Name: The Resplendent Queen of Entropic Shadows
Caste: Midnight
Essence: 3
Appearance: A young woman in her early twenties by appearance, with flowing black hair that contrasts against milk-pale skin. Her eyes are a bright blue color. Typically she wears clothes that hug and reveal her generous figure, to better attract the eye and distract the mind.
Theme Song: Something that well defines your character.
Character Summary: Shadow Queen is not really a fighter. She has training with a bow and carries a Soulsteel long powerbow for self-defense, but she doesn't like to fight. Not because she doesn't like to hurt people. She does. Her arrows are poison-tipped for example. She just doesn't like to fight when she can seduce with her words or her looks. Her favorite methods of dealing with trouble are to play the helpless damsel in distress and stir mobs of angry civilians into fighting for her. More chance of death all around that way. Directly confronted, she's something of a coward, and likes to leave escape options open for herself. She thinks nothing of sacrificing the people whose devotion she's won.
The Shadow Queen is primarily a social combatant, using Charms, hearthstones, and her own appearance to win over converts to the cause of Oblivion.
Epic Motivation: Corrupt the religions of the world into worshipping Oblivion, and her as Oblivion's one true mistress.
History:The Shadow Queen got her start as Heaven's Shining Gift, the daughter of a notorious (and wealthy) courtesan in Great Forks, father unknown. Growing up, she learned the arts of manipulation and social manuevering at her mother's feet. To her, twisting minds was just something you did when bored or if you wanted something. Her mother taught her that right meant "getting my way" and the only thing that was wrong or shameful was being denied something you wanted. How you got it was immaterial.
As she blossomed into a young woman her mother taught her her craft. Heaven found it easy, and easy was boring. After a couple of years she was bored enough to leave Great Forks with a handsome young caravaner of the Guild who caught her fancy. She enjoyed the traveling about for a time, and seeing how the Guild operated helped her refine her own manipulative talents, which she put to work increasing the caravan's profits. That she was skimming off the top for herself was understood, she thought. She thought wrong. Her erstwhile boyfriend caught the skimming and she was forced to steal a horse and flee.
Undeterred, she fled to a little town and picked right back up where she left off. She found the local chief, ingratiated herself into his life, and was soon back to living large. And this time she was prepared for him finding out. When he discovered her theft and skimming, she was already gone to the next town. She continued in this pattern for the rest of her teen years, living as a conwoman/concubine. Eventually she wound up the arm candy of a high-ranking member of Sijan's Morticians' Guild. That's where her brush with death came.
The mortician was married, and his wife did not appreciate this young beauty stealing her husband. She hired poisoners to deal with the pair. Heaven survived her poisoning. The mortician did not. Nearly bankrupted by the medical costs and forced out of her preferred niche, Heaven turned to another unsavory art. She hired mercenaries and had the wife killed. Then she stepped in and stole the mortician's money before fleeing the city. From that experience, she came to like death as a solution. She resolved never to be cast out again.
By twenty-one she had broken more hearts, and hired more assassins to kill those who discovered her stealing. She'd also gotten good at forging wills that left estates and fortunes to her. She had come to worship herself: her own beauty, cunning, and intelligence. The only thing higher in her reverence was money and power. She paid lip service to the gods but her passionate, heartfelt devotion was only to herself. She seemed well on her way to living the high life on her ill-gotten goods when she was betrayed. One of the mercs she hired to be rid of a pesky but wealthy old man she was seeing thought he could claim the fortune for himself by killing her and the old man both. She found herself on the recieving end of a blade in the gut. She would have died there, just another petty schemer. Then the voice of the Ashen Emperor came.
She accepted without a second thought, and in the moment of her Exaltation learned of a power worthy of her worship. Death was more than just a tool she discovered. It was a righteous cause in and of itself. Killing the world was truly the kindest gift one could give it. After a lifetime of taking, she decided that she would truly give back to Creation by killing it. In honor of that, she killed the mercenary who had betrayed her, and made him her first sacrifice to Oblivion. She has since served the Ashen Emperor faithfully. Although she's still a selfish little conniver at heart, for the first time she feels she's making the world better, not just herself. That faith comforts her like all the money and adulation in the world never did.
