Saskiah Snowbright[]
Gender: Female
Faction: Alliance
Race: Gnome
Class: Mage
Profession: Herbalist/Enchanter
Hobbies: Flower-picking, snacking, reading, daydreaming
Age: 53
Guild: TheBlackCompany
Usually found in: Stormwind
Appearance[]
The petite young gnome (small even by Gnomish standards) is fresh-faced and freckled, with a disarming dimpled smile and wide hazel eyes. Her robes are finely-made but much rumpled, and there appears to be a jelly stain on her sleeve. She wears her hair in two knots on the sides of her head -- at least, that seems to be the theory, but her hair is generally trailing on one side or the other, and the buns are often curiously lopsided. She smells of goldthorn tea and burnt toast.
Saskiah can inevitably be found by following the glittering trail of Strange Dust scattered on the path or pavement in her wake, as it leaks from a hole in her left pocket. She is accompanied on her travels by a large toad, whom she addresses quite earnestly as Mr. Hatmuddle.
History[]
Saskiah was born in Gnomeregan to geologist Linnea Pebblekeep and inventor Pippin ("Pip") Tinkerbotham. She was the younger of their two daughters; her older and much-idolized sister is the mercenary Iridiah Tinkerbotham.
From a very young age, Saskiah was a dreamer and a chatterbox, much prone to distraction and harmless misadventure. She had a tendency to wander, busy in some daydream or another, into the tunnels of Gnomeregan and become hopelessly lost. Her inability to, as her mother once put it, "find her way from her bedroom to the parlor in less than a week" led her parents to decide that she ought to be schooled at home in their family quarters, rather than sent out into the Gnomish city where she would undoubtedly starve cheerfully to death in some obscure dead-end corridor one day. (It is a consequence of this sheltered upbringing that she developed the adorably gullible and entirely trusting manner she has today; she will strike up happy conversation with nearly any stranger she encounters, no matter how tall or well-armed or decomposed, and tends to believe whatever she is told.)
Her mother began to school her in the rudiments of geology and archaeology, for which Saskiah demonstrated, if such a thing is possible, a negative aptitude: each day, she seemed to know a little less about both subjects than she had the day before. Just as her harrassed mother was about to throw up her hands entirely on the prospect of a future career for her hapless child, a curious incident occurred. In typical fashion, Saskiah wandered out of her family's home one evening after supper without word to anyone, and was gone nearly all night while her family frantically scoured the city for her. In the small hours of the morning, her sister found her near the alchemy labs and led her home. Somewhere in the course of her travels, young Saskiah had discovered a fat green frog that now insisted on following the girls home, and immediately took up residence in Saskiah's room. When asked about the frog by her family, she informed them all quite seriously that it was not a frog in the least, but a toad, species Toadus Erroneous, and in fact was not properly even a toad but a very old gnome, named Mr. Hatmuddle. After some dark mutterings from Iridiah and many significant eyerolling glances and shruggings between her parents, the family agreed that Saskiah could keep her new pet; perhaps it would teach her some responsibility.
Whether the frog -- pardon me, toad -- did in fact teach her responsibility is not clear. What is clear is that someone certainly began teaching her something, for in very short order it became apparent that Saskiah had an aptitude for sorceries of various kinds. (It became apparent when various objects in Saskiah's room were discovered by her mother to have been quite badly scorched, and subsequently mysteriously encased in ice, perhaps as a countermeasure for the scorching.)
A short while later, Iridiah and her father had a serious falling-out, and Iridiah left home. Saskiah was heartbroken and did not leave her room at all for some time after her sister's departure. However, various musty tomes and encyclopaedic treatises from the family library began to disappear in the night and were later discovered stacked under Saskiah's bed, along with a great number of extremely stale toast crusts. When the tear-stained girl finally emerged after several weeks, her powers as a mage seemed to have expanded quite formidably -- during an argument with her father about Iridiah's absence, she inadvertently sheeped him, much to the startlement of both parties -- and she had begun learning on her own the rudiments of enchanting. Linnea breathed a sigh of relief for Saskiah's future and promptly hired a mage-tutor.
Life carried on in this vein in the Pebblekeep-Tinkerbotham home for many years. Outside in the city, dark political mutterings stirred among the friends and supporters of Sicco Thermaplugg, and Linnea and her colleagues began to make troubling discoveries at several of their deeper archaeological sites, but none of these things reached little Saskiah, studying contentedly at home with her tutor Fitz Glitterbang and her beloved Mr. Hatmuddle.
At last, late one night, Saskiah was shaken awake by her parents in the grey hours before dawn and bundled into her warmest clothes. Her mother told her that they had decided it was time to further her education, and so she was being sent to Kharanos to meet Iridiah, who would take her to study in the Mystic Ward of Ironforge. Thrilled at the prospect of a reunion with her sister and giddy at the thought of a journey to the dwarven capital, Saskiah asked no questions as her mother pressed a letter into her hands and explained that she was to mail it once she was safe in Kharanos. Her father gave her a purse of money and a kiss on the forehead, and then her parents hustled her urgently into the upper tunnels of the city and out into the night air of Dun Morogh. They left her at the exit to the city, alone in the snowy outside world with only Mr. Hatmuddle and the echoes of their teary goodbyes for company. She set off for Kharanos and the Thunderbrew Inn.
Aided by a few kindly Dun Morogh Mountaineers (and, according to her account, Mr. Hatmuddle), it took Saskiah only a week to make the four-hour journey to Kharanos. Once she had arrived, she mailed her mother's letter, and settled down at the inn to wait for her sister.