Saorlaith of no line

Character Name: Saorlaith

Race: High-Elf

Age: 70

Gender: Female

Character Description: Tall, rakish thin, and the picture of seductive elegance more so in how she moves and speaks than by any other factor. As a High-Elf she stands at 7’2” and tends to prefer clothing somewhere between classy and scandalous, a dance between ballroom charm and gutter dregs. If possible she’ll be found in expensive, good material but where she can’t she’ll make do with fake gems, cut glass and anything in-between to complete that look. Her hair and eyes are a sharp pink. She wears her hair short with one long bang, an asymmetrical cut that exposed her neck and features well. She deeply enjoyed showing her collarbone and back off and quite liked chokers.

Given to secretive smiles and an easy demeanor, she had pleasant features at most times. A thin nose, thin lips and all the sharp features any Elf could be seen with. She generally wears light lavender lipstick. Her hair can be combed either way, she enjoys the bang however it falls that morning. It settled in around pale and healthy, well-cared for skin. In general, Saorlaith liked very pretty things and deeply preferred to fit that description herself.

Character Occupation: (Optional) Prostitute

Character Personality/Traits: She knows what she wants and she knows what she doesn’t. Saorlaith is a fierce woman, a seductive creature who loves the thrill of every moment. She drinks in the mistakes of life and swallows them down with a quiet, faintly rebellious glee. There’s a fascination in the mildly profane and a love for wicked humor. As such, she teases others lightly, enjoys a good bit of banter but still greets with a bright spirit. Saorlaith is not an unkind individual but she is a complicated one who enjoys when others praise her and when she can elevate others also.

There’s a wicked jest in her heart, a quiet need to occasionally just embrace chaos and let the wind determine what happens next. To hell with consequences when the mood strikes her.

Character Biography:

That night the star that led the cosmic host represented disaster, tragedy and regret.

Silivrenmir had fallen two years prior. The way the fires painted with orange, red and white had stained not just the environment but the people also. Civilians had left on evacuation orders en masse, secreted away by ships and the combined efforts of Dark and High-Elves. They all trusted in the word of the Unconquered Sun, Lord Parcivale Arrynlocke. He bid them all prepare to leave a military might he had little to no faith they could defeat. Even the trees seemed to understand, for they did not strike out as they once had in the ages prior against aggressors. The trees were silent and only a handful of Elves knew why. 

The civilians fled and the warriors bled. They marched their armies into the capital, laid out plans with their cousins and prepared to no longer have a home. The future uncertain, the present violent, the past fading they met the Orcs, trolls and goblin hordes and their black magic masters that they had coaxed out from hiding. The trees and the estates were brought down on their enemies and the Dark Elven hideaways were barricaded after enemies entered them and set ablaze. The air sizzled with magic and the ground was thick with blood. Behemoths ran screaming on fire. Chaos. Among all this were griffons and their riders, House Tarana. Their wings were splendid, their blades sharp.

There were so few of those beasts. Two to three years after the fall of Silivrenmir, the Elves huddled with humans in Barkamsted. Far from home, over swamps, the Tarana household was celebrating the birth of twins. The star in the sky was a fickle one, pink and blue, flickering as it carved the way through the sky. Lady Luincrist Tarana and Lord Rovan Tarana embraced one another and remarked how their pink haired children had hair like that star and like the sky in the softest moments of dawn. The family rejoiced, celebrations began with what meager resources they had and the Belenias were invited to make predictions.

Lady Luincrist was, in particular, partial to fate. She swore it had saved her in the past, these readings allied with her good sense and head for battle. So it was that a Belenias arrived, looked to the children and their not-blue hair, then to the star. She proclaimed that the star they shared their hues with was a cursed one; their fate was equally vicious. They would bring ruin upon their house if they were permitted to stay.

So the Belenias had announced in the main hall, in the midst of the party. No one had thought to consult the stars for where such announcements might be made.

Despite this they did their best. They named them after the first year, Dymphna for her initially timid seeming and her shy smiles and Saorlaith for a spirit that never diminished. The parents raised them as such children ought to be raised. News trickled in of more cities falling. Tenifae, where Lord Parcivale Arrynlocke had headquartered for a time. Sandori Kanas, which seemed untouchable for all of its wealth. Who would attack the heartless merchants? Kouren Kai, the iron circle. Even that land of warriors was crushed.

Soon the world had shrunk till only Barkamsted remained. There was nothing, nothing but one mountain rang that pushed through and divided the forest and a thin, sad strip of salt swamp before it opened into a dead world of ruin, where conquerors squatted in ancient glory. In the earliest years the twins had lessons, maths, language, writing, reading. They began martial training early, riding early also. Both loved horses, they were naturals. They would sing and gallop into the distance, gallop through the years.

So many things happened around them during that time, from the span of Tenifae to Sandori Kanas. While they learned to climb the mountains of the Hunter’s Guild and pointed out over the waters of the bay, people died in the distance. While the sisters shared bread with young Lyrals or Alwarans, an outpost was built up at the edge of the swamp and intentionally broken to resemble a ruin.

The year they were nearing adulthood was the year everything thinned out. No more letters from the outside, no more communications and less hope. The atmosphere was bleak and the city was packed. Tents stretched almost as far as what would later become the peninsula for the Qorinvayas Estate, somewhere between the Lyral and Remartiu estate. Dwarves, Humans, Elves… Half-Elves.

There were so few allies left. Yet the city was eating itself alive with distrust, despair and crime at an all time high due to just how few resources were to be had and how many needed them. At the time it had been suggested that they help with that. The oldest of the pack was a Siddhe. He said the old hunts were still on and his good friend, Lord Dagnir Alwaran was eager to give that a try. Dymphna and Saorlaith liked to see themselves as hardened Tarana by now, yet they always felt they had so much to prove. There was a distance between them and the rest of the House. They were never allowed to prove themselves, never allowed to live up to their names. Gone were the kind years where they could ride a griffon with their parents, or talk with them into the deep of night.

They drove the Half-Elves through the plains, past a small tower ruin. They laughed as they caught them between ropes, snagged them and dragged them across the rocks until they could no longer cry out. It was a sport, a game that helped the supplies. Less Half-Elves, less mouths to feed. No one cared. No one ever made a register of the animals. All the young lords and ladies found it strange the things could even speak.

Dymphna and Saorlaith laughed along with the rest. They did until they had to chase after a straggler and happened upon her and her children, who clutched to her in the brush. The fear in their eyes, the hatred and terror in the mother’s. Saorlaith and Dymphna realized that they were people then. With the horror of realization they pulled away. They told the others that Half-Elf had been carried off by an alligator or a crocodile, whatever they were called.

It was waved off. Times changed. The year turned and they were full adults. They were set to marry, suitors were being arranged. As they celebrated, a star glimmered in the sky and led a host across its expanse while intruders made it into the city, old vampires and undead who had claimed the land as theirs ages ago. A troll had wandered into the tavern. So many wild things. And today, why, a ship was going off to reclaim Thonduhm! It was supposed to be near the human capital, Falkvard. There were so many heroes making their names known, Rashne, Rathuris, Borin, Valardan. Glaedwin, Alva… Half-Elves.

So many never made it back. A dragon had been there instead of goblins and all manner of monster and cultist had been inside. Many of their friends were gone and their mother muttered about ill stars. The marriages were halted as stories began to fly around the siblings. They hadn’t known who they would be married to, had never met them yet. Apparently both had died in Thonduhm. The Belenias were consulted.

One day, as ships were preparing to sail toward Falkvard for a night strike, they were pulled aside and mages were called to check them. A fault was found in each. Neither had a complete uterus; they couldn’t breed. Immediately the rage that filled the room was palpable. Lords of other families claimed that Luincrist should have known and she barked back at them.

Yet when it was done their mother looked through them, not at them. Talk was had of emergency Alterations, even merging the two together. They were never apart anyways, they only ever seemed complete when they were with one another. The terrified girls kept their composure as best they could until the possibility of silencing them was aired. Then they spoke, at last. They spoke of the times they shared, the love they had, of the things they did. Little things, they hadn’t been allowed to ever interact with much. When they had, ruin. Their mother made that clear.

Saorlaith began to shout and kick over tables. She threw down her signet ring and shouted that it wasn’t their fault to be born under such a star and maybe a curse had been laid upon them, had they ever tried breaking curses? Dymphna grasped onto that and asked what the prophecy was. She then posited that the only part that mattered was being in the family.

Lady Luincrist and Lord Rovan finally took their daughters in their arms once more. They had not been able to have any more children so they held them tight one last time. The four of them spoke late into the night, joked and teased. It felt like early days. When the morning came, they were put out of the House and left without direction. They had a set of clothing, a sword, some coin.

Their reputations were poor. The Elven Houses who knew them shunned them. To lose title meant you lost it due to incompetence, failure. Until Lord Arrynlocke gave forgiveness or the Head of House did, they were worthless. They were remembered by the Half-Elves as cruel killers and the rest of Barkamsted was indifferent to them. Only one Half-Elven mother helped them. That familiar face smiled, broke bread with them and helped them sale their swords.

Dymphna attached to the few interested in the medical world. Valerie Kyrie shunned her wholly, screamed that she was there to kill them all. She had to find education with hedge witches and small time potion brewers, grueling work. Saorlaith tried her hand at job after job and found she just didn’t have the focus for them, nor the heart. A lot of her fire had drained away and each new job just meant a new boss she couldn’t stand. She’d get into spats with them. A dwarf got into an altercation with her, hit Saorlaith right across the jaw and snapped it like a tinder twig. She launched at him and dug one of his eyeballs out with her nails. Both were arrested. There, they had briefly met Glaedwin, who did his rounds to heal with holy magic. There was something in his eyes that scared Saorlaith, but she accepted the blessing.

Perhaps she saw those Half-Elves she dragged through rocks. Actually, it was probably because she felt he knew somehow. Not what crimes she had committed, but that crimes had occurred. She was placing too much in the eyes of others and she knew. Those eyes were hollow, easy to put whatever you wanted into them. Were hers like that?

She wandered, trying to find a purpose, find a job. Dock work, garden work, the occasional mild magical thing whenever she had a trinket and hadn’t sold it off to pay off costs. Money wasn’t always in hand, bills mounted up and debts got collected. She’d spend nights drinking, partying or gambling. And that’s where she found her fun. Knife games, gambling sessions. She had to have a finger put back on once. She was reckless, but she’d pull back in when it got too bad. Yet she often couldn’t resist just having fun, doing something wild or stupid. Why not risk it all? Fate had it out for her after all.

It was when the war changed trajectory that she started to find her stride. Falkvard was reclaimed, people from the Gut moved over, she did too. Dymphna stayed in Barkamsted, started to attach to bigger medics, trained under apprentices to bigger doctors. She learned a bit from a student of Mleza, partook in experimental treatments. She had a fascination with those things. And Saorlaith? Well, people in Falkvard knew how to party. There was more space, two cities. Refugee camps were draining out and no one remembered the sins of anyone else.

Everyone was dead or trying to remember how to be alive and she would dance and drink and play. She finally found what brought her to life. It wasn’t any single thing, but a combination that really culminated in a career. She had to pay off some debts and one man suggested her body. She had such a wretched association to it due to how her family had rejected her that there was something exciting about the prospect.

Oh she turned that man down. She paid the debt with money and moved on, she wasn’t going to give a rat his cheese. She did notice people looked at her though. She could choose how to do things on her terms. She started making money, clumsily at first, poorly. Pulled muscles or just deep inexperience, but she managed to make do. She’d work through things and gamble it off or send funds to her sister. Dymphna would thank her and ask about her life. Then took interest.

They’d start swapping lives then, occasionally. Neither knew what to do in the shoes of the other but it felt exciting to fail, to just be out there. Yet Saorlaith always had the worst luck. The demon gate wars? She was in Falkvard when the gate to Hell opened and she had to run for her life when the demons burned through the streets. She got recruited partway through and had spent the majority of that final battle reloading crossbows or barricading doorways. The meeting of the Ca’liar and the discovery of Acaedia were pleasant, those times were exciting until the whole thing with the Brazen Bull happened, then the ghosts that would pour through holes left by Battle Maidens and Hunt Spirits. There were so many times where the roads were just a nightmare.

The Void, both sisters avoided any real tragedy during that time save an extremely brief stint in the darkness, then an almost immediate return home as things were sorted by that weird theater kid and the fashionless one-pocket cloak half-elf.

The plague was, tragically, where Saorlaith thrived. She made enormous amounts of money then, enough to start feeling like she could be a mover and shaker. In a time where everyone was terrified of sickness but whores were still popular, a High-Elf was the top billing. She couldn’t carry or pass the plague; she got to know every side street, back corner and many livingrooms of the Falkvard city. That was when she truly learned to seduce others, grew confident in her skills. And after all that, a bunch of assholes broke down her door and took everything she had. She had to sell her house and go right back to the Cermie Laity alms houses as a frequent guest.

Her luck stayed consistently miserable when she took Dymphna’s place right as the Ca’liar accidentally landed in Barkamsted and attacked it, thinking it was Acaedia and home to witches. She once more found herself barricading doorways and tending the most basic wounds, which by now she knew how to do. Surgery? Hells no, that was for other medical staff. Someone died on her watch, a man who had a blade in his throat. She was certain she couldn’t have saved him even if she had the know-how. That’s what she told herself anyways.

So many things were a blur after that. The Acaedia War ended, something about a demon and now the Ca’liar were led by a new Emperor, didn’t impact her at all. The Avalti came to Barkamsted in numbers, which excited Dymphna, who studied medicine with them and who transferred to Falkvard’s hospital occasionally. Some farms sucked at farming, a big scary forest was big and scary in the east, that was a problem for knights. They talked about spiders, she took their coin. She’d hear stories and helped ease the dread of poor men and women at arms but otherwise it wasn’t for Falkvard. A royal wedding, people went to this place to fight or that place to fight.

She was more worried when the Crossroads fell. That terrified her. Dymphna had been missing for a few years, no show, no letters. The front lines had crumpled occasionally and some medics just disappeared into the mist of war. Saorlaith spent those nights crying, wishing she could talk to her sister. Dymphna it turned out had survived, but came back with questions about things people couldn’t heal. She talked on and on about people who had fixed wounds but broken hearts. It became a fixation and she would go on pilgrimages to learn more. They’d still swap but Saorlaith didn’t leave the cities much.

The winters, the way the waters became their enemies, that was a scary time as well. A time when people spent money on her profession and she lost it all on food, supplies, especially medical needs for her sister to continue under bad investments with one quack doctor or another.

A voyage later and it brought us to today. Saorlaith was unrecognizable from the soft years of her youth. If a warrior was hardened by battle and campaigns, a whore who had seen the decades and who grew to respect her sister’s love for the mind became adept at seduction. Gone was the casually cruel woman of the past, replaced by someone who was a little selfish, a little cowardly, a little disastrous, but well-meaning. She had picked up holy for a few years before she had lost her trinket, helped others here and there.

Honestly, despite the crooked little jigsaw puzzle that she was, Saorlaith liked helping others a bit. It helped her like herself; she saw how much they enjoyed her.

And that made her feel less like a half of something. Her ambition was to feel alive when she so often felt incomplete.

(Optional, this form must be filled out if you want your character to have magic at all.

Magic Biography:

As a once noble and now absolute commoner, Saorlaith had gone from having grown up around magic and breathing it in each day to fighting to even see a trinket along with everyone else. She loved the feeling of it, the majesty and the way it made one feel connected to the whole world. She had lessons as a child, then years of magical poverty that occasionally saw her with a trinket on loan or one she had to pawn off. She had three stolen over the years, including a holy trinket she had dealt with extensively. That one hurt.

They discovered their potential the way most nobles did; they were tested, went through each possibility to find what their aspects would strictly be. They were grilled on them, how to use them in war, a lot of lessons she just couldn’t bring herself to pay attention to. They just weren’t fascinating so it slid right off of her, never stuck.

The use of it, though, the actual use. Gods that made her feel like sparks were under her fingers. It reminded her of griffon flights.

Please describe the magic system, including its limitations in your own words:

The magic system is built around trinkets, which limit the power of one’s spells and if they can cast at all with each item being bound to a particular element or capability, and to aspects which were the limited by the race one was born as.

As a High-Elf, Saorlaith had four aspects and was quite confident hers were telekinesis, holy, wind and ice. There was probably a whole philosophy as to why she had those but she never gave it too much thought.

With the right trinkets and aspects a mage could cast magic, but they should be careful. Spells were limited and overcasting had incredible danger associated with it, to both the trinket and the mage. The consequences ranged from damaged to destroyed trinkets to hurt or killed mages.

Please describe how you would use a weak trinket with your characters first/only aspect:

Her first aspect was wind. She had used it to blow dust away, hide homework and rush through her hair and clothes. She loved the feeling it gave and how it could make water in a glass stir to follow the motion of the tiny gusts. She had once blown a person’s permit down a street which amused the hell out of her.

-Please note that some aspects are set when a character is born, while others are up to practice. The number of aspects you have is limited by your character’s race, but they may have less than the max should you so choose, but they will not be able to regain that lost aspect naturally-

Special request: she begins with no money and very little in terms of equipment.