Backstory

Elara Vance was born and raised in the pragmatic world of Emberfield's merchant class. Her family, the Vances, were not among the city's elite, but they were respected for their reliability and the quality of their goods—mostly sturdy tools and raw materials for the city's shipbuilders. From a young age, Elara was more interested in how things worked than what they were worth, often disassembling clocks and music boxes to understand their mechanisms.

Seeing this aptitude, her father apprenticed her to a watchmaker, where she excelled, but her ambition extended beyond crafting simple trinkets. She combined her mechanical skills with a study of the arcane, poring over texts scavenged from the declining Emberfield Academy. She saw magic not as a mystical force, but as a tool to be understood, harnessed, and made practical. She began her own business, "Vance's Practical Provisions," creating and selling cleverly enchanted items: self-heating cook pots, ever-sharp axes, and weather-resistant cloaks. Her reputation grew, and she became known as a pragmatic merchant who sold reliable, useful goods.