Name: Itzli Arinuli

Gender: N/A

House Name: Feraei

Age: N/A

Appearance: Itzli's exact appearance can, obviously, vary wildly. In her shade form, she appears as a black specter that is approximately human sized, but with no legs or discernible features. Currently, she is possessing a suit of armor, and so appears to be approximately 6' (1.82 m). The armor itself is traditional half-plate that is the usual silver color, though it does appear to be in particularly good shape, gleaming in the sunlight. The helmet also has a plume that is green in color, representing the nation of Ferros.

Homeland: None, really, but did arrive in Ferros

Race: Shade

Spells: School of Cursing
Itzli is at about the level of an adept when it comes to using Curse magic, having trained with it for a while with a group of feral mages. At her current level, she is able to use a variety of curses, like making individuals blind, causing them to fall asleep, or even making them have trouble breathing. Of course, the more energy she puts into the curse increases the likelihood that it will backfire, as does spreading the curse among a vast number of people.

School of Illusion – Inactive
Itzli is currently learning how to do more with magic than just Cursing, expanding into Illusions. Of course, being self-taught means that she is very poor at using this magic at the moment. In fact, she has just learned how to expand her mind so that she can feel the minds of those directly around her (~5 ft). She literally can do nothing beyond that, not even something as simple as recognize the minds she feels or learn anything of them. Compared to Tower Mages, she would be significantly below the level of a novice.

Bio: Itzli's memories from before her... arrival, are nearly non-existent. Her clearest memory from before her arrival is of a tremendous pressure and pain. When she was next conscious of her situation, she was lying on the side of a mountain that was blanketed with snow and dotted with tall evergreens. She wandered around for a while on the mountain, observing the people who came to hunt or trap or even camp and growing stronger every day.

Eventually, Itzli grew strong enough to materialize herself, though she quickly learned that the same people she had been observing were not very receptive her to ghastly form, most of them either running off screaming or attempting to take her down with bows and arrows. Though it didn't harm her, she still allowed them to believe that it was effective, disappearing into the forest again.

After a time, she learned that she could enter animals and use them as a vessel. Unfortunately, this also lead to the discovery of the pain that follows when the vessel is slain, as a deer she had been possessing was shot through the heart with an arrow from a hunting party, the animal dying before she could leave its body due to the pain disorienting her. That, however, was nothing compared to the agony of being dematerialized due to the death of her vessel.

A few days later, she found that she was able to materialize again, though by this time she was beginning to grow weary of the mountain. So, she devised a plan to possess an animal belonging to a hunting party and to travel back with them. Apart from almost getting found out a couple of times due to how hard it was to behave as a dog would, her plan was successful, and she found herself in a large city built into a valley between two of the mountains in the range. It was only later that she discovered that it was the capital of the nation of Ferros.

Once night fell, she left the dog she had been possessing to wander the city, sticking to the shadows and observing the people. It was during one of these nights that she chanced upon a family mourning the loss of their daughter to fever shortly before they would have retired to bed. On a whim, Itzli entered the body of the girl and took over, giving it the appearance of life and the family much joy. Of course, they thought that they had been mistaken concerning her condition.

As the days went on, it became clear that the girl clearly wasn't the same, though it was chalked up to results of the ferocious fever that had afflicted the girl. This dismissal of the change in her behavior allowed her the time she needed to blend in, learning a lot about the girl and taking on several of her characteristics, like her name for example.

When she was deemed “well,” she was sent back to her apprenticeship with a nearby smith, as well as the classes on swordsmanship and combat that it seemed all able-bodied children took. It seemed that the girl had already learned things like math, reading and writing, which meant that Itzli was forced to learn that on her own during the night while everyone else was asleep, a feat made easier by the fact that she had no need for sleep.

It was also quite clear that she was exceptional at swordsmanship, able to move with more speed and strength than most of the other children. In addition to her extra strength and speed, she also didn't really tire and had increased reflexes. Though she was still continuing in her apprenticeship to the smith, it appeared more and more likely that she would become a high-ranking soldier or something along those lines.

Her magic actually didn't see much use during this time, as she had very little understanding concerning it and had no real need to use it, though she did know that she was able to use magic, having done so on a couple of occasions in the forest where she had awoken. On a couple of occasions, her “family” caught her using magic to curse something like a rat in order to get rid of it, usually by fusing its little paws with the floor so that she could crush it. On those rare occasions, she was reminded of how the reputation of the family could be at stake if she was found out to be able to do magic, effectively being chastised and told not to do it again.

After a few years, she finished her apprenticeship with the smith, having reached a proficiency in the art that would have allowed her to open her own business if that had been what she desired to do. Instead, however, she figured that she would do something that would make her “family” proud and joined the army, though as a blacksmith and not a soldier. Once it was determined that she had the appropriate level of combat expertise, she was stationed at a watchtower along the border of Ferros towards the barbarians of the north, given the primary task of keeping the soldiers' gear in good condition and with the understanding that she would have to take up arms in defense of the tower if it ever came to that.

Unfortunately, it did come to that after several years at the post when a group of barbarians attacked the tower, catching those stationed there almost entirely by surprise. In fact, they had even managed to get inside the tower itself, which was why Itzli had taken up her sword in the first place. Though she was a good swordsman, the barbarians were stronger and larger than she was, and it wasn't long before they were able to separate the body of the girl from her head, dematerializing Itzli.

When Itzli did rematerialize, she was looking down on the body as the surviving guards were preparing to haul it out to the burial site, muttering about what a shame it was that she had died considering she hadn't been an actual soldier. Unsure of what to do from there, Itzli possessed a set of armor, including a sword, that she had just finished mending before the attack and left in the dead of night.

She wandered south and east for quite some time, sticking mostly to the wilderness she knew, following the old, beaten paths. Of course, such areas are prime targets for banditry and the like, and it wasn't long before she was ambushed by a group of people demanding her money, their logic being an individual that can afford a suit of armor like she was possessing must have at least something worth stealing on them.

It turned out that the people she was ambushed by were actually feral mages who made a hobby of banditry in order to get by, as she found out when one of their member used Aeromancy to keep her from drawing her sword. That didn't hinder Itzli too much, however, as she was able to use magic herself to fuse the feet of the bandits to the soil, preventing them from moving.

The tune of the mages changed rather quickly once they were unable to move, offering Itzli a position in their group and promising to help her learn to improve her magic if she let them go. Seeing the opportunity as a better alternative than aimlessly wandering around like she had been, she accepted and released the bandits before following them through the forest to their camp. Their camp itself was actually rather impressive for a group of bandits, even if they were mages, as it was essentially built into a cliff face, offering them a very defensive position.

As she worked with the group of feral mages, Itzli gradually expanded her abilities with magic, becoming much more proficient at controlling her magic outside of moments of pure instinct. She also began to learn what exactly she could do with her hexes, from making people unable to breathe to temporarily blinding them to causing them to fall asleep. She also began to experiment with illusion magic, having found some old books that the feral mages had kept when they discovered the place.

In order to contribute to the group itself, Itzli was required to participate in ambushes every so often so that they could get things the group needed or money to buy such things. It was rather interesting to see how the group organized itself, however. Everyone was on the schedule for ambushes, but it rotated every so often so that merchant caravans and the like never saw the same people each time, giving the appearance that the were a number of bandit groups in the area. Magic was also used as a last resort for the most part for similar reasons.

Of course, Itzli's gray morality means that she finds nothing wrong with banditry in and of itself, though she doesn't like killing people. And its not as though wealth means anything to her either. Itzli remains with the group merely because of the sense of camaraderie that she experiences there, which was much the same reason that she had stayed with the family back in Snowhearth.