L O R E L E I
Details
Full Name: Lorelei Vitalis
Race: Druskai
Sex: Female
Age: Twenty-five
Height: 5'8
Weight: 143 lbs
Birthdate: 194 Frost, 83rd Day
Birthplace: Korizant
Profession:
Housing: Basic Housing (Shack on big city barge)
Partners:
Titles:
Factions:
Fluencies: Common, Korkos
Conversationals: None
Ineptitudes: None
Appearance
At first glance Lorelei could pass as human. She is tall and stands proud, head always held high no matter how deep in the depths she is. On closer inspection her heritage shines through. Where one may mistake her as fair-skinned they would realize her tone is closer to mother of pearl. Her eyes are a cold icy blue that shocks away from the deeper tones of the rest of her features. Long amber tresses flow freely from her head, falling wildly where they choose. Rarely is she seen with her hair pulled back and away, choosing instead to let it blow where the sea breeze may carry it. Five carved bone earrings are split between her ears, three on one side and two on the other.
Deep sienna marks mirror her face where soft and iridescent scales grow. This aesthetic carries all throughout her body down each arm, running along her sides and finally spreading across her thighs and calves. Lorelei is by no means a woman who has faced no hardship. Her wiry arms speak of the years she has lived on the sea. From a lifetime of pulling ropes, scaling masts, and most of all raiding her body is much more a tool than a decoration. Lorelei's legs and arms are powerful in their own way, able to equally propel her through the waters with relative ease as well as hoist her weight over ropes and other obstacles.
The scales that line her also sport features that would require proximity to truly discern. Dappled all through her body are strange runes and sigils that not even she comprehends as of now. They are raised slightly from the skin as if from scarring. It can be easily missed unless someone were to run through fingers along her scales, where then they could feel the intricate inscriptions. These are the giveaway to her abilities as a summoner should anyone be able to discern their purpose.
Generally Lorelei is seen wearing worn leather knee high boots over a pair of striped, tight fitting trousers. They are held together with a series of belts that serves the purpose of holstering her hand crossbow. On either leg a small quiver loaded with bolts is wrapped for ease of access. She wears a long tail coat opened down nearly to her midsection on days where good weather prevails. A leather bodice laced only to the chest resides underneath. This coat has seen better days and has been modified to fit a smaller frame. A belt attached to the back has allowed her to pull it in, signifying that this may have belonged to someone else. The coat has a high collar and flows behind her as she walk. There are no sleeves on this coat. A tattered scarf wraps around her neck. She wears worn leather gloves that reach up towards her forearm and a large captain's hat adorned with a bright plumage. The hat is a special piece for the times when she is at sea.
Personality
There are many aspects that can affect the molding of a youth. First there is nature. It was her lineage that implanted a certain wanderlust, a carefree attitude that would equally push Lorelei to as many adventures as there were moments of recklessness. Like many of her kind a passion was instilled in her. The emotions she feels are entirely embraced and experienced, leaving nothing out. Each blow to the heart as powerful as the ones where laughter raises the sorrow from her being. Lorelei is both jovial and intense. She is kind and cruel, unforgiving and merciful all in one.
Growing up with other southern Druskan children the first emotions Lorelei knew her happy ones. This is where she was nurtured, and for awhile was able to live carefree knowing there was a safe and loving home awaiting her. Her tribe knew how to love deep and live to the fullest, and it was these actions that she first emulated. Lorelei has always easily made friends, owing it to her magnetic and inspiring personality. Many of her friends have found themselves swept up in her excitement and lead on reckless adventures. She is a natural born leader, one who does not shy away from the work it takes to run a ship of any size. Lorelei tries to be the first one to action and would never put herself above her crew. She is loyal to them and in an instant would put her life on the line for them.
In battle is where her northern blood truly shows. She accepted long ago that it is kill or be killed and no longer hesitates to put an arrow between someone's eyes before they can do that to her. She tries to act with decisive cunning, not allowing for an opportunity to overtake her. Only a single chance is to be given for another crew to give up. Always she tries the peaceful route, swearing that none shall be harmed if her crew is allowed to merely take what they want and allow them to go on their merry way. She even makes sure that what is left for the ship they are raiding is enough to see them to the nearest civilization. If that opportunity of life is not taken though, it is death for those who stand in the way of her path to greatness.
Lorelei has shared deep experiences with her people. She weeps freely at the loss of a loved one, bristles at the challenge of her skill, and fervently shows her passion for someone. She drinks deeply when there is drink to have and laughs genuinely when there are times of joy. Lorelei has never been one to hide her emotions. She has no issue with letting someone know when they've pissed her off or hesitation when it comes to praising the deeds of another. Whatever sensation it is that she is experiencing, Lorelei embraces it fully.
History
Mine is a story of nature and nurture. Mine is a story that begins long before my clutch was laid, even before my mother chose her mate. It begins at the divergence of the Druskai. Our people have never been one unified tribe. We are many scattered across the seas and coasts, equally different in our ways as we are similar in our appearances. It is the way, at least for now, that we battle at every meeting- that we consume other tribes and send to the depths of the sea the ones who would seek to sink us first. We have never made allies outside of the families you are born with, outside of the hatchlings you grew up with and lived side by side on the treacherous seas.
Within these ever warring tribes exist two ideals that for many, many years, have defined our entire race: The Old. And the New.
I remember how cold it would get and I don't mean the frigid nights. It was the staring eyes of people who looked like me but were nothing like me would chill me to the bone. I understood from a very young age that there were those in this world who would just as quickly toss you overboard should you happen to cross them on a bad day. Their ways are ruthless. No mistakes allowed, no chance for rest and merrymaking. There were only obligations. Should you be unable to perform your task then you were made an example of. I remember seeing these punishments doled out with a manic passion. It was strange seeing my kin, separated by miles of water and land, had turned out to be so very different than you or me. Different in the way that only strength prevailed, and the meek were nothing more than fish food.
Now I know you've heard the tales of reaving, how their boats are decorated with the skulls of their fallen prey and even of their own who failed to prove themselves. I heard the same stories of the ways that they shackle the dead to their will and turn their bloated corpses against the ones they loved in life. They leave a trail of dead as they savage the unfortunate coastal towns until they have what they want or that their power has been sufficiently flaunted. Some of you have even crossed blades with them, some of you turned sails at first sight of their dark fleet - and I do not blame you - for all of these stories are true.
There is more, though, that few of you have ever learned. I am sure of it for I have been fortunate to have seen both sides now. In between those moments of merciless aggression and domination over everything but the self I saw something that mirrors what I see here. They sat in circles just like this, sharing the same ales and wines and days old bread. Stories were told from old to young, legends passed down to the ones who would carry on in the world much like I am doing for you now. They felt the same rush that I know you all do when we are to set upon another ship unlucky enough to cross our path. I saw them fight so fiercely for their own continuation on a daily basis.
You see our waters? How blue they are. So clear that you could see for leagues under the ocean if only you looked long enough. Their seas are frozen hellscapes seeking only their destruction. Where we were blessed with a warm and loving sun that rises and heats our faces every day they are shrouded in a fog so thick you could lose yourself in it. They have never known the safety that we have, the simplicity of being able to reach out and pluck a fruit so succulent. The Vethcairn have been molded by the horrors of the North. They have fallen prey to a god twisted by the Sundering, and in turn they have become twisted themselves.
But they are still family. They ARE our kin. For too long have we spent our lives hoping to please a Queen who has never been seen once in hundreds of years, or to a Lord as enigmatic as an impenetrable fog. If we could just be free these gods who care little for us and break the shackles that, maybe we could overcome this nature and become something more.
- A story told by Lorelei, on a night of celebration from a successful raid with her crew mates
This story that Lorelei tells is not true, as much as she hopes that one day it will be. You see, she has never set foot in the lands that the Vethcairn called home. At least, not truly.
Her mother was born to a family of merchants just outside of Korizant, on a smallish barge that traveled up the coast to trade and bring back curiosities to the home city. She was one of three born in her clutch - all girls - and was raised living a life of ease, even in comparison to the already relatively simple of a southern Druskan. Her mother always dreamed of being whisked away from this world of endless days at sea. She cared little for the kinds of pleasures her people often sought, and instead yearned for a way to overcome the life of pirate-or-be-pirated. She herself was a great beauty, and demanded that her environment be as beautiful as she. It was on a fateful journey far closer to the Blackwater Bay than her family had ever been that her desire for something different was satiated.
Just not in a way she had expected, nor likely ever would have chosen.
The fog had caused them to drift further out than they thought. Everything happened so fast it, though even if they were warned their was little chance of their fate being changed. A Vethcairn warship set upon them and in but minutes had captured or killed everyone on that barge. Lorelei's mother had been spared, mainly to be taken as a trophy and used to sate the needs of the crew. Everything changed then, and it was by sheer luck that she captured the attention of a northern Druskan man. He came with a certain gravitas that proceeded him wherever he went. The raiders clearly answered to him, by the way they dropped the beautiful, struggling woman at one barking order from this man. He approached her, broad of shoulders and sturdy of body, and spoke three words that Lorelei's mother still clings to: You are mine.
He was handsome in a dangerous way, with an intensity to his being that was unlike anything she had seen before. He bore markings that covered more of his body than the scars of past battles did, strange and cryptic runes engraved on to his skin. His voice could compel his men to anything. They would die at his behest, drive themselves onto their own blades if they thought it would please him. He was an incredible warrior, never once bested in battles of wit or blade. The very sea seemed to bend to him, and then there were the creatures that he would rouse. They were mighty beasts of the deep, far too strange to fully comprehend. These were where his strength came from, why his tribe were so willing to die for him. It was this power that he could summon forth, calling out their twisted names and directing their unending hunger. With tendrils so black they seemed to contain an inky black sea within they would come and swallow whole ships into the sea. They could drag even the sturdiest of barges through the waves, sunder it in two and claim it for the unknown depths below.
Lorelei's mother existed as one of his concubines for only a handful of weeks. In that time Lorelei's cluster was conceived, but it would not be until after a Korkann raiding party took vengeance on the Vethcairn warship. In the night they set out from a larger ship on small skiffs, covered to look like the dark sea. They swarmed the Vethcairn and managed to slay many of the sleeping northerners and set fire to their ship. Recognizing one of their own, now pregnant and nearly ready to lay her cluster, Lorelei's mother was dragged to safety and returned to the life she once thought wasn't enough for her.
Lorelei was raised with other southern Druskan babies, cared for and adored by the people of her new tribe. She had been the only one to survive from her cluster, most likely due to the stress her mother faced just before ready to lay them. Her mother never quite recovered from the double shock of culture, and seemed to have lost what sharpness she once had in her youth. She is delicate now, and much better at caring for clusters and waiting for them to hatch than braving the warrior's life.
Lorelei is nothing like her, and in fact has always caused her mother's hear to quake with fear. From birth her daughter was headstrong and filled with explosive energy. She always needed more attention than other kids, demanding the world stop and listen to her rather than pass her up as another passive baby. Her curiosity was nearly unending, often driving Lorelei to dangerous pursuits in search of an answer for a question that would not leave her mind.
That question was always of her nature.
Her mother would tell her stories of the kind of man her father was. A true Commander of the Seas, nothing like these men who were nothing more than boys playing pirates in comparison. Lorelei's stories of legends were almost always about her father. Her mother spoke of him like a dream, as if she could conjure him if only she could precisely describe the force of personality that he was.
This girl grew up yearning to know of this firsthand. Lorelei wished, just as her mother had once wished, to know of a life different than hers. And so she became driven.
Driven was she to consume all knowledge of her people and study their ways. She joined with the first raiding party that would accept her and threw everything she had at this life. From her captain and crewmates she learned how to pilot these great ships their people called homes. Her mind was filled with fantasies of one day sailing north through the hordes of Vethcairn druskan to find this man and for him to know his only living daughter. In this life passion freely flowed. Each day was a gift when any raid could go wrong and they could find their lungs filling with the sea. Any hesitation when acting could result in an arrow through the skull or sword through the gut. A plan gone awry might herald the destruction of their ship to the booms of cannon fire.
Lorelei paid close attention to everything their captain said, down to the way he delivered orders. Night after night she implored the quartermaster to teach her numbers and letters until her very dreams would become filled with inventory logs of their ship or accounts of the treasures they stole. The sailing master showed her how to read the stars and to always find her way no matter how lost she had become. Lorelei poured over maps of known water currents, trade routes of nearby coastal cities, topography maps and more. She learned how to use a sextant and estimate time of travel. The sailors taught her to understand that the ocean and its moods. The master gunner showed her how to operate cannons, use a crossbow to defend herself and attack, and how to accurately measure distances.
There was not one position in that crew that Lorelei felt content with. Their importance was understood, but there was only one position that suited her. Lorelei needed to know all of this if she ever hoped to be half the commander that her father had been. One day she will become captain of her own vessel, the strongest in the sea. Then, she will set out and find her father.
191 Searing, 15th Night
My initiation ended a few hours ago, and I find myself alone after the celebration they threw for me. I don't think anyone noticed I hardly touched my drink. I raised it, again and again, toast after toast-
Something is wrong.
Captain Makarius told me what to expect. Pale and unfeeling, they would come to me under the cover of fog. Shapeless and with no eyes or mouth or anything of that kind. They are aberrant, but ultimately without a drive. He told me these creatures live to serve, formless lumps of clay waiting to be molded by our hands.
Sitting through the engraving was harder than expected. I thought it was going to be stick and ink. I've seen plenty others get tattooed in that way, long nights of endless stabbing until the ink took hold.
I don't even fully understand what it was Makarius was doing. The voices that came from him are still echoing in my mind, unearthly and too many for one man to make. His fingers fluttered through the air, tracing symbols only he could see. There was no one else in the room save us, my body bare for him to work his ritual upon. It burned so cold when finally he touched me. I shivered and strained to stay still. He pressed against my flesh and I could feel his nails digging into me. First along the sides of my head, Makarius looming over me and speaking in those strange voices. It filled the room as if he was joined by a choir unseen.
I won't lie, it terrified me. After all these months of Makarius wanting to choose someone to pass this down to I finally felt a sense of doubt. I'd seen him do it before and it was incredible. The way he cut through the cloth of our world and pulled forth these vaporous dolls. They'd cover our approach to an unsuspecting ship. From the mist they would come, clawing for their sailors and pulling them to the sea.
He told me they would come to trade.
But I heard nothing. There was nothing.
Suddenly I felt exposed. It was not just my body laid bare but my thoughts, my being and everything that made me who I am. I flushed with a wave of sheepishness and I wanted to cover myself. I reached my arms to my chest , turned my hips to cover myself.
I cannot even begin to describe the absolute fear that came over me when something else also reached out. Cold, slippery tendrils wound around my ankles and wrists. They pulled my limbs away and I could do nothing to stop them. Every muscle in my body strained against their might. Across my thighs they coiled, tighter and tighter until it cut the blood flow. Those tendrils slithered up my stomach and my chest, wrapping around me until there was no flesh exposed.
I opened my mouth to scream as I became enveloped. They reached my neck and halted just before the edges of my mouth. I felt it then, a hollow acceptance. The tendrils rushed inside me, ripping down my throat and then it was over.
Makarius was standing over me with concern in his eyes. His hands were on my shoulders now, gripping with the fervor of worry.
He asked me then, "is it done?"
I wasn't sure how to tell him what had happened. The gift he wanted to give me...
I nodded my head, afraid to speak should those strange tendrils spill forth from my mouth. We emerged from his cabin with his coat draped over my body. Proudly he presented me to the crew and their voices echoed across the waves.
I stood there, unsmiling. As cold as the One who was watching me.
