I'm just posting here in case I need to use this space later.
_______________________________________________ "Our consciousness cannot grasp its own end, despite being fundamentally conscious of death's inevitability. To understand it, is to experience it. And to experience it is to be unable to speak of it." N A M E ⋮ Mortika MORT d'Arce A G E ⋮ 102 R A C E ⋮ Elf C L A S S ⋮ Necromancer A P P E A R A N C E ⋮ Mort appears to be in her mid to late twenties, though the graying of her naturally peach-colored skin may tell a story that she's older than she appears. She stands no taller than a human but is not lithe nor dainty. She has broad shoulders that extend to strong arms, a body that has seen hardships, fingers that were once clawed at the end but have been clipped--yet they still retain that feline grace, and the legs of an acrobat. It's evident that she's had to pull herself out of situations through the will of her body alone. Her hair is the color of a tidewater pool and just as glimmering. Though it may have lost its luster beneath the mines. Her irises are the hue of milky tea, not blending in with the bright sclera but counter to it. Her long ears are elven in nature and were once stamped with gold. Her nose is aquiline but reflects well on her sculpted face. A septum piercing at the end drips into her bow-shaped lips. Sharpened teeth are on the other end, cosmetic but still capable of doing damage if she bit into you. She walks with the confidence of a cat and the curiosity of a bear. There's no subtlety to her movements. They demand attention and get it. P H I L O S O P H Y ⋮ 1The ambiguous nature of the body may be formulated in a number of binary oppositions. The body is both the Same and the Other; both a subject and an object of practices and knowledge; it is both a tool and a raw material to be worked upon. The body appears to oscillate between presence and absence, most paradoxically in intense feelings — feelings as sensations and feelings as emotions. The body seems to be simultaneously the subject of highly articulated utterance and yet at perpetual risk of disappearing from our awareness. | P E R S O N A L I T Y P E R S O N A L I T Y Mort doesn't speak unless she is spoken to. Yet, she may take any passing comment as a formal address. She has a curt, sharp way of talking that doesn't do well to enamor her to anyone. She's quick to insult, and even quicker to laugh in most macabre situations. There's always something unsettling in the way that she acts. Yet, don't take that odd nature to be bravado. She's aware of lines, and she draws them in the still sands of her mind. She's gotten by in her life by pretending to follow the moral compass that everyone holds aloft as being even brighter than the sun. Only in the dredges of civility will she let loose the thoughts that bubble in her brain. She also has a tendency to talk to someone named Bertrand. It's hard to tell if he's a ghost, a figment of her imagination, or a tactic to unsettle those around her. She's creepy--yes--but you have to ask yourself how much of that is an act to be left alone. Also also really likes to rattle off about philosophy. B A C K S T O R Y B A C K S T O R Y Mort couldn't begin to tell you how other elves act. What their lands are like. What beliefs that her people subscribe to. What she knows is that she grew up in the cult of Messengers of the Black Sign. Born on a fortuitous day amidst a wellspring of a blight. Neither of her parents were elven, and as such, were not her blood and flesh. Yet, she did not belabor that fact. They cared for her and loved her like any would their child. She was held up as royalty within the small cult that had settled in the swamp town of Torniko. Torniko had sunk ten times over, and each time the cult had rebuilt the town on the wreckage of it. It was the Message's Will. It wanted them to be here. So, underneath it were catacombs that housed not only its previous denizens but its culture and knowledge as well. A wealth of information that Mort endured the perilous adventure to drink up in her youth. What did the Messengers of the Black Sign believe in? Well, they believed in the nature of the body, and the sheer confoundingness of its binary nature 1. The Black Sign was a map on how to form a bridge between the Same and the Other and create a being that is aware of both its body and its spirit at the same time. And what they discovered was the only way to achieve that, to achieve enlightenment, was to supplant the soul back into its body after it had departed. Like being born anew in the flesh that is familiar. The spirit has already perceived what it can without the body. So reunited with the body, it could perceive multitudes. That's how Mort came to know necromancy. And it's fair to say her entire ideology and the town's worship of such a belief was quite the black mark upon them. They were attacked in the middle of the night, the village burned as its denizens slept. Mort had been away in the catacombs, looking for an old manuscript she'd seen in her youth. When she emerged from the depths to all the death and carnage, something in her snapped. So, she summoned up her abilities and awoke the now-dead cultists to fight on her behalf. As revenge? Maybe. One couldn't say she was powerful, more than she had the numbers to create a distraction and flee the ruins of Torniko. Rumors would say that she killed them all and danced on their bones. The reality was that a few were scratched and scraped, but the only ones left dead were the villagers. So, Mort ran, and ran, and ran, and found companionship in new faces that she met. Slowly, she started to build back up the cult, becoming its matron--its princess. They hadn't done anything wrong, but probably holding service in the catacombs, speaking of raising corpses, and "fixing" the duality of their nature by dying didn't sit well with people. So, of course, she'd be caught, shackled, and thrown into the mines. Who was she hurting? No one, she thought. But some higher power probably took offense. They always did. So, here she was sent to rot. Ten years grinding away at gold, and quite content to defame it with her fingers. A B I L I T I E S A B I L I T I E S NECROMANCY: The only magic that Mort can tap into. While the goal of the cult was to create lich-like creatures out of its members, she really can only bring up mindless denizens to do her will. The fresher the corpse, the harder it is to control. Animals are easy, and her preferred method if they are around for her to use. She can also sense the life force around her, allowing her to see enemies before they see her. Unless they have ways of masking it. SPEAK WITH THE DEAD: Part of her necromancy, Mort has the ability to speak with the spirits that are sans their bodies. She can't converse with ones that have moved on, ones that don't wish to speak to her, or those that she doesn't share a language with. While she can passively see ghosts that wish to be seen, it takes quite a bit of effort to actually speak with the ones that she's not established a previous report with. And even then, some spirits can hide from her, and make it so that she's not aware of their presence. ANATOMY & PHYSIOLOGY: It's not a medical version of this, per say, but it is knowledge of the body and how it functions. She could probably diagnose a broken bone, and tell you how to put it back into place. But she isn't going to tell you how to fight infection, staunch the bleeding, or deal with the pain. ARCANE KNOWLEDGE: Mort read a lot, and a lot of that reading was about magic. Again, she can't perform anything beyond her necromancy, but that doesn't mean she can't read magical symbols or mystical languages. |