Name: Nyssa, witch of Mora

Race: Breton (Reachman)

Family Origins:
Nyssa was born among the Forsworn of the eastern Reach, and thus into a hard, bitter life of vendetta and conflict. Her mother was a bloody-handed shaman, frequently bare-breasted and elbow-deep in the entrails of some slaughtered animal. Her father was a hunter, and not only of game; the Reach held no lack of marauders eager to murder travelers to and from the stone city and loot their goods. Their daughter was instilled early with the values of her people -- hatred of the usurpers of the Reach -- hatred for just about everyone, for that matter -- mistrust of strangers, respect for the Daedra and of the old ways of life, the embrasure of hardship and the natural necessity of killing.

She was soon followed by two younger brothers she regularly scuffled with, and with a burgeoning affinity for magic, a dangerously sharp mind for her age and a scarcity of already limited resources, Nyssa was passed over to one of the Reach's insular Raven covens, reaching her adolescence confined within one of the Reach's many ruined towers in an enforced apprenticeship to the witches and Hagravens that dwelt there. 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 after some willful action or sharp remark. Though a hard and thankless education, it was unquestionably effective, and in the driven eyes of the Forsworn fanatics, a coveted and honorable position for a young girl, who with the proper devotion might one day aspire to become one of the revered feathered monsters herself.

Unfortunately, 'honor' was a value Nyssa's parents had neglected to instill. And in time, she developed aspirations of her own.

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.

Oiled leather riding cloak -- Does it ever stop raining here?

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

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. She learned the principles and practice of basic magic, the ritual arts, fragments of the black secrets and forgotten histories of the world. 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.

The Reach began to feel smaller and smaller, the Forsworn's war more futile and insignificant. As her age and understanding grew and her blood began to heat with a growing rebellion, apathy toward her people's cause, resentment for the preening Hagravens, a hunger for freedom and the lure of hidden knowledge drove Nyssa to slip her leash. She planned the escape for close to a year. 5th Mid Year, summoning day of Hircine, would be the hour; time of a night-long communion between the covens and the clans, the making of the sacred Briarhearts and bloody rites to the Lord of the Hunt. With the bulk of the coven bent toward the rituals, she would have due time to slip away. Once her overzealous companions had been dealt with.

She prepared a leather raincloak, a sack, a secreted boning knife and enough dry food and water for the first day, hiding most of it amongst the books over a period of days. When the night came, it was only she and one of the older witches within the tower garret, most everyone below amidst the small, flickering fires in the thickening dusk. As night finally fell and her last tasks were done, opportunity presented itself, and as the woman bent to fetch a fallen quill, Nyssa got her belt around her keeper's scrawny throat.

This is where the first thing went wrong.

Nyssa was younger, but not stronger, and though savagely determined, she had no practical experience in a true life or death struggle. Her quiet assassination became a desperate melee. Eighteen savage, panicked knife blows later, and Hircine had his first sacrifice earlier than expected.

It was a disaster. Someone would come, soon. Her timetable had shrunk to a pinpoint. There was no point in trying to conceal the body. The evidence was everywhere. All her planning had been next to worthless. She could do nothing to suppress her scream of frustration before she recovered her things, stuffed the relevant books in with them and fled into the night, covered in more blood than she could possibly have expected. The one Hagraven near enough, but not prepared enough, to stop her got an icicle through its eye socket, and if the scuffle in the tower hadn't been enough to draw attention, the creature's wretched shrieking surely would.

She scrambled east, avoiding the road and hurrying over the rocks in near-blackness, the stars -- which she knew well -- and the moonlit silhouettes of the mountain range her only guide. A torch at this point would mean certain death, and it was a matter of moments before the night sounded with the howl of wolves, pinpricks of fire danced in the darkness behind her and she heard the first arrow clatter against the freezing stones nearby. She couldn't even know who was shooting at her, or even whether they knew who they were shooting at themselves. It didn't matter. If you were alone in the Reach, you were prey.

The second disaster came as she splashed into the river, meaning to cross over directly rather than lose time following the waterline. She was unprepared for the strength of the water, and far too weak to fight it. The current took her and she was dragged over the falls, twice, cracking her ribs on the first landing and mercifully plunging into deeper water on the second, swept downstream until finally dragging herself out under a collapsed bridge, huddling and gasping long enough to get her breath back before pressing on. She was disoriented, soaked and in pain, but it had put distance between herself and her pursuers, and they had temporarily lost her, granting her enough precious time to reach her intended waypoint: the collapsed Dwemer ruin of Arkngthamz, still rumbling darkly in its depths.

She sheltered in a concealed ventilation pipe attached to the subterranean hold, opening it using a method learned from one of her liberated books, drying herself and her possessions beside a meager fire sparked from her hand and barely staving off death as the bitter cold of the Reach settled murderously over the hills. There were no further pursuers. At times, she has wondered if perhaps the Prince of the Hunt approved of the sport despite the affront to his followers. The chase, however improbable, has always been sacred to him, and he had been given quite the show.

When morning came, she ate what food remained and continued on to her destination, a Daedric shrine marked in the hills that she believed held the path to greater mysteries. Alas, the tower's information was old. The shrine was in ruins, and there was no sign of any living thing. Only a fragment of an inscription was left, which she copied, furious and dejected, but unwilling to give up.

She made her way toward Rorikstead, the village visible from the hills, drawing odd looks and being directed to the inn. The innkeeper had no taste for charity and was disinterested in bartering slightly waterlogged and frankly esoteric manuscripts for food, not to mention being suspicious of the bloodstained, harshly-mannered waif trying to press the bargain, but eventually nodded toward another man who had made his way down from the rafters. This was Cassus Tarsus, a greying Imperial travelling between Skyrim and Hammerfell who had 'gone native' in the western land, employing a handful of Redguard protectors and trafficking manuscripts via caravan between the Mage's guilds.

Tarsus, himself a man not untainted by bargains with the Demon of Knowledge, took an immediate interest in the unusual young girl and the damp but nonetheless intriguing writings she carried. He claimed to know of a man in distant Sentinel who specialized in lore of the sort she seemed fascinated by, and offered to take her along with the caravan if she earned her keep. She agreed, once terms were favorable. The man seemed more than content with her strict expectations, even a little smug, and no fuss was raised over the odd-looking girl's presence in his company as they departed; though he received a dark, dirty look from the swordswoman leading his bodyguards, for no reason Nyssa could understand.

She understood later that night, in Dragonstar.

While he slept, she went through his things, found an Imperial merchant's writ of passage and a few letters of credit, took them and left before dawn. The Redguard woman was on watch, and didn't stop her, or even ask where she was going. She got herself aboard the first barge along the Bjoulsae river toward the bay and continued toward the capital, telling herself that one day, the account would be settled.

The travel on dry land was arduous. It is one thing to read about a place in its most painstaking detail, and another to actually tread through the shimmering dust of its roads and bake beneath the punishing Alik'r sun when the freezing rocks of the Reach had been one's home. Nonetheless, Nyssa developed a strange fascination with the desert. Its winds seemed to whisper to her like the tongues of dry ghosts, and there were secrets held within its shifting expanse that called to her like sirens.

In time, she came to Sentinel, harder and more bitter and willful than she had been even at her outset. She sought out the man named to her by Tarsus, Ibn Shem ar-Ayaan, a nearsighted scholar and astronomer who turned out to be one of several in the direct employ of the King. A protected and valuable personage, Shem was not to be troubled by any dust-covered waif who just blew in off the street, and on arriving at his residence, the girl was first turned away and then, on pressing the issue, manhandled and partially beaten before the quick intervention of Shem's wife: Hemaah ar-Ayaan, a dark, striking woman in blue silks and sharpened gold finger-rings, who seemed to have a sixth sense for being in exactly the right place at exactly the right time.

Her husband, she claimed, would be pleased to have such a tenacious (though the word she later whispered into his ear was 'obsessive') assistant who could read old Berton script and Daedric, and, in her quiet way, she saw that it transpired. The man's considerable defences were disarmed almost at once at his wife's story of the rough treatment Nyssa had received at the hands of the house guards, and slowly the girl began to understand that none of it had been an accident. It was her first glimpse into Hemaah's mastery of manipulation and coincidence. She was to have many more.

Though Nyssa had no interest in social graces or friends, preferring to throw herself into her work, Hemaah made the time to engage with the young woman in the quiet moments of her private researches. She was a subtle, educated woman who knew a great many things. She knew the tiding and language of much of Nyssa's old books that had eluded her. She knew about Tarsus's business, his double-dealings with the Empire and his under-the-table proclivities with vulnerable young girls. She even knew things about Nyssa herself she had no right to. She took her time slowly coaxing out and testing more and more of the girl's character and willpower, asking ever more direct questions about the old things she had learned from her tutors in the Reach. At last, after months of this, and when all her caution had been satisfied, she asked what the girl would do to achieve the breadth of power and knowledge she sought. The look on her face was answer enough.

Hemaah and a single, heavily-armed attendant took the girl into the desert as the sun began to set, making certain some plausible excuse was left for her husband. Time seemed to hold its breath in the Alik'r, and there was no way for her to know how long they had travelled, the lady telling more and more elaborate and suggestive tales, before they came to the shrine; a bizarre and inhuman carving of Hermaeus Mora, chiselled into an outcropping of twisted stone, bearing an inscription much like the one Nyssa had sought in the Reach. They travelled down into a concealed stairway at its back, and into a cool, firelit chamber, long and wide, its floor richly carpeted, its walls set with magical artifacts and equipment and ringed with stuffed bookshelves. There were two others inside, already waiting and expectant, blue-robed figures in old, chipped golden masks. They said nothing, only inclined their heads to Hemaah and gestured toward a door in the rear of the strange vault. Nyssa eyed them coldly and without trust, but the contents of the room had already begun to provoke her thirst, and she followed where the scholar's wife led.

Beyond the door was a tiny cell, barely a room as much as it was a narrow alcove, sparsely lit and cast in shadow; and there upon a wooden plinth sat one last book, it's cover dark and empty. Inked onto a shred of vellum beneath it, in Daedric lettering, was the word 'TEMERITY'. The cloaked figures took up position by the door, their backs turned, and Hemaah nodded smoothly toward the dark tome. Nyssa approached it, taking bleak, paranoid glances over her shoulder but unable to resist the bait. She turned open the cover, and read.

It was some sort of theatrical play, a story about a young girl plotting a rebellion which was destined to go catastrophically wrong. Nyssa's face twisted, and as she was about to ask what kind of game they thought to play with her, the words changed, the ink ran like blood, her stomach dropped as though the floor had fallen away and she blacked out.

When her eyes opened, she stood upon a wide, single path amdist a warped, mist-filled labyrinth of libraries, its unnervingly-carved shelves vanishing into the fog above her, pages shuffling themselves between stacks like cards. Dark water sloshed and rippled in barely-glimpsed pools and canals, and before her, a long, winding causeway stretching out over a bleak, stagnant ocean. There was some unearthly sound drifting on the still air, and the distant groan of changing paths.

She focused at once. She knew where she was, where she had to be, and knew the dangers as surely as she salivated for the rewards. Though pages opened like spring flowers as she passed by, each holding invaluable revelations, there at the end of the twisting, unsteady causeway was a wider, greater tome, and she knew in her blood that this was the one she sought. The others could wait. This was the true goal, the thing she had suffered, starved and crossed the mountains to find. She would have it. She would kill anyone that tried to stop her.

She strode toward it, the causeway seeming to lengthen as she did, barely growing closer. She broke into a run, the path extending with her so that she seemed to be moving in slow motion, as though in some nightmare. When at last her hand reached out to touch it, something wound around her waist from behind. She kicked, screamed, fought against it, wet tendrils wrapping around her neck and arm, coiling up to her very fingertips as they hovered an inch from the book, her eyes never leaving its cover. And then the island detached from the causeway, rumbling back through the sick, churning waters, and vanished into the thickening mist. The twisted stacks rang with her thwarted, ravenous shrieking as the Things dragged her back.

Nyssa found herself back in the chamber, panting and soaked with cold sweat, the book closed before her. Hemaah leaned over and looked her carefully in the eyes. She smiled, satisfied.

"Now you are ready, I think." she said.

They gave her her first mark, a calligraphic tendril around her right forearm, and she has since earned many more. Mora's sphere suited her ambitions perfectly, and she embraced it with enthusiasm, learning the names of unseen stars and the twisted paths to forbidden places of power, blossoming from an obedient, dead-eyed girl into a power-hungry, dead-eyed woman.

Her life since then has been travel, bargaining, research, discovery and intermittent violence. It has been a dual existence; finding work as a hireling scholar, researcher and scribe while quietly working to serve her own ends and those of her unearthly master. Her legitimate work and skill with translation has allowed her to travel between borders moderately freely and with minimal harassment, and her dogged tenacity, willingness to endure suffering and indifference to the suffering of others made her valuable as an itinerant. She frequently works to acquire forgotten manuscripts, occult magic and secret histories, taken from unmapped and dangerous ruins or aquired, legally or otherwise, from private owners or third parties. Things beyond the sight or knowledge of the rest of the world, to be hoarded in the cult's hidden libraries and exploited, sometimes in precise and inscrutable ways -- A great part of Mora's domain is fate, and his followers, however peripheral, exist in a world of cause and effect that even they do not always fully understand. Sometimes she offers subtle bargains to her employers, or those near to them, small favors in exchange for tantalizing knowledge or means to power, though often, the right knowledge in the wrong hands would be favor enough. Even when, on occasion, the nature of her true master is exposed, the fruit she offers remains too sweet to cross her.

For the last six months, Nyssa has been insinuating herself into High Rock, currently researching a contested lineage for one of the more ambitious barons near Meir Darguard while covertly liaising with a small clutch of Hemaah's native associates in pursuit of some other, softly-whispered goal.

Fighting Style:
Though not a soldier or career killer, 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.

She trusts no one to watch her back, generally working to secure herself before engaging foes, 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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