I S A B E L L E - I N E S
Details
Race: Human
Age: 31
Height: 5'7"
Weight: 120 lbs
Occupation: Sunderer
Relation to PC: Friend
NPC Type: Companion
Description:
Isabelle Ines (Izzy) was born to the entente, some would say by mistake. The Ines family hailed from Arlain; a small family shouldered by two Veir. Sir Mateo Ines was its patriarch, and Lucia Ines was the lady of the house.
Miguel Ines was first born to them, followed by Isabelle a few years apart. Both were initiated in Brand at a very young age, and blessedly, both were successful. Isabell was nine when she was initiated in Grave, and her brother was on to his third mark, Mentalism. Though they shared blood, their affinity for magic differed immensely.
Miguel was a prodigy and seldom failed to perform the abilities of his three marks; he knew his limits and how to push them, and mageblight only twice struck him. Isabelle couldn't seem to perform novice abilities with consistency, potency, or efficiency. It was often that she burned through her ether and overstepped, which set her back months of progress with sickness and unease.
It's not often that siblings see eye to eye on many subjects, some siblings even bicker and fight tooth and nail. Miguel and Isabelle shared none of these behaviors. To Miguel, Isabelle was a blight on the house: a lazy, stupid little girl that didn't even try to progress the gifts bestowed upon her. So, he simply pretended she didn't exist.
Mateo and Lucia did supposedly support her in those years, but only behind closed doors. In public, she was often wafted behind the curtains while Miguel was put on a pedestal for display.
She knew shame, inadequacy, and such became the association of her Marks. She withdrew even further from her training, failed to practice in her free time, and sought other venues to fill her time. Whenever the old hag fell asleep, she snuck out and mixed with the children of society's lowest echelons. Among them were the orphaned children of blasphemers, foreigners, and some who were supposedly born in the imperial badlands to the east.
It took time to build the trust of the other children, and they often teased her for her origins with nicknames like princess and posh, but it was all in good fun, and she found her place among them.
Inevitably, it came to light that she often snuck away and that she mingled with the city's gutter trash. It was then that Mateo and Lucia had to double down on her training; there was no room for such marred outward appearances. They sought the help of magical scholars for answers to her ineptitude, and though most suggested that it was normal for children so young to shy away from such powers, Mateo was relentless in his search until finally, it was suggested, that she might have more luck practicing Nightfall for its fluidity and simplicity.
So, they arranged for her to be initiated in the magic of umbralplasm at the age of nine. It was there that everything changed for the worse.
Isabelle failed the initiation; she survived, but the umbralplasm she ingested blocked her magic, permanently.
She became an ugly stain upon their family, even to Mateo and Lucia. Miguel was made to train harder, to push himself even further in a desperate effort to draw attention away from their failure in Isabelle.
Such shame continued for years, and it eventually came to be that Mateo and Lucia wouldn't so much as look in her direction. The Valran of the house still fed her, and some even took pity on her.
When Miquel finally pushed his magic too far and violently overstepped, Isabelle happened to see him in his room in the company of Lucia and a number of Valran. His eyes, nose, and ears were bloody, and his lip was dark with ejected corruption. The pressure was killing him, and the hate that he held in his gaze when their eyes met was so tangible it frightened her. Lucia saw her too, for the first time in weeks, and she looked at her with disgust.
Fearful for her safety, she fled the estate that evening and returned to her friends. All the urchins feared for her safety when she told the story, and convinced her that Miguel was going to kill her. And so Jacob, a boy from the Imperial Badlands, presented an option.
That option beheld the shape of an engraved ice pick with an odd gem at the hilt. It was a weapon that could stop any mage, and reduce them to powerful crystals. Isabelle, holding no love for her brother, took the pick.
That night, she crept into Miguel's room, climbed atop him to aim for the heart, and woke him in the process. Isabelle was smaller and weaker than him, but Miguel was ravaged by magithermal entropy. He turned the pick on her and shallowly stabbed her left eye with the pick. The adrenaline was enough that she overpowered him, and plunged the pick into his heart.
He became paralyzed while Isabelle held her bleeding, blind eye. And though she quietly wept, she stayed to watch the fear in his eyes as death claimed him, and his body turned to crystal. When he broke apart, she pried the Sunderscrap from his chest and fled the estate forever.
She went with Jacob and his family to the wasteland, where they bought her a new artificed eye, and strickened it with her brother's sunderscrap; the mark of Brand. From there, she proved her worth in hunting magic users and even helped the family at the forge and strickening chains. She became a Sunderer, and with her eye, she quickly paid off her debt to the family and made her own way with the skills they taught her.
Skills
Sundering: 55
Gunslinging: 45
Mount: Chariot: 50
Unarmed combat: 25
Tracking: 25
Survival: 25
Rhetoric: 10
Brand: 10
Grave: 5
She also has a relic as an addendum, as submitted here: viewtopic.php?f=150&t=2452
