Tabby
Derpsichord
Elysse Zasalamel
Appearance: Elysse keeps the shirt zipped up and tends to wear an obscuring cloak over the rest of her attire when in public, preferring to draw as little attention to herself as possible. She moves with awkward grace; there is a feeling of lithe power, of purpose in her movements, and yet it is equally obvious that she is having difficulty holding iron control over her own body. When free to move freely, primarily in combat or scouting, the awkwardness melts away instantly in favor of her extreme agility.
Titles:
- Wraithblade / Wraith of Blades - primarily around the area she originally worked in in the South, though out of some twisted sense of humor, she occasionally ensures that it is propagated somewhere new. Generally speaking, regardless of how well or little-known the name is in the area, it isn't connected to her specifically. She doesn't like taking credit for most of her work.
- Anathema is both the de facto name for any of the returning Solars and occasionally the title she refers to herself as, with slightly deeper meaning than pure sardonic humor - even for a Solar she's a bit out there, as she very well knows. Having an ex(?)-demon in your head and still nursing a touch of Infernal taint isn't quite par for the course for the flawless god-kings of old. Then again, occasionally referring to yourself as Anathema isn't super bright from a completely detached perspective, and it'll probably come around to bite her in the ass someday.
Caste: Night
Concept: Tainted - but not corrupted - Solar serving the greater good.
Out-of-Context Quote: "Changed my mind. Wearing a dress. Casual, with a side of breasts."
Motivation: Serve Creation by doing what needs to be done.
Tongue: Riverspeak
Intimacies:
- +Grimoire - he very literally saved her life and helped integrate her back to society. She owes him. Elysse travels with him partially because she still responds to orders rather than striking out on her own, a result of a lifetime of dependency and a habit she's still working to shake, and partially because it's just easier to have him do the talking rather than try to do it herself. She isn't lazy by any definition, but every bit as ruthlessly pragmatic when inspecting her own abilities when gauging someone else's, and Elysse harbors no delusions about her skill in diplomacy outside of impaling someone to a wall and working from there. That approach is very effective in certain scenarios, but doesn't tend to work out as well in real life.
- +Raziel (awkward camaraderie) - neither Elysse nor her co-conspirator are quite sure if it's an intimacy of grudging acceptance, understanding, love, hatred, exasperation, or some combination of the lot of them, but neither of them would disagree with the fact that some sort of intense bond exists. It is only through Elysse that her compatriot exists, and it is through him that she is in posession of memories not her own, a mind linked to her own, and occasionally-solid advice when she's about to do something really stupid. They can argue, ignore each other, compare notes, or debate whatever they want; each is a central focus of the other. For better or for worse... that remains to be seen. She wouldn't mind if he - or she, or it... whatever xe actually is - would be a little more forthcoming sometimes, but can't win 'em all. And it's not really all Raziel's fault, xe is still more or less pulling itself together.
- +Yozi essence (unwilling comfort) - so many years spent steeped in it has caused Elysse's body to adapt, not entirely to her liking. While she knows intellectually the danger that demons and Yozi influence represents, she finds herself naturally shying away from interfering, forcing her to convince herself to step in.
- +Benefactor (hesitant admiration) - While her mind and consciousness were too clouded at the time to have a solid memory of him, Elysse remembers and holds a degree of apprehensive reverence for the Infernal that gifted her the dual blades and trained her when she was younger; as positively as her fractured mind represents him, she knows quite well that he was a servant of the Yozis, and that just doesn't lead anywhere she likes to think about.
- +Trying new things (awkwardly eager excitement) - developed as a side of effect of missing out on having a childhood, Elysse has an unfortunate tendency to jump at new experiences, all the while downplaying her reaction and general fondness of the concept. This has landed her in trouble in the past and likely will again soon.
- -Slavery (disgust) - to deprive someone of their freedom is not one of her favorite subjects.
Biography
-Her parents were merchants, alongside the whole HOBBY: ENEMY OF ALL THAT IS GOOD IN THIS WORLD thing, and taught Elysse some part of their trade before she became the Wraithblade.
-The cult that she became a part of, and was conditioned to serve mind and body - read: prenaturally loyal assassin - was a Yozi death cult, specifically one revering the Principle of Hierarchy herself. The one who would become the Wraithblade, knowing little else and eager to please, became what they desired; little more than a silent, implacable killer, one who would not - could not - betray them, who would hound their foes until the end of time, and who, as the infernal taint permeating the cult shrine where she essentially existed slowly overtook her body, rapidly became something more - or perhaps less - than human.
-As the cult grew from a fringe society dedicated to mindless destruction towards something perhaps more stable, with connections and resources outside of the core group and a power base funded by more than crazy people, the ceremonies became more grandiose, the sacrifices more perfect - and when one of the Green Sun Princes in the area happened by at his amused master's behest, teaching a cult member versed in thaumaturgy how to summon demons, they suddenly had a link to the Demon City of Malfeas.
-Some time later - her perception of the flow of time had become so dilated by that point that she had and has no idea of the actual timeframe, really - the cult managed to procure a single bottle of Chalcanth, the distilled essence of a sacrificed demon, full of its dreams, memories, essence, even its very being. It was presented to the cult's favorite little assassin, who took it and drank it with all the apparent excitement of a corpse, her emotions blunted by a decade of conditioning and bloodshed.
-Whether as a reflection of her own pervasively tainted body being a suitable host, or the shadows in her mind providing an inviting refuge for what tattered remains of the demon's psyche still clung to existence, fragments of its mind coalesced within her, forming a vaguely coherent consciousness. As she drank in its memories, it took in hers.
-It was kind of a bad time to spontaneously combust in a bonfire of Solar essence as she exalted, in retrospect. Getting two new voices in her head in rapid succession made it (un)surprisingly difficult to focus on either, and the whole "bloodthirsty crowd suddenly deciding to kill her" thing really didn't make matters any better.
-The Wraith of Blades fought her way out with minimal bloodshed, averse to harming the only faces she had known in years, especially without being able to think two damn straight thoughts in a row.
-Momentarily after getting out, the whole impending-migraine thing had cooled down enough for her to realize a very important fact.
-Right after that, she turned around and fought her way back to the core, butchering everyone she could find in a lovely stream of blood and body parts, after realizing that leaving any alive would screw her over. A lot. Leaving any loose ends had a tendency to backfire anyways, and more importantly, she didnt' want any of the cultists getting away and informing anyone capable of taking her down of what had happened - better that whichever demon, Infernal, or local authority found the wreckage assumed that a passing do-gooder had butchered everyone than tracing the slaughter back to her. Granted, they could probably figure it out anyways by the lack of her corpse, but at least it would take time.
-Too bad half the cultists had already been enhanced by the ambient essence to the point that some of them approached yozikin status.
-Covered in blood, her own and that of the slain, she quickly learned that apparently surviving in the outside world requires you to know the language, relevant social norms, all those handy little things. Without any of those skills, and without any real idea of what to do without the order and guidance of the cult, her state very quickly deteriorated, causing her to eventually collapse from starvation and a number of wounds.
-It also turned out that apparently exalting as a Solar caused the exaltation to purge some, though not all, of the miasma in her body. Apparently it was less pleasant than she might have hoped. A lot more of the "crippling pain" thing, really. Not painless at all, as she would have liked it to be.
-Grimoire found her unconscious and blood-spattered in a gutter, took and cared for her for reasons his own, and eventually taught her Low Realm as she acclimated to the outside world. She ended up sticking with him, partially because she didn't know what to do with herself or her newfound power, and partially because she felt that she owes him for saving her life, and so figured that she might as well use her talents to help. One way or another, anyways, whether it involved killing people to protect Grimoire, or just being company on the road. Not that she was very good at the latter, but she was very good at the former, and Solars tended to attract plenty of trouble. It was bound to be a useful skill at some point, right?
Personality & Bearing
She harbors no love for the Yozis or any of their spawn, though she doesn't actually hate them, but still tends to act much as she did during her stint as a death cult assassin - laconic, brooding, and with a penchant for quick but excessively brutal and oft-bloody kills, along with inhuman flexibility and agility that she hides poorly at best. While she isn't necessarily inherently an emotionless killer by a long shot, she suffers from blunted affect due to years of Yozi cult conditioning, and while she isn't necessarily happy about the fact, she is so used to death being a valid solution that she tends to look to it as the first or second option, rather than as a last result. Whether it is the result of primal bloodlust or just being used to it is up in the air.
-Partially tainted by Yozi essence from spending so much time (figuratively speaking) bathed in it; no mechanical effects, but something about her feels a little off, which serious (read: supernatural) investigation can detect, and she naturally feels more comfortable around any variety of Infernal essence, whether Yozi, GSP, or demonic. Not that she has to like it on an intellectual level.
-While she often appears surly and unwelcoming, Elysse holds little real animosity for much of the world. She isn't so much a negative person as she has no other frame of reference to model her reactions after, and as keenly aware as she is of her own oddities and inadequacies, she tries to cloak her heart in armor of stone.
Raziel
-Drinking the chalcanth while so tainted caused an unusual reaction; some of the fragments of the demon's consciousness reformed inside her, retaining a limited degree of sentience and access to their shared consciousness and memories. Raziel can't directly affect her, nor vice versa.
-Raziel was an Adorjani demon, so she is more sensitive to noise and prefers to not make or be near too much of it. It has a tendency to scramble her thoughts slightly, but the effect is not nearly strong enough to induce any serious psychosis - more than she already had, anyways - so it's more of a nuisance than a constant fight for her consciousness. The demon alternates between vaguely helpful, impossible to deal with, and aggrieved silence with neither rhyme nor rhythm, and she makes an effort to ignore it as much as possible, though it's unsurprisingly difficult to really ignore something that pretty literally lives in your head. Besides, it occasionally proves useful with some tidbit of information about the demon city of Malfeas, though never any pertinent information - that would be far too informative. It was only a first circle demon, and thus all it can really tell her is about daily life in Malfeas... what little it can dredge from the fragments of its shattered memories. As mentioned in Intimacies, both parties are still testing the waters of their relationship, trying to figure out where they actually stand.