Maris Voss

Level 1 Human Bard (College of Eloquence)

STR
9 (-1)
DEX
15 (+2)
CON
13 (+1)
INT
14 (+2)
WIS
11
CHA
16 (+3)

Defense

Armor Class 13 (Leather Armor)
Hit Points 9 (1d8 +1)
Speed 30 ft.

Proficiencies & Skills

Saving Throws Dexterity, Charisma
Skills Deception +5, Acrobatics +4, Persuasion +5, Performance +5

Character Information

Maris Voss is a performer and negotiator who lives on the edge of law and myth. Her voice is a currency she borrows and borrows back, shaping contracts and power with the same ease with which she hums a tune. Her stage is the ocean, her audience the tide, and her instrument a set of borrowed cantrips that she can host on loan to others for a price. Her signature spell, Tidal Stage, is a watery arena that can heal, harm, or enthrall depending on how well the act is received. The crowd governs the clauses she can add or remove, making every performance a political act and every page of a contract a potential trap for them to exploit. Her past is a tangle of chants, loopholes, and whispered bargains with patrons who know the price of power. Her lifelong quest is to reclaim her chorus from a cathedral sunk upside-down in a sunken bay, a place where echoes are tethered to memory and power. The audience’s voice matters to her as a living thing, a partner in a dance of words that could either set her free or bind her forever. Underneath the flourish and bravado lies a shiver of fear—what happens if the voices she borrows become the only voice she can hear?

Character Background

Maris grew up on a quiet reef where ships passed like gulls overhead. The sea was both the map and the court for her early life; she learned to read the currents as if they were a legal text, to hunt for loopholes in language as one might search for treasure. Her family belongs to a tradition of voice traders, a shadow economy of the sea that binds people through spoken terms rather than gold. When she was old enough to bargain for herself, she found a way to parlay the power of a single voice into power for herself and others by borrowing it, then selling it back in exchange for spells, boons, and protection. She crafted a system around it: Contract Slots that hold borrowed cantrips or features, and a Voice Die that amplifies a spell or imposes silence. The system keeps her afloat in dangerous waters where legal hounds and sea-lords circle like sharks. She also discovered a family secret: the chorus which once belonged to her lineage has hidden themselves in a cathedral under the water, upside-down and waiting for someone to bring them home. Her plan is to reclaim this chorus and to use the recovered voice to improve her own power and influence, while also offering boons to those who support her on this path. The more power she wields, the more she sprinkles favors across ports and courts, a theatre of manipulation that is both exhilarating and terrifying to her. Her journey is not only about power, but about identity, voice, and the price of keeping a chorus alive in a world where every phrase has consequences.

Unresolved Plots

  • The cathedral upside-down remains a labyrinth that shifts when tides change, and a chorus fragment hides in its corridors.
  • A rival negotiator claims the audience is rigging the very terms of the contracts Maris signs; she must uncover the crowd’s manipulation.
  • Some listeners claim a forbidden chorus is listening from beyond the reef, granting impossible responses to certain questions.
  • A ledger of past deals surfaces in a tavern, showing voices that have been traded away and never returned.
  • A storm approaches that could erase all memory of the chorus unless she acts quickly.

Secrets

  • Maris once borrowed a voice from a child, a choice that haunts her when she cannot sleep.
  • The upside-down cathedral is not accidental; it is a trap laid by a rival who wants to exploit the chorus’s power.
  • She secretly fears that reclaiming the chorus will sever a living human connection that keeps her from becoming a true monster.

Fears

  • Losing her own voice forever in a contract
  • The chorus being used to enthrall an entire city against her will
  • The sea swallowing all contracts she has signed and leaving her powerless

Aspirations

  • Restore her chorus to its full voice and reclaim her heritage
  • Master the art of loopholes so that every contract can be a performance piece
  • Become a steward of voices who can save or doom with a word

QUEST -- Reclaim the Chorus from the Upside-Down Cathedral

Maris’s most cherished ambition is to reclaim the chorus she once belonged to, a chorus that was ripped from her when a cathedral sunk to the ocean floor and turned upside-down. The cathedral’s halls are now a labyrinth of coral arches and seawater corridors where the drowned choir’s voices linger like bubbles that never escape. To recover the chorus, Maris must navigate the wreck’s treacherous acoustics, negotiate with ancient sea-sorcerers who guard the choir’s memories, and confront the blind belief that power lies only in possession of voice. The stakes are deeply personal: reclaiming the chorus would restore a core part of her identity, grant her access to powerful voice-based boons, and finally allow her to perform without siphoning others’ voices. The quest will demand cunning, negotiation, and a willingness to negotiate with beings who measure worth in contracts and sighs rather than gold. The rewards include the return of a portion of her true self, a new Contract Slot, and the ability to channel the chorus into dramatic, world-shaking performances.

Current Stage

Stage 1: Hear the Cathedral’s song and locate the upside-down spire that houses the chorus. Choices: (a) Seek a hidden conduit to the choir through a legalistic ritual that could grant a temporary boon; (b) Demand the cathedral’s current owner (a sea-court ward) to return the chorus through a binding contract that may bind her further.

Choice

Accept the conduit ritual and risk boons with unknown terms.

If she accepts, she gains a temporary 'Voice Die' amplification for a single spell but binds herself to a new, uncertain clause she must reveal later.
Alternative

Dare the ward’s binding contract to retrieve the chorus without rituals.

She wins access to the spine of the cathedral and discovers a rift in the memory of the choir that can be coaxed open.
Mechanical Rewards
  • One Contract Slot (permanent)
  • Voice Die affinity increases - maybe grants a small boost to spell amplification
Narrative Rewards
  • The choir’s memory is partially restored to her, creating a tangible sense of self.”
  • The cathedral’s tides whisper her name, inviting more contracts and stakeholders to hear her voice

QUEST -- Loose Ends and Loud Demands: The Audience Controls the Clauses

Maris discovers a sealed tome in a tavern that describes how crowds can influence the terms of contracts by shouting down the clauses that bind them. She sees an opportunity to turn her strength—audience participation—into real boons. This quest tests her ability to craft loopholes that grant benefits without breaking the crowd’s trust. Her success would mean a new path into the city’s law and performance circuits, where success rests on clever wording, not force. It also brings risk: the more she relies on the audience, the more her own voice risks being diluted or enslaved by the crowd’s will.

Current Stage

Stage 1: The tome’s pages demand a public reading where the audience can propose clauses. Choices: (a) Let the crowd vote on a clause that grants you a boon but binds you to a strict rule; (b) Refuse and preserve autonomy but forgo a potential boon.

Choice

Let the crowd vote

The crowd grants a boon but imposes a rule you must follow, such as never breaking a pact without 24 hours’ notice.
Alternative

Refuse the clause

You preserve autonomy but lose a potential grant of power for the time being.
Mechanical Rewards
  • Audience-chosen boon (limited-use)
  • Potential future contract loophole catalyst
Narrative Rewards
  • The public’s trust grows but so does the risk of coercion in your deals.

QUEST -- Chorus Within a Shell: The Sea-Choir’s Echo

Maris works with the cathedral’s memory to locate a separate chorus bound in a marine-shell. The shell is a resonator that, when cracked, could restore a voice to the original chorus or shatter it forever. The risk is that the shell’s echo can be coercive and dangerous, mutating hearing into compulsion. The goal is to return the voice while preserving the sanctity of the original chorus, to avoid decimating the voices of others who rely on that chorus for a living.

Current Stage

Stage 1: Locate the shell chamber deep within the cathedral’s hull and endure the echo’s pulls. Choices: (a) Use a borrowed Voice Die to stabilize the echo at your own expense; (b) Resist the echo and risk losing the shell’s resonance.

Choice

Stabilize the echo

You stabilize the echo, but the shell binds itself to you as a focus of the chorus’ power.
Alternative

Resist the echo

The echo slips through your fingers; you must seek other means to recover the chorus.
Mechanical Rewards
  • Echo-bound resource for Tidal Stage
  • Temporary increase to Voice Die pool
Narrative Rewards
  • The shell’s echo becomes a reminder of the chorus’s lost power.

Major Decision

Context

Decision 1: Accept a powerful but opaque contract that can empower her temporarily, but binds her to the contract’s terms. If she accepts, she gains access to a new Voice Die that can amplify spells or silence opponents; however, she may become dependent on others’ voices to fuel the stage.

Choice Made

Accept the contract with a hidden clause.

Impact

Her rating as a performer doubles, but her autonomy weakens as she becomes increasingly bound to the terms she signs.

Major Decision

Context

Decision 2: Choose to join a faction that values the art of performance and contract law or stay independent and rely only on intimate bargains with individuals.

Choice Made

Join the Tidewrights Guild or remain independent.

Impact

Guild membership grants access to patrons, boons, and title but draws attention from rival powers.

Major Decision

Context

Decision 3: Decide whether to break a previously договор contract to reclaim her chorus and gain the power she desires, even if it risks her reputation and safety.

Choice Made

Break the contract.

Impact

Tradeoffs between personal risk and the reward of regaining a long-lost power.

Transformative Moment

Trigger

First time using Voice Die to amplify a spell in public

Transformation

She tastes the power of borrowed voices and realizes she can change outcomes with a single spell and a single clause.

Mechanical Changes

Voice Die

+1 Contract Slot (permanently)

Her mastery of the thread of contracts grows.

Transformative Moment

Trigger

First time she uses Tidal Stage to enthrall the crowd and heal allies

Transformation

She embraces a more performative approach to power and sees her abilities as a living, shifting performance.

Mechanical Changes

Tidal Stage

Engloba healing or harm with performance quality

Her spell’s reception increases its power.

Transformative Moment

Trigger

Breaks a contract to reclaim her chorus

Transformation

Her voice fractures and multiplies into multiple echoes that grant greater power, but at a price; she becomes more dangerous and unpredictable.

Mechanical Changes

Voice Die

Shatter into Thunder damage when deal is broken

The deal’s broken in a devastating way.

Ally:
Lira Shadowfin

Relationship Mentor and patron
Influence 5/10
Loyalty 70/10

Shared History

Lira, a veteran merrow bargainer, took Maris under her fin when she was a fledgling dealer of words. Lira taught her to read the smallest words in a contract and to sense when a clause was meant to mislead. Their early years together were spent in smoky, flooded libraries beneath the waves where Lira challenged Maris to negotiate with the sea itself. Lira’s encouragement remains the backbone of Maris’s approach, but a complicated history remains: Maris once borrowed Lira’s voice to win a case, and Lira has never fully forgiven that act.

Potential Breaking Points

  • Lira could reveal the terms of the most dangerous contract Maris ever signed, causing a crisis of trust
  • Lira could demand repayment in a way that could end Maris’s career if Maris refuses

Enemy:
Captain Calderiq, the Dredge Marshal

Threat Level 7/10
Conflict Type Rival Bargainer

Personal Stakes

Calderiq seeks to control all contracts that cross the sea lanes, including Maris’s voice-empowerment, to secure his own expansion.

Possible Resolutions

  • Strike a new bargain in which Calderiq’s power is reduced
  • Forge an alliance with other factions to contain Calderiq’s influence

Faction: The Tidewrights Guild

Standing 7/10
Influence Strong in coastal markets and law courts, they shape policy for sea-trade contracts.

Obligations

  • Provide patronage for performances that align with guild interests
  • Maintain a minimum number of voices under contract to ensure guild revenue

Benefits

  • Access to guild-funded venues
  • Legal protection against rogue clauses and unpredictable buyers

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