Wraithwood
01-24-12, 02:17 AM
Name: Malevole Wraithwood
Age: 21
Race: Human, of the Steppe Tribes
Height: 5’7”
Weight: 134 lbs.
Hair Color: Pale Blonde
Eye Color: Dark Brown
Occupation: Summoning Witch
Personality:
No human being enjoys the company of Malevole Wraithwood. There is something about her which simply isn’t appropriate to the wholesome sunlight. Malevole is stoic to the point of alienation, as though the world she sees is merely an amusing trifle compared to some other unknown quantity to which she alone has access. This is not to say that Malevole is emotionless; simply that her emotions occur in subtle gradations and at strange, un-guessable promptings.
Malevole enjoys reading, if she can be said to enjoy anything. It is, to her, the purest form of gaining knowledge, which is something Malevole feels is vital for reasons she has not disclosed. Malevole also likes fear; not feeling it herself, but seeing it in others. She gets a strange thrill in the depth of her soul when viewing someone wracked with mortal terror, doubly so if she is the object of that fear.
Malevole is slow to anger, with a generally level demeanor and straight-faced, curious expression of slight interest. It takes a great deal to anger Malevole, and even in her darkest moods her manner is largely indistinguishable from her default.
Malevole Wraithwood is a monster. Evil is perhaps not the correct word, because evil’s drives are simple and predictable. Malevole would flay a person alive not for the thrill or the power, but simply because, to her inscrutable logic, it is the only course which makes sense. It is difficult to provide absolute terms describing her morality, because it seems to operate according to rules normal men and women do not know and cannot truly learn.
Appearance:
Malevole is an outwardly attractive woman, with wide, rolling hips and an ample bosom. Her face is youthful, with full lips and large eyes. This beauty seems only a veneer, however, hiding the incomprehensible geometry of her psyche. Her figure seems wasted when moved in so alien a way, and the aforementioned large eyes are also inhumanly dark. The young men of her tribe sought her with some vigor at first, but were ultimately far too disconcerted by her attitude to pursue her in any meaningful way.
Her pale blonde hair hangs to just below her shoulders, swaying unstyled and roughly-cut, hanging messily in front of her face. Her eyes are mostly chocolate-hued iris and pupil, with very little visible sclera. She walks with a quiet grace, carrying herself without pride or pretense.
She wears a thick woolen bandage wrapped about her midsection from armpit to midriff and a pair of canvas knee-length pants. A dire encounter with a caravan of dwarven tradesmen has left her with a pair of heavy iron boots, perfectly sized to her petite feet. She has made no attempt to wash away the bloodstains.
There are ritual tattoos on her face, courtesy of her family’s traditions, in the form of two pale blue lines from the center of each eye and straight down each cheek, continuing down the sides of her neck and meeting at a circle just above her sternum.
History:
Malevole Wraithwood was born to the Steppe Tribes, a nomadic people. From the moment of her birth she was an object of some trepidation; she did not babble or cry as most babies do, but watched with a stoicism which was decidedly distressing in an infant. Her parents raised her with as much affection as their culture expected, but Malevole retained this tendency to watch with her dark, silent eyes well into her childhood, as though she was waiting for something.
Malevole’s childhood would be considered lonely by most, but if she was bothered by this isolation, she did not show it. The other nomad children whispered behind her back, but their community was far too close for the usual cruelties of childhood to be inflicted on her. It was as a child that Malevole began having the dreams.
These dreams were always the same; Malevole wandered, bodiless, through an unfathomable gulf of space. Scattered throughout this void were points of light, no bigger than a pinprick, impossibly distant and yet throbbing with a potency that made even the normally implacable Malevole shiver to recall it in her waking hours. Peculiarly, the points would seem closer with each successive night’s dreaming.
This revelation totally changed the nature of the dreams; Malevole began finding herself in the orbit of her dreams’ once-distant points of light, and could see them as they were; luminous beings, shaped as beasts or men or far stranger forms, and locked in a frigid, deathly slumber. The girl became even further withdrawn from her small community. This seclusion went largely unregarded by the tribe, save for the girl's concerned parents. It remained so unregarded until the coming of the first dream beast.
One morning Malevole awoke to find that she had brought one of these creatures with her into the waking world. Any normal girl would have been delighted, or at least astonished, but Malevole simply smiled in a distant and troubling way. It was as if the event she had waited and watched for since her infancy had finally transpired.
Malevole’s fellow tribesman and women were disconcerted by this new power, but they were a flexible people, able to adapt to unexpected situations. They did not ostracize her, nor did they welcome her with obsequious wheedling. They simply wished for her to use this gift to the aid of the tribe, as they would ask any other.
Not long after this, Malevole brought forth another dream creature, one far more communicative. The girl learned that these entities were not product of her own mind, but spirits of the world of Althanas itself, forgotten and locked away eons ago by the shortsighted men who were the first of their kind to people the sphere. That this girl could summon and bind them was an unanticipated occurrence for the spirits. Some of them would be amenable to such control, certainly, but only the younger spirits could speak with the tongues or think with the minds of men. The older spirits were things far stranger and more alien, predating the coming of humanity, or even life, by centuries, and taking forms which could drive the weak-willed to madness.
Power is a terrible thing. It can turn even normal people into monsters, but Malevole had a head start. She was dissatisfied with the nomadic life, and sought more, so without resentment or hesitation, she slaughtered every member of the tribe. Malevole’s own parents were, at their unearthly child’s direction, torn apart by a raging pre-human spirit. Their past left behind in blood and ash, the girl set her black sight on the future.
Malevole is fascinated by fear. It is the oldest and rawest of emotions, and it alone gives her a vibrant thrill that holds nothing of romance. Unlike so many villains, she does not desire power for its own sake. Malevole wants more than anything to be feared; she wants to be a name spoken only in whispers, a story told in the dark, an avenging spectre which clutches the heart with a hand of ice and squeezes.
Malevole Wraithwood is a nameless, terrible thing. All that is light and happiness in Althanas will quake at the mention of her name so very, very soon, and their fear will only strengthen her unnatural vigor. Malevole holds this to be an accurate augury, and will do anything to bring it to fruition.
Skills:
As the daughter of a nomadic tribe, Malevole has a host of practical skills. Many of them bored her as she learned them, but she regards all knowledge as equally valid, and so she retains these skills.
Woodcraft: Malevole can determine, with some degree of accuracy, the edibility of various items in the wild, and she is capable of gathering plants or trapping/hunting animals.
Armed Combat: Malevole, as with all members of her tribe, has rudimentary training in fighting with a weapon. She herself prefers blunt instruments, such as clubs or maces, but can fight well enough with blades or pole-arms.
Cookery: While far from an expert, Malevole can prepare most foods to a certain degree of quality. She has peculiar tastes, however, and what she finds palatable is usually rejected as horrid by others.
Athletics: A life of constant travel precludes the development of habitual lethargy. Malevole can run, climb, crawl, swim, and jump ably.
Language: Malevole has a gift for languages easily crossing the border into preternatural. She can pick up foreign languages quite rapidly, to the point of total fluency in only a few weeks; less if she has written examples of the language.
Medicine: Malevole knows something of basic medicine, but it is all muddled with the spirituality and superstitions of her tribes witch doctors. She anxiously desires to learn more of the human body and its ailments, though not in the interest of treating them.
Bound Spirits:
In lieu of combat abilities, Malevole relies on the spirits bound to her service in combat. She can summon any one of these at will, and her prodigious force of mind is all that contains them or commands them. Only one can be summoned at a time, and to summon another, Malevole must banish the first.
Itellivornus:
Itellivornus is the most communicative spirit Malevole has summoned. It speaks with distinction and mannered politeness, in any known language and quite a few unknown ones. Itellivornus is the patron spirit of parasites, formed by the collective tiny wishes and small desires of the countless billions of these creatures that crawl and grow and breed inside larger beings. Itellivornus takes the form of an enormous, brightly-colored and patterned Cordyceps fungus fruiting body, walking about on a morass of mycelial tendrils, standing at a constant height of six feet, with the stem of the mushroom being about a foot in diameter. Malevole knows these very specific terms and facts because Itellivornus has told them to her. Itellivornus is ancient, a whisperer of secret knowledge, motes of data stolen from the hosts of his billion, billion parasite children.
Itellivornus is actually somewhat pleased to be in service; its bizarre psychology sees Malevole as somehow kindred, and treats her almost as a mentor treats a pupil. The secrets that the giant mushroom has imparted onto his summoner are so great and terrible as to drive most men to madness, but none of it brings even a glimmer of disquiet to Malevole's strange, dark eyes.
In combat, Itellivornus usually attempts to throttle enemies with his hyphae tendrils. Despite appearances, the great Cordyceps can move with a frightening turn of speed. His tendrils are able to leach nutrients away from any victim whose skin they can penetrate, slowing the unfortunate individual and, after protracted exposure, dropping them to unconsciousness. Anyone reduced to unconsciousness by Itellivornus’ draining attacks will awake perfectly fine, but afflicted with a random parasitic ailment, ranging from harmless athlete’s foot to full-blown malaria.
Itellivornus knows nearly everything (or at least everything worth knowing); his network of informants includes every parasite that has ever lived and ever will live, and the secrets they overhear as they rest in a blood corpuscle or crawl through a liver are without number. Itellivornus is fond of using this information to destabilize opponents in combat: he may reveal to them the true feelings of someone they thought was a friend, or speak aloud their most dark and dirty secret. Itellivornus never lies, though he may omit details as he sees fit. He is certainly reluctant to provide Malevole with any concrete answers, feeling that doing so would prevent her from developing any independence.
Ability: Cordyceps Control
Itellivornus is capable of emitting spore clouds in combat. Usually these serve only as a smokescreen, but if a spore is able to land and germinate close enough to a victim’s brain, then it will grow into a fruiting body, resembling a pale mushroom emerging (in humanoids) from the skin of the scalp. Individuals so infected can be directly controlled, like a puppet, by Itellivornus. This only works, however, if the victim is weak-willed or otherwise compromised; in strong willed individuals, the mushroom is only able to cause disorientation and unusual motor impulses (turning left when one means to turn right, for instance) for a few minutes before withering to dust.
Bathory:
Even Malevole isn’t quite sure what kind of spirit Bathory is. It seems to be human-derived, after a fashion, but as to what it represents and what it is composed of, she hasn’t a clue. This uncertainty has led Malevole to become fascinated by the little spirit, observing its behavior under a number of stimuli.
Bathory appears as a poorly-made child’s rag doll, with thick, clumsy stitching and yellowed fabric forming lumpy, overlong limbs. It is clad in a similarly poorly made gingham dress, with overall clasps. The head of the doll is porcelain, with a very obvious wig draped over it. What makes this spirit so unsettling is that where one would expect to find a face on the doll’s ceramic head, there is a huge gaping hole, the edges of which trail off into thin cracks that spiderweb across the entire head. The hole does not show the interior of the doll’s head, but a black and empty void. Malevole swears that, sometimes, she can see stars in it. The whole body of the thing stands only fourteen inches tall.
The behavior Bathory exhibits is anomalous in the extreme. Its normal affect is listlessness and occasional weeping. Bathory will often gather random objects; anything that is small enough will be placed in its facial hole, from which it may reemerge totally at random at any point in the future. If any attention is called to its face, or rather lack thereof, it enters something of a panic, feeling with its clumsy mitten hands at the emptiness, and expressing a great deal of distress, as though it had never noticed the hole before. The doll begins weeping, writhing, or pawing desperately at anyone around it. This behavior repeats each time the hole in its head is remarked upon or touched, with seemingly no memory of previous such responses; Malevole theorizes that this behavior is some kind of deliberate display, but like many questions about Bathory, it is unlikely to be answered.
Bathory cannot speak, but it seems to understand any spoken language Malevole uses. In combat, its body is nearly useless, but its facial hole can vacuum up or fire out any number of small objects at a speed comparable to that of a punching fist or kicking foot.
Ability: So Very Empty
Bathory is capable of generating a powerful vacuum from its facial hole, drawing in objects (or living things) that would normally be much too large. Of course, strong entities, and people or objects which are able to affix themselves to the environment in some way, are able to resist the terrible, frigid suction. Objects that are drawn in typically emerge some time later, suffering no ill effect. Individuals, however, are released after only a few moments, disoriented and cold, and possibly traumatized if they were foolish enough to keep their eyes open during their capture. For a full hour after a person has been captured and released, Bathory is capable of using some combat-related ability which that individual possessed; this capacity is illustrated by the nature of Bathory’s wig and dress changing in some way to match that of the person whose ability it has copied, often forming a miniature costume, yet always leaving the facial aperture unobscured. In addition, Bathory may take on some element of the victim’s personality or body language. The copied ability seems to prevent Bathory from firing captured items or capturing another victim for the duration of its persistence, though Bathory appears to be able to shed this power on command by vomiting forth a pile of the unfortunate victims hair or dander. Any copied ability is significantly weakened compared to that of its source, as one might expect when a technique is appropriated by a ragdoll, generally functioning as such a technique might when used by a character of a level one notch higher than Malevole herself.
Equipment:
4 lbs. of Auroch Jerky: A staple of her people, the dried meat of a species of massive bovine which wanders the northern steppe. It is hard-wearing, if somewhat underwhelmingly flavored, though it is nearly a delicacy to someone of Malevole's inscrutable tastes.
Iron Adze: A woodworking tool salvaged from the fires of her family's yurt, this adze is little more than a heavy club with a curved, sharpened bill on one side of the head. Not a gifted carpenter, Malevole uses this in the rare occasions when she must solve a problem without the aid of her Bound Spirits. These problems are typically solved in a terminal manner.
3 Water Skins: Simple animal bladders and stomachs, cleaned and inverted to serve as canisters of life-giving water. Malevole, despite her monstrous alienism, still adheres to the tribal tradition of refilling them every evening, even in the cities where such supplies are unlikely to be required.
Dwarven Iron Boots: Finding her own hide sandals inadequate to her frequent walking, Malevole took the opportunity to slaughter an entire dwarven trade caravan so that she could see which of the diminutive miners bore feet closest to her own size without complaint. She took these boots from the ruined carcass of the caravan leader, and finds them to be of a most exceptional snugness.
Bag of Books: Though not a common thief by any stretch of the imagination, Malevole is arrested by that resource which was unknown to her for so long; the book. Whenever she comes across a book not under immediate observation, Malevole will attempt to stow it in here with the others for later perusal. Her eclectic collection style has yielded her four tomes at present; a treatise on frog reproduction in southern Fallien, a cookbook of recipes based on goblin cuisine, a book of humorous spells and cantrips, and a three year-old logbook from a Salvaran bank. She treasures them for the knowledge, however trivial, they contain.
Tribal Medicine Bag: A bag of simple sundries for healing wounds. The herbs, poultices, and rough bandages of the steppe have been supplemented with more modern conveniences found in the rare free clinics of civilized nations.
Map of the World: An outdated and inaccurate map of Althanas as it is presently known, stolen from the wall of a pub (after the murder of its patrons and proprietors). Malevole uses it as a rough guideline for her long wanderings, unaware of its sub-par utility.
Age: 21
Race: Human, of the Steppe Tribes
Height: 5’7”
Weight: 134 lbs.
Hair Color: Pale Blonde
Eye Color: Dark Brown
Occupation: Summoning Witch
Personality:
No human being enjoys the company of Malevole Wraithwood. There is something about her which simply isn’t appropriate to the wholesome sunlight. Malevole is stoic to the point of alienation, as though the world she sees is merely an amusing trifle compared to some other unknown quantity to which she alone has access. This is not to say that Malevole is emotionless; simply that her emotions occur in subtle gradations and at strange, un-guessable promptings.
Malevole enjoys reading, if she can be said to enjoy anything. It is, to her, the purest form of gaining knowledge, which is something Malevole feels is vital for reasons she has not disclosed. Malevole also likes fear; not feeling it herself, but seeing it in others. She gets a strange thrill in the depth of her soul when viewing someone wracked with mortal terror, doubly so if she is the object of that fear.
Malevole is slow to anger, with a generally level demeanor and straight-faced, curious expression of slight interest. It takes a great deal to anger Malevole, and even in her darkest moods her manner is largely indistinguishable from her default.
Malevole Wraithwood is a monster. Evil is perhaps not the correct word, because evil’s drives are simple and predictable. Malevole would flay a person alive not for the thrill or the power, but simply because, to her inscrutable logic, it is the only course which makes sense. It is difficult to provide absolute terms describing her morality, because it seems to operate according to rules normal men and women do not know and cannot truly learn.
Appearance:
Malevole is an outwardly attractive woman, with wide, rolling hips and an ample bosom. Her face is youthful, with full lips and large eyes. This beauty seems only a veneer, however, hiding the incomprehensible geometry of her psyche. Her figure seems wasted when moved in so alien a way, and the aforementioned large eyes are also inhumanly dark. The young men of her tribe sought her with some vigor at first, but were ultimately far too disconcerted by her attitude to pursue her in any meaningful way.
Her pale blonde hair hangs to just below her shoulders, swaying unstyled and roughly-cut, hanging messily in front of her face. Her eyes are mostly chocolate-hued iris and pupil, with very little visible sclera. She walks with a quiet grace, carrying herself without pride or pretense.
She wears a thick woolen bandage wrapped about her midsection from armpit to midriff and a pair of canvas knee-length pants. A dire encounter with a caravan of dwarven tradesmen has left her with a pair of heavy iron boots, perfectly sized to her petite feet. She has made no attempt to wash away the bloodstains.
There are ritual tattoos on her face, courtesy of her family’s traditions, in the form of two pale blue lines from the center of each eye and straight down each cheek, continuing down the sides of her neck and meeting at a circle just above her sternum.
History:
Malevole Wraithwood was born to the Steppe Tribes, a nomadic people. From the moment of her birth she was an object of some trepidation; she did not babble or cry as most babies do, but watched with a stoicism which was decidedly distressing in an infant. Her parents raised her with as much affection as their culture expected, but Malevole retained this tendency to watch with her dark, silent eyes well into her childhood, as though she was waiting for something.
Malevole’s childhood would be considered lonely by most, but if she was bothered by this isolation, she did not show it. The other nomad children whispered behind her back, but their community was far too close for the usual cruelties of childhood to be inflicted on her. It was as a child that Malevole began having the dreams.
These dreams were always the same; Malevole wandered, bodiless, through an unfathomable gulf of space. Scattered throughout this void were points of light, no bigger than a pinprick, impossibly distant and yet throbbing with a potency that made even the normally implacable Malevole shiver to recall it in her waking hours. Peculiarly, the points would seem closer with each successive night’s dreaming.
This revelation totally changed the nature of the dreams; Malevole began finding herself in the orbit of her dreams’ once-distant points of light, and could see them as they were; luminous beings, shaped as beasts or men or far stranger forms, and locked in a frigid, deathly slumber. The girl became even further withdrawn from her small community. This seclusion went largely unregarded by the tribe, save for the girl's concerned parents. It remained so unregarded until the coming of the first dream beast.
One morning Malevole awoke to find that she had brought one of these creatures with her into the waking world. Any normal girl would have been delighted, or at least astonished, but Malevole simply smiled in a distant and troubling way. It was as if the event she had waited and watched for since her infancy had finally transpired.
Malevole’s fellow tribesman and women were disconcerted by this new power, but they were a flexible people, able to adapt to unexpected situations. They did not ostracize her, nor did they welcome her with obsequious wheedling. They simply wished for her to use this gift to the aid of the tribe, as they would ask any other.
Not long after this, Malevole brought forth another dream creature, one far more communicative. The girl learned that these entities were not product of her own mind, but spirits of the world of Althanas itself, forgotten and locked away eons ago by the shortsighted men who were the first of their kind to people the sphere. That this girl could summon and bind them was an unanticipated occurrence for the spirits. Some of them would be amenable to such control, certainly, but only the younger spirits could speak with the tongues or think with the minds of men. The older spirits were things far stranger and more alien, predating the coming of humanity, or even life, by centuries, and taking forms which could drive the weak-willed to madness.
Power is a terrible thing. It can turn even normal people into monsters, but Malevole had a head start. She was dissatisfied with the nomadic life, and sought more, so without resentment or hesitation, she slaughtered every member of the tribe. Malevole’s own parents were, at their unearthly child’s direction, torn apart by a raging pre-human spirit. Their past left behind in blood and ash, the girl set her black sight on the future.
Malevole is fascinated by fear. It is the oldest and rawest of emotions, and it alone gives her a vibrant thrill that holds nothing of romance. Unlike so many villains, she does not desire power for its own sake. Malevole wants more than anything to be feared; she wants to be a name spoken only in whispers, a story told in the dark, an avenging spectre which clutches the heart with a hand of ice and squeezes.
Malevole Wraithwood is a nameless, terrible thing. All that is light and happiness in Althanas will quake at the mention of her name so very, very soon, and their fear will only strengthen her unnatural vigor. Malevole holds this to be an accurate augury, and will do anything to bring it to fruition.
Skills:
As the daughter of a nomadic tribe, Malevole has a host of practical skills. Many of them bored her as she learned them, but she regards all knowledge as equally valid, and so she retains these skills.
Woodcraft: Malevole can determine, with some degree of accuracy, the edibility of various items in the wild, and she is capable of gathering plants or trapping/hunting animals.
Armed Combat: Malevole, as with all members of her tribe, has rudimentary training in fighting with a weapon. She herself prefers blunt instruments, such as clubs or maces, but can fight well enough with blades or pole-arms.
Cookery: While far from an expert, Malevole can prepare most foods to a certain degree of quality. She has peculiar tastes, however, and what she finds palatable is usually rejected as horrid by others.
Athletics: A life of constant travel precludes the development of habitual lethargy. Malevole can run, climb, crawl, swim, and jump ably.
Language: Malevole has a gift for languages easily crossing the border into preternatural. She can pick up foreign languages quite rapidly, to the point of total fluency in only a few weeks; less if she has written examples of the language.
Medicine: Malevole knows something of basic medicine, but it is all muddled with the spirituality and superstitions of her tribes witch doctors. She anxiously desires to learn more of the human body and its ailments, though not in the interest of treating them.
Bound Spirits:
In lieu of combat abilities, Malevole relies on the spirits bound to her service in combat. She can summon any one of these at will, and her prodigious force of mind is all that contains them or commands them. Only one can be summoned at a time, and to summon another, Malevole must banish the first.
Itellivornus:
Itellivornus is the most communicative spirit Malevole has summoned. It speaks with distinction and mannered politeness, in any known language and quite a few unknown ones. Itellivornus is the patron spirit of parasites, formed by the collective tiny wishes and small desires of the countless billions of these creatures that crawl and grow and breed inside larger beings. Itellivornus takes the form of an enormous, brightly-colored and patterned Cordyceps fungus fruiting body, walking about on a morass of mycelial tendrils, standing at a constant height of six feet, with the stem of the mushroom being about a foot in diameter. Malevole knows these very specific terms and facts because Itellivornus has told them to her. Itellivornus is ancient, a whisperer of secret knowledge, motes of data stolen from the hosts of his billion, billion parasite children.
Itellivornus is actually somewhat pleased to be in service; its bizarre psychology sees Malevole as somehow kindred, and treats her almost as a mentor treats a pupil. The secrets that the giant mushroom has imparted onto his summoner are so great and terrible as to drive most men to madness, but none of it brings even a glimmer of disquiet to Malevole's strange, dark eyes.
In combat, Itellivornus usually attempts to throttle enemies with his hyphae tendrils. Despite appearances, the great Cordyceps can move with a frightening turn of speed. His tendrils are able to leach nutrients away from any victim whose skin they can penetrate, slowing the unfortunate individual and, after protracted exposure, dropping them to unconsciousness. Anyone reduced to unconsciousness by Itellivornus’ draining attacks will awake perfectly fine, but afflicted with a random parasitic ailment, ranging from harmless athlete’s foot to full-blown malaria.
Itellivornus knows nearly everything (or at least everything worth knowing); his network of informants includes every parasite that has ever lived and ever will live, and the secrets they overhear as they rest in a blood corpuscle or crawl through a liver are without number. Itellivornus is fond of using this information to destabilize opponents in combat: he may reveal to them the true feelings of someone they thought was a friend, or speak aloud their most dark and dirty secret. Itellivornus never lies, though he may omit details as he sees fit. He is certainly reluctant to provide Malevole with any concrete answers, feeling that doing so would prevent her from developing any independence.
Ability: Cordyceps Control
Itellivornus is capable of emitting spore clouds in combat. Usually these serve only as a smokescreen, but if a spore is able to land and germinate close enough to a victim’s brain, then it will grow into a fruiting body, resembling a pale mushroom emerging (in humanoids) from the skin of the scalp. Individuals so infected can be directly controlled, like a puppet, by Itellivornus. This only works, however, if the victim is weak-willed or otherwise compromised; in strong willed individuals, the mushroom is only able to cause disorientation and unusual motor impulses (turning left when one means to turn right, for instance) for a few minutes before withering to dust.
Bathory:
Even Malevole isn’t quite sure what kind of spirit Bathory is. It seems to be human-derived, after a fashion, but as to what it represents and what it is composed of, she hasn’t a clue. This uncertainty has led Malevole to become fascinated by the little spirit, observing its behavior under a number of stimuli.
Bathory appears as a poorly-made child’s rag doll, with thick, clumsy stitching and yellowed fabric forming lumpy, overlong limbs. It is clad in a similarly poorly made gingham dress, with overall clasps. The head of the doll is porcelain, with a very obvious wig draped over it. What makes this spirit so unsettling is that where one would expect to find a face on the doll’s ceramic head, there is a huge gaping hole, the edges of which trail off into thin cracks that spiderweb across the entire head. The hole does not show the interior of the doll’s head, but a black and empty void. Malevole swears that, sometimes, she can see stars in it. The whole body of the thing stands only fourteen inches tall.
The behavior Bathory exhibits is anomalous in the extreme. Its normal affect is listlessness and occasional weeping. Bathory will often gather random objects; anything that is small enough will be placed in its facial hole, from which it may reemerge totally at random at any point in the future. If any attention is called to its face, or rather lack thereof, it enters something of a panic, feeling with its clumsy mitten hands at the emptiness, and expressing a great deal of distress, as though it had never noticed the hole before. The doll begins weeping, writhing, or pawing desperately at anyone around it. This behavior repeats each time the hole in its head is remarked upon or touched, with seemingly no memory of previous such responses; Malevole theorizes that this behavior is some kind of deliberate display, but like many questions about Bathory, it is unlikely to be answered.
Bathory cannot speak, but it seems to understand any spoken language Malevole uses. In combat, its body is nearly useless, but its facial hole can vacuum up or fire out any number of small objects at a speed comparable to that of a punching fist or kicking foot.
Ability: So Very Empty
Bathory is capable of generating a powerful vacuum from its facial hole, drawing in objects (or living things) that would normally be much too large. Of course, strong entities, and people or objects which are able to affix themselves to the environment in some way, are able to resist the terrible, frigid suction. Objects that are drawn in typically emerge some time later, suffering no ill effect. Individuals, however, are released after only a few moments, disoriented and cold, and possibly traumatized if they were foolish enough to keep their eyes open during their capture. For a full hour after a person has been captured and released, Bathory is capable of using some combat-related ability which that individual possessed; this capacity is illustrated by the nature of Bathory’s wig and dress changing in some way to match that of the person whose ability it has copied, often forming a miniature costume, yet always leaving the facial aperture unobscured. In addition, Bathory may take on some element of the victim’s personality or body language. The copied ability seems to prevent Bathory from firing captured items or capturing another victim for the duration of its persistence, though Bathory appears to be able to shed this power on command by vomiting forth a pile of the unfortunate victims hair or dander. Any copied ability is significantly weakened compared to that of its source, as one might expect when a technique is appropriated by a ragdoll, generally functioning as such a technique might when used by a character of a level one notch higher than Malevole herself.
Equipment:
4 lbs. of Auroch Jerky: A staple of her people, the dried meat of a species of massive bovine which wanders the northern steppe. It is hard-wearing, if somewhat underwhelmingly flavored, though it is nearly a delicacy to someone of Malevole's inscrutable tastes.
Iron Adze: A woodworking tool salvaged from the fires of her family's yurt, this adze is little more than a heavy club with a curved, sharpened bill on one side of the head. Not a gifted carpenter, Malevole uses this in the rare occasions when she must solve a problem without the aid of her Bound Spirits. These problems are typically solved in a terminal manner.
3 Water Skins: Simple animal bladders and stomachs, cleaned and inverted to serve as canisters of life-giving water. Malevole, despite her monstrous alienism, still adheres to the tribal tradition of refilling them every evening, even in the cities where such supplies are unlikely to be required.
Dwarven Iron Boots: Finding her own hide sandals inadequate to her frequent walking, Malevole took the opportunity to slaughter an entire dwarven trade caravan so that she could see which of the diminutive miners bore feet closest to her own size without complaint. She took these boots from the ruined carcass of the caravan leader, and finds them to be of a most exceptional snugness.
Bag of Books: Though not a common thief by any stretch of the imagination, Malevole is arrested by that resource which was unknown to her for so long; the book. Whenever she comes across a book not under immediate observation, Malevole will attempt to stow it in here with the others for later perusal. Her eclectic collection style has yielded her four tomes at present; a treatise on frog reproduction in southern Fallien, a cookbook of recipes based on goblin cuisine, a book of humorous spells and cantrips, and a three year-old logbook from a Salvaran bank. She treasures them for the knowledge, however trivial, they contain.
Tribal Medicine Bag: A bag of simple sundries for healing wounds. The herbs, poultices, and rough bandages of the steppe have been supplemented with more modern conveniences found in the rare free clinics of civilized nations.
Map of the World: An outdated and inaccurate map of Althanas as it is presently known, stolen from the wall of a pub (after the murder of its patrons and proprietors). Malevole uses it as a rough guideline for her long wanderings, unaware of its sub-par utility.