Lemons

The Elder Scrolls: Eye of the Hurricane

Certainly not as elaborate as most here, but hopefully she's good enough:

Aud Longspear

Name: Aud Longspear
Race: Nord
Sex: Female
Age: 29
Birthsign: The Lord
Family Origins: The Skaal of Solstheim
Appearance:



Aud, as a Nord, is unsurprisingly tall, only an inch or so under six feet. She is a strong woman, and a compact one: her entire body is covered in corded, rippling muscle from a life lived in the harsh climate of Solstheim, and long days and nights spent hunting. Her skin is extremely fair, and burns easily. As pale as it is, though, the rough, almost leathery texture very clearly indicates the many-many long hours she’s spent under the sun and in the driving snow. She has raven-black hair that falls in a tight braid down to her mid-back, as it’s far harder for it to futz you up in a fight if it’s harder for it to get in eyes and mouth.

Her body is covered in scars, acquired over many years of hunting and defending the Skaal from bandit incursions and other threats. The largest and most important is a long series of parallel lines on her left shoulder, forming a jagged claw mark that runs all the way from her shoulder’s apex to just below her breast. It serves as a stark, potent reminder for her to never grow overconfident in her skills. She has a very sharp face with angular features, with the Nord high cheekbones so common to see in Skyrim and Solstheim. Those cheekbones frame a pair of glittering pale-grey eyes, narrow and suspicious. Underneath each of her eyes is a thick stripe of black war paint to guard her eyes against sunglare, and a narrow red stripe cuts vertically through each. Her nose is medium-sized and straight, narrowing to a sharp point.

When she’s not wearing her armor (which is essentially all the time that she’s not actively and consciously preparing for combat), her general clothing is a reflection of the harsh arctic climate where she was born and raised: a shirt and kilt of thick gray-black bear furs over horker-hide trousers, occasionally speckled with daubs of ground shells to break up her silhouette and make it a touch paler, depending on the climate in which she’s hunting. She wears a heavy bearskin hooded cloak just slightly lighter than the rest of her furs, pinned about her neck by a bear claw toggle. The clothing is rounded off by a pair of sturdy leather boots, light enough for a swift, easy run but heavy enough to withstand the constant wear and tear of the snow and stones of Solstheim. If you look closely, you can see them patched in several places.

However, describing her normally is only half of her description, because Aud just so happens to be a werebear. She has a wild, unpredictable strain of lycanthropy, a seemingly-random time passing between transformations, though it’s never more than twice a week and never less than once every fortnight. When she transforms, whatever she's wearing and bearing melds into her; she is much larger and bulkier, and her posture is hunched; her fur is the same color as her cloak, a charcoal-grey, and she has long, sharp claws and fangs. Her eyes remain the same pale grey, but turn bestial and glint angrily as she unleashes her frustrations.

---

Equipment:

• Her primary weapon is a replica of Hircine’s Daedric artifact, the Spear Of Bitter Mercy, forged out of good, quality steel. There’s nothing else special about it; it’s simply a well-crafted (if slightly rugged-looking compared to the original) spear about five and a half feet long, generally slung over her right shoulder. She did, however, make one major concession: instead of metal, the haft is made of a gray-stained fire hardened wood. It’s been enchanted with sun-magic, for better fighting of vampires.
• On her left shoulder, opposite her normal spear, is a somewhat strange object: it looks like a basic quiver, but nearly twice as long, sitting a hefty four feet. Inside of it are five spears slightly shorter than her main spear, much more simple in their forging (though no less effective) and specifically for throwing: steel and fire hardened wood. These are also sun-enchanted, so losing one is a big blow to Aud’s arsenal; they’re not easily replaced.
• A set of Nordic carved armor, significantly cut down to vastly reduce weight, for use during real combat: a chestplate, pauldrons, vambraces and tassets. She refuses the use of a full suit, insisting that it slows her down too much in combat. It’s been modified since her joining of the Dawnguard; instead of chainmail, it’s been mounted on a suit of light Dawnguard leathers.
• A brilliantly-crafted Stalhrim dagger, forged by the finest craftsman of the Skaal some hundred years ago. When she went exile, she stole it from the village as her only memento, something to remind her of her roots, however many paths she may wander down and however far she may stray. She hangs it from a leather thong around her neck underneath her clothing, but that does not diminish its potential as a weapon if she really, really needs it.

---

Misc. Possessions:
Always one to travel light, there isn’t much else that Aud carries with her. Most of her food comes with her hunting.

• A simple leather backpack (a fairly small one, compared to most traveler’s packs) that she carries most of her things in.
• Flint, steel and dry tinder kept in a pouch of oiled leather. Self-explanatory.
• Two-liter leather waterskin. Hung on the outside of her backpack by a leather thong.
• A small bottle of oil that she uses to lubricate the joints of her armor.
• Needle and heavy thread.
• A whetstone.
• A purse and a few septims, mostly to pay people to renew the enchantments on her weapons.

---

Family and Associations:
Gisli Horn-Blower - Father (Estranged)
Skið Swifteye - Mother (Estranged)
Basically The Whole Skaal Population Of Solstheim - Former tribemates, now estranged.
The Companions - She tried.
The Dawnguard - Current membership, and who she considers family. She’s fiercely protective of them.

---

Favoured Skills:
Highly proficient: Two-handed (Spear): Aud is an expert at the usage of a spear. While she’s not particularly acrobatic with the weapon (she’s no Mazrah), she’s exceptional at using it to space herself apart from shorter-range enemies, harrying them until she can find an opening. She’s mostly a defensive fighter, and due to the sheer quantity of animals and bandits that she would often end up fighting with a very small group, she’s become very skilled at fending off multiple adversaries at a time. All those scars gotta come from somewhere, after all.

Highly proficient: Marksmanship (Also Spear): And just as she excels in the use of spears in melee combat, so too does she excel at throwing them, perhaps even more so. It’s a fairly uncommon practice compared to archery, which she initially began after watching the rieklings of Solstheim bringing down far larger prey than themselves with the use of their spears. She found it far more effective than archery (which she was always rather incompetent at), and it became her primary hunting vector. She’s practiced throwing spears since she was barely a teenager, and it shows: she can throw them a very long distance (nearly 40m, or about 130 feet), and is very, very accurate with them. They cause far more severe wounds than a typical arrow, but she can only carry so many at a time.

Moderately proficient: Athletics: A native of an incredibly harsh climate and a hunter-warrior since her youth, Aud has become very fit. She can jog for hours at a time, and is capable of bursts of incredible speed to chase down deer, though she tires out quickly during them. She is also a capable climber, able to navigate her way around the rocky crags of Solstheim.

Moderately proficient: Stealth: Hand in hand with her athletic skill and her spearcraft, her skill in stealth comes with hunting. While in a city she wouldn’t know how to even begin to escape a view, whenever she’s in the wilderness she can melt into the background as long as she’s holding still or moving slowly. Moving quickly while hiding isn’t something in her wheelhouse, however, and she reveals herself rather quickly. Still, it’s useful for ambushing a deer. Or a bandit.

Somewhat proficient: Light Armor: While she doesn’t much like wearing armor, she recognizes how useful it is when she engages in combat and so has become fairly decent at moving around in it. She loses much of her explosive speed, but if it turns away a single lethal blow, it’s more than worth it to her.

---

History:
Aud was born to Gisli Hornblower and Skið Swifteye, in the deep winter of 4E184. Her life in the Skaal village was one of hardship from the beginning. Solstheim is not a kind place at the best of times. Crushing ashfalls and the winter weather are just as lethal as any living being on the island. But in addition to the hardships of life as Skaal, there’s a deep camaraderie there; in such a hostile place, you can’t afford divides in the tribe. That and the shared belief in the All-Maker foster a deep interconnectedness in the Skaal, and Aud threw herself into the center of it. If you asked her, she could still probably name everybody in the tribe when she lived there. Then she’d knock you out for asking her about it, but the point remains,

From the very beginning, she was a willful child, unwilling to sit inside. Many times in her childhood, she had very close escapes from life-threatening incidents. Her favorite story to recount is clinging to the rocks outside Frossel at only ten years old with groups of Rieklings both above and beneath her, unaware of her presence as she desperately looked for a way out without sending any loose stones showering down to show her presence.

As she matured, this willful nature settled into a fierce independence and athleticism. Roving far across Solstheim was a calling for her, and her keen eyes and strong muscles conspired with these qualities to turn her into a skilled hunter. Still...she felt that the bow in her hands tried to kill her more than it tried to kill her quarry. She simply could not get the hang of the weapon. She still has scars across her first three fingers from the string biting into her unskilled hands. Then, one day, she watched Rieklings bringing down a deer, peppering it with their arrow-sized spears, and an epiphany bloomed in her. Taking a trio of poorly-balanced spears from above the mantle of her home--her mother was always better with the bow anyway, and her father the axe--she stole off into the arctic night. She returned at sunup, exhausted and satisfied, with the corpse of a fully-grown horker dragged on a makeshift sled behind her.

That first hunting trip with spears changed Aud’s life. She came into her own as a consummate spear-wielder, and as she aged, she only grew more skillful. Her spears were just as brutal in combat as they were on the hunt, and at sixteen, she earned her epithet--Longspear--by killing a frost troll with a single spear to the back of the neck, cast from nearly thirty paces. This feat--combined with how effective her fighting style was at harrying bandits and raiders off from the Skaal, scars she’d acquired notwithstanding--had earned her ales and claps on the back from people much more seasoned, who’d seen things that she couldn’t have imagined.

Then, the next year, things in Solstheim got harder. Not the same kind of hardness; Aud was used to that. No; Skaal began to act strangely, and they clustered around the All-Maker Stones, building something while repeating an odd mantra over and over. In an attempt to help them, she traveled to the Beast Stone, thinking she would do something to make a difference. But she was unable to make any change at all. In powerless frustration, she lashed out at the Beast Stone, tried to demolish whatever structure they were building. And she only realized what a mistake she’d made when one of the people working on the structure morphed into an abomination: a werebear. And though she tried her best to fight it off, it mauled her savagely, carried her into the woods, and left her for dead.

And that is when Aud felt the Turning for the first time.

Her impotent rage manifested inside of her as she lashed out at the trees around her, the new-grown claws on her malformed paw-hands shredding the bark and wood like paper. Red descended over her eyes and assaulted the forest for a full night. When she returned to her shaken, pallid form in the morning, she looked around at the destruction she’d wrought, and bile rose in her throat. She vomited from the existential illness of what she’d become, and a deep self-loathing was born in her. She slunk back to her tribe and presented herself to Fanari Strong-Voice, asking what needed to be done to redeem herself in the All-Maker’s eyes. She was given two choices: she could let herself be killed to show the All-Maker her deference and respect, or she could leave and search for a way to remove her lycanthropy. She was a hair away from asking for death, but the smallest voice within her urged her to seek redemption. She gathered her things--her parents would no longer look at her--snatched a dagger of pure Stalhrim in a desperate fit of sadness, and departed for Skyrim. She was on the cusp of her eighteenth year.

She wandered Tamriel for a long time. Skyrim, Cyrodiil, Morrowind; in none of them could she find a sense of belonging. Her self-hatred refused to leave. Her werebear nature had her removed from the Companions before long. She balked at the strict rules of the Cyrodiil fighter’s guild. Everywhere else, everyone else, laughed her out for her uneducated nature, and her illiteracy.

When she returned to Skyrim after years of roaming--she was 26 at the time--she heard rumors of an organization that killed monsters--vampires, she later discovered--that had been rebuilt south of Riften. Traveling across the country, she saw the scars that the civil war had left deep within the nation, and--more important--she saw those scars exploited by all walks of villainy. It came to a head one night as she slept under the stars near Ivarstead. Her memory of the incident is crystal-clear, even now: the burning orange of her assailant’s eyes, and the baleful red of the magic that began to pull her life away. It was her dumb luck that it was a newly-turned, weak vampire, or she would have died that night. She pinned it to a tree with three spears through its torso and one through the neck, and let the sun take it in the morning. Then, galvanized by an urgent sense of self-preservation, she set forth for Fort Dawnguard with a renewed purpose.

And in the Dawnguard, she finally found a place that accepted her and her...condition. A place where she could belong. Over the next few years, she would come to a new resolution: her lycanthropy was not a damning curse, as she’d believed for a decade now. It was a boon. Her unnatural vitality, and her immunity to Sanguinaire Vampiris--her twisted ursine form--it was all a weapon to use against those who were truly cursed: the vampires. She learned to read. She made friends, armed herself better. And she set out from Fort Dawnguard. Now, she wanders Tamriel again. But this time, she is not aimlessly, despondently meandering. Hearing rumors muttered on the wind of a Higher Vampire in Valenwood, Aud has gone back to her roots, and is doing what she does best:

She is hunting.

---

Aud's Biggest Regret:
For a long time, it was going to the Beast Stone, and the subsequent choice to survive instead of to die. But now? Now, after finding people to care for and protect? Now it's that she spent so long living a half-life as she wandered, despondent, through Tamriel.

Aud's Goal:
For an equally long time, it was to find out a way to remove her lycanthropy so she could return to her home. But now, her goal is one that's more...open-ended, with no strict endpoint: now that she has a new home, she goal is to ALWAYS have that home to return to.

---

Personality:
Aud is an intense woman. Unnecessarily intense, many have said. Her years of self-loathing, believing that she was an abomination that could only escape by purging herself, or finding herself a cure, have worn the patience out of her soul through long abrasion. She has no time for social games, either her own or those of others. She is straightforward and stubborn, point-blank refusing anything she deems wrong without any preamble or justification. She is...not a quiet person. Never one to let things move on around her without having any say, she’s fairly practiced at slamming her hand on a table to shut people up so she can have her say, and she’s goddamn getting her say, no matter who tries to shush her.

And she’s not just that aggressive in conversation. She is an exceedingly confrontational person in most other aspects of her character as well. While she can, of course, discern when getting in a fight would probably kill her or make it impossible for her to do her job and thus avoid one, she’s not just an angry person. She loves fighting. Barroom brawls are a fairly common occurrence for her, and she’s won her fair share of coin by beating the tar out of overconfident men who can’t imagine being bested by a young woman. She’s lost just as much from having the tar beaten out of her as well. She takes the loss and the pain in stride; she doesn’t use much money, and it’s of fairly little importance to her.

Perhaps the picture being painted here is that Aud doesn’t know how to have fun. And most of the time, that’s...not inaccurate. Aud’s had a lot of disappointment over the past decade or so of her life. She doesn’t trust positive emotions easily, and she’s had so many holes poked in her self-esteem over the years that she’s more likely to be suspicious of happiness than to enjoy it. Still, there are times when little fragments of her old confidence resurface. Mostly, it’s when she’s inebriated. Drinking reminds her of the old camaraderie that she had in the Skaal, and of the new friendships she’s made in the Dawnguard. She relaxes and lets some of her spite go, and Aud without anger is almost a different person, with a penchant for bad jokes and bawdy songs. And when she is comfortable enough around somebody to show them that side of her, she becomes fiercely protective of them. And thus her Dawnguard zealotry. While it’s congealed by now into a deeply-rooted hatred of vampires, it began as a burning need to protect the ramshackle little family she has in the group from those who would see them killed.

Speaking of the Dawnguard, the way they operate--the loose structure they have, and the relatively few rules--speaks to perhaps the deepest-seated point of Aud’s personality. Ever since childhood, the thing most important to her has been freedom. Her maturation has given unto her the realization that total freedom--anarchy--is...less than a good thing, and in fact leads to people like the vampires doing whatever they want while the weaker people are beaten down by them. She extends her surprisingly protective nature out to them, but subscribes to a simple philosophy: the best defense is a good offense. Instead of shielding people and protecting them like a town guard, she takes it upon herself to remove what’s threatening them.

The Elder Scrolls: Night of Pestilence

Sihava Blackthorn

"Five people have asked her to dance so far. That's five fewer people with purses." - Galerus Quintilius

Name: Sihava Blackthorn, the Smoke Dancer
Race: Half Nord, half Dunmer
Sex: Female
Age: 31
Birthsign: The Shadow
Origins: A working-class family in Windhelm
Appearance: Sihava largely takes after her mother in appearance. Tall, willowy and beautiful, she looks like more like a courtier than a priestess-thief. She doesn't have the defined musculature of a warrior, to be sure. But to call her weak would be a grave disservice. She's been wandering the length and breadth of Tamriel for over a decade, from southwestern sands to the wild oceans of Winterhold, and so her body reflects that. Her legs are pure muscle, from thighs to calves, and there is not an ounce of fat on her body; her constant roaming burns it all off far faster than she can build it. While her arms aren't as strong as her legs, they're plenty on their own. Years of illegal climbing have built them up (especially her shoulders) to a surprising degree. That's not to say she could arm-wrestle a Legionnaire, but she's certainly no pushover.

Her skin is a dusky Dunmer gray, though a bit warmer than most. Though it is roughened by decades of travel through sun, sand and snow, she does her damndest to keep it as soft and clean as possible. Though she takes after her Dunmer mother, her face is where her mixed blood is given away. Instead of the sunken cheekbones that so characterize the appearance of a Dunmer, her face is round. Not quite as much as a Nord's, but close. Her eyes, as well: instead of the swollen irises of an elf, hers--while Dunmer red--are more in line with the size you might see of a human's. Those eyes, a sign of her dual heritage, are also a study of the dual sides of her personality. While they glimmer with barely restrained excitement, they are also constantly shifting back and forth, searching, scoping, making sure things are safe, equal measure of innocent and calculating. Often, though, they are obscured; her long, fine hair, a pale gray-white, hangs loose most of the time, and can easily sweep in front of her face until she brushes it away with a finger or breath to behind one of her ears, which--while not as much as a full elf--are definitely a sharper shape than any human's.

The only time she ties up her hair of her own will is when she's wearing her thieves' clothing. Tight-fitting leggings and tunic of deepest blue and dappled with black, along with a matching mask and a headscarf to hide her distinctive white hair. A leather shoulderbelt dyed in the same colors cuts across it, filled with thievery supplies; lockpicks and key wax, a pry bar, a strong thin rope. As long as she's done it right, the only parts of her that show are her eyes and her hands.

When she's not wearing her thieves' clothing, she has fairly expensive tastes. Nothing too extreme; wouldn't want a simple merchant to look like royalty waltzing through the countryside and getting the attention of every bandit and guard within a hundred miles. But she is very fond of luxurious fabrics done in red. Mostly, she wears a simple burgundy tunic over brown leggings; her traveling clothes. But she does reserve some clothing for an occasion. When she wants to make an entrance, or an impression, she dons a stately floor-length dress of wine-red satin, coupled with a golden collar-style necklace studded with a large carnelian. She combs out the knots that usually infest her hair, and perhaps dabs some kohl on her eyes to complete the transformation: from scruffy wandering merchant to a woman that could blend in in the Blue Palace.

History: Demivah Rallaron was a Cyrodiil Dunmer. Born and raised as a carpenter in Cheydinhal, she felt a burgeoning wanderlust growing ever since she was a small child. Though her parents weren’t exactly thrilled (to say the least), the call of the road was stronger than the call of home, and when she grew up, she became a wandering trader, a caravaneer that poached and sold curios from all around Tamriel, ranging from ancient Akaviri daggers, to Welkynd stones from deep beneath the Ayleid ruins of her homeland, to branded Septims from the reign of the Wolf Queen, Potema, and everything in between. Nothing was safe from her questing grasp. But she never stole. Adamantly. She was an honest businesswoman, and proud of it.

Ulfskaar Blackthorn was a Skyrim fisherman, native to the beautiful city of Windhelm and intensely proud of that fact. The architecture! The history! Truly, Windhelm was the best city in Skyrim to live in. He’d never left Skyrim; he’d never even wanted to leave, really. Fishing was a taxing, time-consuming job, and what little leisure time he had was spent at the Candlehearth Hall. Warm fire, cold mead, good friends to chase away the chill. A good life.

The two met in the winter of 4E172, quite by chance, as Demivah passed North, fleeing from the Great War, and stopped in Windhelm to replenish her supplies for the journey north, to Winterhold and then to Dawnstar. Ulfskaar purchased a strange insect, trapped in Elsweyr amber from her, and the two began to talk. They talked for a long time. Days, which stretched into weeks, which stretched into months. Until both of their coin began to run short, and Demivah left for Winterhold, promising that she would return. He waited for her, and a month later, she kept her promise, coming back with a ring of Solstheim gold, and asked if he would marry her. And though the rumblings of war grew stronger in Cyrodiil, the two of them were wed. Then, two years later--Morning Star, 4E175--they had a single child. A girl, who they named Sihava.

And then came the White-Gold Concordat. And the goodwill that Demivah had built up with her neighbor Nords, the friends she’d made--it began to all peter away. Nationalism steadily rose at the thought of the worship of Talos being banned, and then shifted rapidly into a boiling racism. For as established as she was, Demivah became just another ‘grayskin’ spying for the Dominion. She was spared the Gray Quarter, living as she was in Ulfskaar’s ancestral home. But she was spared very little else. It was in that political climate that Sihava was raised. Windhelm isn’t the friendliest of cities for a growing girl. Growing up in a cultural center of anti-mer racism doesn’t help. Especially if you’re a “half-breed.”

Sihava had a target on the back of her head since she was born. Even as a little girl, she was scorned, insulted, bullied; by children, and even by adults. She didn’t know why at the time, but as she grew, she figured out what caused it. She heard the people calling her mother a grayskin, a Dominion spy, a filthy elf. She heard people calling her father an elf-lover, a supporter of the Dominion, despite the shrine to Talos in his home. And she grew bitter. Bitter at the Great War, for causing so much pain. Bitter at her neighbors, for hating her for such a stupid reason and for leaving her friendless. Bitter at her parents, for falling in love like they had, and for somehow remaining so happy with each other. And bitter at herself, for being so bitter. She lived a quiet life, stewing in her resentment. Against all odds, she managed to find a job when she was twelve. Sorting Wuunferth the Unliving’s workshop and laboratory. Nothing particularly interesting; arranging scrolls on a bookshelf, sorting the soul gems on the display racks, cleaning the alchemy and enchanting workbenches...something calm and quiet. And though Wuunferth didn’t particularly care for her, from his mumblings as he worked, he cared for ‘those clod-headed guards’ even less.

And then, all that bitterness that had build up in her came to a head when she was fourteen years old. She was walking back home from her job when she was jumped in front of her home by a boy--Aljor something-or-other--she’d seen grandstanding about his Nord heritage around the city. He was going to rebel against the Imperials, he’d said, and other things along those lines besides. He shoved her, hard. Her bag was dashed to the ground. The strap snapped. His eyes fell on her purse, the few Septims that she’d made from her work with Wuunferth. And he advanced on her as she scrabbled desperately to dig through her bag. That’s when, from out of her fallen bag, she snatched the spell scroll she’d stolen from Wuunferth in a fit of curiosity. She channeled it as he ran at her. She prayed it would save her. And she let the magic fly. Aljor stood poleaxed for a moment, eyes suddenly running with red light. And then he screamed. He shrieked in terror and ran from her, dropping her purse in his haste to escape from the nondescript girl. And as she returned to her home to escape the guards that his scream would surely have brought running, a knifelike smile formed on her lips.

She never forgot the look of terror on Aljor’s face, and she longed to experience that feeling of power again. From that point on, she devoted her life to procuring as many books on illusion magic as she could. And those texts that she wasn’t allowed to access by Wuunferth--who showed surprising interest in the development of her magic, remarking that perhaps she would make a decent apprentice in a few years’ time--she would steal, squirreling them away under a floor tile in her house. Never more than one or two at a time, but enough for her to grow...well, not good, but adequate enough. And she found that the feeling of power that magic had given her was almost more intensely given by that theft. She’d been schooled since she could remember by Demivah to never steal. But, she reasoned in a fit of anger, these Nords had stolen her childhood from her. So she would respond by stealing from them in kind.

She was eighteen, in 4E193, when she told her parents that she wanted to follow in her mother’s footsteps and become a traveling trader. They were--to her surprise--thrilled. They’d seen the way she had been treated by the people of Windhelm. And Demivah took her in her arms as she left: “Siha, you asked me once why we didn’t leave Windhelm and find somewhere else to live, and I told you it was because Windhelm is our home, and the heart follows home. But...it’s not your home, sweetling. And just as the heart follows home, home follows the heart. So go find yours, sweetling. I love you.”

As she walked from the city, with nothing but her clothes and a massive backpack filled with trinkets to sell, she let the tears fall down her face, and she apologized to her mother, and to the Divines. And then she embarked on an epic crime spree across Skyrim that took her from the Ratways of Riften through Dragonsreach and the Blue Palace of Solitude, and every town and city in between. The feeling of power grew stronger as she grew quicker and more confident in her crimes, pillaging not only coin and jewelry, but also the laboratories of court wizards all across Skyrim. She read voraciously, and her study of illusion grew feverish as she felt her aptitude growing. Soon, she could bend people to her will, or drive them mad. And with that accomplished, and Cyrodiil stabler than Skyrim now, with the tension reaching a fever pitch, and it seeming safer to leave than to stay--her crimes across the country, from the smallest settlements to the largest cities, had taken her through 4E197--she departed, heading south. The Imperial City looked mighty rich for someone like her, and she was hungry.

She quickly became something of an urban legend in the Imperial City. Nothing like the Gray Fox had been, so long ago; nowhere approaching that level of notoriety. But certainly, she had the guards feeling nervous. They even gave her a nickname: the Smoke Dancer. A wisp of whirling shadow, almost visible out of the corner of your eye, but impossible to catch. With her skill as a thief, and her expertise in illusion magic--she was so skilled now that she could turn invisible--she was like a shadow, dipping in and out of shops and well-to-do homes as she pleased and taking what wasn’t nailed down, hiding her finds in secret pouches throughout her backpack. She did do some trading, to keep up a veneer of legitimacy, and to justify her huge bag, but it was mostly a side business to her real passion. And then a man approached her one day. Galerus Quintilius, he introduced himself. And told her to come to the ruins of the Waterfront district that night, at midnight, and tell the beggar Old Milky--named for her blind right eye--that she was there to see Quint.

Interest piqued despite her caution, she did so, and so came across the Cyrodiil Thieves’ Guild. She ran with them for many years, discovering a sense of comradery and compassion that had been sorely absent from her lonely, angry life. She and Galerus became close friends as she rose in the ranks, and she eventually met a figure that she’d believed to be a myth. Someone she’d only ever heard of in scattered legends and occasional books. Someone that caused her to, for the first time in her life, be truly awestruck: the Gray Fox. Legends say that he stole the Cowl from Nocturnal herself, whispered Galerus to her, once. And so her interest in Nocturnal began to grow.

As she aged, that newfound friendship with the Guild’s members had unforeseen consequences. Namely, she stopped enjoying thievery. With her anger and bitterness ebbing, she no longer needed that same feeling of power that she once craved. She longed instead for something bigger. Mysterious. Incomprehensible. Something to figure out, or attempt to, like she had done for magic. She hacked together, out of a novice’s study of mysticism and a creative mind, a way to impress images into another’s mind, and then she stopped talking. She commited herself to silence, for a reason that she scarcely understood. And then she felt an urge. A calling, towards the north. And so, for the first time since she’d left--years later, in 4E203, after the end of the Stormcloak Uprising--she made a pilgrimage back to Skyrim, drawn by rumors, myths, and a half-forgotten dream to a cave in Falkreath Hold. Guided by an inexorable pull that she didn’t understand, she winged on silent, invisible feet through the Pilgrim’s Path, and emerged into the place that she now knew she’d been longing to find for her entire life.

The Ebonmere.

And as she stood there, beneath the darkness of the Evergloam, she heard a faint voice speak to her. She does not remember what it said. But she emerged from the Twilight Sepulcher with a new purpose in life. No more would she simply steal from those more fortunate than she was. No, her theft was part of a higher calling now: to embody the darkness, silence and mystery that was Nocturnal, and to spread the shadow of the Evergloam, until all the thieves of Nirn could feel Nocturnal’s shadow.

Ever since, she’s been wandering, ghosting through towns and cities and leaving them with a backpack maybe a bit heavier than it was before she got there. She may be out of practice with lockpicking and and...well, most of the thieves’ trades, but Nocturnal smiles upon her, and so she knows no fear. But now, roaming through Daggerfall, the nights have gotten colder. They have grown longer. And this is not the kind of darkness that Sihava knows.

Perhaps it is time that whatever is causing this supernatural shadow learns what a real night looks like...

Personality: Sihava’s personality comes across differently than most because of her silence. She moves through the world quietly in every way--quiet feel, quiet movements, quiet breaths--and with something that seems to most like great solemnity; like she has a terrible weight dogging her heels, pulling down on her shoulders, pressing her to the ground. And she does feel that she carries a great responsibility with her. But it doesn’t weigh her down the way that many people seem to think it does. The solemnity that they see is simply her way of walking. In fact, past the long-standing silence only broken with mysticism or writing, Sihava is a remarkably personable woman, with a wry smile, a dry streak of sardonic humor, and perhaps more than a touch of vanity.

In her trades as a thief and a merchant, she learned better than anybody how to roll with every punch she takes. Consequently, she’s as far away from stubborn as you can find: she is remarkably flexible, and if someone tells her that she’s doing something unfathomably stupid, she’s able to step back, analyze what she’s doing, and come to the conclusion that they’re probably correct.

Speaking of unfathomable stupidity; while her worship of Nocturnal has changed many things about her, it hasn’t changed her personality at its core. And so she is very, very reckless and easily excited, surprising those who have heard about the Smoke Dancer and her epic crime spree through the Imperial City and find out that’s who she is. While she’s learned how to take things slow and scope something out over a period of days or even weeks before making her move out of pure necessity, her natural proclivity is to jump into a situation headfirst, escaping with her illusion magic, her skill at stealth, and the seat of her own wit. Consequently, she’s excellent at thinking on her feet, able to come up with workable plans in a moment’s notice, even while under heat. The converse, however, is also true. Whenever she tries to plan something out meticulously, it backfires on her. Inevitably, and usually spectacularly. Doing her best work in the moment means she overcompensates and overplans, and when even one thing goes wrong, it all comes tumbling down. She’s no strategist. Keeping it simple is the only way she survives.

As for romance, she’s not interested. She once thought that perhaps she and Galerus might have something, but by the time anything could have developed, she’d given herself over to Nocturnal. Perhaps she could still find someone, but they would need to beat a Daedric Prince for her attention, and that is a steep task indeed for anyone who might wish to woo her. She does love dancing, though.

It is in her nature to be slow to trust. Even now, so far removed from her troubled childhood, its scars still linger, and the years as a thief don’t exactly help. She is an incredibly suspicious person, second, third, and fourth-guessing anybody who she gives her companionship to. And while, after some time, she might begin to trust you more than she did, she’ll likely not really trust you. A full unconditional trust is something that she can only give after years of companionship, if ever, and she’s only ever given it to Galerus.

As might be surmised by Sihava’s particular occupation over the years, she’s not overly concerned with legality. There are, however, some lines to be drawn. She will not murder. Kill, yes. If someone comes at her with a sword and she has no lines of defense to withdraw behind, she is a fair hand with her daggers, and has no compunctions over self defense. But murdering someone is different. She also does not steal from those who have nothing to begin with. While the law might not care if you take the scant Septims from a beggar’s purse, Sihava will. Not only is it a waste of time for very little return, but she does still have a conscience. Stealing every Septim of someone who has nowhere to go is similar to murder, in her mind, and she does not care for it. Not only that, but beggars are patroned by Nocturnal, just as thieves are. If she sees someone stealing from a beggar, she will follow them and slowly take every scrap of coin or jewelry on them and funneling it back to the beggar. So while the law is minimally important to her, ‘the law’ and ‘justice’ are not the same thing.

There is one glaring weakness that Sihava has, despite largely being imperturbable to threats and the like. She’s spent a long time distancing herself from her childhood in Windhelm, but has never been entirely successful. ‘Knife-ears.’ ‘Grayskin.’ ‘Half-breed.’ These words, and words like them, occupy a place of childish terror in her heart. Hearing them leaves her scattered and flustered at best. At worst? She’ll break down crying, futilely trying to forget the past as it claws at her mind.

Equipment:

A pair of elven-metal daggers: One of the very few weapons she’s ever stolen, she was taken by their fine design and snatched them up, almost without thinking. They are sheathed horizontally across the small of her back.
Lockpicks: Though she no longer makes a habit of breaking into every house she comes across during the night, there are some habits that are harder to break. She keeps her lockpicking tools in a pouch strapped to her left thigh, beneath her tunic at all times, and only takes them off to bathe or sleep. Sometimes not even then.
Thieves’ Clothes: A special set of clothes for when she’s engaging in skulduggery. Tight-fitting and very dark blue, with numerous pockets spread across. Includes a headscarf for tying up her hair and covering her face.
Backpack: A big, burly backpack decades old, used by her mother in her caravaneer days. It’s held up admirably, though it’s been patched so many times there are almost more leather patches than original leather. Half a dozen or so hidden pouches are scattered throughout the lining for hiding things she doesn’t want people to see.

Misc. Possessions:

Map of Tamriel: A map of the continent, with all major roads and cities marked in original ink. The thing is so marked up by her own ink, though, charting her journeys across Tamriel, that it’s barely recognizable anymore.
Amulet of Nocturnal: A metal disk perhaps an inch and a half wide strung on a leather thong underneath her tunic (or her thieves’ clothes, when the occasion calls) and emblazoned with the crest of Nocturnal. She hasn’t taken it off in three years.
Money: While in her purse she carries a modest sum, perhaps seventy Septims, she has an emergency fund of nearly three hundred kept under a false bottom in her backpack.
Merchant’s Goods: She still keeps up the persona of a merchant, and so she needs merchant’s goods to sell that, if you’ll pardon the pun. Includes such things as alchemical ingredients (nothing too rare), semiprecious gemstones and a few really precious ones, some jewelry, clothing both fine and rough, et cetera. All of it was and is acquired legitimately, in the case that someone in a town that she steals from searches her things.
Bedroll: A comfy bedroll of fur and leather strapped to the bottom of the pack's outside. She eschews a tent, preferring to sleep under the stars whenever she can.
Kohl: She keeps a bit of kohl with her at all times, for when she needs to make an entrance.

Family and Associations:
Demivah Rallaron: Mother
Ulfskaar Blackthorn: Father
Galerus Quintilius (Quint): Still a very close friend

Favored Attributes:

Major: Agility
Minor: Personality

Favoured Skills:
Highly Proficient:

Sneak: You don’t become a thief as skillful as Sihava was (and in a sense still is) without being excellent at remaining unseen and unheard. She knows exactly where the least visible spot is on the edge of a campfire or torch or lantern, and if you didn’t know how much time she spent learning those skills, you’d think her supernatural, with how little noise she can make while moving. And attached to this is her skill as a pickpocket. Unlike lockpicking, she's never really stopped dipping her fingers into people's belongings. And so, she's able to take their belongings before they even know she's in the room.
Illusion: Since her childhood in Windhelm, she’s been obsessed with illusion magic. What started as a way to gain power over people for a powerless and vengeful girl became another tool in her bag of tricks for getting in and getting out completely unnoticed. She’s excellent at manipulating people with this, which is helpful, since she’s not very good at verbally calming people down. For obvious reasons.

Moderately Proficient:

Acrobatics: Flexible and spry, Sihava developed those traits into a real skill to help her slip in and out of sticky situations. While she’s not going to be unharmed by a twenty foot fall anytime soon, she can contort her way through spaces that look way too small, and climb up a building without great effort.

Somewhat Proficient:

Lockpicking: Once, Sihava could pick a lock faster than she could turn a key. She was a true master at it. But times change and time passes. She’s not been picking locks nearly as much, as she doesn’t steal nearly as much. Her old skill has passed, but if she was pressed, she could still pick a simple lock with relative ease, and though it would take a few minutes instead of a few seconds now, more complicated locks are still within her reach.
One-Handed: As a wanderer and roamer across Tamriel, Sihava has been accosted by her fair share of brigands and bandits. While she usually dissuades them with illusion magic, there are times when it’s simply more effective to fight back, and she does so with her elven daggers. She’s not particularly good at it, but she’s competent enough that she’s still alive after over a decade of wandering.
Mysticism: As mentioned, though she does not speak, Sihava can use a ramshackle, cobbled-together slew of Mysticism principles to telepathically convey images, emotions, and some scattered words. It’s an imperfect method of communication at best, but combined with her expressive face, she can...generally get a message across. She only learned any Mysticism for the sake of communication, so she doesn’t actually know any spells from the school.

Spell List:
Invisibility, Pacify, Rout, Frenzy Rune, Muffle, Alluring Gaze, Phantom Image

The Elder Scrolls: Night of Pestilence

Sihava Blackthorn

"Five people have asked her to dance so far. That's five fewer people with purses." - Galerus Quintilius

Name: Sihava Blackthorn, the Smoke Dancer
Race: Half Nord, half Dunmer
Sex: Female
Age: 31
Birthsign: The Shadow
Origins: A working-class family in Windhelm
Appearance: Sihava largely takes after her mother in appearance. Tall, willowy and beautiful, she looks like more like a courtier than a priestess-thief. She doesn't have the defined musculature of a warrior, to be sure. But to call her weak would be a grave disservice. She's been wandering the length and breadth of Tamriel for over a decade, from southwestern sands to the wild oceans of Winterhold, and so her body reflects that. Her legs are pure muscle, from thighs to calves, and there is not an ounce of fat on her body; her constant roaming burns it all off far faster than she can build it. While her arms aren't as strong as her legs, they're plenty on their own. Years of illegal climbing have built them up (especially her shoulders) to a surprising degree. That's not to say she could arm-wrestle a Legionnaire, but she's certainly no pushover.

Her skin is a dusky Dunmer gray, though a bit warmer than most. Though it is roughened by decades of travel through sun, sand and snow, she does her damndest to keep it as soft and clean as possible. Though she takes after her Dunmer mother, her face is where her mixed blood is given away. Instead of the sunken cheekbones that so characterize the appearance of a Dunmer, her face is round. Not quite as much as a Nord's, but close. Her eyes, as well: instead of the swollen irises of an elf, hers--while Dunmer red--are more in line with the size you might see of a human's. Those eyes, a sign of her dual heritage, are also a study of the dual sides of her personality. While they glimmer with barely restrained excitement, they are also constantly shifting back and forth, searching, scoping, making sure things are safe, equal measure of innocent and calculating. Often, though, they are obscured; her long, fine hair, a pale gray-white, hangs loose most of the time, and can easily sweep in front of her face until she brushes it away with a finger or breath to behind one of her ears, which--while not as much as a full elf--are definitely a sharper shape than any human's.

The only time she ties up her hair of her own will is when she's wearing her thieves' clothing. Tight-fitting leggings and tunic of deepest blue and dappled with black, along with a matching mask and a headscarf to hide her distinctive white hair. A leather shoulderbelt dyed in the same colors cuts across it, filled with thievery supplies; lockpicks and key wax, a pry bar, a strong thin rope. As long as she's done it right, the only parts of her that show are her eyes and her hands.

When she's not wearing her thieves' clothing, she has fairly expensive tastes. Nothing too extreme; wouldn't want a simple merchant to look like royalty waltzing through the countryside and getting the attention of every bandit and guard within a hundred miles. But she is very fond of luxurious fabrics done in red. Mostly, she wears a simple burgundy tunic over brown leggings; her traveling clothes. But she does reserve some clothing for an occasion. When she wants to make an entrance, or an impression, she dons a stately floor-length dress of wine-red satin, coupled with a golden collar-style necklace studded with a large carnelian. She combs out the knots that usually infest her hair, and perhaps dabs some kohl on her eyes to complete the transformation: from scruffy wandering merchant to a woman that could blend in in the Blue Palace.

History: Demivah Rallaron was a Cyrodiil Dunmer. Born and raised as a carpenter in Cheydinhal, she felt a burgeoning wanderlust growing ever since she was a small child. Though her parents weren’t exactly thrilled (to say the least), the call of the road was stronger than the call of home, and when she grew up, she became a wandering trader, a caravaneer that poached and sold curios from all around Tamriel, ranging from ancient Akaviri daggers, to Welkynd stones from deep beneath the Ayleid ruins of her homeland, to branded Septims from the reign of the Wolf Queen, Potema, and everything in between. Nothing was safe from her questing grasp. But she never stole. Adamantly. She was an honest businesswoman, and proud of it.

Ulfskaar Blackthorn was a Skyrim fisherman, native to the beautiful city of Windhelm and intensely proud of that fact. The architecture! The history! Truly, Windhelm was the best city in Skyrim to live in. He’d never left Skyrim; he’d never even wanted to leave, really. Fishing was a taxing, time-consuming job, and what little leisure time he had was spent at the Candlehearth Hall. Warm fire, cold mead, good friends to chase away the chill. A good life.

The two met in the winter of 4E172, quite by chance, as Demivah passed North, fleeing from the Great War, and stopped in Windhelm to replenish her supplies for the journey north, to Winterhold and then to Dawnstar. Ulfskaar purchased a strange insect, trapped in Elsweyr amber from her, and the two began to talk. They talked for a long time. Days, which stretched into weeks, which stretched into months. Until both of their coin began to run short, and Demivah left for Winterhold, promising that she would return. He waited for her, and a month later, she kept her promise, coming back with a ring of Solstheim gold, and asked if he would marry her. And though the rumblings of war grew stronger in Cyrodiil, the two of them were wed. Then, two years later--Morning Star, 4E175--they had a single child. A girl, who they named Sihava.

And then came the White-Gold Concordat. And the goodwill that Demivah had built up with her neighbor Nords, the friends she’d made--it began to all peter away. Nationalism steadily rose at the thought of the worship of Talos being banned, and then shifted rapidly into a boiling racism. For as established as she was, Demivah became just another ‘grayskin’ spying for the Dominion. She was spared the Gray Quarter, living as she was in Ulfskaar’s ancestral home. But she was spared very little else. It was in that political climate that Sihava was raised. Windhelm isn’t the friendliest of cities for a growing girl. Growing up in a cultural center of anti-mer racism doesn’t help. Especially if you’re a “half-breed.”

Sihava had a target on the back of her head since she was born. Even as a little girl, she was scorned, insulted, bullied; by children, and even by adults. She didn’t know why at the time, but as she grew, she figured out what caused it. She heard the people calling her mother a grayskin, a Dominion spy, a filthy elf. She heard people calling her father an elf-lover, a supporter of the Dominion, despite the shrine to Talos in his home. And she grew bitter. Bitter at the Great War, for causing so much pain. Bitter at her neighbors, for hating her for such a stupid reason and for leaving her friendless. Bitter at her parents, for falling in love like they had, and for somehow remaining so happy with each other. And bitter at herself, for being so bitter. She lived a quiet life, stewing in her resentment. Against all odds, she managed to find a job when she was twelve. Sorting Wuunferth the Unliving’s workshop and laboratory. Nothing particularly interesting; arranging scrolls on a bookshelf, sorting the soul gems on the display racks, cleaning the alchemy and enchanting workbenches...something calm and quiet. And though Wuunferth didn’t particularly care for her, from his mumblings as he worked, he cared for ‘those clod-headed guards’ even less.

And then, all that bitterness that had build up in her came to a head when she was fourteen years old. She was walking back home from her job when she was jumped in front of her home by a boy--Aljor something-or-other--she’d seen grandstanding about his Nord heritage around the city. He was going to rebel against the Imperials, he’d said, and other things along those lines besides. He shoved her, hard. Her bag was dashed to the ground. The strap snapped. His eyes fell on her purse, the few Septims that she’d made from her work with Wuunferth. And he advanced on her as she scrabbled desperately to dig through her bag. That’s when, from out of her fallen bag, she snatched the spell scroll she’d stolen from Wuunferth in a fit of curiosity. She channeled it as he ran at her. She prayed it would save her. And she let the magic fly. Aljor stood poleaxed for a moment, eyes suddenly running with red light. And then he screamed. He shrieked in terror and ran from her, dropping her purse in his haste to escape from the nondescript girl. And as she returned to her home to escape the guards that his scream would surely have brought running, a knifelike smile formed on her lips.

She never forgot the look of terror on Aljor’s face, and she longed to experience that feeling of power again. From that point on, she devoted her life to procuring as many books on illusion magic as she could. And those texts that she wasn’t allowed to access by Wuunferth--who showed surprising interest in the development of her magic, remarking that perhaps she would make a decent apprentice in a few years’ time--she would steal, squirreling them away under a floor tile in her house. Never more than one or two at a time, but enough for her to grow...well, not good, but adequate enough. And she found that the feeling of power that magic had given her was almost more intensely given by that theft. She’d been schooled since she could remember by Demivah to never steal. But, she reasoned in a fit of anger, these Nords had stolen her childhood from her. So she would respond by stealing from them in kind.

She was eighteen, in 4E193, when she told her parents that she wanted to follow in her mother’s footsteps and become a traveling trader. They were--to her surprise--thrilled. They’d seen the way she had been treated by the people of Windhelm. And Demivah took her in her arms as she left: “Siha, you asked me once why we didn’t leave Windhelm and find somewhere else to live, and I told you it was because Windhelm is our home, and the heart follows home. But...it’s not your home, sweetling. And just as the heart follows home, home follows the heart. So go find yours, sweetling. I love you.”

As she walked from the city, with nothing but her clothes and a massive backpack filled with trinkets to sell, she let the tears fall down her face, and she apologized to her mother, and to the Divines. And then she embarked on an epic crime spree across Skyrim that took her from the Ratways of Riften through Dragonsreach and the Blue Palace of Solitude, and every town and city in between. The feeling of power grew stronger as she grew quicker and more confident in her crimes, pillaging not only coin and jewelry, but also the laboratories of court wizards all across Skyrim. She read voraciously, and her study of illusion grew feverish as she felt her aptitude growing. Soon, she could bend people to her will, or drive them mad. And with that accomplished, and Cyrodiil stabler than Skyrim now, with the tension reaching a fever pitch, and it seeming safer to leave than to stay--her crimes across the country, from the smallest settlements to the largest cities, had taken her through 4E197--she departed, heading south. The Imperial City looked mighty rich for someone like her, and she was hungry.

She quickly became something of an urban legend in the Imperial City. Nothing like the Gray Fox had been, so long ago; nowhere approaching that level of notoriety. But certainly, she had the guards feeling nervous. They even gave her a nickname: the Smoke Dancer. A wisp of whirling shadow, almost visible out of the corner of your eye, but impossible to catch. With her skill as a thief, and her expertise in illusion magic--she was so skilled now that she could turn invisible--she was like a shadow, dipping in and out of shops and well-to-do homes as she pleased and taking what wasn’t nailed down, hiding her finds in secret pouches throughout her backpack. She did do some trading, to keep up a veneer of legitimacy, and to justify her huge bag, but it was mostly a side business to her real passion. And then a man approached her one day. Galerus Quintilius, he introduced himself. And told her to come to the ruins of the Waterfront district that night, at midnight, and tell the beggar Old Milky--named for her blind right eye--that she was there to see Quint.

Interest piqued despite her caution, she did so, and so came across the Cyrodiil Thieves’ Guild. She ran with them for many years, discovering a sense of comradery and compassion that had been sorely absent from her lonely, angry life. She and Galerus became close friends as she rose in the ranks, and she eventually met a figure that she’d believed to be a myth. Someone she’d only ever heard of in scattered legends and occasional books. Someone that caused her to, for the first time in her life, be truly awestruck: the Gray Fox. Legends say that he stole the Cowl from Nocturnal herself, whispered Galerus to her, once. And so her interest in Nocturnal began to grow.

As she aged, that newfound friendship with the Guild’s members had unforeseen consequences. Namely, she stopped enjoying thievery. With her anger and bitterness ebbing, she no longer needed that same feeling of power that she once craved. She longed instead for something bigger. Mysterious. Incomprehensible. Something to figure out, or attempt to, like she had done for magic. She hacked together, out of a novice’s study of mysticism and a creative mind, a way to impress images into another’s mind, and then she stopped talking. She commited herself to silence, for a reason that she scarcely understood. And then she felt an urge. A calling, towards the north. And so, for the first time since she’d left--years later, in 4E203, after the end of the Stormcloak Uprising--she made a pilgrimage back to Skyrim, drawn by rumors, myths, and a half-forgotten dream to a cave in Falkreath Hold. Guided by an inexorable pull that she didn’t understand, she winged on silent, invisible feet through the Pilgrim’s Path, and emerged into the place that she now knew she’d been longing to find for her entire life.

The Ebonmere.

And as she stood there, beneath the darkness of the Evergloam, she heard a faint voice speak to her. She does not remember what it said. But she emerged from the Twilight Sepulcher with a new purpose in life. No more would she simply steal from those more fortunate than she was. No, her theft was part of a higher calling now: to embody the darkness, silence and mystery that was Nocturnal, and to spread the shadow of the Evergloam, until all the thieves of Nirn could feel Nocturnal’s shadow.

Ever since, she’s been wandering, ghosting through towns and cities and leaving them with a backpack maybe a bit heavier than it was before she got there. She may be out of practice with lockpicking and and...well, most of the thieves’ trades, but Nocturnal smiles upon her, and so she knows no fear. But now, roaming through Daggerfall, the nights have gotten colder. They have grown longer. And this is not the kind of darkness that Sihava knows.

Perhaps it is time that whatever is causing this supernatural shadow learns what a real night looks like...

Personality: Sihava’s personality comes across differently than most because of her silence. She moves through the world quietly in every way--quiet feel, quiet movements, quiet breaths--and with something that seems to most like great solemnity; like she has a terrible weight dogging her heels, pulling down on her shoulders, pressing her to the ground. And she does feel that she carries a great responsibility with her. But it doesn’t weigh her down the way that many people seem to think it does. The solemnity that they see is simply her way of walking. In fact, past the long-standing silence only broken with mysticism or writing, Sihava is a remarkably personable woman, with a wry smile, a dry streak of sardonic humor, and perhaps more than a touch of vanity.

In her trades as a thief and a merchant, she learned better than anybody how to roll with every punch she takes. Consequently, she’s as far away from stubborn as you can find: she is remarkably flexible, and if someone tells her that she’s doing something unfathomably stupid, she’s able to step back, analyze what she’s doing, and come to the conclusion that they’re probably correct.

Speaking of unfathomable stupidity; while her worship of Nocturnal has changed many things about her, it hasn’t changed her personality at its core. And so she is very, very reckless and easily excited, surprising those who have heard about the Smoke Dancer and her epic crime spree through the Imperial City and find out that’s who she is. While she’s learned how to take things slow and scope something out over a period of days or even weeks before making her move out of pure necessity, her natural proclivity is to jump into a situation headfirst, escaping with her illusion magic, her skill at stealth, and the seat of her own wit. Consequently, she’s excellent at thinking on her feet, able to come up with workable plans in a moment’s notice, even while under heat. The converse, however, is also true. Whenever she tries to plan something out meticulously, it backfires on her. Inevitably, and usually spectacularly. Doing her best work in the moment means she overcompensates and overplans, and when even one thing goes wrong, it all comes tumbling down. She’s no strategist. Keeping it simple is the only way she survives.

As for romance, she’s not interested. She once thought that perhaps she and Galerus might have something, but by the time anything could have developed, she’d given herself over to Nocturnal. Perhaps she could still find someone, but they would need to beat a Daedric Prince for her attention, and that is a steep task indeed for anyone who might wish to woo her. She does love dancing, though.

It is in her nature to be slow to trust. Even now, so far removed from her troubled childhood, its scars still linger, and the years as a thief don’t exactly help. She is an incredibly suspicious person, second, third, and fourth-guessing anybody who she gives her companionship to. And while, after some time, she might begin to trust you more than she did, she’ll likely not really trust you. A full unconditional trust is something that she can only give after years of companionship, if ever, and she’s only ever given it to Galerus.

As might be surmised by Sihava’s particular occupation over the years, she’s not overly concerned with legality. There are, however, some lines to be drawn. She will not murder. Kill, yes. If someone comes at her with a sword and she has no lines of defense to withdraw behind, she is a fair hand with her daggers, and has no compunctions over self defense. But murdering someone is different. She also does not steal from those who have nothing to begin with. While the law might not care if you take the scant Septims from a beggar’s purse, Sihava will. Not only is it a waste of time for very little return, but she does still have a conscience. Stealing every Septim of someone who has nowhere to go is similar to murder, in her mind, and she does not care for it. Not only that, but beggars are patroned by Nocturnal, just as thieves are. If she sees someone stealing from a beggar, she will follow them and slowly take every scrap of coin or jewelry on them and funneling it back to the beggar. So while the law is minimally important to her, ‘the law’ and ‘justice’ are not the same thing.

There is one glaring weakness that Sihava has, despite largely being imperturbable to threats and the like. She’s spent a long time distancing herself from her childhood in Windhelm, but has never been entirely successful. ‘Knife-ears.’ ‘Grayskin.’ ‘Half-breed.’ These words, and words like them, occupy a place of childish terror in her heart. Hearing them leaves her scattered and flustered at best. At worst? She’ll break down crying, futilely trying to forget the past as it claws at her mind.

Equipment:

A pair of elven-metal daggers: One of the very few weapons she’s ever stolen, she was taken by their fine design and snatched them up, almost without thinking. They are sheathed horizontally across the small of her back.
Lockpicks: Though she no longer makes a habit of breaking into every house she comes across during the night, there are some habits that are harder to break. She keeps her lockpicking tools in a pouch strapped to her left thigh, beneath her tunic at all times, and only takes them off to bathe or sleep. Sometimes not even then.
Thieves’ Clothes: A special set of clothes for when she’s engaging in skulduggery. Tight-fitting and very dark blue, with numerous pockets spread across. Includes a headscarf for tying up her hair and covering her face.
Backpack: A big, burly backpack decades old, used by her mother in her caravaneer days. It’s held up admirably, though it’s been patched so many times there are almost more leather patches than original leather. Half a dozen or so hidden pouches are scattered throughout the lining for hiding things she doesn’t want people to see.

Misc. Possessions:

Map of Tamriel: A map of the continent, with all major roads and cities marked in original ink. The thing is so marked up by her own ink, though, charting her journeys across Tamriel, that it’s barely recognizable anymore.
Amulet of Nocturnal: A metal disk perhaps an inch and a half wide strung on a leather thong underneath her tunic (or her thieves’ clothes, when the occasion calls) and emblazoned with the crest of Nocturnal. She hasn’t taken it off in three years.
Money: While in her purse she carries a modest sum, perhaps seventy Septims, she has an emergency fund of nearly three hundred kept under a false bottom in her backpack.
Merchant’s Goods: She still keeps up the persona of a merchant, and so she needs merchant’s goods to sell that, if you’ll pardon the pun. Includes such things as alchemical ingredients (nothing too rare), semiprecious gemstones and a few really precious ones, some jewelry, clothing both fine and rough, et cetera. All of it was and is acquired legitimately, in the case that someone in a town that she steals from searches her things.
Bedroll: A comfy bedroll of fur and leather strapped to the bottom of the pack's outside. She eschews a tent, preferring to sleep under the stars whenever she can.
Kohl: She keeps a bit of kohl with her at all times, for when she needs to make an entrance.

Family and Associations:
Demivah Rallaron: Mother
Ulfskaar Blackthorn: Father
Galerus Quintilius (Quint): Still a very close friend

Favored Attributes:

Major: Agility
Minor: Personality

Favoured Skills:
Highly Proficient:

Sneak: You don’t become a thief as skillful as Sihava was (and in a sense still is) without being excellent at remaining unseen and unheard. She knows exactly where the least visible spot is on the edge of a campfire or torch or lantern, and if you didn’t know how much time she spent learning those skills, you’d think her supernatural, with how little noise she can make while moving. And attached to this is her skill as a pickpocket. Unlike lockpicking, she's never really stopped dipping her fingers into people's belongings. And so, she's able to take their belongings before they even know she's in the room.
Illusion: Since her childhood in Windhelm, she’s been obsessed with illusion magic. What started as a way to gain power over people for a powerless and vengeful girl became another tool in her bag of tricks for getting in and getting out completely unnoticed. She’s excellent at manipulating people with this, which is helpful, since she’s not very good at verbally calming people down. For obvious reasons.

Moderately Proficient:

Acrobatics: Flexible and spry, Sihava developed those traits into a real skill to help her slip in and out of sticky situations. While she’s not going to be unharmed by a twenty foot fall anytime soon, she can contort her way through spaces that look way too small, and climb up a building without great effort.

Somewhat Proficient:

Lockpicking: Once, Sihava could pick a lock faster than she could turn a key. She was a true master at it. But times change and time passes. She’s not been picking locks nearly as much, as she doesn’t steal nearly as much. Her old skill has passed, but if she was pressed, she could still pick a simple lock with relative ease, and though it would take a few minutes instead of a few seconds now, more complicated locks are still within her reach.
One-Handed: As a wanderer and roamer across Tamriel, Sihava has been accosted by her fair share of brigands and bandits. While she usually dissuades them with illusion magic, there are times when it’s simply more effective to fight back, and she does so with her elven daggers. She’s not particularly good at it, but she’s competent enough that she’s still alive after over a decade of wandering.
Mysticism: As mentioned, though she does not speak, Sihava can use a ramshackle, cobbled-together slew of Mysticism principles to telepathically convey images, emotions, and some scattered words. It’s an imperfect method of communication at best, but combined with her expressive face, she can...generally get a message across. She only learned any Mysticism for the sake of communication, so she doesn’t actually know any spells from the school.

Spell List:
Invisibility, Pacify, Rout, Frenzy Rune, Muffle, Alluring Gaze, Eyes Of Midnight

Iquenos: In Nomine Domini

Etoile

---

Clara's words were welcome. But her shadowed face was not.

Etoile had seen suspicion before. She'd had plenty of it directed at her, both in her line of work, and afterwards. Pythia's parting jab--that the only strategists she knew were Inquisitors--they had hurt. They were true, no doubt about it; the military was the Church, and so the only real military strategists were those that the church had trained. But they still hurt.

Etoile was silent as the group moved into Pythia's formation, eyes burning into each of them in turn. If she was going to be the rear-guard, she needed someone she could count on if--when--things got rough. Pythia. She's paranoid, prideful, and has no understanding of strategy beyond "zap it with lightning from a sword." She's also crammed her way into the front, so she probably won't even notice if we get picked off one by one. Garbage. A rock would be more use in a fight than her. Lazulin. I don't know enough about him to gauge much of his combat potential, but he sets off warning bells in my head. He may be skilled, but I trust him about as far as I can throw him. Zestasia. He's less proud than Pythia, but also less intelligent. His magic is more versatile than hers, but I get the feeling that he's less competent at using it. Still, at least he'll listen if I call for him. Better than Pythia, at least.

Pagonia. A competent swordsman, and he seems smart enough. He's not too proud, either. But he's emotional, and Zestasia could be used against him. And he's in front. He's probably going to have his own things to worry about. And Clara. She seems to understand the concept of a command order, at least, which is more than the rest of them can say. Her particular brand of magic seems useful, though I've only seen it once. She'll be near me in the marching order. And she keeps a cool head under pressure. If I had to pick one of them to actually warn, it would be her. She'd by my choice to fight with--

But she stopped her train of thought there. As it seemed, she wouldn't be picking people to fight with. They would be picking whether or not to fight with her. And she didn't much like that.

She heaved a sigh and threw one last tired glare at Pythia--too drained by frustration and worry to put much energy into her malice--then ratcheted her awareness all the way up. She hadn't envisioned herself as the rear-guard here. But here she was. And Sol be damned if she'd let something by her. Just because she didn't like her job didn't mean she didn't need to do it. If there was anything she wanted to be less than ordered around, it was dead weight.

Especially after Pythia's words. These people didn't seem the type to wait for an explanation. And they still hurt.

Current Mood in One Gif

don't mind me just screaming into the abyss

Iquenos: In Nomine Domini

Etoile

---

It almost hurt to grind teeth together as hard as Etoile ground hers when Pythia responded with...well, pretty much exactly what she'd expected. But expectation doesn't preclude disappointement, she groused to herself. The sting in the tail of Pythia's remark didn't exactly improve her mood.

"He'll probably rush in without thinking," she mocked, pitching her voice up in an exaggerated imitation of Pythia's, "someone has to watch his back." She scoffed, returning to her normal voice: "Of course, you're right. It's not enough to have three magi, all of whom have magic which is more useful for utility applications than direct combat, watching someone's back when they run in. It'll all be better if instead of that, we have a primarily offensive magi with a comparatively frail body run in next to him, be immediately crippled, and subsequently lose a great deal of direct combat magic. That's far more strategically sound than having other people drawing attention in a major conflict and said frail but powerful magi delivering an unexpected surgical strike and everyone being fine."

She placed a hand on her chest, heaving out a heavy breath. She needed to stay calm. If Pythia got under her skin, she'd be compromised, both in strategizing and in fighting. Best to just let her barbs skate off. She wasn't that much taller than Pythia. Five or six inches, if she had to guess. But she moved closer and straightened her back up, doing her best to emphasize the height difference as she threw her arms and shoulders into an exaggerated shrug.

"But if, in your opinion, what a veteran strategist thinks is wrong and you know better, Sparky--kid: then who am I to argue with you?"

She stalked away, taking up a position behind Clara, who...well. Perhaps it's best if I stay back here after all, with how she's looking. Wouldn't do for her to collapse and only Pythia to be there to help her if something unforeseen happens and we're separated.

"I'll just be back here if you actually want some advice. Zestasia, you've been promoted to a name. There's another person here who merits the moniker 'kid' far more than you do."

She lowered her voice to just above a whisper, moving closer behind Clara and murmuring into her ear: "Hey. What's going on?"

Iquenos: In Nomine Domini

Etoile

---

Etoile couldn't track magic through the air.

She didn't know why, but for some reason, she'd never been able to feel ether around her. It was like she was missing a sense, and she hated it.

But she didn't need to be able to track magic through the air to feel it stagnating around her. It felt like she was walking through existential honey. It was a feeling that she hadn't had in a very long time. Not since she was still in service of the church. And it was still just as alien to her as before.

"For once," she murmured, looking up at the innocuous trees above her, "I agree with the kid. We're in enemy territory, pretty much right in the nexus of this mysterious maleficarum's power. If they don't already know that we're coming, they're probably a strong enough magi to feel us now that we're this close. This is ambush tactics one-oh-one. If we're not very, very careful, I doubt we'll even see the enemy before we're overwhelmed. I would be pleasantly surprised and amazed if all they have are birds and krovar."

It reminded her of a quote from a book she'd read once: The triumphant seizes their victory before the war has begun, while the fallen goes to war and seeks to win. If ever she was going to war and seeking to win, it was now. Ill-prepared, injured, miscommunicative, in enemy territory, and with a list of misfits that, while perhaps competent in single combat, would be absolutely useless on a coherent battlefield with a command structure and likely had no idea how to fight a maleficarum...the list went on, and every item on it made her less and less confident that they would somehow manage to pull a win out of this disaster. Enough of that, she chided herself grimly. This will be hard enough as-is. Get your head together, these idiots stand zero chance without you. If there's no organization in the way we approach this, we're all going to die.

"Alright. Pagonia. You're probably the most suited for frontline combat and taking hits. When we go in there, you take point. Clara, the kid and I will be behind you, supporting you, watching the sides, and providing utility. Sparky? You can beat the tar out of anything you touch, but you don't look like you can take a hit and keep on doing so. You play rearguard. Anything comes up behind us, you zap it out of existence. Any objections?"

There was a desperate hope in Etoile that everyone would for once agree with something, but she wasn't very confident in its coming true. More likely, Pythia would be overly-prideful again, refuse to stay in the rear, take point, and then immediately be dropped by a threat nobody saw coming. And with her gone, so would be a great portion of their combat strength. She raised her eyes to the heavens, delivering a quiet prayer: please, Sol. Don't let these idiots die. I still need them.

The Witcher: Under the Shadow

Pretty much that.

Aidann isn't going anywhere quick, don't you worry.

The Witcher: Under the Shadow

I think there were only two Witchers tops, and they've been yoinked.

The Witcher: Under the Shadow

I'm sorry about the dead radio silence; my parents are really worried about the virus, so I've been running around most of the day stocking up on food and whatnot.