration spells disconcerting, so he tired his hand at spell research as a final project, eventually stabilizing and standardizing the intellect fortress spell. He also wanted to learn item enchantment to send protective items back home to his family, who he visited at least yearly.

He ended up never actually leaving the College. Sure, he did some consulting and adventuring work after graduation, like every other recent graduate, but he came back to use the libraries and workshops. Eventually they hired him on as a professor of abjuration, and two years ago he accepted the position of Dean of Abjuration after Krannock Steelshanks kept disappearing for months at a time. The College has recently put him and Ami Deniz, the Dean of Alchemy, in charge of the research effort into a recently-recovered sample and recipe for Orichalcum.

He fielded many odd requests in his 45 years as faculty at the College. One of the strangest involved a dwarven noble who called himself Mark (a terrible alias), obviously running for his life from something or someone, who asked him to get all the protective spells and items he could in exchange for a rare dwarven item: a platinum geode. He seemed especially interested in elemental protection, water breathing, and protection from devils. Mark then boarded a ship headed east across the ocean and disappeared. Alton has been reverse engineering the geode ever since.

Back when he had light brown hair, he feathered it back to keep it out of his face, as was the fashion at the time. Now that it thinned and greyed, he keeps it in a single long ponytail. His grey eyes remain sharp and bright. He found himself addicted to pipeweed a decade or two back, but he has since replaced his oral fixation with hard candy, or with taffy as an occasional treat. He usually ponders his response before committing to anything, but he will impulsively run back to his family if he hears something happened to one of them.

Alton Stonehollow
Stout Hominae Vitae Abjurer Wizard (Level 18) (Sage Background; Keen Mind, War Caster Feats)
Str 8  Dex 16  Con 14  Int 20  Wis 12  Cha 10
Arcana +11, History +11, Investigation +11, Medicine +7

Part of T.W.Wombat's Lore 24 project, detailing the world around Fellport.
For all city posts, see the Fellport Index. For posts about the wider world, see the Beneterra Index.