Name:Angora Serah Kelenwyn
Age: 19
Race: Human (Inhabited by a fragment of the mortal soul of Kreshtaat, Lord of Darkness)
Sex:Female
Appearance:
Angora stands somewhat taller than the average human female, at about five feet and nine inches; her frame is lithe, agile and well-suited for hunting through dense forests or dark alleyways and ambushing her targets. She has a decent level of musculature, but not bulky - perhaps the best terminology would be 'athletic', with a relatively well-proportioned chest area: estimates as to her weight would place it at around 160-170 pounds. Her skin is pale, with few markings or freckles; her raven-black hair falls roughly about to her upper back, rarely seen fettered by ties or knots, whilst her eyes are a shade of emerald green, with heavy lids and an odd blackening around the edges of the eye (possibly a physical effect from the fragment of Kreshtaat). Her nose is sharp yet rounded, and her mouth is medium-sized, her lips relatively plump and a pleasant shade of red, usually accentuated with lipstick. Her teeth are straight and in good condition, being mostly straight and fairly white, with a slight overbite of the front teeth. Overall, Angora would be considered rather pleasant to look at.
Personality:Angora has changed quite dramatically over the last six months. From her old self, to the melding, to the restoration of her mind, Angora has had to endure quite a bit, but for the moment, it seems that she is free of the fragment's influence over her. As a result, Angora's personality is one that can best be described as determined, yet optimistic. Despite, some would argue, her criminal background, Angora is dependable and loyal to her friends, and truthfully her time away from her life of crime has allowed her to re-assess her priorities, and she is determined to at least try and lead a life of legality and decency. Angora is a lively and outgoing woman who is able to read a situation and act accordingly - she is able to both turn on the charm (with a flutter of the lashes, no doubt) and also turn up the heat, depending on what the current matter requires. However, the fragment's presence still makes itself known - Angora can be quick to anger, and quicker still to draw her sword in defence of her friends, and she is prone to entering a semi-berserk state in combat.
Biography:Angora Kelenwyn was born to a middle-income family in the better areas of Zerul City's suburbia - her father, a smith working with rare and mysterious metals, including gold, silver and other precious metals; whilst her mother, a courtesan amongst the city's lower elite classes, as well as a part-time thief and filcher of items from those who contracted her services, intending to sell them into the black markets. Angora had three siblings - two older and a younger, all brothers - her elder brothers Yvann and Reikard were more akin to their father and martially-inclined; Yvann held aspirations to join the City Guard, whilst Reikard sought to join the ranks of the Duchy of Zerul's sergeants-at-arms. Karl, the youngest of the four children, was an accident. Angora's mother fell pregnant after visiting one of the city's nobility, and gave birth to a bastard child - the nobleman acknowledged the son and occasionally visited, before recommending that Karl join the Zerulic Academy of Magic.
Angora, however, took more after her mother, both in looks and in her skillset - from an early age she displayed a talent for stealing items (though she often landed herself in trouble) and she sparred with her older brothers, though both of them were far more delicate swordsmen than the young Angora, who tended to wield a sword "as if she had little regard for her own safety" according to Reikard. Angora's true skill was with a flutter of the lashes, and with a knife behind her back. This led Angora down the path of the seductress assassin, and as she grew up, Angora delved into the world of organised crime. Prices were placed every so often on members of society, and it was doing this that Angora honed her skills of ambush attacks - she would often scope the area that she was due to kill the target in before the time came, and would hide in nearby alleyways or darkened streets, walk out behind the target and plunge her blade through their back and into their vital organs, sometimes through the spine. Then, she would take them down to the dockyards and dump the body in the sea. The victim would be sometimes still be found dead, but nobody would be any the wiser, the death blamed on the gang violence inherent in such poor and deprived areas.
Angora's jobs eventually started taking her outside the city, and one day she was assigned a very important task - a group of penin had unearthed a most rare and unusual artifact - the Black Sword of Klorr, an ancient and failed experiment by the demigod which was designed to tap directly into the Spirit Realm for magical energy, instead of relying on material sources of magical power. However, unbeknown to all except Klorr himself, the Black Sword was also inhabited by something... a fragment of the mortal soul of the Lord of Darkness himself, the dreaded Kreshtaat. The fragment's presence in the sword generated a strange aura about the weapon that drove those nearby to desire to possess the weapon, to kill and maim and burn. This aura eventually led to the downfall of the penin transporting the Black Sword, as they began to bicker and desire the sword for themselves, leaving the convoy open to Angora's ambush. It was over in only a couple of minutes, the penin having been hacked to death in the middle of the night one by one, and then Angora could claim her prize; the Black Sword.
However, Angora would never make it back to Zerul City. Over the next week, Angora's personality began to shift and warp, as if the outsider within the Black Sword was attempting to move into her own consciousness. Fighting back against the fragment, Angora inadvertently set off a strange magical chain reaction that instead of pushing the outsider out of her consciousness, began to merge Angora and the outsider together in a strange hybrid of the two of them. Thus, the Untamed was born. Angora's memories of her old life faded away into a grey shroud, the names of her parents and her brothers little more than words that she remembered but didn't know the significance of, whilst her view on the world altered and changed radically - no more could she recognise the different factions within Rodoria, be they the Crusaders, or local farmers or townsfolk. No, instead they were all threats to the Untamed, threats that had to be dealt with. Though her memories of her old life had been destroyed in the merging, Angora still knew how to ambush, how to hunt and track, and how to kill. She took the Black Sword as her own - it became almost part of her, and magic flowed through the sword from the Spirit Realm, just as Klorr had initially intended for it to. Over the next few months, Angora's attacks on travellers within the woods slowly grew in knowledge. The method of assault was almost always the same - the travellers would be ambushed and killed at night, whilst they were unable to defend themselves meaningfully in the face of the bloodthirsty frenzy of Angora, before their corpses were stripped of any valuable items and clothes, and their flesh would be hacked from their corpses - likely to be used as meat in the various fire-pits that were found next to the bloodied skeletons that served as the grisly remains of the Untamed's victims. Even the Crusader's Guild weren't safe from Angora - a couple of Crusader patrols were also ambushed and killed by Angora in her murderous frenzy, slashed into pieces by the Black Sword of Klorr. After some six or seven months, Angora finally came upon a fight she could not win, when she attacked the group, then led by Aemoten. After a brief, brutal and almost fatal engagement, Angora was subdued, but instead of finishing her off, the Eireannach Iridiel Caomhanach, favoured of Sulis, intervened to subdue the influence of the fragment of Kreshtaat within her. Following this, Angora has joined the group in their quest for an answer to the Withering. Angora swore a blood oath to help in this in whatever way she can - perhaps to soothe her guilty conscience for her (albeit unwitting) part in her crimes as the Untamed, but also to repay the group for saving her from a much more grisly and bloody fate than she might otherwise have suffered. As a result, she has accompanied the group to Zerul City, but the fragment within her begins to stir once more...
Physical Skills:Angora's physical strength and stamina is undeniable. Though she lacks the raw muscle of, say, a penin or a lohk, Angora's frenzied bloodlust allows her to keep fighting even when others might have run out of energy or been subdued by the enemy. Her adrenaline-fuelled fury also renders her virtually immune to pain until the end of the fight, or perhaps even afterwards - Angora acts similar to a berserker in this regard. She is a fearsome warrior to face down, especially with the Black Sword of Klorr at her side; though less skilled with a blade than, say, Jaelnec or Aemoten, Angora instead relies on her ferocity and brutality to overcome her enemies. Angora also has a puzzling talent following the melding with the fragment - her voice has taken on a strange, ethereal tonality to it, and this can be utilised as a weapon itself, for Angora is also a capable ambusher, skilled at concealing herself within cover, be it a dark alleyway, a line of trees with undergrowth and bushes, or simply blending into the background as best she can. Angora most often is able to get the drop on whoever it is she is hunting, something that definitely works to her advantage when it comes to her fighting style, as enemies often are unable to react in time to Angora's attacks: with fatal consequences.
Equipment:The Black Sword of Klorr / Dreamcatcher:The Black Sword of Klorr, also known as Dreamcatcher by its creator, is a very powerful sword constructed from obsidite that Angora stole from the penin who were attempting to conceal the weapon from all mortal eyes. The sword is a (originally-failed) experiment from the legendary craftsman Klorr, meant to siphon infinite quantities of magical energy from the Spirit Realm without the infusion of a soul. The sword, which had absorbed a small portion of the mortal energy of none other than Kreshtaat, mightiest of all immortals, was discarded by Klorr into the material plane as a failure, whereupon it was discovered by the penin, and was on it's way to the academy when Angora attacked. As Angora kept the sword with her, the fragment of Kreshtaat gradually melded itself with her, but consequently turned into something not quite one or the other; Angora seemingly went insane, and lost both her memory and her mind, devolving into a crazed, animalistic butcher solely devoted to bloodshed and destruction, all due to the fragment of Kreshtaat's influence. The process cleansed the sword of the fragment, however, and as a result it now acts as a conduit between the magical power of the Spirit Realm and the material plane. Though the Black Sword lacks any inherent magical enchantments (currently), it is still a very powerful (and consequently desirable) item. Admittedly, to get it, you have to get through Angora first, a feat much easier said than done.
Angora's Knife:Since her return to Zerul City, Angora has been able to purchase new equipment and clothes for the first time in months. One of these purchases was a silvered-steel stiletto knife, with an eight-inch triangular blade, specifically designed for thrusting through thick cloth, padded armour and even finding its way through mail or the gaps in a knight's helmet. The knife as a whole measures some 15 inches, including the handle, and features a plain crossguard. This can usually be found on Angora's left side, attached to a leather belt.
