Ihimirsyn
05-23-12, 04:10 PM
Name: Ihimirsyn
Job: Inevitable
Race: Minor Death
Age: 2
Gender: Female
Hair Color: Silvery Gray
Eye Color: Scarlet
Hgt / Wgt: 5'5" / 4 lb
Languages: None
Weapons: A Stick
Armor: None
Description
Slender, pale, and fine-featured, she appears as a young woman in the prime of her life. A headful of silvery gray hair runs straight to her knees. Her scarlet eyes are the only pools of color on that small-boned, small-nosed, small-lipped, triangular face. She wears a big, black cloak with tattered edges and a deep hood, fastened with a button made from a piece of oyster shell. This used to be her burial shroud, but has been adapted for her new office. It billows inappropriately in slight winds and conceals her moderate curves in calm.
She has a contralto stage voice like lead slabs hitting a marble floor and a natural mezzo-soprano when she's not trying. She has a common fault among Minor Deaths in that she breathes out of force of habit and unnecessarily. Her movements are drifting and stately, like a fog carried along on an evening breeze.
Personality
Always cheerful and optimistic, she is a model example of an carefree spirit untroubled with worldly worries. Certainly, she has a purpose that she must fulfill, but after years of wandering around and not getting any closer to it, she had figured that she was eventually going to complete it when it is time to be completed. She has a really energetic mood, where a disturbing amount of vitality goes into achieving whichever goal is at the top of her mind, and a really lazy mood, where she just wants to take it easy or, better yet, take a nap. Fortunately for the world, she's usually in the lazy sort of mood much more often. Otherwise, that lack of inhibitions plus her unshakeable determination (unless distracted) might cause daily catastrophes.
If someone tries to get her to do something or not do something using the reason of local customs or laws, it is almost guaranteed that she'll pointed ignore such a thing because she reasons that silly mortal laws and customs are for silly mortals. On the other hand, she's very easy to get guilt-tripped into things because she actually feels sorry for all the people that have to worry about worldly things. She's even more agreeable when drunk, preferring distilled liquors.
She doesn't like to kill people because it reminds her too much of her job that she fails at. On the other hand, she doesn't mind things getting killed, because it's not actually so bad once you get past the painful bits. She's clever but forgetful, the sort to come up with a cunning plan and then forget what step 3 is when she is falling out of a third-story window as part of step 2. Then she's likely to get distracted and come up with a new step 3 that does something completely different because she's forgotten about what she was trying to do in the first place.
It is very difficult to get her to be angry at anything, but when she does become angry, she generally becomes less dangerous. The thought of a sleepless, implacable, unstoppable killing machine coming after you to claim your soul is one thing. The thought of the same thing that can't find the bedroom in a 2-room house and would forget why it wanted to go to the bedroom in a few minutes is quite another.
Background
Death is inevitable for mortals and the world has methods, some extreme, to deal with those who would cheat it. One of the penultimate responses is dispatching a Minor Death, which is a spirit called up from beyond the grave, made manifest, and dispatched into the world with the goal of hunting down a person or persons who have been using unnatural methods to cheat death. Ihimirsyn was sent 3 years ago to hunt down Iorea Cenata, a sorceress who drains the life from living things in order to sustain her own unnatural long lifespan and physical youth. The problem was that Ihimirsyn was created from the ghost of someone who had the single worst sense of direction imaginable.
All she had to start with was a tattered black cloak (originally her own burial shroud) and a somewhat malicious Unknown-Dead-Tongue-to-Tradespeak Phrasebook. One was a mantle of her office and the other was a necessary tool.
In the first year, Ihimirsyn made her way from near Eluriand for the Red Forest, where Iorea Cenata reportedly was last seen. She arrived in Knife's Edge eight months later after having turned back from the shore of the Frozen Sea. During the course of her travels, she had become a casual gourmand and great joy in experimenting with new and exotic foods. While the dine-and-run works perfectly well, on occasion she has had to earn a few coins so that she could patch up her cloak. A brief stint as a fortune-teller didn't work out because she keeps upsetting the customers by telling them when they would die.
In the second year, Ihimirsyn was chased out of Knife's Edge on account of larceny, public indecency, negligent arson, scandalizing a wealthy merchant's wife, behavior liable to cause a breach of the peace, actual breach of the peace, slandering the entire City Watch, sleeping on the steps of the courthouse, refusing to be hanged by the neck until dead, and having run out of places to hide in. Since then, she's been wandering the countryside, entirely lost, looking for Iorea Cenata - and enjoying herself tremendously.
Skills
Chess [S]: She plays at grandmaster levels.
Singlesticks [A]: She doesn't parry or block. She only knows to attack.
Cooking [A]: She specializes in meat dishes.
Sneaking : She specializes in moving through houses at night.
Boating [B]: Best with sailing
Thieving [C]: Can't be counted on to competently pick a pocket, but knows burglary
[B]Abilities
Exorcising Blade: Silent invocation creates a 2-foot blade or stick of glowing blue soul-stuff springing from some convenient part of her body. Short invocation "Ensis Exsequens" creates a 6-foot blade or stick of glowing blue soul-stuff. Long invocation "To Sumbolaion Diakoneto, Turanne Psuke. Epigenetheto, Lux Katharseos, Ourania Thanatou, Ensis Exsequens." renders an existing object in hand into a glowing blue soul-stuff version. This is the primary weapon of a Minor Death and only affects spirits and souls. They are fully effective against ghosts. They make no impact whatsoever on any material object. When they strike a person, it attempts to tear or knock the soul out of the body, causing a moment of disorientation. Each strike that lands tends to weaken the connection between body and soul until it separates entirely. Re-entering the body is mostly a matter of the soul taking a few seconds to wriggle back in.
Mistform: Her body is not so much flesh as it is a collection of spiritual particles held together by the will of her office. When together, it gives the tactile illusion of flesh, but blows to it immediately reveals its white-mist-like nature. Once scattered, it takes a half hour to one hour for the spiritual mist to slowly reconstitute back into form nearby. She has no ability to affect worldly things while scattered. She may scatter herself by concentrating for a minute to travel; this is the source of the idea that no doors are barred from Death.
Know Name and Death: By looking at a mortal, Ihimirsyn knows all the names of that mortal and when that mortal will die.
Detriments
No Sense of Direction: She becomes hopelessly lost if it travels more than 10 feet. She can get lost while following someone unless taken hand in hand.
Upsets Animals: All animals except cats are upset, terrified, or enraged by her mere presence. They feel threatened.
Disquieting Presence: Her presence gives people an uneasy feeling, like there is something wrong with the world. It's not an evil feeling so much as a feeling that they should have as little to do with her as possible. Or punch her in the face. It takes a conscious effort to suppress this feeling.
Sacred Banned: She may not step into consecrated or hallowed grounds. To do so is to immediately dissolve into mist, which blows out of the area before reconstituting. The one exception are hallowed graveyards.
Equipment
Burial Shroud of Ihimirsyn, a black cloak
Malicious Tradespeak Phrasebook and Dictionary
Job: Inevitable
Race: Minor Death
Age: 2
Gender: Female
Hair Color: Silvery Gray
Eye Color: Scarlet
Hgt / Wgt: 5'5" / 4 lb
Languages: None
Weapons: A Stick
Armor: None
Description
Slender, pale, and fine-featured, she appears as a young woman in the prime of her life. A headful of silvery gray hair runs straight to her knees. Her scarlet eyes are the only pools of color on that small-boned, small-nosed, small-lipped, triangular face. She wears a big, black cloak with tattered edges and a deep hood, fastened with a button made from a piece of oyster shell. This used to be her burial shroud, but has been adapted for her new office. It billows inappropriately in slight winds and conceals her moderate curves in calm.
She has a contralto stage voice like lead slabs hitting a marble floor and a natural mezzo-soprano when she's not trying. She has a common fault among Minor Deaths in that she breathes out of force of habit and unnecessarily. Her movements are drifting and stately, like a fog carried along on an evening breeze.
Personality
Always cheerful and optimistic, she is a model example of an carefree spirit untroubled with worldly worries. Certainly, she has a purpose that she must fulfill, but after years of wandering around and not getting any closer to it, she had figured that she was eventually going to complete it when it is time to be completed. She has a really energetic mood, where a disturbing amount of vitality goes into achieving whichever goal is at the top of her mind, and a really lazy mood, where she just wants to take it easy or, better yet, take a nap. Fortunately for the world, she's usually in the lazy sort of mood much more often. Otherwise, that lack of inhibitions plus her unshakeable determination (unless distracted) might cause daily catastrophes.
If someone tries to get her to do something or not do something using the reason of local customs or laws, it is almost guaranteed that she'll pointed ignore such a thing because she reasons that silly mortal laws and customs are for silly mortals. On the other hand, she's very easy to get guilt-tripped into things because she actually feels sorry for all the people that have to worry about worldly things. She's even more agreeable when drunk, preferring distilled liquors.
She doesn't like to kill people because it reminds her too much of her job that she fails at. On the other hand, she doesn't mind things getting killed, because it's not actually so bad once you get past the painful bits. She's clever but forgetful, the sort to come up with a cunning plan and then forget what step 3 is when she is falling out of a third-story window as part of step 2. Then she's likely to get distracted and come up with a new step 3 that does something completely different because she's forgotten about what she was trying to do in the first place.
It is very difficult to get her to be angry at anything, but when she does become angry, she generally becomes less dangerous. The thought of a sleepless, implacable, unstoppable killing machine coming after you to claim your soul is one thing. The thought of the same thing that can't find the bedroom in a 2-room house and would forget why it wanted to go to the bedroom in a few minutes is quite another.
Background
Death is inevitable for mortals and the world has methods, some extreme, to deal with those who would cheat it. One of the penultimate responses is dispatching a Minor Death, which is a spirit called up from beyond the grave, made manifest, and dispatched into the world with the goal of hunting down a person or persons who have been using unnatural methods to cheat death. Ihimirsyn was sent 3 years ago to hunt down Iorea Cenata, a sorceress who drains the life from living things in order to sustain her own unnatural long lifespan and physical youth. The problem was that Ihimirsyn was created from the ghost of someone who had the single worst sense of direction imaginable.
All she had to start with was a tattered black cloak (originally her own burial shroud) and a somewhat malicious Unknown-Dead-Tongue-to-Tradespeak Phrasebook. One was a mantle of her office and the other was a necessary tool.
In the first year, Ihimirsyn made her way from near Eluriand for the Red Forest, where Iorea Cenata reportedly was last seen. She arrived in Knife's Edge eight months later after having turned back from the shore of the Frozen Sea. During the course of her travels, she had become a casual gourmand and great joy in experimenting with new and exotic foods. While the dine-and-run works perfectly well, on occasion she has had to earn a few coins so that she could patch up her cloak. A brief stint as a fortune-teller didn't work out because she keeps upsetting the customers by telling them when they would die.
In the second year, Ihimirsyn was chased out of Knife's Edge on account of larceny, public indecency, negligent arson, scandalizing a wealthy merchant's wife, behavior liable to cause a breach of the peace, actual breach of the peace, slandering the entire City Watch, sleeping on the steps of the courthouse, refusing to be hanged by the neck until dead, and having run out of places to hide in. Since then, she's been wandering the countryside, entirely lost, looking for Iorea Cenata - and enjoying herself tremendously.
Skills
Chess [S]: She plays at grandmaster levels.
Singlesticks [A]: She doesn't parry or block. She only knows to attack.
Cooking [A]: She specializes in meat dishes.
Sneaking : She specializes in moving through houses at night.
Boating [B]: Best with sailing
Thieving [C]: Can't be counted on to competently pick a pocket, but knows burglary
[B]Abilities
Exorcising Blade: Silent invocation creates a 2-foot blade or stick of glowing blue soul-stuff springing from some convenient part of her body. Short invocation "Ensis Exsequens" creates a 6-foot blade or stick of glowing blue soul-stuff. Long invocation "To Sumbolaion Diakoneto, Turanne Psuke. Epigenetheto, Lux Katharseos, Ourania Thanatou, Ensis Exsequens." renders an existing object in hand into a glowing blue soul-stuff version. This is the primary weapon of a Minor Death and only affects spirits and souls. They are fully effective against ghosts. They make no impact whatsoever on any material object. When they strike a person, it attempts to tear or knock the soul out of the body, causing a moment of disorientation. Each strike that lands tends to weaken the connection between body and soul until it separates entirely. Re-entering the body is mostly a matter of the soul taking a few seconds to wriggle back in.
Mistform: Her body is not so much flesh as it is a collection of spiritual particles held together by the will of her office. When together, it gives the tactile illusion of flesh, but blows to it immediately reveals its white-mist-like nature. Once scattered, it takes a half hour to one hour for the spiritual mist to slowly reconstitute back into form nearby. She has no ability to affect worldly things while scattered. She may scatter herself by concentrating for a minute to travel; this is the source of the idea that no doors are barred from Death.
Know Name and Death: By looking at a mortal, Ihimirsyn knows all the names of that mortal and when that mortal will die.
Detriments
No Sense of Direction: She becomes hopelessly lost if it travels more than 10 feet. She can get lost while following someone unless taken hand in hand.
Upsets Animals: All animals except cats are upset, terrified, or enraged by her mere presence. They feel threatened.
Disquieting Presence: Her presence gives people an uneasy feeling, like there is something wrong with the world. It's not an evil feeling so much as a feeling that they should have as little to do with her as possible. Or punch her in the face. It takes a conscious effort to suppress this feeling.
Sacred Banned: She may not step into consecrated or hallowed grounds. To do so is to immediately dissolve into mist, which blows out of the area before reconstituting. The one exception are hallowed graveyards.
Equipment
Burial Shroud of Ihimirsyn, a black cloak
Malicious Tradespeak Phrasebook and Dictionary