Winter

Name
Lady Chantrelle Winterbourne - and at 60, still mortified that her loving but not too educated mother named her after a mushroom. She avoids using her given name whenever possible, and tends to intriduce herself as Winter (informally) or Lady Winterbourne (formally).

Physical Traits
A woman of indeterminate age (the reality is 66 or so), with a youthful face but the thin, dry hair of an old woman trying very hard to not look her age. Probably quite the beauty when she was young, but her looks have deteriorated in spite of obvious, extreme and quite probably magical efforts to maintain them. She has a slight Hillsbrad accent, and the calm, authorative (though slightly cool) manner of a woman accustomed to both giving orders and fending for herself.

She wears well-tailored but inexpensive clothing and a very old wedding ring, worn smooth with time. She carries a satchel and several belt pouches at most times, containing arcane and alchemical odds and ends.

She is generally accompanied by a small Siamese cat, which prefers to sit in high places (her shoulder, lacking a better place) and stare down at people. Occasionally, she talks to it.

Race and Class
Human Mage

Occupation
Alchemist, arcanist, witch and adventurer.

Family
Parents, deceased, natural causes.

Husband, deceased, complications of an old war wound.

The Vale family, her brother's household, a Southshore merchant family continuing her parent's trade.

An estranged mercenary son, whom she rarely speaks of.

A daughter, married into a merchant family in Theramore.

Background
Some things regarding her past Winter mentions freely. She says she was born to a merchant family in the Hillsbrad region. She studied for the priesthood, was even initiated: however, she gave up that calling to marry at the age of 18, as part of her family's trade arrangements. She harbours no resentment for this. Marrying where it serves to provide for both them and their family is, in her opinion, what grateful daughters do.

The match was with an older man, the widower Lord Winterbourne - a minor Lordaeron nobleman in need of a sensible woman young enough to give him the sons his first wife didn't manage. It was no great love affair, but thirty years of marriage genuine affection and partnership grew between husband and wife. Winter had three sons, two daughters, four of whom survived to adulthood. She managed her husband's household with practical efficiency, directing her former priestly callings instead toward medicine, alchemy and hedgewitchery. The later two would eventually lead her into arcane magic, under the casual tutelage of a Quel'dorei conjurer her husband employed.

During the Second War, Winter assisted in treating the wounded and took in refugees while her husband was away fighting. He returned from the front mortally wounded, but under his wife's care survived merely crippled for another ten years before finally dying of age and complications. That left Winter a widow and their eldest son, by then a knight of the Silver Hand, lord of the estate for the next ten years. He and his younger brother eventually died in the Third War, defending Lordaeron. Winter herself refused to be evacuated further south than her native Hillsbrad, and ran one of many field hospitals dealing with evacuees and wounded.

Winter does not speak of the years immediately following the war, but there is the sense that something changed, something besides the loss of home and status that all Lordaeron nobility have in common. Finding herself without household or responsibilities for the first time in thirty-five years, Winter has since devoted her time to the magical and alchemical research she has always loved. This has involved studying alchemy in Darnassus and magic in Stormwind, volunteering medical services in whatever region she is in, and helping the Argent Dawn with their research on combatting the Plague. The later in particular has become a priority to her, and has a way of taking her to all manner of unsavoury place in search of knowledge that is, at best, suspect. When navigating particularly hazardous regions, she sometimes employs a bodyguard, a semi-permanently drunk Kal'dorei woman who answes to the name Sarama.

A staple of her research is her belief that to fix what was done with necromancy, one must first understand the black arts used to create the affliction. So far, the Dawn and the Cathedral have allowed her to pursue this angle, though under the condition of public discretion, and complete private disclosure to them. She seems to have kept up her end of the bargain, and manages her studies into necromancy and Plague magic with a great deal more discretion than many of Stormwind's warlocks manage their own demonological pursuits.

Old Gossip
Chantrelle Vale is the second Lady Winterbourne. The first was the late Lord's great love, a fragile girl who died in childbirth. It's said the Lord never got over her, and that for all the facade of the good wife, Winter secretly resented his love for a dead woman.

Winter's youthful looks and unreasonably sound physique are a result of arcane meddling on her own part, and generally viewed with greater or lesser charity depending on how favourably one regards such vain use of magic.

Those who remember gossip thirty years out of date might also remember rumors of scandal involving Winter and her magic teacher -- the sort that will always happen when an old man's wife starts spending sizeable amounts of time with a man decidedly more attractive than her husband. If there was any basis to the rumors, Winter was draconianly efficient about covering her tracks. Not even the shadow of proof ever materialised, and the man is long gone, presumably killed in the Third War.

Since Lordaeron is lost and the Winterbourne lands and estates with it, Winter's title is rather obsolete. She rarely uses it, except to level the playing field with other nobility. Should Lordaeron ever be reclaimed, true right to the Winterbourne lands and titles belongs to her estranged, youngest son.

Two of her three sons are dead. The youngest, reputedly, is making his way as a mercenary captain under a new name. He and Winter do not speak. Her youngest daughter died as a child, the elder has since married a merchant and settled with her family in Theramore.

Criminal Record
None, though occasionally her research into Plague cures leads her into murky territory. She maintains close ties with trusted members of the Church and other interested parties (such as Argent Dawn) to reassure them that she studies necromancy, she does not practice it.

Personal Notes
She is practically always accompanied by a lady's pet cat (a Siamese), which tends to stare at people near her with altogether too much interest, and comment on events with yowls, hisses or by jumping on things. A familiar, most likely. Druids particularly may be convinced it's not really a cat at all, just something magical pretending it is.

While she doesn't exactly consider her past a secret, Winter rarely draws attention to it. Unless she needs the authority of a title, she'll generally introduce herself simply as Winter (the nickname her servants gave her for her cool disposition) and pass as the adventurer she has become, not the Lady she was.

While generally calm and well-mannered, at sixty-odd Winter has also honed a tongue sharp enough to cut glass with. Those who incite her to use it tend to come through the experience understanding exactly why her household referred to their Lord's wife as Lady Winter.

In addition to scholarly pursuits, Winter has achieved fair mastery at needlepoint, household management, medicine, riding, and other passtimes suitable to noble young ladies. She's also an accomplished fencer -- which is absolutely useless in a real fight, where the purpose is to be effective, not to look dashing.

Current Status
Pursuing Plague research and discreetly seeking assistance from the Dalaran University.