Reference Sheet: https://www.furaffinity.net/view/44230500/

Physical Appearance: Very thin and ghostly pale. Guen has a small pointed canine that always pokes through her closed mouth and white frizzy hair with a cow-lick sticking out the top. Her extremities (ears, finders, toes, etc) have a blackish tinge to them.

Clothing: Light adventuring gear. For someone who can change form and does so often, having heavy or bulky clothing is more of a burden than anything else. She’ll wear as little as possible that still provides the protection she needs

Expressions: Happy, bubbly, goofy

Likes: Frogs, Magic

Dislikes: Mechanics, lab settings

Fears/Phobias: Loss of sanity

Guen used to be a calm, cool, and orderly person, but after three years in captivity as a prisoner of war and all the mental torment that came with it she’s a bit… Unhinged. Not “radical”, but extremely polarized on her viewpoints. She’s very much someone who will stand by her beliefs and go down fighting over them. That being said, for someone who preaches law and order, she sure does take a chaotic approach to it. Then again, living with a curse like hers for over 500 year you really get a different view on what is and isn’t “chaotic”.
In general Guen is happy for the sake of others. After all she’s been through she doesn’t want her friends to have to suffer the same way she did. Without knowing her history she’s the kind of person who appears to have the perfect life. Always has something cheerful to say and always jokes around lightheartedly. It’s not necessarily a facade either, although there certainly are times she fakes her happiness. She really does try to be happy. Even if in doing so she’s blatantly ignoring anything that may be going wrong in the moment.

Strengths: Magic

Weaknesses: Sanity

Weapons/Tools: Claws

Being a changeling, Guen has an innate ability to alter her physical appearance to match any creature she’s seen before, although with her expertise on transmutation in addition to that she can turn into more creatures than the average changeling. While most are forced to stick to humanoids, Guen is able to shift her form into animals, beasts, monstrosities, etc so long as she’s seen them before. The caveat to this is she doesn’t adopt any non-physical abilities these creatures may have. If she turned into a fairy she would only gain the appearance of one, not any of it’s magical abilities.
Guen is an expert on the subject of transmutation, to the point she’s specialized in it. She’s able to cast just about any spell in that school and has a natural inclination to the subject which makes learning new spells easy. She is a caster, but she doesn’t have any general use spells. Only transmutation, which makes combat… Interesting...

Addictions: None

Mental Illnesses: Botched brain surgery

Physical Illnesses: None

Disabilities: None

Allergies: None

Guen was born on the outskirts of Hillford. Like most members of her species, she was not raised by her biological parents, but rather a stranger her mother dumped her on. An elven man by the name of Silvyr Veron. A mad admittedly only chosen due to his above average looks. Silvyr was far from a perfect guardian. He was the town drunk, who spent most of his days scrounging around the city for a bit of extra coin to spend at the local bar. A poor man with poor morals who had no business raising a child.

From the beginning his decision to raise Guen was out of selfishness. Having a child meant gaining financial support, even if it was only slightly. Money was money, and for someone as bad with money as him he didn’t even stop to think that adding a child to his expenses would net him less money overall even with the support. Not like she was really added to anything, however. Between the ages of 1 and 5 she was more or less left to fend for herself. If it weren’t for the kindness of the guards tasked with dragging her drunken father back home or the neighbors going to investigate the nonstop crying she probably would have starved to death.

Even with a relatively neglectful “parent” Guen still managed to show a fair bit of promise. From a very early age she had a natural and innate tie to magic. Specifically the magic of transmutation. Being a changeling she was already able to alter her own physical appearance, but her magic allowed her to do more. During the long stints of being alone she kept herself busy by tinkering around with basic spells. Her natural mastery over this magic was enough for even her father to realize. Then again, anything that might get rid of the thorn in his side was enough to catch his attention.

With the help of her father’s silver tongue Guenevire was enrolled in Little Valley School of the Arcane. Silvyr hadn’t intended on sending the child to school at all, but after realizing boarding school meant permanent housing for Guen 9 months out of the year it was far too good to pass up. It was perhaps the only good thing he ever did for Guen, but Silvyr fought hard to get her enrolled as soon as possible. He spent hours talking up her abilities and showing off her talents to the school’s faculty until eventually they too realized her promise and decided to allow her to enroll.

The one thing no one realized was just how advanced Guen’s magic was. Naturally the school had to run all sorts of testing to accurately place her in one of their programs, and in doing so they found she was nearly 7 years above her peers. A true child prodigy! She was only six years old at this time, but she could easily integrate with the thirteen to fifteen year olds Her skills were certainly good enough for that, but the school feared putting Guen in an older class like that would hinder her social life. Prodigy or not, she was still only six. A kid who needed to be able to be a kid.

Guen was eventually placed in the fourth grade as a compromise. Still a bit below her skill level in terms of magic, but enough to give her a chance to make friends and learn somewhat normal social skills. After all, while it was a school of magic it did still teach general life skills such as math and language. If she skipped too much she’d be on level with magic, but below level in everything else.

Even though her peers were only three to four years older, Guen was still relatively isolated for most of her first year at the school. She was already stunted socially because of her father’s neglect. That, paired with the fact she was so much younger, made it hard for her to connect with anyone. For the first five months of her first year she spent the majority of her time by herself. Often she’d spend her free time in the lunchroom; using the wide open space as a testing ground for her spellcasting. It was around this time she met her soon to be lifelong friend and lover, Vivian.

It was a pretty average day. Guen was sitting in the cafeteria by herself eating lunch as per usual when one of the older girls from her grade approached and offered to sit with her. Much to Guen’s surprise it was another changeling, albeit one with a clearly different father species. Where Guen more resembled an elf, Vivian looked more like a Tiefling in terms of appearance. It was the first thing that was brought up when they met, and that single similarity was enough to spark a much longer conversation. As it turned out the two had a lot in common, and as kids are wont to do the pair became fast friends from there.

The two girls mostly bonded over their shared, somewhat uncommon, species. Changelings weren’t the norm in Tredzil so meeting another one at all was surprising enough. In addition to that the two had a shared love of animals. Guen, being the only one of the two able to turn in to animals, would often do so at Vivian’s request for the various child-like games they played. They also shared a love of magic, reading, and drawing. Basic things kids fixate on that the two were able to become fast friends over.

Of course, the main thing they bonded over was their mostly absent parents. Neither of them liked their parents, although it was clear their reasons why were vastly different. Where Guen just didn’t feel connected to her absentee father, Vivian was terrified of her overly strict and rule heavy parents. Especially her mother, who acted almost authoritarian in nature. Vivian was pushed hard to study and receive good marks for fear of being disowned. But regardless of why they disliked them, it was something to bond over nonetheless.

Time went on, and eventually summer rolled around. While Little Valley School of the Arcane did house it’s students for the majority of the year, all students were sent home during the summer for general maintenance and upkeep of the building. Schools of magic tend to get destroyed bit by bit throughout the year with all the unpredictable spellcasting going on, so the place needed time devoid of students to prevent it from collapsing completely.

Neither of the girls wanted to leave their new friends. It’d be hard for both of them to be separated. Back at home Guen didn’t really have any connections to anyone, and Vivian wasn’t allowed to hand out with friends due to her ongoing summer studies. Their homes were too far away for either of them to reasonably be able to visit over the break. It was going to be difficult, but as kids do the two of them began crafting an elaborate plan to keep in touch while they were away.

Doing research at the school’s library the two discovered a spell known as “message”. A simple spell which allowed someone to contact anyone in radius via a psychic link. A link that allowed basic communication telepathically. It seemed like the perfect solution to their problem! They could use this spell and continue to talk with one another even while separated. But there was one thing the two overlooked. Message’s range is relatively short. While their experimentation with said spell inside the confines of the school seemed to work, the second they both set off for their hometowns they both went out of range. For that first summer break the two were completely no contact.

Summers would prove to be the worst part of the year over the next eight or so years. Every summer until she graduated Little Valley School of the Arcane was spent back at home trying to keep her father from getting himself arrested or killed. Doing everything in her power to keep him in check, mainly so she herself wouldn’t have to face the consequences of his actions. Once she got a little older and the town came to the understanding she was far more responsible than her adult father she’d be held accountable for his actions more often than not. Keeping him out of trouble kept her out of trouble.

That first summer, though, was probably the hardest. Their spell didn’t work and all of her summer plans revolved around things her and Vivian wanted to talk about during the school year.  Her plans of having a friend to keep her company over the next few months were now gone. She was left alone to wonder if the lack of communication was a result of her spell failing or her friend not wanting to talk. Luckily for Guen, it turned out to be the former. When the three months of summer were over and the two finally reunited at school everything was cleared up. As it turned out, Vivian was just as distraught over the lack of communication as she was.

Life at Little Valley School of the Arcane from here on out was fairly standard. Like most kids Guen made more friends as the years went on. With most of the kids at the school returning year after year she really got to know the other kids in her grade. Her clique was mostly made up of the bookish and reserved intellectual types. Kids who’d much rather get together and study in a group than go out and cause trouble. Not that they didn’t, all kids do, but it was never something they’d get expelled over like some of the more outgoing kids in their grade.

Guen’s time at Little Valley School of the Arcane also greatly helped with her skills in magic. By her second year at the school she’d already mastered her means of talking to her friends long distance, this time using the spell “Sending” rather than message. Her mastery over transmutation was clearly far greater than the schools staff originally thought. It didn’t take long for her to reach the skills of the teachers themselves, and by that time she became more of a TA/tutor to her peers because the school she was at simply couldn’t keep up.

Life went on as normal for the next few years. During the school year Guen would be hard at work studying, as well as connecting with the small group of friends she had, and during the summer she’d be keeping her father’s antics in check while venting her frustrations to her dearest friend. It was no secret her and Vivian were closer than anyone else in their group, although by this point the two still hadn’t quite realised their feelings for one another.

Eventually Guen turned fourteen. By this point she was in eleventh grade, meaning she only had one year left at Little Valley School of the Arcane before graduating and going off in pursuit of a higher education. A few months in to the school break Guen got a letter in the mail from her father. This was a very unorthodox event, as her father usually pretended she didn’t exist and often went no contact throughout the year, so she knew something big was about to happen. Much to her horror the letter basically told her that her father had done something unforgivable and the two of them were going to be moving out of the country. What this thing was was left vague, but with all the antics her father had gotten into in the past she could only imagine the severity.

In an instant Guen’s life was flipped on its head. For the past few years her, Vivian, and a few of their closer friends had been making a bit more long term plans in terms of education. They were all planning on continuing their study of magic after graduation and all of them wanted to go to Silver Creek University to do so; hoping to one day get into more important magic like an advisory position or one of the countries royal mages. Now all of that was being torn away. This year was going to be her last year at the school. This year was going to be her last year near her friends. The people at Little Valley School of the Arcane were all she had! If she left now she’d be left with nothing.

Ok, perhaps not nothing, but to a fourteen year old the situation felt far more dire and out of her control. Her friends often forgot she was so much younger than they were due to her maturity. Vivian suggested just moving out a year early before remembering Guen was only fourteen rather than seventeen. She wasn’t going to be an adult next year like Vivian was. She couldn’t just move out on her own.

That’s when Vivian made the suggestion that she move in with her. The plan seemed simple enough. Both of them were planning on going to Silver Creek University together anyway. They were going to all get shared housing with the few of their other friends during that time. Not only that, but if she stayed enrolled in Little Valley School of the Arcane there were only three months of housing they’d have to worry about before being more or less set. If they could convince Vivian’s mom to let Guen stay with them over that summer she wouldn’t have to move and she’d finally be able to cut ties with the pathetic excuse for a “father” she’d been stuck with.

Of course, this plan was something the two really had to sit down and think over. Talking was one thing, but actually carrying out a plan like this was another. So, throughout their 11th grade year, the pair really went all out in their research. Figuring out how much money they were going to need to live on their own and where the best place to live would be. They even sat down and wrote out a long and heartfelt letter to Vivian’s mother in hopes of convincing her to let Guen stay for a bit. That was the most nerve wracking part. 

It’s not that Guen hadn’t met her mother. They’d met several times before, usually during winter break when the more attentive parents came to visit, but they’d never spent much time together. Something like this was already pushing it. Neither of them knew how her mother would react to the proposal, even if it was only for three months. They did managed to convince Vivian’s mother in the end, and soon enough the two were graduating 12th grade and on their way to a higher education with the rest of their clique.

It was also around this time the two finally realized they were more then friends. This was, of course, after one of their other mutual friends let it slip they thought the two were already dating. Apparently it was a well known “fact” in the friend group the pair were a couple, and when it came out that they weren’t everyone was shocked. This shock didn’t last long, though. Once the idea was put in Guen’s mind she became uncomfortably aware of her feelings nearly all at once. From there the relationship was made official.

Life only got better from here. Soon after enrolling in Silver Creek University the royal family of Trezdil began taking interest in Guen’s abilities. She was brought on as one of the kingdom’s head mages apprentices, and soon enough she herself was head mage of her city. She had a wonderful life, wonderful wife, and overall things were going better than she ever could have hoped. Her life was perfect. That is, until the Battle of the Arcane broke out.

Guen was never involved much in the government side of things despite working for the kingdom’s mages. Her line of work mostly involved keeping magic around the city in check. Keeping an eye out for any unseen issues that may arise and creating scrolls and other magic items for the local magic market. On occasion she’d do something a bit more important like helping dissect a curse or using her magic on someone else directly, but that wasn’t the norm by any means.

The Battle of the Arcane, from her perspective, started when a group of anarchists known as the Free Will launched an attack on the capital. Apparently they were getting upset with the kingdom’s laws and how they used magic to execute said laws, but again. Guen was never really too in to politics. The Free Will was a chaotic and unpredictable group to the point their next move was always impossible to predict. Not without a bit of extra effort.

Being an expert on transmutation and having the ability to change her form into just about any living creature the Collective, Trezdil’s army, decided to take her on as a bit of a spy. A literal fly on the wall. They needed insider information on how the Free Will worked and Guen having the ability to change her face and turn into animals made her almost undetectable. The perfect spy, in a way.

Of course, she didn’t work on her own. The Collective knew that Guen wasn’t involved in government and, more importantly, wasn’t trained in any aspect of war. So instead of being sent in blindly she was sent to work under the instruction of a man named Cecil.

Cecil was an… Odd individual. He had strange mannerisms and behavioral quirks that made him a bit difficult to be around. For one thing, he was overly orderly in nature. Everything had to be perfect, but to him “perfect” didn’t always mean neat and tidy. Cecil could see the future, and this drove him a bit mad at times. If there was a certain path of the future he wanted to play out he’d go out of his way to set everything up perfectly. So, for example, if a chair was pulled out in his vision and it wasn’t pulled out in the present time he’d go and pull the chair out himself.

His future seeing abilities were annoying in day to day interactions, but from a strategic standpoint Cecil was an amazing tactician. He’d always make sure Guen was going to be safe before sending her out sleuthing for information. He knew Guen couldn't fight, so he’d take extra care to help her avoid confrontation as much as possible. The two’s abilities played off well together. At least, for the brief time the two were working together.

Guen very quickly gathered that Cecil wasn’t in the war for the cause as much as he was setting up a desirable future for himself. Guen genuinely cared about their cause. The Free Will were anarchists. Completely anti government heathens who seemingly wanted to abolish law and order entirely. They reminded Guen of her father, and after all the heartache he brought her over the years she didn’t want people like him in charge. Cecil didn’t seem to care about any of that. His sights, as always, were set off in the distant future. He couldn’t care less about the reason behind the war so long as he got what he wanted out of it. It just so happened he needed their side to win to set up whatever his desired future was, so Guen never let it get to her.

But Cecil’s lack of care for the matter at hand would eventually end in disaster. As time went on he got progressively less and less attentive to the investigation side of things. After awhile Guen was forced to go out on missions without his guidance out of pure necessity. By this point she’d gotten good at what she did, sure, but she was by no means an expert on stealth. More and more close calls began to happen. Things that could have been avoided.

That’s when it happened. The war had been going on for quite some time now, and stakes were only rising. There was seemingly no end in sight for any of this, so many of the head mages, tacticians, and generals were all brought in to a meeting to talk things out. This meeting was supposed to be fairly simple and straightforward. More of a “hey, here’s the state of things currently” type deal. Nothing overly technical. Not even anything particularly classified or noteworthy. 

With how seemingly ordinary and run of the mill this meeting was at its core no one would have ever expected an ambush. Then again, the Free Will was known for being unpredictable. The Free Will stormed this meeting; taking as many of the Collective as they could. Guen was lucky enough not to get killed like many of the others, but she wasn’t fast enough to escape. A quick blow to the head and she was out cold.

This blow to the head would wind up being the first of many head injuries she’d suffer over the next three years. A bad omen, so to speak. For a brief moment she was brought back to her childhood in some sort of hallucination induced by the injury. When she finally woke up she found herself in a prison cell somewhere within the Free Will’s headquarters. A cell she’d live in for the next six months.

Being someone so high up in the rankings the Free Will was hoping to use Guen as a sort of a bargaining chip. What they wanted she didn’t know, but she could only imagine she was going to be held for ransom for either money or information. Of course, this would never come to be. With how chaotic and disorganized the Free Will was on the inside she was quickly forgotten about. For the next few days she was left in that cell by herself without any food or water. Not only that, but they’d taken precautions to negate the use of her magic, so Guen really didn’t have many options for escape. She just had to sit there and suffer. For a time she thought she was going to die in that cell. Forgotten and alone. That would not end up being the case.

Eventually someone was sent in to check up on her. A dwarven man by the name of Darmond. He was appalled by his colleagues mistreatment of her, and while he didn’t agree with Guen’s viewpoints and still viewed her as an enemy, he didn’t think she should be left to suffer like this. During her stay at this facility Darmond tasked himself with caring for their new prisoner. Making sure Guen was fed and not left to starve to death in a concrete box.

Guen, naturally, did not like Darmond. Not in the slightest. He by all means seemed like he should be a good person. He seemed to have more empathy than the other members of the Free Will. He seemed to care about her wellbeing. Hell, the two of them even spent quite a bit of time talking to one another about magic; something they both took interest in. If they had met in any other circumstances they may have become friends, but despite her pleas Darmond never let her go. He did everything he could to pull strings and get her things she wanted, but he’d never grant her her freedom.

Being held captive was horrible. Guen had access to her magic heavily restricted. To the point she was no longer able to cast Sending, something she and Vivian had continued to use for communication well after graduating Little Valley School of the Arcane. She never evcen got to say goodbye to Vivian. Not in a meaningful way, anyway. With how standard her last meeting was supposed to be Guen had fully intended on returning home in a few hours. Now she was gone, and Vivian was left to wonder what happened. Was she still holding out hope? Had she been trying to bargain? Had she given up and assumed Guen was dead? Had she moved on? Thoughts like this would continue to plague Guen’s mind for the next three years.

Eventually Guen was moved to a different facility. The base of operations she was in currently got compromised and everyone was left to move out and set up shop somewhere else. She, of course, was taken in by Darmond. Knowing she’d be left to die without his influence Darmond had gotten the OK to take Guen with him on the contingency that she helped him with his work for the Free Will. She didn’t want to aid the opposing side, but Guen would much rather stay alive and help Darmond than be left to starve to death. It was a lose lose situation, but she managed to make the best of it.

Darmond’s personal facility was a vastly different place. It was set up like a massive underground workshop, which made sense given the fact he was an artificer for the war. She was set up in a room there that, while still a prison in its own right, was far closer to a bedroom than it was a jail cell. It had a bed, desk, bookshelf with books, paper to write on, journals, etc. She had pretty much anything she could ask for to keep her busy. That only added salt to the wound. It was a faux sense of freedom. A false sense of normalcy. Guen hated it.

For the three years she lived in Darmon’s workshop Guen was forced to construct something Darmond only ever referred to as a “core”. It was a powerful magic item which turned a mortal soul into a battery of sorts for another project he was working on. Turning a soul into an object fell under the realm of transmutation, which is why Guen was tasked with the job.

With how high level this magic was it already dangerous by nature. Any magic involving the soul was dangerous, and while what Guen was doing was mostly transmutation it had a smidgen of necromancy which made it all that more unstable. Darmond had cast this spell the first time only to discover it had undesirable consequences if not cast correctly. So, Guen not only crafted this spell to begin with, but was also tasked with carrying it out.

Unbeknownst to the two of them this spell had more downsides than they first thought. The cores Darmond was making were to power machines known as Warforged. Humanoid machines which had more of a resistance to the magic of the Collective than the average person. In order for the Warforged to be granted life they needed both a mind and a soul, but as far as Darmond and Guen knew it only needed the soul. Darmond had the soul part covered, but with the mind part overlooked the spell had to pull from an unintended source. Each time Guen cast this spell and made another core a piece of her mind was taken from her. The longer she stayed in this facility, the more of her sanity she lost.

About six cores and a year and a half in to her stay at Darmonds Guen’s mind had reached a breaking point. Her continually lowering sanity had forced Darmonds hand in a lot of ways. Acting more irrational and unpredictable meant he had to put Guen in more heavy restraints to nor only prevent her from escaping, but also to prevent her from hurting herself. After making the sixth core her sanity was all but gone, causing Darmond to begin looking for a solution.

With the sixth core made Guen was at a point she could no longer create any more cores. Her mind was too fragmented for her to even understand where she was, let alone the complex magic needed to create something like this. If her mind was broken, perhaps he’d be able to fix it. Darmond knew quite a bit about biology in addition to his engineering. In an attempt to fix Guen’s mind he first figured out what was wrong, then went in manually and tried to sway things the other way. For example, if the spell had caused her to lack fear he’d try and compensate by making her feel too much of it. In doing so the magic and medicine would, hopefully, counteract one another and she’d be brought back to a baseline.

The medicine, surgery, and other various medical and magical procedures did not work. Nothing Darmond did helped long term, although he was able to coax Guen to finish the remaining six cores. In addition to this, he also began using Guen’s abilities as a changeling for his own benefit. Before her mind was shattered she was uncooperative in helping with anything aside from the cores, but now that her mind was more pliable he was able to convince her to play along. Darmond was a biologist as well as an artificer. Having access to samples from just about any animal imaginable due to Guen’s shapeshifting would prove to be an asset.

At the end of her three year stay with Darmond Guen was left as a shell of a person. Her mind was so damaged and destroyed that she was little more than a living statue. She had no concept of time, no idea who she was or where she was. She couldn’t feed herself anymore. It was horrible. But Darmond, never intending for this to happen, had finally found a potential solution to all of this. A way for Guen to be able to rest and recover.

The human mind, or changeling in this case, is a very high power and high energy part of the body. With all the finer intelligence it has and all the functions it needs to do it’s pretty much always active. The mind of an animal, however, is much less resource intensive. Darmond figured that turning Guen into an animal more permanently would give her mind a chance to finally shut down and start recovering. The animal he had chosen was a simple goldfish. One that could swim around in the lake just outside his facility as Guen’s mind healed itself.

At this point Guen could not remember anything about her past. This curse of hers, being a fish that is, would end up persisting for the next five hundred years or so. The type of magic she’d been messing with did more than just break her mind, that was for sure. Messing with necromancy had also unintentionally extended her lifespan. When her mind was finally healed enough for her to “wake up” she woke up as a fish, in a pond, not knowing or remembering any past life to speak of.

While Guen did believe she was just a goldfish at this point, she knew she was different from the other fish around her. She was smarter than them. Their eyes were hollow and soulless, where hers were full of life. She was able to cast spells and do magic, which regular fish couldn’t. She outlived everything in that pond time and time again. Year after year after year. It didn’t take long for her to come to the conclusion she was some form of being “above” that of a normal fish. A being of vast intelligence and powerful magic which dominated the pond’s ecosystem. She was the ruler of this lake. A queen. No, more than that. She was the god of this pond, and as gods often do Guen began searching for more land to conquer.

Even with magic, a mere fish is unable to exit the water. She had tried many ways of doing this, including enchanting a small discarded glass bowl she’d found to allow her to roll around in a free moving sphere of water. Something that would prove to work in places with flat ground, but Guen was not strong enough as a fish to push her hamster ball fishbowl through the thick pond mud. She needed legs. That, or she needed a creature with legs to ferry her around.

After many years had passed Guen eventually encountered one such creature. A small frog-like being that’d been spotted wandering around the pond over the past several days. A creature who, while frog like in nature, was far more than your standard frog. He was more bipedal and slightly more aware than the others. This creature seemed like the perfect vessel to walk her around, but Guen needed some way to introduce herself. While she may have viewed herself as a god, she still lacked the ability to speak even with magic.

She took a rather brash approach on getting this frog’s attention. There were a few places in the lake she was able to roll out of the water in while using her orb. One of which was a large fallen tree, which Guen rolled up on and then off back into the water. This was timed so she’d land on the frog’s head as he swimmed under the log and, surprisingly, this worked. Using a bit more of her magic she charmed this creature in addition to giving him a few other buffs to tether the two together using magic.

This frog, who later called himself Nibbly, not only did exactly what Guen had wanted him to, but the two became fast friends. Like how Guen was smarter than the other fish in the pond, Nibbly seemed smarter than the other frogs. They were two of a kind. Creatures not meant to be in a world which didn’t have a place for them. Not only that, but being around this frog made Guen feel comforted. Having a friend like this made her feel less alone. Now able to walk around, Guen and Nibbly went off on an adventure of their own. A small one which lead them to a fairly large town known as Dextly.

Dextly was an interesting place. A town known for pottery which had hundreds of hand crafted pots and vases sitting outside to dry before being fired and glazed. The majority of the people walking around were satyr, making the two of them extremely out of place, but they trudged on nonetheless. It was in this town where Guen got the first clue into her past life, although she didn’t know it at the time.

Magic is a strange thing. While walking past the local temple Guen found herself drawn to a familiar ping of magic. A kind she knew she had felt before but couldn’t put her finger on it. It was far too alluring to pass up, and with the self control of a literal goldfish there was nothing stopping her from going inside and checking things out. It was there she found a single, old looking urn. An urn with a very familiar symbol on it.

Guen could not remember what this symbol was, but seeing it filled her with a strange sense of determination that only pulled her in closer. She tried to instruct Nibbly to open the urn, but it was sealed shut by a magical force. So, instead, she instructed him to find a way to remove the seal; giving insight on various spell components in order to essentially pick this lock. It took several days of fiddling around with, but eventually the urn was open and Guen was face to face with another familiar face.

The person housed inside the urn was none other than Cecil, although at the time she didn’t recognize him. As always he was irate and acted oddly, going off about how now “wasn’t the time” for him to be released and that him being awake meant something went wrong. Upset with Nibbly and Guen over this, he got the pair to help him out with some sort of spell that’d “fix” whatever problem he was having.

Guen didn’t know much about who he was or what he was talking about at this time. As far as she was concerned this was the first time they had ever met. But with how familiar he seemed Guen figured she might get answers by helping this man. So, she guided Nibbly to and fro as they acted as both runners for various errands or guards to keep people away from his work area.

This would end up being bad for everyone involved. As it turned out, Cecil had put himself inside of that urn to keep his body in a sort of stasis; a way to keep himself alive well past his normal lifespan. One vision of the future he had seen he’d obsessed over, and being woken up early meant he wouldn’t be alive by the time this event rolled around. The spell he wanted to cast that’d “fix” his problem was actually a spell to sap the life force from the people of the town to extend his own. Guen and Nibbly caught on to this as the spell was being cast and the two promptly fled the town, terrified of just how badly they’d screwed up. Anyone willing to slaughter a town to further their goals is a bad person. Bad, and extremely driven.

For weeks the two were on the run until eventually they wound up at another nearby town. This is where the two met a small band of adventurers who, admittedly, didn’t have much of a goal to their adventure. Among the people in this group were a pair of warforged; both of which were searching for answers into their past. One of these warforged had lost their memory, and the second wasn’t actually a warforged at all, but rather a Tiefling who’d traded bodies with the real warforged and now wanted her body back.

Guen largely took a back seat in all of this once her and Nibbly joined this group. Nibbly was her handler, after all. He was the only one able to talk to anyone and for the most part, despite Nibbly’s constant explanations of Guen’s “higher power”, everyone thought she was no more than a normal fish. Nibbly aided this group in their search for answers on the warforged past mainly as a means of protection. If he and Guen were in a larger group they’d have a better chance against Cecil if he ever returned. They had pissed him off. It wasn’t much of a stretch to assume he’d be back.

After weeks of looking through libraries and traveling through the thick forest the group eventually learned of a dwarven artificer named “Darmond”. This name, again, felt familiar to Guen, but it just wasn’t clicking. Nothing would click about her past until the group eventually made their way into Darmond’s lab. A lab that just so happened to bring both her and Nibbly back to the little lake in the forest they once called home.

The lab itself was an old and decrepit place. It had been here for the past 500 or so years, so that was to be expected, but even with how old it was it still appeared to be up and running. Several of the warforged were still here, still doing the tasks they were created for. Not all of them, as several had been lost or destroyed over the years, but over half were inside the facility itself.

It wasn’t until they got to Guen’s old room thing’s finally clicked. After talking to the warforged and getting the basement key Guen was brought right back to the prison she’d spent the last three years of her life as a Changeling. All the pieces were beginning to fall into place. Looking at the old pictures and journal entries she’d made she knew they were hers. She knew she didn’t like this room, and she knew she HATED the name Darmond, but there was still one thing missing. She still had the mind of a fish which was preventing her from fully absorbing all the information being presented to her.

Finally the group found Darmond. They also once again found Cecil and his own lackey, who’d come in pursuit of Darmond with the hopes of converting him to their ranks and using his skills as an artificer for himself. Cecil wasn’t hard to run off. He wasn’t interested in getting into a real fight at the current time. The second Nibbly and the party got violent with him he fled; content with whatever information he’d managed to get from Darmond before the party arrived.

Darmond himself had a lot to say. Being reconnected with two of his missing warforged and the prisoner he’d discarded years before was a lot to take in, and he wanted to do his best to mend the situation he’d caused. From what he said, it seemed he deeply regretted his treatment of Guen in the past; claiming it was never supposed to end that way and it was all out of the necessity of war. Guen didn’t believe a damn word he was saying, but what happened next was largely up to her dear Nibbly.

Nibbly was the one to make the choice to fix her. From what Darmond explained: In order for Guen to be permanently changed into the fish form her changeling intelligence had to be taken away. But if it was destroyed outright she’d be left mentally crippled. So, Darmond transferred the intelligence to someone else. A small orange frog, which eventually turned into Nibbly. That explained where Nibbly had come from and why he was seemingly so much different from the other frogs in the pond. 

The only downside was, fixing Guen’s mind would mean taking Nibbly’s mind away. The choice was his, and he ultimately decided to fix Guen. After all, his whole purpose in life up until that moment was to help his closest friend. This was the one way to do that.

Waking back up and becoming fully aware of her past wa quite a shock. Guen was angry. Angry that Darmond had done this to her. Angry she had to leave her old life without answers. It had been 500 years, and even now she still didn’t know the results of the war or anything about what happened to Vivian. She wanted answers, and the only two people still around from that time period were Darmond and Cecil. Cecil was, obviously, out of the question, so Guen decided right there and then that she wasn’t going to let Darmond off the hook until she got answers.

Unfortunately for Guen, her anger got the best of her. Darmond wasn’t in the room when she regained consciousness after the procedure to restore her mind, and by the time she’d finally found him and the rest of Nibbly’s party the only thing she could bring herself to do was slap him as hard as she possibly could. She was not a violent person, even after her stint in the war, but after all this bastard had done to her it was more than deserved. Darmond, already weakened by whatever Cecil had done, went down almost immediately from the force of it all. Not dead, but he was out cold.

That’s what leads us to where Guen is now. Currently her and her party opted to take Darmond outside the lab and back in to town so he could get both medical attention and so Guen and the warforged could host their interrogation. Her only current objectives is to clean up Cecil’s mess, as she was the one responsible for releasing him in the first place, and getting answers about what the hell had happened over the past 500 years. What the future has in store for her is uncertain, but hopefully she’ll find the answers she seeks someday...

Creation date: September 30th 2021

Alignment: Chaotic Neutral

Voice Claim: None (yet)

Other: Everything in Guen’s backstory starting with meeting Nibbly happened within the span of my D&D game! That’s also why her backstory ends pretty abruptly after being turned back into a changeling, because that’s as far as we’ve gotten in the game at the time of writing this :>