Tammini Silverspark

Archmage Tammini Silverspark is a gnome arcanist and Archmage of the Magus Senate of Dalaran. She is best known as a scholar of mana and other magical power sources, though her eccentric nature and boundless intellect means that her studies extend to nearly all fields and to every corner of Azeroth.

Appearance
Tammini radiates intense energy, both magical and otherwise. Her body, clad in shimmering metallic robes, hums with energy,  and her every movement looks as though it might just be her last. When she blinks, her eyes clamp shut, then snap wide open; when she turns, she practically spins; and when she talks, it is a stream of pure, unrestrained thought.

Her eyes, in typical gnomish fashion, seem unnaturally large. This is magnified to almost absurd proportions by a pair of spectacles that continuously slip down her button nose. Her eyes are a vibrant shade of blue, glinting with curiosity and a hint of wisdom. Her face is pale and vaguely heart-shaped. As with her fellow gnomes, her head is seemingly ill-proportioned, far too big for her body. Her shocks of silvery, shoulder-length hair have been cut short, flying off in all directions, unrestrained and untamed.

She is usually seen in a long robe, perhaps slightly too long for her her small frame. Her typical garb is an outlandish assortment of silky cloth and shimmering mana-infused metals. She has around her head a strange circlet that shoots upwards and crackles with arcane energy, and a pair of shoulderpads that crackle with contained magic. The whole ensemble gives her the appearance of a wobbly lightning rod. She is often found with a large tome under her arm, or her metallic staff in hand, topped by a glowing purplish crystal fashioned to trap and release mana particles.

Personality
Tammini's expansive mind is constantly two-steps ahead of herself, a fact made manifest by her unusual speech patterns, in which 'superfluous' words are excised in favour of speed of delivery. At best, this makes her brilliant, able to grasp complexities and conundrums. At worst,  she stumbles over her own feet.

She is often condemned as absent-minded, and there is much to the complaint. But the gnome can actually be quite rigorous when she applies herself to a given topic, bordering on obsessive. However, she is just as likely to live up to her reputation, flitting from one subject to another with remarkable speed.

Tammini is not empathetic: she prefers the mysteries of the arcane to what she sees as trivial, superfluous human interactions, all of which lead to complication upon complication. The search for knowledge is fixed; all else is confusing and dangerously distracting. This is perhaps ironic given her own propensity for constant movement.

Though not emphathetic, Tammini has a strong set of ethical principles stemming from her rationality. This often appears as a studious concern for rules and institutions, which she sees as the social manifestations of morality.

History
Tammini's first childhood memories are of the Violet Citadel of Dalaran, licked with flame, the night filled with the  roars of dragons and orcs, and the cries of Dalaran's defenders. Her parents, a pair of prosperous gnomish artisans, were killed during that attack – the Siege of Dalaran – in midst of the ferocious Second War. She was young, then, too young to remember much of her parents, or what her life had been like before.

After the battle, Tammini was found amidst the rubble. No one knew quite what to do with her, until a pragmatic Kirin Tor archmage, looking at the grim rolls of slain wizards, proposed that some of the orphans be trained as in the arcane arts to one day replace the fallen. Most of her childhood was thus spent learning her assigned craft under the close tutelage of the more senior members of the Kirin Tor. Compared to many lives, it was a blissful existence, and Tammini came to love the magic she controlled.

But history has a way of repeating itself,  Just as the gnome was blossoming into full magehood within the Kirin Tor (by virtue of her overactive mind a youthful energy), disaster struck once more. This time, it came in the form of the undead Scourge under the traitor Arthas. When the unliving hordes breached the archmages' shield, the young gnome fled for Stormwind along with many of those lucky enough to escape. By the time she learned that the Kirin Tor still survived, it was too late to return: the mages had sealed themselves inside the ruins of Dalaran to rebuild their city.

Tammini remained in Stormwind as an itinerant mage, pursuing a successful career as a scholar, albeit an eccentric one, even as mages go. But her failure to defend her home gnawed at her pride. After time spent with an organization known as the Blood of Arathor attempting to reclaim Lordaeron (and Dalaran's original site – her most pressing concern), she rejoined the Kirin Tor.



She arrived in Dalaran prior to the corruption of the Magus Senate's Chancellor, Damon Halliwell. When battle-lines were drawn, she fought alongside the Senate's Councillors and other members to overthrow the Chancellor and restore proper order. At Chancellor Halliwell's trial, she argued that, despite his recklessness, harsh punishment would only serve to stiffle magical research for fear of punishment should it go awry.

Since then, Tammini has been an active voice at the Magus Senate's sessions, and led an expedition to the defunct Manaforge Ultris to harvest magical energies directly from the rifts there. At present, she is conducting experiments into ley-line creation through the retention of loose mana-motes in the air, and into the possibilities for arcane power provided by the harvesting of elementals for their base components.

Skills
Tammini's aptitude with magic extends to all schools, as befitting an archmage of Dalaran. Her specialties, however, are evocation, abjuration, and conjuration. She sees these as the purest of disciplines, because they tap directly into the underlying magical features of the cosmos. In this vein, she tends to disdain elementalism as primitive, preferring to harness and wield unfiltered arcane energies in her spells.

Beyond her magic, Tammini is a scholar almost without peer. She has studied and written on numerous subjects, and often pursues the obscure and pedantic in all fields.