The Riven Lands

An elegant Tiefling woman whose small horns are branded with academic symbols burned into her flesh during her expulsion ceremony. Her throat bears puckered scars where her tongue was partially severed. She wears academic robes bearing fake university insignia that change depending on which institution she's currently targeting for revenge. Her red eyes burn with the fury of someone who has seen the true cost of academic advancement, and her damaged voice carries the authority of a witness to systematic murder.

Intellectually brilliant but consumed by nihilistic rage toward educational systems that treat human lives as acceptable research expenses. Her bitterness runs deeper than professional rivalry - she's witnessed firsthand how academic respectability conceals systematic torture and murder. Takes sadistic satisfaction in destroying institutional credibility by selling fraudulent degrees to the children of her former tormentors, watching them fail spectacularly in positions they didn't earn. Views legitimate scholars as willing accomplices to atrocities who deserve whatever suffering she can inflict.

Professor Silvia Thornweaver was once a genuinely brilliant researcher whose groundbreaking theories about necromantic applications of academic knowledge were stolen by senior faculty. These faculty members tortured her research subjects, children, to death in their cruel experiments. When Silvia protested the murder of these children, she was expelled for "academic misconduct" and had her tongue partially cut out to silence her from spreading "lies" about the university's horrific research methods. Her stolen research was weaponized to create mass destruction that killed thousands, while she was left with scarred vocal cords and a burning hatred for academic institutions that trade human suffering for knowledge.