Tifor the Tall

Early life

Tifor the Tall is a human wizard, born in 872 LC as Cheo Asudef, in the Zhai city Lloridan. Amidst the magic of that city, he developed a knack for music, but also spell-casting. His skills were so promising he was allowed to work as an apprentice with Hesmondon, who was developing chronomancy as a new field.   Chronomancy excited Cheo, who worked with Hesmondon to study its theoretical basis and perform basic experiments. His main interest was displacing living creatures across time and he inferred the existence of spatio-temporal elasticity, which he manipulated for his spell Time Tourism. Working from philosophical principles of causation and technology, Hesmondon and Cheo aimed to master magic that could help sabotage Labarean machinery.   Their work was tragically interrupted when in 903, the Labarean Empire invaded Zhai and besieged Lloridan. Part of the city was occupied, while fierce resistance kept going in other parts, including in the Sage District where Cheo and Hesmondon lived. Cheo was urged by his mentor to flee towards the Kingdom of Laeryll to continue the work. While seeking out a way to be smuggled out of the city, Cheo came into contact with a member of The Shekekar, who was willing to help him in return for specific arcane knowledge from Hesmondon.   Cheo said he would consider the deal and then started using chronomantic and divination spells to get a better idea of who he was dealing with. He uncovered that the agent had expressed happiness at the advent of the war in early 903 and that seven years earlier he had met with Rondo Buckleflap, the Labarean captain who had intercepted the magic item shipment in 902 LC that was used as a casus belli to march onto Zhai. Cheo realized the Shekekar may be in cahoots with the Labareans and decided to trick them: he took the documents from Hesmondon and cast a spell glyph triggering his newly developed Age Material on them. Then, he traded the documents for an escort out of the city.   The plan worked and Cheo escaped from Zhai, from where he traveled to Qosid (he considered Dathyll to be too obvious a destination). After some wandering he settled in an old abandoned tower in Oltumur where he took on the identity of Tifor. Using his time traveling spell, he created the perfect alibi for a fugitive: he had been living there all along.    

Life in Oltumur

Oltumur was a boring place compared to Lloridan, but under his new name Tifor, Cheo traveled to all the great parties that local wood elves still remember. In between these parties, he started working on recovering the knowledge he could not take from his study in Zhai - he did this by traveling back across space and time and persuading his old self to come visit regularly to copy old spells and manuscripts.   Tifor also set out to host a party himself and he had a great idea: he would be teaching himself to play a lot of different instruments and then he would give a concert featuring his temporal copies on a single stage, to which he would proceed to have invited the whole town.   When Tifor had technically only been living in Oltumur for nine months, he already shared a lot of memories with its residents. He became intrigued by the stories of the 'crazy storm', a rare event that brings a storm to Lake Olt to leave residents of Oltumur murderous and crazy. Tifor traveled to the various days on which a 'crazy storm' hit the city and procured small mysterious tadpoles from beachside pools. His brought some back to his time and now keeps them in a Time Jar for study -- having recognized them from a book on mind flayers that he bought from his neighbour Torak Arad. The book, titled Psychotaxis: The Monstrous Biology of Illithid was written by the high elf scholar Istariel Jayler.