N P C: Lucia Dal’Seileach
Details
Age: 67
Race: Sil'Norai
Height: 6'2''
Weight: 175
Occupation: Valran to Veir Degare Socorro
Title: Valran
NPC Type: Personal
Influence: 6
Skills
Magic: Malformity (Journeyman), Brand (Apprentice), Bane (Novice)
Skills: Seduction (Expert), Persuasion (Expert), Deception (Apprentice)
Description:
-> Charming, intelligent, methodical, flirtatious, curious, sadistic, cruel, loyal, passionate
Personality: A coquettish social butterfly, she works as a wolf in sheep’s clothing for her Veir. Coming off to most as demure, sweet and utterly charming, she’s able to put most people at ease, convincing them to trust her even sometimes after the first conversation. In reality, she is a cold, vicious hunter of a woman. She likes making people trust her, love her, even– and then breaking them. These habits serve her well under Degare’s employ as she functions as an extra set of eyes and ears, loyal exclusively to him.
History: Living on the poorer outskirts of Veranor, her life was never easy but her family did what they could. For Sil’Norai, love, marriage and family had special value on the emotional ties between members. Love was meant to last, and especially in the modern day, fertility was overall low. Any child at all was a blessing, so Lucia was cherished by her parents and in turn, she cherished them.
One cool summer evening, her mother sent her out to the market to pick up a few things while her parents stayed home to prepare a meal and do other chores at the house. It didn’t take her all too long, maybe an hour or so because the little lass was somewhat slow to move. However, this time frame allowed her to only narrowly escape the fate of her parents and a fair few of her neighbors.
When she arrived back to the street on which she lived, everything was oddly quiet. Doors were closed, nobody was outside– which was odd. Usually, there would be signs of life to at least some degree, even as the sun was setting…but that wasn’t the strangest part. Blood splatter, bloody footprints, handprints and marks in general lay scattered in the street, the door handles, the walls. Her heart sank.
Slowly, she crept towards the door of her home in the eerie silence of the evening. Opening it, what she saw ruined her. Two corpses on the floor, blood splattered everywhere. They were barely recognizable as the parents that raised her given the fact that near to all of the flesh and viscera had been removed and either consumed or strewn on the floor soaking in puddles of slowly coagulating blood.
Her whole life as she knew it was over. In shock, she collapses to the floor near the bodies and remains there in a catatonic state for days. After not hearing from her parents at all during that time, a concerned aunt who’d been planning a way for both families to leave Sil-Elaine stopped by the house and came upon the rotting scene and traumatized girl. Collecting her niece, the woman takes her leave and puts a lot more effort into expediting their departure.
Her aunt and her aunt’s lover planned on joining with a caravan leaving Sil-Elaine to Daravin. The two of them were talented glassblowers and passed off the young Lucia as their daughter. Thoroughly traumatized, she barely spoke a word for quite a long time to the mix of refugees and merchants that accompanied her on this journey.
They took a great risk trying to escape through the west– the area was known to be crawling with Dranoch of all types but it was either that or die to magithermal entropy in the north. Alternatively, they could stay in Sil-Elaine, but then they’d probably die to Dranoch anyways, so was there really even a good choice out of all three? Their answer, as expected, is no. The small group of travelers made it just over halfway through their chosen route when their luck ran out. Much as they did their best to be careful, there is only so much one can do to hide from the senses and erratic movements of traveling Dranoch. For the second time in Lucia’s short life, everyone she loved was slain, only this time she had to see it happen.
Once they realized they’d been spotted, the young girl’s aunt and uncle told her they needed to run through the bog and fast, using the mud of the bog to cover their scent. Legs can only take you so fast, though, and a stray botchling spotted this small fragment of the main group. In a final act of love, her last remaining family took the hit and died keeping the thing busy while Lucia dove into the waters of the bog, covering herself in the mud before crawling out.
Blackened, muddy and about as feral as the beasts she was running from by now, the girl kept running in the direction she had been told they were going. Somehow, she managed to cross the border of Daravin and run into an actual trade caravan, this one native to the nation she’d not even realized she’d managed to enter. In some tiny modicum of fortune, the caravan lead was a Sil’Norai himself and took pity on her. Much as he knew her fate in Daravin wouldn’t be kind, it would at least be a future. Leaving her like this would be damning her to the grave.
Eventually, the slow moving merchant caravan made its way to the Daravinic city of Boghadar, in Verant. The man spearheading it had family in this city and so it was here that they would stop. With nowhere to go, no money, and no Marks of Power, little Lucia and was forced to accept her new role as a slave to the family that held the reigns over the caravin lead and his kin.
This new life was excruciating for her especially since she’d arrived not knowing a single word of Raillen or Common; eventually, she was taught to speak, read and write Raillen by the other slaves and a kinder Valran. As time passed, she began to loathe the lack of control she had in her life. Every decision was made for her by those above her and she was treated and used by them however they saw fit.
Days upon months upon years began to pass and Lucia, now in her twenties, gained a fair bit of social confidence that she now planned to use to claw herself out of the pit that was her life. One of the Veir in the house she resided within had a Malformity mark, a weak mind, and a lonely heart; thus, she made him her target. Using a combination of her physical allure and sweet charm, she was able to cozy up to him and eventually convinced him to give her the mark of Malformity. Her plan finally bearing fruit, she continued to use him for a while for the purposes of refining her skills with the Mark. As more time passed and more honeyed words and promises of eternal love and affection were shared between the two, the man offered her his second mark– that of Brand. Happily, she accepted and succeeded in that initiation as well.
Now bearing two marks of her own and with some modicum of skill in her Malformity, she found herself rising in title to that of Valran. However…she wanted nothing to do with the man whose marks she’d stolen, nor did she want anything to do with his house or family. After all, they possessed little power and, frankly, bored her. It was during this period of time that she began whispering saccharine words and weaving webs of lies in an attempt to be brought on to a different, and hopefully more interesting, house.
Entering her thirties, she succeeded. She pitched her skills and talents for subterfuge, information gathering and spycraft to Lords Degare and Averre of House Socorro and they decided to accept her request. There was little her old house could do in reaction to this given their more limited influence.
As years passed under the employ of her new House, she found herself actually admiring and forming pretty much the only genuine bond with another person since she’d left Sil-Elaine with her new Veir, Degare. When his husband passed, the Lord leaned heavily upon her for emotional support and the two forged a bond more tightly entwined than the strongest of elements
