To the best of my knowledge, it only takes 8 hours and a valid ritual book to master a ritual. It doesn't have to be copied into your personal book. To cast a ritual, you can use any ritual book containing that ritual. Again, it doesn't have to be your personal book.
Scary, purely mechanically inclined, optimisation advice starts here.
I'm so in, if possible.
Does that mean you'd like to be in for this coming session, or would you still need to wait a few weeks for exams? Either way, it's good to have more submissions. The forest in the background sounds too passive to be the Thornvine. That puts it somewhere in the great bin of "To be created, with player input." As for the creature(s), I've got three broad ideas. 1, it could have been a group of humanoids investigating the forest. 2, it might have been an elemental formed by the energy of a nearby portal. 3, perhaps some powerful creature(s) wandered through a portal connected to a vastly different plane. You can take your pick or let me know that you don't mind the details.
Also, thanks a ton for the list of current character submissions. That helps.
Level_8_Mudcrab, I've got an updated character builder, so even though I don't own a copy of Arcane power I have the relevant information on Focusing Spellfury and Tearing Claws. I think you haven't chosen your resistance yet, but everything else checks out. Glad to have your submission.
Sorry about the delay, I'm having trouble coming up with a character I like. Seems I'm more partial to Feylocks than I thought.
That's ok. It's a soft deadline. But a late submission will adversely affect your chances of selection, the degree to which I can tie your character into possible events, and how finished your Maptool token will be.
Virex, that should work. Although there's one thing in your background that isn't likely in this setting. "He also pisses off the local clergy by opposing their practice of resurecting people," Resurrection doesn't happen all that often (or ever) in backwater villages. Perhaps we could amend that to be "vocally opposing the theory (dream, hope?) of resurrecting people?"