Name: Ophelia
Race: True Paleblood
Age: 33
Appearance: Ophelia holds the bearing of a dignified and sombre person in the face of tremendous suffering, her features pale and sullen, and aged in ways that someone of her relative youth should not–one would be forgiven for mistaking her for an old woman. Her features lack the healthy vim and vigour of life, wrinkled and frail against a thin and brittle frame. Her face is almost-gaunt, features rendered sharp due to lack of fat, her lips thin, and her eyes not-quite sunken in–though her irises are a shocking hue of sparkling teal, the only notable bit of colour about her entire personage. Her eyes are bright and focused, though a hint of wildness can be detected in their shifting gaze and something about the sclera is not-quite white. Her hair is brittle and grey, though surprisingly long–and tied into an ornate braid that reaches down to her lower back. Though the braid has persisted this long, it is clearly filthy and has not been adequately cared for–and at its most ornate parts, the brittle hairs threaten to break with any significant motion. Her brows are similarly aged, and almost completely white, though still fairly long otherwise healthy. Her figure is thin and modest, not enough such that her bones are visible but she retains very little body fat and her musculature is beginning to deteriorate. Her arms and hands are fairly long, though her hands are neatly manicured and calloused in equal measure–Ophelia has clearly worked with her hands for a long time, and it is one of the few points of dignity and pride about her appearance that remains. Her posture is hunched and short, her spine deeply compressed, and as such she is both fairly short and she does not exude much presence. Her feet lack the cleanliness of her hands; her toenails are long and unkempt, but her feet are otherwise marred by similar calluses that indicate frequent use.
At least… until she wakes up from her blood ministration. The infusion of Old Blood has returned to her her rightful vim and vigour, and features that were once aged have undergone a tremendous rejuvenation (though this is no miracle; she simply looks like her age, rather than thirty years older). Where once her face was gaunt it is now full and round, rosy-red, flush with the essence of life–her lips fuller (though still on the thinner side), glowing with a new health that is positively radiant compared to its prior paleness. Her eyes remain much the same, though Her hair is silver rather than grey, and bristles with new life–covered still with dirt and grease, but lively. She stands much taller, with her hunched form now straightened out and her posture much improved, at an almost-lanky six feet. Where once there was atrophy there is now corded muscle, wiry but brimming with an excess of vitality compared to the dearth it had before.
Height: 6’0” (183cm)
Weight: 135lb (61kg)
Clothes: Ophelia’s clothes are similar to those of typical Yharnamites, more specifically
those of Hemwick. Her gloves are an ashen-grey leather, form-fitting, and well-maintained (though with suspicious dark stains, and other less-savoury and more unknowable stains). Ophelia also wears no headgear.
Biography: Ophelia is defined best by two characteristics: curiosity and sympathy. She has ever been the thoughtful sort, mind mired by the many mysteries of the mundane and transmundane worlds. She has always sought understanding, be it of the observable phenomena that present themselves in the world around us, or the inhuman and sticky thoughts of places beyond–for she has sought knowledge above all else, and in reordering the boundaries of her ignorance has she brushed against the limit of feeble human intellect. Inadvertently has she walked the path of Byrgenwerth and its late Provost’s ethos, bereft of their insights but sympathetic in cause and in method. Eyes are what call to her the most, her imperfect lenses into the world (one of the few parts of her biology not to have betrayed her) and a source of tremendous insights into others–so potent her mania for the insight granted by eyes that she studied under the witches of Hemwick to elevate her understanding.
She also feels quite keenly a sympathy with others, eager to understand them and help them achieve the understanding that she has. This manifests most keenly as empathy, though it should not be mistaken with kindness. She is a soft and pleasant sort, often found mumbling to herself about her thoughts, though this veneer of passivity belies the work she has been found doing in the past: tending to corpses, plucking them of their eyeballs, and performing rituals and experiments best left unmentioned. For all of her sense of sympathy, she seems to have no qualms in divesting them of their flesh for her arcane purposes: indeed, they say that even those who have gone mad may serve a grander purpose, for posterity. It is not the eyes of others that are her true purpose, but rather in collecting their power to enhance her own sight: that with the help of many, with their essences melded to hers, she might finally see beyond–and to this end, it is not only eyes, but knowledge. Eyes are but a tool to behold the Truth, and she yearns truly for that grandest and stickiest of insights.
Ophelia’s dreams have always been slick with whispers, where her mind could roam free from the prison of her body–for she was afflicted at birth with Paleblood. Manifesting almost as a wasting sickness, she has been declining since the moment she was brought into the world. She always yearned for the secrets in the Labyrinth discovered by Byrgenwerth, but was never fit enough to even attempt to go there even with the aid of others despite her disciplined training–for she wasted away faster than she could ever gain strength. She gained the skilled dexterity and fluidity of motion associated with it, performing what work her limited energy would allow with accuracy and precision, but her ailing physicality eventually prevented her from even this–and it was the proposition of being bound to a bed before a long and painful death that broke Ophelia’s resolute spirit enough to the point that she would betray the lesson she had abided by all her life:
Fear the Old Blood.The Church’s ministrations were her last resort: for death promised no great insights at all… and for the sake of learning she finally surrendered. The White Healing Church, she knew, would take interest in her Paleblood–and indeed, they were always recruiting Hunters… she could not say that she was not curious about the secrets in their possession. So it is that she now awakes, fresh from the procedure, experiencing what it feels like to walk without fatigue for the very first time… and is curious to find out what, exactly, is to come.
History: Ophelia is a native Yharnamite, born in the outskirts near Hemwick. She has always been a close attendant of corpses, and has worked closely with the witches of Hemwick before the first Night of the Blood Moon. She knows well that eyes can be found inside the right corpses, those touched by knowledge of the eldritch kind. She is familiar even with the runes left by Caryll of Bergenwyrth, understanding them as transliterations of the utterances of the Great Ones–and being quite familiar with the tool used by the Witches, before it was taken by the Hunter on the Night of the Blood Moon. She was not present in Yharnam for the Night of the Blood Moon, for her sickness had progressed quite badly, at that point, and a distant land promised a cure independent of the lure of the Old Blood. She tried everything that she could, before resorting to the Healing Church's offer of blood ministration. When she returned she was no better, and she was bereft of the company of the witches she'd worked with prior, who'd been slain by the Hunter. In the ensuing chaos she made herself small and hidden as possible, carving out her own niche to search for a cure before she would have to resort to the temptation that had been there in Yharnam all along - and when she retreated away from Hemwick and moved into central Yharnam and her mobility was beginning to fail, the proximity to the Church led to her accepting the offer of blood ministration more swiftly than she'd anticipated, the world of Yharnam she'd known before almost just a dream.
Skills: Ophelia is first and foremost a scholar, devoted to insight in its purest forms–her inner eye is wide open, her dreams replete, and her brain intimately prepared to receive the requisite eyes for the thoughts she cannot yet touch. She knows intimately the body, and has been a close companion of death for as long as she remembers–she has performed plenty of vivisections and autopsies both, though only on those already close to death.
Ophelia is skilled in the arts of esoteric and arcane rituals, and has a sympathy with these items that affords her a certain ease in their use, as well as an easy intuition: though this is as much a curse as a blessing, for many of these forces are not benign.
Ophelia is surprisingly nimble with her hands, and now rejuvenated, has a grace and dexterity that is keenly uncommon. She is adept at very delicate and precise work, such as practising medicine and operating fine tools–she has a particular knack for removing the eyes of a corpse perfectly intact.
Possessions: A vial of her Paleblood, before the ministration occurs. Hidden away in her old home in Hemwick (abandoned years ago).
Insights: Guidance Rune - Granted by Holy Moonlight Sword.
