Syn Ba'al was the daughter of a wealthy and successful nobleman in the trade business.
She was a good daughter and always did her best to make her parents happy, but they were not a happy family.
On the side her father was in the slave trade and her mother was the proprietor of several well known brothels which her father would sometimes attend as well.

Her father would often come home drunk and enraged, the maids and servants always hid themselves when he got like this, but she being the only child received the brunt of his animalistic bouts of rage.
Sometimes her mother would even be present and would actually join in.
Being the dutiful daughter she was she took the violations in silence and never told anyone, she was angry and scared but couldn't ever bring herself to say she hated either of her parents.

But as most stories go, that changed.
One night her parents went to far, in insane lust and drunken violence he took his daughters face in one hand, and one after the other reached in a pulled her eyes out.
Her screams meant nothing, her bleeding meant nothing, even after that she was expected to be dutifully obedient, neither of them stopped this, they laughed while they continued to violate her and enjoy each other at the same time.

Suddenly, in the utter darkness, she heard a voice besides that of her parents, a voice that promised her revenge.
Suddenly she realized the anger she felt was hate, she discovered that she hated her father and her mother for taking part.
She couldn't see, but she could feel her father still on top of and inside of her, she reached out and hugged him with blood running down her face, she held him close and leaned toward his ear, "Goodbye, father..."

She didn't see what happened, only heard a roar of fire and felt him melting away in her arms, somewhere her mother screamed in terror.
After it was done there was silence, she could hear nothing but rain against the window, she could see nothing but permanent blackness.
She fell back on the bed as the pain of the loss of her eyes finally set in as the adrenaline ran down and she screamed in anguish, she wanted to cry, she wanted to see, she wanted to run, she wanted to leave.

Her screams seemed to have attracted some attention as soon there was a loud bang as the door was kicked open and the sounds of heavy footsteps and the clanking armor of many men entered the room.
Rough hands grabbed her as she writhed and screamed and she heard the sound of a woman's voice instructing the men to bring her to the slave pens.
She was pulled off the bed and carried violently through the mansion until the outside rain was suddenly pelting her naked body.

The voice again in her mind, "I will save you."
Another roar of flame around her and she was dropped to the mud as the arms disintegrated from under her.
The voice again, "Run, follow my voice."
She heard it off to her left and she got up and stumbled after it as best she could.

After that was a struggle but she eventually followed that voice for miles through the wilderness to the steps of a monastery, the priests there took her in and cared for her, tended her wounds, wrapping a linen bandage around her eyes and did their best to minister to her, but all the while that voice stayed with her.
Eventually she was able to learn her way around her blindness and could walk very well with the help of a cane, now able to walk without fear of stumbling or running into anything.

She spent a year with the monks and during her time her other senses grew sharper in the absence of her eyes.
She was now able to recognize each individual monk, priest, and nun by the sound of their voice, their scent, or the sounds of their footsteps.
She grew very attached to the inhabitants of the monastery and they loved her in return.
On her seventeenth birthday the monks gave her an ornate metal visor as a gift, she ran her fingers over the beautiful craftmanship and immediately fell in love with the gift, finally able to cast aside the hot bandages for the cool metal visor.
But even more, this gift was the first she had ever received even as a child, so it became that much more cherished to her.

But even after all this time she couldn't make a full recovery in the arms of the monastery, her ordeal leaving deep mental and spiritual scars that wouldn't heal and eventually developed into several behavioral abnormalities.
Sometimes she would relapse and this would show especially in her treatment of the men and boys of the monastery.
But in spite of this nobody gave up on her, helping her work though these episodes and doing their best to make her comfortable and safe in their care and she was always grateful to them for not turning her out even at her worst, even when the voice on her head told her to leave, told her to avoid these people, told her to come to him, she would cover her ears and hide herself from the voice but he would never leave.

Unknown to her was the mark he had placed on her shoulder, the magical scar that nobody in the monastery knew what it was or how to remove, but simply let it be and never told her about it, focusing on her as a person and doing their best to care for and love her.

One day she was taken by a Dreadweaver of Bastellen. After "watching" her family at the monastery slaughtered by this assassin she thought she would feel angry, afraid, vengeful, but non of that happened... She felt excited, invigorated by the bloodshed about her, even as the last of her friends were killed at her feet. She wanted pain, and Bastellen gave her pain, physical, emotional, spiritual pain, any pain she could imagine and she loved every bit of it, and loved him for giving it to her.

Syn Ba'al Did not shy away from her new life. She dove head first into the life of an assassin for Bastellen, having immediately been chosen as his head Dreadweaver. She trained, she grew more powerful under the tutelage of the Dreadweaver who recruited her, Elise Darkwater, who also became her lover. After three years with the Cult of Bastellen she has become a young woman, and her literal lust for pain has yet to fade in even the slightest.