Seraph/Challenge3

Title: Darkness Beneath Stormclouds
Caste: Midnight
Nature: Savant
Concept: Albino Sea Witch

Attributes
Strength 3, Dexterity 3, Stamina 1
Charisma 3, Manipulation 4, Appearance 2
Perception 3, Intelligence 5, Wits 3

Abilities
Awareness 2, Dodge 2, Investigation 3, Linguistics 2, Lore 2, Melee 3, Occult 3, Presence 3, Sail 3, Socialize 2, Stealth 2

Backgrounds
Abyssal Command 2, Artifact 2, Liege 1, Manse 1, Necromancy 5, Resources 3, Underworld Manse 2, Whispers 2

Virtues
Compassion 3, Conviction 1, Temperance 3, Valor 2

Charms

Elegant Flowing Deflection
Furious Blade

Elegant Tyrant's Majesty

Excellent Inquisitor Attitude

Master Sailor's Memory

Shadowlands Circle Necromancy
Terrestrial Circle Sorcery

Spirit Sensing Technique

Spells

Iron Countermagic
Piercing the Shroud
Rune of Sweet Passing
Summon Ghost
Soul Brand
(and 2 more necromancy spells to be named when Book of Bone and Ivory comes out)

Emerald Countermagic
Summon Elemental

Willpower: 6
Health: -0/-1/-1/-2/-2/-4Seraph/Challenge3/Incap
Essence: 3
Essence pool: (15) (31) (5)

Equipment: excellent concealable daggers (three), silken armor, soulsteel whip (Consuming Shadow of Desire), yacht (Rides Before the Teeth of the Storm)

Combat
Base initiative: 6
Soak: 4B/5L (silken armor 3B/5L)
Dodge: 5
Attacks
Whip Strike

• (doesn't actually exist: to be statted later)

Sketch

Darkness Beneath Stormclouds is a small, slender woman with bone-white skin and pale blonde hair, worn tied back in a ponytale or up in a complex corona of hair. She is not particularly beautiful - her fine features and the unnatural pallor of her flesh still war with each other - but already one can see the beginnings of an Abyssal's unnatural beauty creeping into her face and body. Most of the time, Darkness Beneath Stormclouds wears sheer black robes that are actually silken armor, protecting her from harm without revealing that she is protected. The belt of her robes is actually a soulsteel lash called Consuming Shadow of Desire. Darkness Beneath Stormclouds also carries three concealed daggers on her person at all times.

There is something sad about Darkness Beneath Stormclouds, something that would move others to pity her, were she not also mad and cruel. She does not cause mayhem without reason, but if given the slightest chance, the smallest power over another person, she will exploit it mercilessly. Long before her Exaltation, Darkness Beneath Stormclouds gave up hope of being heroic, or even just ordinary and good. She is almost totally secure in her role as a destroyer of Creation. Almost, because having so easily accepted her place, she has a lot of energy left to question it, and although her life has been filled with sadness and cruelty, she has also had more than her share of good examples.

Fortunately, the life of a deathknight gives her nothing if not time to think, and the Lover Clad in the Rainment of Tears is a forgiving mistress who lets her servants have long leashes. Darkness Beneath Stormclouds serves her mistress loyally and bides her time, weighing the costs and benefits of goodness, heroism, and betrayal.

History

Gentle Spray's first memories were of the hold of her father's ship, where she hid from the sun by day and the Storm Mothers by night. As her father often told her, she should never have been born, and if she had to be born, she could have at least had the courtesy to not be a girl, or a worm-pale monster, or an abomination that killed its mother on its way into the world. Even before the Black Exaltation took her, Gentle Spray was almost totally albino. Direct sunlight would kill her in minutes.

Of course, there was also Eyes of Storm. He was Gentle Spray's brother, and all the goodness and health and beauty in the world was cupped in one of his strong, sun-bronzed hands. Like Gentle Spray, he had a role to play on their father's ship, but where Gentle Spray's job was to lurk in the hold and calculate courses and pay, it was Eyes of Storm's job to hang from the riggings and keep the sails in order. He was also Gentle Spray's advocate to their father. He was the one who convinced their father let her do the accounts, so she would not spend all day sitting alone in the darkness. Gentle Spray was certain that at least three times he had convinced their father to weather a storm rather than feed Gentle Spray to the Storm Mothers, and at least one of those times, Eyes of Storm had threatened to kill him. For some reason Gentle Spray could never understand, Eyes of Storm loved his sister.

And Gentle Spray loved Storm Eye, but there was something wrong with how. He was so kind and so beautiful, and he smelled like the sunlight and the salt wind. Besides their father, who was paunchy and scarred, Storm Eyes was the only man Gentle Spray had ever seen. She knew as she grew older that she did not just love her brother, she wanted him. Even she knew that that was wrong, and so she knew that she must be wrong, too; the monster her father said she was. Storm Eyes was the good one, and she, Gentle Spray, was the bad one.

Finally, father died and Eyes of Storm took the money he had been left and bought a new ship for himself and his sister. Now she was more than the navigator and calculator, she was the ship's purser, brokering deals with spirits and keeping the ship stocked with everything it would need. Now she did not sleep in the hold with the rats, she had a cabin all to herself, with a door that locked from the inside and oiled cloth covering the windows to keep out the sun. Eyes of Storm even made sure their cabins connected on the inside, so Gentle Spray could go into his cabin from hers without exposing herself to the sun or the gaze of the Storm Mothers.

This proved to be his greatest mistake. The temptation gnawed at the edges of Gentle Spray's mind. Her brother, in all his beauty, lay in the room nextdoor. She begged every spirit and god she knew the name of to take this darkness away from her, but no one answered.

At last, Gentle Spray could take it no longer. While Storm Eyes slept, she crept into his cabin and placed one last, chaste kiss on his brow, and then went out on deck and threw herself into the black sea. She vanished beneath the waves, and Storm Eyes has not seen her since.

Gentle Spray did not die then. With the water crushing down on her, a sibilant voice drifted through the darkness into her panicking mind. Death she was ready for, but not this pain, not the tightness in her chest and the desperation to breath, not the images of Storm Eyes flashing before her and the knowledge that she would never speak to him again. The voice offered her another chance, with all the power it would take to make her revenge against the world that had harmed her. She accepted in the moment her heart faltered. She drifted down into an underwater Shadowland and was taken through the Underworld to the palace of the Lover Clad in the Rainment of Tears to begin her training.

Backgrounds

Abyssal Command 2

Darkness Beneath Stormclouds staffs her ship, Rides Before the Teeth of the Storm, with a crew of ghosts and dedicated mortals. She has a few nemissaries to command the humans, dwelling in specially prepared bodies she purchased from the Silver Prince.

Artifact 2

Darkness Beneath Stormclouds has been fairly well equipped by her mistress, with a soulsteel lash and a set of silken armor.

Liege 1

The Lover Clad in the Rainment of Tears currently has only a passing interest in her newest deathknight. Her keen mind and talent for necomrancy made her a good catch and her incestuous desires were fascinating, but now that she has the inclination to act on them she lacks the opportunity. When Eyes of Storm re-enters her servant's life, however, the Lover might take a more direct approach. With her brother around, especially given his current... situation, Darkness Beneath Stormclouds will become much more interesting.

Manse 1

Darkness Beneath Stormclouds has a manse in Creation of her own, a water-aspected manse on a small northern island that produces some hearthstone or another that I will detail later.

Necromancy 5

The Lover Clad in the Rainment of Tears has built on Darkness Beneath Stormclouds' natural intelligence and educated her in the arts of necromancy. Darkness Beneath Stormclouds has proved a quick study, the twists and turns of necromancy matching the natural perversity of her mind.

Resources 3

The Lover Clad in the Rainment of Tears has made sure that Darkness Beneath Stormclouds has the resources to support herself in Creation.

Underworld Manse 2

Her deathlord has allowed Darkness Beneath Stormclouds to attune to a number of manses in the underworld.

Whispers 2

Darkness Beneath Stormclouds does not quite trust the whispers of the Malfeans that buzz in the back of her mind. On the one hand, they are comforting, and mutch of what they say matches what she herself has come to believe. There is nothing in the world that should be forbidden, because there is no power with the authority to permit or forbid. All is vanity, and the sooner Creation falls the better. On the other hand, the voices sometimes whisper things Darkness Beneath Stormclouds does not wish to believe. They whisper of her brother shining with golden light, slaying the dead with a golden mace. Darkness Beneath Stormclouds suspects that the whispers are lying to her, and so she only makes a halfhearted effort to hear what they say.