Morrow Winspir

Background The daughter of a well-to-do trading merchant of the frontier town Horvath, Morrow Winspir grew up in a position of protection -- her family had the resources and where-withal to keep their blind daughter safe and out of the streets.

Nevertheless, Morrow grew up with a temper and insisted on helping herself whenever she could. Unable to do bookkeeping or inventory, she found herself learning the stables, and as she was growing up learned how to take care of the horses used to pull her father's caravans.

By the time she had come of age, she was the stable master for Winspir Goods. Ever insistent, she was resolute in attaining her next goal -- actually accompanying a caravan on the road. Her father and mother, ever cautious, forbade young the Morrow.

But she knew her father, and she knew that persistence would one day take her out of the stable, out of even Horvath. And finally, her father acquiesced.

Morrow joined a caravan to Stern, a caravan on which she was head stable master and her father himself oversaw. The journey was incredible. In her twenty-odd years of life, she had never been out in the country. And though she couldn't see the stars the teamsters told tales about, she could hear the sounds of the night and the crackling of an open fire -- again, something she had never been allowed to encounter in the house.

The caravan was only a several days out when tragedy struck. At first Morrow heard shouts, then the whiz-thunk of arrows striking the carts, and the screams when they hit their mark. The sounds of men shouting, metal striking metal, more shouting... and an increasing quiet.

Then breathless laughter. The bandits surrounded the poor girl who still sat on the lead wagon. In a hysteria, tears rolled down Morrow's face, as she listened to their jeers. Someone spoke, and grabbed for her.

Strange words -- her hands moved in fits and turns -- fire leapt from her fingertips and seared the onlookers. Aflame and cursing, they screamed and fell back, yelling at the witch in their threatening speech. Then the sound of feet, running away. Silence.

It was seemingly an old man who came next to the woman, asking Morrow her name, calming her as best he could, and placing her upon a fantastic mount which Morrow never did identify.

The man took her to Kendall Keep, where he sponsored her entry and set her up in the castle's inn, seeing that the proprietors understood to take good care of the grieving woman. He then returned to the wagons, buried the bodies, and recovered what was salvageable from the caravan and brought it back to Morrow.

This Morrow learned later, for she sat in a stupor of shock and mourning. Nearly a month the ambush Morrow, able to talk some and explore a little, met the helpful man again...

He knocked on her door. She answered how she had been for the past month, almost as if by reflex, by gesturing toward the sound and enunciating a few syllables. The door swung open as if her own hand had pulled it. He came in.

And throughout that evening, he convinced young Morrow that what occurred on the road that tragic day was not her fault. And he convinced her to make an introspective study of her newfound talent, the same one that opened the door, burnt the bandits, and dwelt within her veins.

And upon querying the proprietors of the inn, she learned that no man had ever accompanied her to the Keep, than no one had put her in their charge, and that not a soul had come to visit her that day.

Strength	10 +0
Dexterity	12 +1
Constitution	14 +2	(Increased at fourth level by one)
Intelligence	14 +2
Wisdom	12 +1
Charisma	19 +4	(Increased at eighth level by one) Since Morrow was blind, I was allowed to move her highest roll up to 18.

SKILLS	Total	Ability	Ranks	Etc
Concentration (Con)	+15	+2	+13
Knowledge (Int) Arcana	+5	+2	+3
Profession (Wis) Stablehand	+9	+1	+8
Spellcraft (Int)	+5	+2	+5	-2¹
Listen (Wis)²	+11	+1	+10
Diplomacy (Cha) cross-class	+11	+4	+7
Intuit Direction (Wis)²	+11	+1	+10
Ride (Dex)	-2	+1	+1	-4³
¹ -2 penalty for not being able to see spell effects. ² These skills are considered class skills for Morrow on account of her blindness. ³ She suffers a -4 penalty to Dexterity- and Strength-based skill checks for being blind (DMG, p. 83).

COMBAT	Total	Ability	Base	Etc
Initiative	+1	+1
Melee*	+5	+0	+5
Missile^,*	+6	+1	+5
* Because of her blindness, Morrow would normally suffer a 50% miss chance, but this is reduced to 25% on account of the Blind-Fight feat. ** Morrow normally can't engage in missile combat, though she can loft grenade weapons if she has a good idea where the target is. Even with her familiar's help, she can't 'draw a bead' well enough to fire a crossbow with any accuracy.

NOTEABLE EQUIPMENT
Quarterstaff +1 melee (d6+1, x2, large)	Morrow does not like carrying edged weapons.
Bracers of Armor +4 (armor bonus)
Ring of Protection +2 (deflection bonus)
Cloak of Resistance +1 (enhancement bonus)
Stone Horse, Coursier "Dusty"

ARMOR CLASS
Base	10
Armor	4	Bracers of Armor +4
Dodge	+1	Does not count against missile attacks
Deflection	2	Ring of Protection +2
Total AC	16+1
Morrow can also add the effects of a shield spell (+7 AC).

Feats
Blind-fight	A "free" feat granted on account of Morrow's blindness.
Toughness	Race
Silent Spell	Level 1
Great Fortitude	Level 3
Improved Familiar	Level 6, Familiar gained "Celestial" template
Still Spell	Level 9

SPELLS
Cantrips (6 per day): Mending, Open/Close, Prestidigitation, Resistance, Light, Know Direction, Ghost Sound, Detect Poison, Toy	Hyper-linked spells are peculiar to our campaign.
Level I (6+1 per day): Burning Hands, Shield, Alarm, Protection from Evil, Comprehend Languages	Burning hands is what Morrow used to drive off the bandits who overtook her father's caravan.
Level II (6+1 per day): Web, Darkness, Invisibility, Resist Elements	Web is treated as a "grenade-like" spell (it rarely lands exactly where intended). Darkness and invisibility put Morrow's foes in her shoes.
Level III (6+1 per day): Dispel Magic, Haste, Summon Monster III
Level IV (5+1 per day): Charm Monster, Evard's Black Tentacles
Level V (3 per day): Bigby's Interposing Hand
Needless to say, many illusion spells are not available to Morrow. Additionally, ray spells or ones that require the caster to "aim" are nearly useless, although her familiar can help her identify foes and thus is good enough for "targeting" charm monster, for example.

The Making Of The URL of this website ends in "winspir," and so I thought I'd tell you about my favorite character of all time, Morrow Winspir, a blind sorceress.

Morrow was my first 3e D&D character. While I was fascinated by the new rules set and their possibilities, I couldn't muster much interest in "vanilla" D&D... at least not until Oriental Adventures came along. So, I decided to play something different, an idea I had been playing with a while, that of a blind (but astute) character. Thus, Morrow.

During the creation process, I started to balk however. D&D is fun, so if my character has a special challenge like blindness, am I saying being blind is fun? Could this be distasteful?

But the more I thought about it, I realized that role-playing is not only for fun but also to learn. And most of the things our characters go through we would not go through ourselves. Hence, we also learn as we role-play. And "seeing" how it would be to be without sight was something I had not really contemplated before. Morrow might not be just a vehicle for enjoyment, but one for insight as well.

I posted Morrow's story and statistics on the bulletin board run by Wizards of the Coast. Much of the resulting posts revolved around how to heal Morrow -- a lot of people thought she should not be blind.

As for game mechanics, I reasoned that since she was blind from birth, a simple remove blindness/deafness or even a heal spell wouldn't work since she never saw anyway (try to restore sight to a ochre jelly sometime).

And from the reading I've done, I know that becoming suddenly sighted is not the miracle most people think it would be, if you have been blind from birth or early childhood. In fact, only a handful of such cases have been recorded, and most of them end sadly -- the person cannot adapt, gets lost in their own house which seems suddenly so foreign, and sometimes even suicides. So, I'd not only rule out curative spells but also ones that could allow her temporary vision such as clairvoyance or scry. Morrow simply does not know how to see, even if she were suddenly granted the ability.