Karun

Slavery has been a thing in all of Golarion, especially Cheliax, for centuries.  This is nothing new.  This is known.  Halflings make up a sizable majority of those slaves, and their existence in the oft-called Empire of Devils is a tortured one, fraught with danger and frequently cut short.  This, too, is nothing new.  This, too, is known.

There were those, halfling slaves and otherwise--sometimes simply sympathizers--who sought to change that.  This desire for freedom gave rise to the so-called Bellflower Network, offering hope to those who wanted to live free without the yoke of tyranny.  Others, like Yamyra, did not cling to hope.

She was a simple halfling woman who had been born into slavery and had no designs on a life she could not imagine.  Instead, she kept to herself, doing the good work of a simple existence as best she could in a very complicated place.  She offered prayers for the dead and the living, welcoming life into the unwelcome damnation that plagued her and all those like her as a midwife.

Those who owned her did nothing to stop her efforts, recognizing that each new birth would replace those no longer fit to work... those no longer fit to live.  She went too far, though, when she tried to help one of the rebels, placing herself in harm's way.  Like her charge, Yamyra died.

The world and those in it forgot about Yamyra.  There are none, living or dead, who would recall a name of so little import.  So small a thing in the grand scheme of things, but humanity's awareness of the grand scheme of things is woefully short-sighted.  The psychopomps, however, are not so limited in understanding.

Children were born.  They grew old.  They died.  The centuries marched forth, and in time, that which had been Yamyra was sent back.  Yamyra was no more, but what had been Yamyra was now a simply-garbed eight-year-old halfling that was hard to describe as fully boy or girl.  Karun, as they call themselves, was condemned to suffer the same fate as their previous life, born into the slavery that was so commonplace in Cheliax.

This time, however, something was different.  This time, something changed.  Karun grew up in Kintargo, the capital of Ravounel, and lived to see the Glorious Reclamation.  Karun was free.  They were still a "slip" in a world that saw them as little more than forced labor, destined to live a life where they needed papers to prove their freedom, but they had a chance--at the life Yamyra never did.  Some part of them, however, still clung to just enough of that long-forgotten soul to cry at loss and smile at a newborn's scent.

Karun was not Yamyra, but her devotion to the Dawnflower persisted even through death.  The strange connection to the cycle of Karun's life and Yamyra's death granted this new creature that was both and neither simultaneously a peculiar affinity to the magics tied to that cycle.  Karun could warm like the Healing Flame or chill like the Lady of Graves.

Scarcely over three feet tall and weighing little more than two and one-half stones, Karun might be mistaken for any other halfling, were it not for the pale ash-gray skin that clashes against their dark hair and inhumanly white eyes that promise both life and lifelessness in equal measure.  The brand of the house to which they were forced to serve--an infernal thing not wholly unlike a summoning circle--was tattooed on the left side of their face when they were still but a child.  It yet covers a large portion of their cheek to this day, though Karun does nothing to hide it.  They dress simply in dark clothes, eschewing all but the most rudimentary of arms and armor in favor of spells or, better still, avoidance.