Post by Emma on Jan 18, 2011 19:27:15 GMT -5
Name:
Pele Lahela Serowë
Age:
720
Race:
Vampire
Occupation:
Sorceress; Oracle of the Hand of Leona
Allegiance:
The Cathedral
Physical Description:
Even when she was an elf, Pele’s appearance wasn’t similar to others’ of her race. The only things that are really the same are her very pale china-white skin from almost never going out into the sun, her long, tapering ears, and the fact that she moves with grace. However, she isn’t as tall as most of her old kind at 5’11”, and her facial features are also very different- despite her age, both magic and extensive, agonizing manual care has kept her looking like, to the eyes of a human, a healthy woman in her mid-thirties. Contradicting the normally slanted, cat-like features of most elves, Pele’s face is deceptively soft with low cheekbones, full lips, large eyes, and a small nose, making her seem almost child-like. This is thrown off by her eyes, however, which are a devilish bright golden, more like a beast’s eyes than a sentient being’s thanks to being a vampire. Standing out starkly against her pale skin, her curly hair is a deep, fiery red, and hangs to her lower back. She usually leaves it untied.
Pele’s body also doesn’t fall into the normal category for elves. Unlike their slim, lithe forms, she is a notably curvy woman with a large chest and very thick hips and thighs, which at first leads most people to think she’s overweight, especially since Pele has no reason to exercise. However, those who would normally be attracted to her voluptuously curvaceous figure and grace are usually frightened off by Pele’s towering rage.
Pele’s appearance absolutely always depends on her current mood, and she will change it at every mood swing. She spends at least four hours a day arranging her hair and make-up and picking out what to wear. The mirror is her closest companion, as evidenced by the fact that she keeps several hundred in her home. Pele uses soot, chalk, lead, henna dyes, ground minerals, plant secretions, and many other natural ingredients for her make-up. She applies it all over her face and body, and the colours match her dress and mood. As for her clothes, Pele always wears skirts and dresses, accompanied with some accessories- she considers a woman in men’s clothing to be strange and uncouth.
Pele’s dresses are usually low-cut in the front and back, but the skirts are never above the ankle, as she considers it the highest of vulgarity for a woman to show her ankles. The materials of her dresses are usually made from animals, but not always- black swan feathers, silk, velvet, a wide range of furs, suede, and woven plant fibres are among her favourites. The cut and style of the dresses vary widely, but they are always very elaborate. Pele also has a wide range of colours in her wardrobe- black when she’s furious, dark blue when she’s thoughtful, deep violet when she’s calm, and so on. Pele never wears light colours, thinking them too aggravatingly happy for her. Whatever she’s wearing, Pele is always well groomed and well dressed, and wouldn’t be caught dead otherwise.
Personality:
Pele’s personality is lukewarm at best. She doesn’t care much for people or social norms, which is odd considering her profession as an Oracle, and therefore a healer of the people. With an extremely cranky disposition, a sharp wit and an even sharper tongue, she is the undisputed tigress of the Cathedral. Pele is extremely difficult to get to know, and time spent in her presence very often results in bruised egos. Extremely intelligent and refined in her bearing, she is generally blunt nearly to the point of being cruel. She doesn’t believe in sugar-coating anything, and will always come right out and say what needs to be said, regardless of the audience or consequences. Pele often comes off as some banshee, but cares enough about people to not want to see them in pain. She is an expert healer, but she seems to lack the basic amount of sympathy that would make her a comforting person to be around.
She is also highly suspicious- nearly to the point of being paranoid- and as a result is slow to trust people. Pele’s personality is also something of a mixed bag- she can be rude, snide, disrespectful and highly impatient as she is wise, intelligent, and extremely ambitious. Pele’s power relies on her book smarts- she can read through as many as sixty books a month, and her manor just opposite of the Cathedral is literally overflowing with texts, tomes, and scrolls of any and all subjects and languages. Ignorance in others is therefore a very sore point with her. Pele’s temper is formidable and inevitable, but never offsets her stately conduct. Pele will strictly never engage in unnecessary violence unless she is first provoked by an attacker to defend herself.
But what most people instantly see in Pele is how frighteningly vain she is- obsessive about her looks to the point of unflinchingly suffering from great pain just for the sake of beauty, Pele will change her outfit at least three times a day, and pays strict attention to the latest fashions of Broddring. She also has a habit of looking down her nose at those who do not adhere to fashion- women that wear pants bother her in particular, as she considers them strange and uncouth, and people who generally don’t care about their appearance are simply beyond understandable to her. This particular trait on top of all others usually leaves people surprised when Pele’s better colours show- she is capable of calling upon incredible bravery in times of crisis.
History:
Pele was born one of three daughters to Duke Othello Venali and Duchess Mercy Venali of Coldharbour Province in the Saxon Empire, an elven nation to the west. Older than her twin sisters Veela and Rusalka by two hundred years, Pele’s childhood was lonely- the first, and indisputably the most important reason being that her father was too busy for her, and her mother Mercy was a Shade. Her youth was spent as a nameless prostitute before becoming extremely proficient in magic and, eventually, becoming a Shade. After seducing her way into marrying Othello, she planned to create a race capable of subjugating all elves- and using her three daughters as the guinea pigs.
Pele was born a normal elf, and her early childhood was just like any other nobleman’s daughter, spoiled and groomed, except for two things. The first was that she felt disconnected from the other elves socially and culturally. She found it difficult to forge and maintain relationships, and because of this became moody and an outcast. Culturally, she absolutely despised the elves’ traditions and still does. The love of nature in all elves never once touched her. Alienated, her personality issues grew worse. However, Mercy kept an eye on her. Pele would not be the most beautiful or the most cunning of her sisters, but she inherited her mother’s terrifying magical skills.
When Pele turned 100, she began being courted by men of the nobility. However, she wasn’t at all interested in any of them, and it wasn’t because of rebellious adolescence- she wanted a husband and children, and all of the men were beautiful, but their advances irritated and repelled her. The few suitors that interested her were few and far between, short-lived, and very minor. Life like this continued for twenty-five years until Pele was wandering the streets of Coldharbour’s capital, and a hooded stranger caught her eye. She was a female elf, and very different from all the others because she was so plain.
She had the cat-like features, the slim frame, but a crooked nose, small mouth, thick black hair, caramel skin, and other less-than-desirable features made her no real beauty. This somehow fascinated Pele, and they spoke together. Her name was Ereshkigal, and she had recently left Alagaësia, driven out for practicing dark magic. Smitten, Pele often visited her. The two became closer than sisters in the few years that followed. Eventually, a few more years later, Pele married Ereshkigal. This outraged both of her parents due to the obvious inability of producing an heir from a woman. But Pele only wanted Ereshkigal, which eventually resulted in the conception of her twin sisters.
Pele lost her credibility to inherit the dukedom after that. She moved to an upper-class manor in the center of the city with Kigali, and spent many happy years there. Though Pele had originally learned magic from her mother, taught to her in secret, Ereshkigal taught her even more. One hundred peaceful years passed before Kigali offered Pele something far greater- she revealed to her wife that she was actually a Shade, and could teach her sorcery. Pele was repulsed at first, but then found that she didn’t care. Sorcery became Pele’s inner strength, the thing that had been missing from her life. Ereshkigal taught Pele well and carefully to avoid her becoming a Shade herself.
200 years passed and Pele became enormously powerful in the school of conjuration. But then, one night, Ereshkigal was attacked. Assassins snuck into Pele and Ereshkigal’s bedchamber and fired arrows through the Shade’s head in her sleep. After screaming with pain, she suddenly disappeared. Pele, infuriated, and thinking that her mate was dead, attacked the assassins. She killed all of them except one, and forced information out of that one. The contract had been given by Mercy Venali, and had indicated that Pele was to die too. Then Pele sent the assassin fleeing, and swore revenge. She went home to the palace, only to discover that Mercy had disappeared- her true nature had been found out.
Pele hunted through the wreckage of the obliterated palace for many hours, and was reunited with her sisters, Veela and Rusalka. They were fleeing the country, but there was one problem- Rusalka’s daughter Mnemosyne had been stuck through with knives, and was dying. Pele possessed the skill to heal her, but was separated from her sisters. She fled Coldharbour, settling in a coastal village called Stormhold and deigning to raise Mnemosyne as her own while plotting revenge for Kigali’s death. Pele practiced her sorcery so intensely that she was constantly drained of energy, and sought refuge in literature- so much, that she ended up mostly ignoring her niece. She read everything- dwarven, elven, and human scripts, and all the books on Shades she could locate.
Only forty years later, however, Mercy attacked again- this time with a cadre of magically elite assassins with a love for sadism. Pele’s house crumbled in the battle, terrifying Mnemosyne and sending her fleeing into the streets of Stormhold. Pele eventually lost the fight, was beaten and violated, and then left to die. With grave injuries, Pele knew she would never survive, and so employed a last-measure attempt to save herself. And so, willingly, she took a vial of vampire blood she kept for experimental purposes, and poured it into her wounds. The change was incredibly painful and took several days, but Pele survived.
Pele , however, did not become undead- which, she realized, was because she had been impregnated when she’d been abused by the assassins. She desperately clung to the small seed of life within her belly, both for her sake and her unborn child’s, and drew strength from it. Eventually, she was able to heal herself. Pele spent the next few weeks desperately looking for Mnemosyne, but the girl was gone. Enraged, Pele left the Saxon Empire, chartering a ship to a distant land to the east called Alagaësia. A land rife with magic, Pele landed in Teirm and immediately headed for the Spine, hostile and uninhabited, where Mercy could hopefully never find her again.
Pele built a small cabin deep in the mountains, and birthed her child- a girl she named Laioni. Despite Pele’s best attempts to ward off evil spirits while pregnant with her, the girl was born with remarkable abilities for the dark arts. Pele pushed magic on Laioni from a very young age should Mercy attempt to kill her like she had with Mnemosyne. The two developed a relationship that was mostly made up of bickering and animosity, but Pele loved her daughter deeply and Laioni reciprocated the feeling. This life only lasted for a brief seventy years, however, when Mercy attacked yet again- but this time on her own. She stormed the cabin, and Laioni, exactly like Mnemosyne, fled.
Pele won the fight, driving spikes through her mother’s head. Mercy did not die, however- she only disappeared into the darkness of the mountains. And though Pele had won, she was tired, and realized that she would not survive another encounter. She did not search for Laioni, deciding that she would only endanger her, and left the Spine. Pele needed allies, but would not find them in the puritanical elves of Du Weldenvarden or the evil-purging Riders. And so, Pele went straight to the Cathedral of The Tears of Leona, where she met with the widely feared Malandra Ramakrishna. Though she wasn’t Nyxian in belief, Pele was accepted into the Hand due to her magical prowess.
Pele has since participated very little in the events forming across Alagaësia, instead focussing on her personal studies within her home and the Cathedral.
