Name: Nyssa, witch of Mora

Race: Breton (Reachman)

Family Origins:


Born among the Forsworn of the Reach and showing a strong aptitude for learning in her early life, Nyssa reached her adolescence confined within one of the Reach's many ruined towers, handed willingly over by her parents as offering and appeasement in enforced apprenticeship to a clutch of witches and their Hagraven sisters. It was not exactly slavery. But nor could it be called anything like freedom. Hours spent at the lectern were enforced with an iron chain around her ankle, and disciplinary action was firm: More than one night was spent hanging in an iron birdcage with an empty stomach.

Her old name was sacrificed and forgotten, and she was called Nyssa, with the understanding that one day she, too, might aspire to become one of the repulsive avian monsters.

The girl, of course, had other aspirations.

Appearance:

Nyssa is sharp-featured, her cheeks pinched and face strongly set, her deep red hair tangled and voluminous. Her narrow eyes and full lips are painted a dark, charcoal gray in the tapered, ritual style of the Reachmen, and there is something of a hard-bitten cast to her, her mouth always turned down at the corners by default. She most frequently wears a rich, toughened blue robe and gloves woven from leather and velvet, wrapped with strips of calligraphy-inked parchment and embellished with light, piecemeal ceremonial armors in false gold. The gown is beautiful in an alien way, tight-fitting and opulent, but has become well-worn from travel and conflict; The thin metals are chipped and tarnished, the fabric stained and cut in places.

Beneath her clothing, should anyone ever see it, her skin is inked with twisting, cephalopodic patterns and arcane calligraphies that coil around her body.

Age: 28

Equipment:
Blue robes of Change (slight Alteration enhancement), clawed ritual gauntlets, light ritual sollerets -- A striking, if disturbing ensemble that would catch more eyes were it not becoming as dishevelled as its mistress.

Opaline crown (slight magicka boost) -- A tiara set with a trinity of polished opals. Old and impressive, but of symbolic value more than anything; the stones bear a tell-tale lack of color, and the metal lacks the glitter of true gold.

Steel ritual dagger -- more a tool than a weapon, the blade has nonetheless claimed more than one unsuspecting life, and its toothed, twisted edge appears to never have been cleaned.

Miscellaneous:
Pen, ink and parchment; Indigo Grimoire (locked); A number of red candles; Assorted minor soul gems.

Favored Skills:
Expert: Destruction
Adept: Alteration, Enchanting, Mysticism
Apprentice: One-handed, Mercantile, Light armor

Crime Committed:
Daedra worship -- "Caught red-handed, m'lud, in the midst of some perverse Daedric rite. She and all her kind mean us naught but ill. Let the people see that they are protected from this foulness."

Murder -- "A number of good men were slain before the coven was overcome and this last craven witch surrendered, m'lud. Only just it is that she pay for their lives."

Character Background:


Most of young Nyssa's childhood time was spent in the dingy stacks of the tower library, cataloging, retrieving, and endlessly copying magical and ritual manuscripts. It was repetitive, dark and thankless work, but also formative -- Nothing holds a tome in a young girl's memory like being forced to ink out its every page -- and the library contained other, stranger books not commonly available to conventional scholars or college mages. More intriguingly, some contained scrawled notes in their margins, each in a different hand yet all enigmatic and tantalizing glimpses of some greater, grander truth. Slowly, over whole years, the young scribe began to piece together whispers of the secret places of the world outside, and other, more rewarding destinies that might await a girl with a strong will and a thirst for learning.

Almost as if the trail had been set that way.

As her age and understanding grew and her blood began to heat with a growing rebellion, apathy toward her people, resentful disgust for the Hagravens and the lure of hidden knowledge drove Nyssa to slip her leash, killing two of her self-absorbed 'siblings' and taking the more relevant tomes for herself as she fled into the night. She traveled, moving through the border of Cyrodiil to Hammerfell, following one connection after another before falling in with a secretive cult of Hermaeus Mora and gravitating at last to High Rock. The Prince's sphere suited her ambitions perfectly, and she embraced the cult's bargains enthusiastically, blossoming from an obedient, dead-eyed girl into a power-hungry, dead-eyed woman.

Til now, she has lead something of a double life, finding work as a hireling scholar and scribe while quietly working to serve her own ends and those of her unearthly master; both a free agent and a loose end. Alas, her searches and manipulations were finally put to a stop when a covert summoning ritual was stormed by the faithful of Stendarr, and all its participants put quickly to the sword.

All except one.

Fighting Style:
Though not the fittest or the hardiest (she needs to catch her breath after a moderate run,) Nyssa is as mentally accustomed to conflict as any veteran battlemage and employs her destructive power without flinching, comfortable at a nearer range to combat than many of her kind. Though very proficient at what she does, formerly-trained mages or the faithful of the Divines may see her magic as corrupt, and there's no denying it's... weird. The fire is off-color in a way that sickens the eyes, the lightning writhes in thrashing, obscene tendrils, and the ice glistens in a way ice should not.

Trusting no one to watch her back, she generally works to secure herself before engaging foes, calling up her invisible armor, ensuring her concentration is unbroken and her exits clear before she blankets the battlefield in chaos and death. Should magic fail and flight become impossible, she fights like a cornered beast, stabbing, slashing and shrieking like a banshee. There is no honor between animals, no code or concord to be had within the red crucible of violence. If she can tear her opponent's throat out with her teeth as they struggle in the mud, she will.

Personality:
Nyssa firmly believes that information is power, and she hungers for knowledge like a wolf hungers for meat. She is tenacious almost to the point of monomania, sleeplessly burning candles over a crumbling stack of ancient scrolls, delving willingly into forgotten pits, scorning any law which thinks to bar her way and dogging paper trails halfway across the world if she has to. Of course, everything has its price. There is such a thing as learning too much too quickly, and there are some things the mortal mind was never meant to contain. She sleeps little and fitfully, her rest plagued by feverish nightmares and wordless answers to unthinkable questions.

She is acutely intelligent and highly literate, but her upbringing has left her socially stunted and apolitical, indifferent to the wider concerns of the world. As a result, she is tactlessly blunt, getting to know people only through necessity and speaking with little regard for delicate feelings. Moreover, there is something feral in her; some dead place in her mind that the comforts of civilization and the warmth of companionship can never reach. She looks at people as though they were things; objects, means to an end rather than living beings, and she lacks even the first shred of empathy, seeing everything as an accounting of values. Nyssa doesn't understand the concept of "friends": But fortunately for those around her, she does understand the value -- and rarity -- of competence.

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