Maya

Maya is an eisfuura girl living in Avalir and the daugter of Cerrit Agrupnin. As an NPC, in Exandria Unlimited: Calamity, Maya is played by Brennan Lee Mulligan.

Description
Maya is an eisfuura girl. She is described as a young teenager with awkward plumage that she is expected to eventually grow into.

Maya is slightly rebellious, drinking alcohol, breaking curfew and sneaking out to a party, but she still apparently trusts and respects her father as shown by her immediately returning home when told to. She is also bright and studious, with a particular interest in history.

She is initially stated to be 7. However, she is later stated to be 14 and described as a young teenager, and her mannerisms and behavior are more similar to that of a 14-year-old. Cerrit uses the racial mechanics of an aarakocra in Explorer's Guide to Wildemount (republished from Elemental Evil Player's Companion), in which they have significantly shorter lifespans than other peoples and mature at a very early age. The later version of aarakocra published in Monsters of the Multiverse, with different mechanics, describe their lifespans using the default "about a century" text in keeping with Wizards of the Coast removing the age trait from player races beginning with Wild Beyond the Witchlight. It is not entirely clear if her age was retconned, if the initial statement was a mistake, or if she's being treated as having a shorter lifespan.

Background
Maya lives in Avalir with her father Cerrit and her brother Kir. Her mother is a scientist who is often away from home on research trips.

Exandria Unlimited: Calamity
On the Eve of the Replenishment, Maya broke curfew to go to a party, unaware that her younger brother saw her leave and was reporting everything to their father. She went to a party hosted at the university for young sorcerers and chatted with another girl who Kir believed to be a triton due to her blue hair. Later that night, as the danger the city faced grew clear, Cerrit instructed Kir to collect his sister and take her home.

Cerrit returned home and reunited with his children, who were both unaware of the chaos and attacks occurring throughout the city. As Cerrit explained he had a gift for them that would send them to their mother, who was very excited to see them, Maya noticed Cerrit's Ring of Honor was glowing. Cerrit gave her and Kir the Runes of Recall and told them they would take them to their mother, and that he loved them very much. Cerrit then squeezed his hands, breaking the rune, sending Kir and Maya to their mother in Gwessar.

Patia Por'co, after realizing that Avalir would fall and the knowledge they've gained is useless if nobody is around to make use of it, Teleported her Orb of Power to Maya, which held within it all of her acquired knowledge.

Notable items
Orb of Power, gifted to her by Patia Por'co

Behind the scenes
Travis Willingham, the player for Cerrit, noted that the structure of Exandria Unlimited: Calamity, in which the party meets a threat within the city, differed from traditional campaigns where adventurers typically traveled to a more remote location first and minimized collateral damage. Because this campaign was taking place inside the characters' home, he felt it was necessary to have a family to make the situation more complex. He pitched Cerrit to Dungeon Master Brennan Lee Mulligan as Jor-El, specifically in wanting to play a character sent his children to safety out of their collapsing home. In relation to that, he also wanted to explore putting something above one's family, which he struggles to imagine as a new parent. Cerrit's children were developed to create a tension between Cerrit having to choose his work and his family, who is ultimately more important.

Brennan was "really glad" that without Travis have Cerrit children because he felt that otherwise the other characters would have become bystanders in the narrative. He felt that Maya and Kir grounded the story in "something real" and were lives are at stake and still matter but are powerless. He named Maya, alongside her brother Kir, among his favorite NPCs of Exandria Unlimited: Calamity. He loved playing them and described the ability to as "really special".

Appearances and mentions

 * Exandria Unlimited: Calamity

Trivia

 * After Brennan described Maya as having awkward plumage because she is a teenager, he mentioned Sunny Biscotto, Marisha Ray's teenage aarakocra character in the Pirates of Leviathan game he ran for Dimension 20. Marisha played Patia Por'co in Calamity.
 * It is unknown where in Gwessar Maya and her family lived during the Calamity, but Aabria Iyengar said that she hoped they were in the Qoniira Tetrarchy, a civilization in southern Gwessar that she created for the first Exandria Unlimited series and was added to Tal'Dorei Campaign Setting Reborn. The Qoniira are neutral and non-judgmental about sources of magic and respectful of all magics, and the civilization's capital Niirdal-Poc survived the Calamity. Furthermore, Niirdal-Poc also has a population of birdfolk, possibly eisfuura, living in it as late as 842 PD, some of whom may be descendants of the Agrupnin family.