Nyx
04-08-07, 08:26 AM
Name: Nyx Sulwyn
Age: 40
Race: Dark Elf
Hair Color: Black
Eye Color: Blue. Ocean blue.
Height: 5’6”
Weight: 112 lbs
Alignment: Lawful Angst
Occupation: Amateur Sorceress
Personality:
In life, Nyx holds three things in utmost regard: freedom, honor, and pride. Without them, she wasn’t quite sure how to live.
She was a good person, or at least, she was born a good person. And although she had lost that merciful and kind deposition she began with, the elf still knew right from wrong. However, she no longer bothered with the niceness. She did what she had to achieve the ends. The ends always justified the means, unless the means interfered with her priorities.
She was soft-spoken and generally quite pessimistic, and people mistook it for shyness or hostility. Nyx didn’t quite mind. Those assumptions were sort of true. She was quick to act and quick to anger, skeptical and seemed a bit cruel. She didn’t like humans very much, but tolerated them. She was evasive, she never talked about her past, she picked at her scars when she was agitated and disappears when she was annoyed. She tolerated no foolishness and no cruelty towards woman other than herself, and occasionally, when drunk, she gets philosophical. And when all had come to pass, you would find that she was just a woman, a woman who lost her childhood way too soon.
Appearance:
_____Attire: LINK (http://i93.photobucket.com/albums/l48/CrystalChalice/Costume.jpg)
There was something unsettling about those incandescent blue-green eyes, oceans where men drown twice sans noticing. Most avoided Nyx’s eyes, but that drove their sights to the rest of her, and it was no less unnerving.
She had high brows and a sharp chin, a nose too small to bear mentioning and lips too thinly set in neutrality. Her cheeks were sunken, her sockets bagged black. Her skin was stretched too tight against her bones and colored an unreal alabaster shade. The hallmark of all elfin kinds – those pointed ears, only added to the woman’s quiet unnaturalness. Midnight black hair was cropped uneven and close to the scalp, making Nyx’s facial features too, too palpable.
The elf was skeletally thin, built like a thin willow ready to drop at the barest of breezes, all angular joints and veins and almost no curvy flesh. Her ribs stuck out, her belly swallowed in, and her limbs were like a spider’s spindly legs. The chest was a little too narrow, the hips a little too wide, and the feet too long. Pink webs of past scars crosshatched on her back and arms and thighs, forever to stay. Nyx looked half-starved and half-dead, and calling her beautiful would be like calling a mortal her age young. But if nothing else, she was that exotic animal one couldn’t tear their eyes off.
Skills/Traits:
Enhanced Hearing
A trait of being an elf, Nyx has enhanced hearing. Her limit had been a radius of 5 meters.
Enhanced Speed
What Nyx lacked in strength, she made up for in speed. With her built, Nyx was, at the moment, a little faster than the average human, making it easier to dodge and evade incoming attacks.
Grace
She’s rather graceful with her actions, and although that doesn’t mean much, it does add to that exotic aura she exudes.
Magic:
Ancient Conjuration
Long since gone out of fashion with the magic users of Althanas for its barbarianism, this is a magical style that focuses on souls and blood. It involves the binding and controlling of supernatural creatures, such as gods, demons, and nature’s spirits. Each creature has different abilities, and depending on the number of times the ability is used, the ability may get stronger. However, a creature cannot learn additional abilities.
Sealing and controlling the creatures require the target be first defeated in battle. Next, a ritual will take place, in which exactly thirteen drops of the caster’s blood must be dripped onto a runestone. A sigil will be drawn in the air at the exact same time. Thus the creature will be bind, and can be summoned at will. Offerings of blood must occur every month thereafter, lest the caster’s control weakens. Should the caster wish to release the creature, the runestone must be broken.
Summoning the creatures involve casting out the runestone and drawing out another sigil. An offering of blood may make the creature more compliant. Once the creature had served its purpose, it will disappear, and the caster may then reclaim the runestone.
Let it be noted that only one creature may be summoned at any given point in time, each summoning lasts for approximately 2 hours, and that there must be a lapse of 2 hours before the same creature may be summoned once more. Also note that each creature may only be summoned twice per day, and should the caster wish to increase the number of times, a liter of blood must be offered on a daily basis for a month.
Creature: Ocesetiel
Ocesetiel was Nyx’s first creature, a minor water spirit that takes the form of a mermaid.
Abilities
Water Manipulation:
The spirit may control the actions of water within a 3 meter radius of itself. It can mold water into tangible shapes, direct them to go somewhere else, or even make everything disappear, so long as everything happens within a 3 meter radius.
Jet of Water:
A pressurized jet of water shoots out from the spirit’s mouth, up to a distance of 2 meters. Beyond two meters, it loses the pressure and becomes regular water.
Mist:
Mists appear within a 10 meter radius of the spirit. If there are no water sources nearby, the mists can be fairly light, and clear silhouettes of others can be seen. If, however, there are large water sources nearby, the mists will get rather heavy, and only faint silhouettes can be seen. The mists are mildly therapeutic, and though it cannot heal, it does have a calming effect.
Equipment:
Scepter
A scepter of ebony wood, black and knuckled, tipped with a small piece of jade. Used to draw sigils and break runestones, if necessary.
Pouch of Runestones
A pouch that hangs from her belt. Contains 13 runestones.
Clothing
Clothes on her back. Offers no protection/benefits. ‘Nuff said.
History:
“Freedom comes first, then honor, and then pride. Never let go of the three.”
Letter from a mother to a daughter
Nyx was the last child of a banished noble and a merchant man, born with brilliant eyes and smiling lips. She grew up kind and happy and good, teased by three elder brothers and loved by parents, making friends from all straits of life. And while the girl wasn’t that perfect beauty who’d grow up busty and leggy, she was something exotic and untouchable, and it substituted well enough for beauty.
She had a best friend, Abby the human boy. Nyx found him when she was four, finally able to walk without tumbling and talk without lisping. The rain was going slap-slap-slap on skin, and he was just sitting down an alley and looking so pathetic, her heart went out to him. She offered a hand. He accepted. Ten years of beautiful friendship would follow.
He was a street kid, prideful and willful and averse to accepting charity from anyone. He ran with the horses and clambered up hills and sat on the trees and fought with the bulls, and she was always, always there beside him, or behind him, with bandages in her pockets and pennies for sweets. “We’ll be best friends forever, and protect each other,” they swore, then laughed, and went to play. Nyx would forever bear this oath in mind.
Life was honeyed apples, delectable spring; perfection in the extreme.
But Nyx turned fourteen. Childhood ended, abrupt, like an unannounced tsunami raging through fertile lands.
Abby came to her on midwinter’s night, she was alone; her brothers apprenticed and parents off on an annual trip. “It’s not my fault,” he said, bloodied and trembling and tense. “Didn’t do anything. Not my fault. I’m sinless.”
She nodded, offered water for washing and bandages for wounds. They worked together, till blood was as much on her hands as they were on his, and at last he was clean. Then he sat and she was kneeling and he took her hands and looked her in the eye. “You believe me, don’t you? It’s not my fault.”
She was going to nod when the guards barged in, waving about that arrest order. Two nobles and their wives, dead, a dagger still plunged into the second man’s body. The guards looked, saw more blood on the girl, and just assumed. After all, what was one child for another? They arrested her. Nyx protested her innocence, looked to Abby to back her up, but he just looked at her with apologetic eyes and turned his face. She bit her tongue, something bitter crashing up her throat. The guards dragged her away. Tears were welling.
In this community of dark elves, mercy was a word unknown. Criminals could bribe their way out, but otherwise, they were destined for death. There was no trial, no panel of judges and no torture nor hunt for the truth. She was sentenced to death come next full moon – two weeks of life, and nothing more.
False friend, thought Nyx, sitting with her back to cold steel and knees pulled up to her chest. I hate you.
Two days prior death, Abby came. Another human followed. The boy had swallowed his pride and pleaded the man to save her. The man now made Nyx an offer – he would take her away from death, so long as she pledged fealty, obedience, and freedom to him. It was her freedom for her life. She wanted to laugh. Freedom was a price too steep. In the end, it was Abby who convinced her, who made her pledge, because now that she saw him again, she found that she still loved him and trusted him and his poisoned words. And when he left her with her new master, she hated herself for loving this false friend still. So she transferred her hatred to the only one she could safely hate.
“I hate you,” she said to her new master. “I’ll kill you if I could.” He only nodded, laughed. They left.
The next page of life was bitter, a never-ending winter.
The man was a baron and a mage, but to Nyx, he was simply the Master and a sadist. To him, she was a pet, masquerading in the public as his shy apprentice. And he taught her the basics of magic, just to make that story true. Slavery was outlawed, after all. Nyx wasn’t his only pet, but she was his newest, the most exotic. The rest were just glad they weren’t the ones being fried.
She was collared with a band of iron, welded close after it had been set on her neck. He healed the scar, but didn’t block the pain. Master taught her to hate him, to despise him, and when she lusted after death, he ordered her to live. She starved until he ordered her to eat, worked till he ordered her to stop, and when she jumped off a cliff and burnt her eyes on hot iron, he healed her with mage craft. If it weren’t for the pain and the way he peeled away at her innocence and life, she would have thought he loved her. But he didn’t. He loved nothing but to hurt. Pain and hurt. Past days and nights, pain was the one constant in life.
So Nyx lived on the fact that she still had her honor, and her pride.
But eventually, he took those away, too.
When she was thirty-four, he took her to Abby. Abby was a man now, with a wife and two kids. Master restrained him and placed a dagger in her hands and pushed the blade against his neck. Abby looked on, mouth sealed shut, pleading and apologetic and guilty all at once. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, he seemed to say. I’m sorry.
“Kill him,” Master said. “He betrayed you.”
Abby made her lose the best years of her life, lose her freedom. She hated him, but still, an oath was sworn to protect. Honor forbade her. “No.”
But her words meant nothing, because he ordered, and her hands pushed and Abby died, leaving a wife widowed and two children without a father. The oath was broken. Bile rose up her throat, and Master laughed and laughed. That night, he rode her like an animal, and the roughness made her bleed, but the pain somehow made her feel better, just a little. It wasn’t enough.
She began living on pride. But pride was nothing. Pride was a concept, and it wasn’t enough to sustain life. She stopped eating, then sleeping. And then she was all but dead, unresponsive, a silent specter.
When you’re silent, people talk. They don’t think you’ll leak out secrets, so they talk in front of you. A general of the Master’s army talked in front of Nyx – of rebellion and takeovers and a new Baron, a new rule.
“I’ll help you,” said Nyx, “if I get my freedom in the end.”
The general laughed. “What do you have to offer?”
“A night… and a distracted baron.”
And so the bargaining went. In the end, it was decided. She would distract the baron, buy the general time… and spend another night with the general after the deed. Then she would be free to go her way.
Nyx sold her pride for a promise of freedom.
On the eve of her fortieth birthday, the deed occurred. While the baron was occupied in the bedroom, the general took over. When finally they came to dispose of the baron himself, the general offered her a sword.
“You want to do the honors?”
She looked down at the man now. Him, kneeling and her, standing; him trembling in sweat and piss, and her, a devilish figure naked and caked with crusting blood. Seeing him like this made her feel no better. It took none of the bitterness away. She hated him for her stolen freedom and honor, and she hated him enough for her to sell her pride… she wanted to see him dead, but she couldn’t hate him enough to end his life herself. Perhaps beneath all that hate, she was just a little attached to the man with whom she had spent the last twenty-six years.
“No. Take him away, please,” she begged. And they did.
On her birthday, the general came to claim his end of the deal.
A day later, Nyx breathed, and the air tasted like the freshest of spring. Freedom. The collar remained. They couldn’t get it off. Free, but not so free.
Age: 40
Race: Dark Elf
Hair Color: Black
Eye Color: Blue. Ocean blue.
Height: 5’6”
Weight: 112 lbs
Alignment: Lawful Angst
Occupation: Amateur Sorceress
Personality:
In life, Nyx holds three things in utmost regard: freedom, honor, and pride. Without them, she wasn’t quite sure how to live.
She was a good person, or at least, she was born a good person. And although she had lost that merciful and kind deposition she began with, the elf still knew right from wrong. However, she no longer bothered with the niceness. She did what she had to achieve the ends. The ends always justified the means, unless the means interfered with her priorities.
She was soft-spoken and generally quite pessimistic, and people mistook it for shyness or hostility. Nyx didn’t quite mind. Those assumptions were sort of true. She was quick to act and quick to anger, skeptical and seemed a bit cruel. She didn’t like humans very much, but tolerated them. She was evasive, she never talked about her past, she picked at her scars when she was agitated and disappears when she was annoyed. She tolerated no foolishness and no cruelty towards woman other than herself, and occasionally, when drunk, she gets philosophical. And when all had come to pass, you would find that she was just a woman, a woman who lost her childhood way too soon.
Appearance:
_____Attire: LINK (http://i93.photobucket.com/albums/l48/CrystalChalice/Costume.jpg)
There was something unsettling about those incandescent blue-green eyes, oceans where men drown twice sans noticing. Most avoided Nyx’s eyes, but that drove their sights to the rest of her, and it was no less unnerving.
She had high brows and a sharp chin, a nose too small to bear mentioning and lips too thinly set in neutrality. Her cheeks were sunken, her sockets bagged black. Her skin was stretched too tight against her bones and colored an unreal alabaster shade. The hallmark of all elfin kinds – those pointed ears, only added to the woman’s quiet unnaturalness. Midnight black hair was cropped uneven and close to the scalp, making Nyx’s facial features too, too palpable.
The elf was skeletally thin, built like a thin willow ready to drop at the barest of breezes, all angular joints and veins and almost no curvy flesh. Her ribs stuck out, her belly swallowed in, and her limbs were like a spider’s spindly legs. The chest was a little too narrow, the hips a little too wide, and the feet too long. Pink webs of past scars crosshatched on her back and arms and thighs, forever to stay. Nyx looked half-starved and half-dead, and calling her beautiful would be like calling a mortal her age young. But if nothing else, she was that exotic animal one couldn’t tear their eyes off.
Skills/Traits:
Enhanced Hearing
A trait of being an elf, Nyx has enhanced hearing. Her limit had been a radius of 5 meters.
Enhanced Speed
What Nyx lacked in strength, she made up for in speed. With her built, Nyx was, at the moment, a little faster than the average human, making it easier to dodge and evade incoming attacks.
Grace
She’s rather graceful with her actions, and although that doesn’t mean much, it does add to that exotic aura she exudes.
Magic:
Ancient Conjuration
Long since gone out of fashion with the magic users of Althanas for its barbarianism, this is a magical style that focuses on souls and blood. It involves the binding and controlling of supernatural creatures, such as gods, demons, and nature’s spirits. Each creature has different abilities, and depending on the number of times the ability is used, the ability may get stronger. However, a creature cannot learn additional abilities.
Sealing and controlling the creatures require the target be first defeated in battle. Next, a ritual will take place, in which exactly thirteen drops of the caster’s blood must be dripped onto a runestone. A sigil will be drawn in the air at the exact same time. Thus the creature will be bind, and can be summoned at will. Offerings of blood must occur every month thereafter, lest the caster’s control weakens. Should the caster wish to release the creature, the runestone must be broken.
Summoning the creatures involve casting out the runestone and drawing out another sigil. An offering of blood may make the creature more compliant. Once the creature had served its purpose, it will disappear, and the caster may then reclaim the runestone.
Let it be noted that only one creature may be summoned at any given point in time, each summoning lasts for approximately 2 hours, and that there must be a lapse of 2 hours before the same creature may be summoned once more. Also note that each creature may only be summoned twice per day, and should the caster wish to increase the number of times, a liter of blood must be offered on a daily basis for a month.
Creature: Ocesetiel
Ocesetiel was Nyx’s first creature, a minor water spirit that takes the form of a mermaid.
Abilities
Water Manipulation:
The spirit may control the actions of water within a 3 meter radius of itself. It can mold water into tangible shapes, direct them to go somewhere else, or even make everything disappear, so long as everything happens within a 3 meter radius.
Jet of Water:
A pressurized jet of water shoots out from the spirit’s mouth, up to a distance of 2 meters. Beyond two meters, it loses the pressure and becomes regular water.
Mist:
Mists appear within a 10 meter radius of the spirit. If there are no water sources nearby, the mists can be fairly light, and clear silhouettes of others can be seen. If, however, there are large water sources nearby, the mists will get rather heavy, and only faint silhouettes can be seen. The mists are mildly therapeutic, and though it cannot heal, it does have a calming effect.
Equipment:
Scepter
A scepter of ebony wood, black and knuckled, tipped with a small piece of jade. Used to draw sigils and break runestones, if necessary.
Pouch of Runestones
A pouch that hangs from her belt. Contains 13 runestones.
Clothing
Clothes on her back. Offers no protection/benefits. ‘Nuff said.
History:
“Freedom comes first, then honor, and then pride. Never let go of the three.”
Letter from a mother to a daughter
Nyx was the last child of a banished noble and a merchant man, born with brilliant eyes and smiling lips. She grew up kind and happy and good, teased by three elder brothers and loved by parents, making friends from all straits of life. And while the girl wasn’t that perfect beauty who’d grow up busty and leggy, she was something exotic and untouchable, and it substituted well enough for beauty.
She had a best friend, Abby the human boy. Nyx found him when she was four, finally able to walk without tumbling and talk without lisping. The rain was going slap-slap-slap on skin, and he was just sitting down an alley and looking so pathetic, her heart went out to him. She offered a hand. He accepted. Ten years of beautiful friendship would follow.
He was a street kid, prideful and willful and averse to accepting charity from anyone. He ran with the horses and clambered up hills and sat on the trees and fought with the bulls, and she was always, always there beside him, or behind him, with bandages in her pockets and pennies for sweets. “We’ll be best friends forever, and protect each other,” they swore, then laughed, and went to play. Nyx would forever bear this oath in mind.
Life was honeyed apples, delectable spring; perfection in the extreme.
But Nyx turned fourteen. Childhood ended, abrupt, like an unannounced tsunami raging through fertile lands.
Abby came to her on midwinter’s night, she was alone; her brothers apprenticed and parents off on an annual trip. “It’s not my fault,” he said, bloodied and trembling and tense. “Didn’t do anything. Not my fault. I’m sinless.”
She nodded, offered water for washing and bandages for wounds. They worked together, till blood was as much on her hands as they were on his, and at last he was clean. Then he sat and she was kneeling and he took her hands and looked her in the eye. “You believe me, don’t you? It’s not my fault.”
She was going to nod when the guards barged in, waving about that arrest order. Two nobles and their wives, dead, a dagger still plunged into the second man’s body. The guards looked, saw more blood on the girl, and just assumed. After all, what was one child for another? They arrested her. Nyx protested her innocence, looked to Abby to back her up, but he just looked at her with apologetic eyes and turned his face. She bit her tongue, something bitter crashing up her throat. The guards dragged her away. Tears were welling.
In this community of dark elves, mercy was a word unknown. Criminals could bribe their way out, but otherwise, they were destined for death. There was no trial, no panel of judges and no torture nor hunt for the truth. She was sentenced to death come next full moon – two weeks of life, and nothing more.
False friend, thought Nyx, sitting with her back to cold steel and knees pulled up to her chest. I hate you.
Two days prior death, Abby came. Another human followed. The boy had swallowed his pride and pleaded the man to save her. The man now made Nyx an offer – he would take her away from death, so long as she pledged fealty, obedience, and freedom to him. It was her freedom for her life. She wanted to laugh. Freedom was a price too steep. In the end, it was Abby who convinced her, who made her pledge, because now that she saw him again, she found that she still loved him and trusted him and his poisoned words. And when he left her with her new master, she hated herself for loving this false friend still. So she transferred her hatred to the only one she could safely hate.
“I hate you,” she said to her new master. “I’ll kill you if I could.” He only nodded, laughed. They left.
The next page of life was bitter, a never-ending winter.
The man was a baron and a mage, but to Nyx, he was simply the Master and a sadist. To him, she was a pet, masquerading in the public as his shy apprentice. And he taught her the basics of magic, just to make that story true. Slavery was outlawed, after all. Nyx wasn’t his only pet, but she was his newest, the most exotic. The rest were just glad they weren’t the ones being fried.
She was collared with a band of iron, welded close after it had been set on her neck. He healed the scar, but didn’t block the pain. Master taught her to hate him, to despise him, and when she lusted after death, he ordered her to live. She starved until he ordered her to eat, worked till he ordered her to stop, and when she jumped off a cliff and burnt her eyes on hot iron, he healed her with mage craft. If it weren’t for the pain and the way he peeled away at her innocence and life, she would have thought he loved her. But he didn’t. He loved nothing but to hurt. Pain and hurt. Past days and nights, pain was the one constant in life.
So Nyx lived on the fact that she still had her honor, and her pride.
But eventually, he took those away, too.
When she was thirty-four, he took her to Abby. Abby was a man now, with a wife and two kids. Master restrained him and placed a dagger in her hands and pushed the blade against his neck. Abby looked on, mouth sealed shut, pleading and apologetic and guilty all at once. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, he seemed to say. I’m sorry.
“Kill him,” Master said. “He betrayed you.”
Abby made her lose the best years of her life, lose her freedom. She hated him, but still, an oath was sworn to protect. Honor forbade her. “No.”
But her words meant nothing, because he ordered, and her hands pushed and Abby died, leaving a wife widowed and two children without a father. The oath was broken. Bile rose up her throat, and Master laughed and laughed. That night, he rode her like an animal, and the roughness made her bleed, but the pain somehow made her feel better, just a little. It wasn’t enough.
She began living on pride. But pride was nothing. Pride was a concept, and it wasn’t enough to sustain life. She stopped eating, then sleeping. And then she was all but dead, unresponsive, a silent specter.
When you’re silent, people talk. They don’t think you’ll leak out secrets, so they talk in front of you. A general of the Master’s army talked in front of Nyx – of rebellion and takeovers and a new Baron, a new rule.
“I’ll help you,” said Nyx, “if I get my freedom in the end.”
The general laughed. “What do you have to offer?”
“A night… and a distracted baron.”
And so the bargaining went. In the end, it was decided. She would distract the baron, buy the general time… and spend another night with the general after the deed. Then she would be free to go her way.
Nyx sold her pride for a promise of freedom.
On the eve of her fortieth birthday, the deed occurred. While the baron was occupied in the bedroom, the general took over. When finally they came to dispose of the baron himself, the general offered her a sword.
“You want to do the honors?”
She looked down at the man now. Him, kneeling and her, standing; him trembling in sweat and piss, and her, a devilish figure naked and caked with crusting blood. Seeing him like this made her feel no better. It took none of the bitterness away. She hated him for her stolen freedom and honor, and she hated him enough for her to sell her pride… she wanted to see him dead, but she couldn’t hate him enough to end his life herself. Perhaps beneath all that hate, she was just a little attached to the man with whom she had spent the last twenty-six years.
“No. Take him away, please,” she begged. And they did.
On her birthday, the general came to claim his end of the deal.
A day later, Nyx breathed, and the air tasted like the freshest of spring. Freedom. The collar remained. They couldn’t get it off. Free, but not so free.