Anima

Appearance

* Black hair, light gray eyes, fair skin, 5'9".

* Usually wears her dark leather armor, its enchantment long since faded away. She still wears a brooch shaped like a crow, identical to her mother's own.

* Armed with a blackened shortsword, whose steel is warped and scarred from faded sorceries. Also equipped with an underwrist knife hidden in her left bracer, and two boot knives.

Skills and Abilities

Bale fire: A sinister form of sorcerous fire, white hot and cold black. A favorite of her mother, it burns only living beings. The flame seeps into the skin, causing intense, crippling pain for a short time, but leaves no lasting damage or marks. Ineffective against armor, for the flame cannot penetrate what does not live. Anima can produce a small orb of bale fire above the palm of her hand, which may then be blown into a short-ranged burst, or thrown in an exploding fireball. May also harm Anima herself.

Fire resistant: The blood of her father grants unnatural tolerance to normal fire and heat. Still, she is not immune, and abnormal fire, such as her own bale fire, is wholly unaffected by this resistance. Cauterization is an effective way for Anima to tend to her wounds. But this boon will not last her whole life, as the Rules of Magic have already begun to ebb away such resistance.

Masquerade: A sorcerous technique taught by her mother. By meticulously cutting off the skin of a humanoid's face and wearing it as if it were her own, Anima may become a perfect facsimile of that person. Her voice, height, weight, skin, sex—everything—will change to copy the other person. Emotion is inherited, wordless and magnified, in association with people, places, and things the person knew. It is easy for Anima to lose herself in the masquerade, to sincerely believe, for a brief time, that the facade is her true life. Alas, within a month's time, the sorcery of the masquerade will wane heavily in the final days, and the seams of Anima's false face will begin to show, peeling away entirely from her own in a grotesque display if she does not remove it herself. Once peeled or removed, the face can never be used for a masquerade again. Anima does not inherit the abilities/spells/skills of the person she is masquerading as.

Personality

* Curiosity gives way to intense obsession often.

* Lethargy slowly grasps Anima without an intriguing subject to shadow, or face to wear and life to impersonate.

* A deep shame has led to a lack of moral conviction and boundaries, and a belief that others share the same lack, or will, given enough time.

* Working against such shame, Anima attempts to right wrongs that have caught her interest, to see if such deeds can bring about some semblance of lasting good—or if this, too, is a lie.

* All falls to chaos, darkness, in the end. Her mother's spoken truth. As such, Anima is comfortable with danger and depravity, irreverent to the sacred and cherished.

* To feel pain is to feel life, pure and raw. Anima enjoys causing pain as much as she does enduring it. The relief of pain, and relieving others of it, is also enjoyed, albeit less so. But for every king, a queen, just as royal.

* There are, perhaps, things waiting in the encroaching dark. Things greater than oneself. Diminishing oneself. Her mother's revelations have taken their toll, and so some may find Anima's manner of speaking peculiar.

* Anima shies not from the consumption of human flesh. A rare delicacy, and an intimate act, to ingest another's suffering. Perhaps it is an indulgence of a different kind to carry a piece of another's spirit with her in this way.

+ Anima has a kind of synesthesia, wherein certain emotions elicit tastes for her.


+ Only dreams when in the company of another. Her sleep is black and formless without it.

+ Craves closeness with and the touch of others. Particularly enjoys running her fingers through hair.

+ By corollary to this craving, Anima is no stranger to brothels.

+ Will occasionally fixate on things of particular interest and lose track of time.

+ Horrified by things of a divine, infinite, or otherworldly nature.

Biography & Lore

Mother had been right all along.

Anima had feared the divine. The sheer immensity of It. The grandness that outshone the love and pain and hope and sorrow of the world and reduced it to the infinitesimally small. But she did not realize, that in so being rendered insignificant against the collosal grandeur of the Great, the divine, yes, in Its enormous capacity there existed the love and pain and hope and sorrow of all time. From Arethil's most nascent days to its inevitable end, for what was, what is, and what will be were all contained within the Things which stood apart from time.

The true horror was not Anima's perceived insignificance, no, it would have been knowing that this, this brief and finite flicker of flame called life, wherein was contained everything she knew and everything she had ever felt, was it. That it was this and nothing more. That she could not be made part of a greater whole, JOIN in its grandeur.

Yes. That was true insignificance. That was true horror.

And she had been.

Made part of that greater whole. Briefly. A taste. A fleeting basking. This...while she was nestled inside the heart of the Amalgamation. The Beast formed from Its liver. The Beast tirelessly summoned centuries ago to Arethil and who had awaited a vessel to be reformed around. And Mother had brought her, unwilling as she was, to this. And Anima, once inside the beating heart of the Beast, could taste all of the emotions (the love, the pain, the hope, the sorrow) of those who had been sacrificed during that centuries-old summoning.

The grandeur was undeniable. And Anima craved more.

References

Her Mother: Khorvayne


Shadows of the Dark Shrine

The Unopened Letter (Anima fails to solve a mystery.)

The Unlikely Pair (Khorvayne gains a servant.)

The Fires Undying

Dark Offerings in the Light

The Last Stand of the Giant

The Vicar of Suffering (Anima is blackmailed. Obsession with Luc.)

Fires in Elbion (Anima confronts someone she failed. Khorvayne retrieves the Symbiote.)

A Hell on Arethil (Abducted.)


The Amalgamation (Found inside the Amalgamation's heart.)

Born with a King's Heart

Only a Massage (Deceased.)