MacabreFox
Alfhedil
DnD Nerd
Bork Lazer
Cleveraptor
TokyoPewPew
Velos
ScreenAcne
DaemonsRevenge
Hos
Appearance:
It can be seen that she was beautiful once, but Deia has grown thin, gaunt, and wild. There are echoes of things that consumed her etched across her being. Her hands are restless. Fingers always moving to trace unseen symbols in the air and across her limbs when she speaks. Her hair, once kept neat in the schools of High Rock and her courts, has since grown wild, long, and into curls. Her thin body is crisscrossed with scars. Her hands, her arms, her throat… Some were earned in battle, others carved there by her own blade and will in moments of ritualistic fervour.
There is a phantom elegance to the way she moves, her affluent upbringing existing still in her soul and she draws on it now in her new life. She has a habit of tilting her head when listening, as if she is catching voices no one else can hear. Thing unheard and unseen, a wisp of something from the other side. When she speaks, her voice is smooth until it isn't. Until her mania slips through in a burst of chilling laughter, her lips curled just a little too wide. The serpent ready to strike.
Personality:
Deia prays in the shadows with her teeth bared and jaw clenched, hands gripped around a blade. To her, faith is devotion carved into flesh and screamed into the harsh and rotten void. When she speaks of her gods, there is a gleam in her eyes that is wide and fevered.
When silence lingers too long, she fills it with laughter that blooms into something high and unhinged and frightening. She laughs at things that shouldn’t be funny. At sorrow, at regret, and at the trembling in a fearful voice. Fear delights her. She especially delights in other’s unease and in the way a man will flinch when she recites prayers not meant for his ears.
Deia still wears talismans of bone and feather hidden beneath her cloaks, still mutters old prayers to gods most fear to name. But beneath it all, buried under the weight she carries there is still something fragile, something that aches in the quiet moments when she remembers what was taken, what was done to her, what she lost. She does not speak of love, but it is her deepest wound that has never closed. She does not weep. Her grief lives and feeds on her rage. It propels her forward, bringing lucidity from her madness enough to disguise herself in the city streets now.
There is still fear that she is too far gone from humanity, that she will never attain a state of being recogniseable to the children who are searching for her. Not only will she live having had her children stolen - but that they will reject her as a thing of the wild, a creature, a monster. There are fleeting moments that something human from the past flickers behind her dull eyes and slips through and out of the madness. Something broken and bleeding.
But then she laughs, and it is gone again.
Background:
Skyrim’s chill was in her bones long before she was old enough to name it. Born to a Nord father and a Breton mother. Dhalia carried their two differing worlds in her veins. Unyeilding spirit of the north, and the thrum of magic in her breath. Having demonstrated affinity, she was sent westward, to High Rock and to the Mages Guild halls where they refined her wild talent. She devoured the secrets of the school of Destruction, binding herself to the fury of Kyne.
When her time came, she was welcomed in Cyrodiil courts as an advisory mage, where she served high born families. It suited her well, and she took to her position as a serpent among the wolves, astute to the politics. It didnt take long for them to whisper in contempt of her. They spun their stories of her seduction and sorcery; rumours of a woman who let too many hands touch her skin, took too many men and women alike to her bed. A witch who took what she wanted without asking. The gods do not grant mercy to a Maiden like that.
Such whispers of her indulgences turned to scandal and soon, undeniable proof swelled beneath her robes. Twins conceived in secrecy, their father highborn, bound to duty, and to his wife. Dahlia was hidden away, back over the border to Skyrim to hide the scandal. When her twins were born, she was poisoned by the very guards who had escorted her. Just like that, she was cast into the dark, taken far from the small town she had been imprisoned in, and left bleeding and broken. Mother for a day. She had been cast out and left for the wilds to consume her.
But the Reach does not waste what still breathes.
Reachmen found her among the briars, half buried in snow as a grieving, screaming spirit too stubborn to pass and too full of primordial rage to die. They took her in, reshaping her in their image, unmaking the woman of courts and remaking her as something wild. Their old magic was carved into her skin, bled into her bones until she spoke in tongues she did not understand. Namira whispered to her through her grief in words of rot and decay until she buried and burned her name and Dahlia was stripped away. Deia emerged - baptised in her antlered mask and crown of death, beneath a bleeding moon.
They called her sister. She let them. The wild life of ritual drowned her own. Her pain and grief was forgotten. Her past was gone. Or so she told herself.
It was the wind that brought the memories back. She heard them in her dreams, in the rustling of trees, in the flow of the rivers and streams, in the rain. In her rituals, the gods told her they were alive and raised by another. They needed her. The Reach could not hold her any more. She escaped the wilds with Kyne’s breath in her lungs. Stealing Namira’s hunger, folding it into herself.
And so she traveled across the border. A Crone trying to wear the skin and disguise of a woman closer to cosmopolitan than she had been for many years. To ignore her inclinations to the wild ways of the time she had spent in celebration of the rot, decay, and abundant life. She had to relearn manners and the ways of an invisible, mindless, godless life in the pursuit of her children.
Manners which were promptly lost when following a lead led her to a brawl... And led her to sinking her teeth into an unsuspecting arm. In defense, of course....
Skills:
Alchemy – Deia can craft deadly poisons from fungi, nightshade, and human /animal remains by smearing them on her blade. She is not above brewing hallucinogenic elixirs that bring her closer to her gods, particularly in her journey to find her children. Believing this communication to be paramount to her mission.
Blade – Primarily a mage, Deia is no stranger to carving symbols into flesh with her ritual dagger, whether it is her own or someone elses... She fights with swift, brutal precision, aiming for arteries and weak spots if cornered, and she does try not to be cornered...
Magic
Destruction – Her primary school of magic, she specialises in Lightning and Storm spells.
Lightning Bolt, Shocking Burst, Lightning Grasp.
Mysticism – The school of things unheard and unseen.
Detect Life, Soul Trap, Minor Dispel.
Conjuration – Having spent years among the Reachmen, she has learned minor conjuration.
Summon Ghost, Bound Dagger, Turn Undead.
Equipment:
Personal
A plain, hooded outfit which covers much of her skin, thin gloves, footwraps.
A silk sash around her waist.
Lockbox
Pouches of bone, herbs, and dirt.
Empty glass vials.
Saltpeter.
A ritual Reachman dagger.
A bloodied cloth.
Ambition:
Retribution and redemption. To reclaim her fragile humanity she once knew, to become the mother her children deserve while punishing those who abandoned her, and stole them from her.
