Tobol Vlarostk

Laboratory Administrator at the Great School of Magic

Alchemist of the Second Circle

AC 1014

"Yes, I know I could have used a living specimen. But it wouldn't have been the same. This is art, my dear! "

Appearance

Tobol is an lean, balding man in his sixties, with water blue eyes and silvery white hair. He is quite fit, for a man of his sedentary habits. His clothes are always reasonably clean and well cut, but they are hopelessly out of fashion, as Tobol stubbornly refuses his tailor's Suggestions to update them, and always requires his new suit to be identical to his old ones.

Tobol suffers from both nearsightedness and farsightedness, and uses thin enchanted spectacles mounted in gold to counter the problem. He always has a scent of alchemical substances, especially embalming fluids, and the skin on his finger is discolored by the excessive use of mild acids.

Background

Tobol Vlarostk hails from the village of Estoniarsk, in the Free Province of Tchernovodsk. His father, Viorel Vlarostk, had amassed a moderate amount of wealth through his work as a merchant, specializing in the horse trade, but he was a mundaner, as was Tobol's elder brother, Gheorghe. Tobol's affinity for magic was discovered at an early age, by the Master of Necromancy of the time, who was touring the province in one of the periodic campaigns promoted by the Great School of Magic.

Though Viorel was happy to know that Tobol had some magic potential, he did not divert all his attention to his arcaner son, like many Glantrian families would do in the same situation. Viorel instead decided that, since the education at the Great School was very expensive but would give Tobol the means to acquire his own wealth, Tobol would receive no more money from the family besides his tuition, and Gheorghe would inherit Viorel's business and all family possessions.

At the Great School, Tobol was quite a successful student, although his career path was quite uncommon. While many poor Boldavian students sought a future in the Glantrian bureaucracy or the Grand Army (usually to earn money and to evade the possibility of returning to their bleak homeland!), Tobol's interests lay in more academic matters such as in animal lore, monster lore, and (as expected of a Boldavian!) necromancy.

The Master of Necromancy, having pondered on Tobol's uncommon tastes, decided that he would do a perfect master of undead master, being skilled in anatomy and the forces of life and death. Tobol was being groomed by the Master of Necromancy to be a necromancer specialist, and was already raise and control advanced forms of undead beings. But it was during his studies of anatomy that Tobol discovered his affinity for alchemical preparations. He was less interested in the Master's lessons than in the work of the laboratory, where he treated corpses with alchemical substances to prepare them for dissection and other procedures.

Tobol started spending most—if not all—of his spare time in the laboratory, helping the wizards and apprentices who worked there and conducting a few experiments of his own. After a couple years, he was inducted in the Secret Craft of Alchemy by one of the laboratory assistants whom he had befriended, even though most of the others Alchemists frowned at the idea of admitting a Boldavian to the Craft.

In the end, Tobol completed his studies with the Master of Necromancy, but not adequate enough to be a true specialist in death magic. With little interest for wealth, and even lesser desire to leave the Great School, Tobol applied for a position at the Great School's laboratory, which he obtained through his connections with the Alchemists. From that point, he slowly attained higher positions in the faculty of the Great School, until he became the Laboratory Administrator when his predecessor, Thierry-Marie de Forêt, died in a lab accident nearly ten years ago.

Personality & Quirks

Tobol Vlarostk is a quiet and reserved man, who is exceedingly shy when confronted by authority figures—which, in the Great School of Magic, means a majority of the denizens.

He is not one whose friendship is won easily, but when he calls someone a friend, Tobol will not stab him in the back—which in Glantri is a sign of great moral fiber. Actually, Tobol would go out of his way to help a friend, if he was not already convinced that his intervention would be useless. Unfortunately, in the few occasions when Tobol could really be of help, he let himself be overcome by his complexes of inferiority, and is more likely to lock himself up in his rooms, mourning his supposed inability to influence the events.

Tobol spends most of his time working on the paperwork needed to keep the laboratories in the Great School of Magic running. His spare time he devotes to his little hobby: creating stuffed animals moved by animated skeletons. While Tobol does use the animate dead spells, he refrains from animating corpses of unwilling subjects. He normally animates only animal skeletons and only uses humanoid or primate skeletons to create servants of human form.

Once a year, Tobol manages to create a large composition, featuring a number of these automatons, instructed to play scenes of natural life. His best recorded exploit was when a group of students came back from a journey in the southern sea, bringing back the remains of three enormous monster-lizards, which were skillfully restored and animated by Tobol, despite the great damage incurred in their capture and transport.

Master Tobol is, of course, an amazingly skilled taxidermist, but he is also knowledgeable on embalming and other ways of preserving bodies. Combined with his studies in necromancy, this makes him the greatest Glantrian expert in the creation and properties of mummies, lightning zombies and flesh golems.

Web of Intrigue

Tobol has few close friends. Some of them are fellow laboratory caretakers. Others are Boldavian scholars. The most prominent of these is Bertok Garn, the current Master of Necromancy, who was Tobol's roommate when they were both students. His most experienced assistant, the Aalbanese Hermann Weiss (Transmuter9/Alchemist1, LN), is also one of his best friends.

On the other hand, at the Great School, there are plenty of people Master Tobol does not like. First of all, he dislikes all the wizards who tamper with the life of sentient creatures, and he would like to ban the experiments on dwarves and halflings.

As a necromancer who does not like to animate dead people, he is not very popular among his fellow Boldavians, especially the nobles. However, he is considered a reliable source of information and a valuable ally by many hunters of the undead—ranking among other notable experts, such as Piotr-Grygory Timenko, Baron of Kutchevski, and Youri Ivanov, Baron of Palatinsk. Master Tobol in fact has very high regard for Lord Piotr-Grygory and would often refer undead hunters to the Baron of Kutchevski if his own knowledge in wanting.

The third kind of people Tobol does not appreciate is the showy kind—people like the Mistress of Illusions, LaVeron Chonere, or the Princess of Belcadiz, Doña Carnelia de Belcadiz. The Princess is also a constant pain in the neck for her continuous requests for her potion materials and ingredients—items which can politely described as "weird," though Tobol often thinks that "disgusting" might be nearer to the truth.

Style of Magic & Combat

Statistics: 10th-level mage, Alchemist of the 2nd Circle; Str 8, Int 16, Wis 13, Dex 10, Con 12, Cha 11; AL LG.

Languages: Traladaran (Boldavian dialect), Thyatian (Glantrian dialect).

Weapon Proficiencies: knife, dagger, stiletto.

Skills: alchemy, bureaucracy, reading/writing, spellcraft, sage knowledge (taxidermy, zoology), undead lore.

Master Tobol was never one for theoretical studies of magic and thaumaturgy, preferring the more practical and hands-on procedures of laboratory work. He has a fairly complete knowledge of necromancy, which he supplements with a large, though not systematic, collection of spells of transmutation and summoning. A working knowledge of the disciplines of abjuration and divination allows him to be effective in detecting and containing laboratory accidents.

Tobol own creations revolve around the idea of making more complex versions of the standard walking dead, combining necromantic magic with techniques of embalming and taxidermy. These spells he uses in his shows, giving better coordination and reaction abilities to the mindless skeletons.

"You mean, that filthy little lab rat is someone important around here? I actually thought he was some zombie janitor or something..."

(LaVeron Chonere, Mistress of Illusion)

References: History of the Secret Craft of Alchemy

Author: Giampaolo Agosta