Greymane/LanguishingSky
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Frost White Maiden of Broken Smiles / Languishing Sky
History: Born in the East on the Shadowlands near Sijan, the girl who would one day take up the title of “Frost White Maiden of Broken Smiles,” was born more simply as Languishing Sky. She was the unwanted daughter of a Sijanian undertaker who had been relentlessly pursued and raped by a powerful, but mad spirit of a criminal she had failed to burry properly. Her mother had no want or love of her unearthly child, but kept her instead as a laborer. Slave labor was cheaper than a paid assistant.
Languishing Sky was not a merry child, as few of the ghost-blooded are. Her mother was a heartless disciplinarian, expecting nothing but obedience and perfection from her daughter and meeting failure to provide it with starvation and beatings. Languishing Sky suffered greatly in those years. She killed her heart as best she could and gave up any thought of worldly happiness, devoted her every moment to keeping careful watch over herself to grant her mother no reason to punish her.
She spent whatever free time she could find wandering within the crypts and burial grounds of her home late at night, communing with whatever spirits were willing to speak with her. She began to play Gateway with an ancient general named Copper Rain who barely had the strength to manifest herself, as lonely and ignored a being as herself whose days of glory were long only faded memories and whose name was honored by no one anymore. Copper Rain became Languishing Sky’s only companion in her childhood, a teacher and a friend who thrilled at the chance to be of use to someone again.
By her fourteenth birthday, she had the skills of an experienced undertaker and was as capable but her mother had discovered a new use for her as well. The ghost-child’s pale white skin and supple curves began to draw the stares of her contemporaries and her mother had little hesitation to capitalize upon this. She sold the girl’s virginity to a whorehouse for a night. A single night, but it was more than enough to break her. The men who came used and battered her like a doll, leaving her bruised and bloodied broken. Her porcine skin was washed in anger red and bitter black and the fragile bones of her pelvis were cracked to pieces. A month she spent in bed, in fever and agony, her mother unwilling to pay more than a pittance to the local doctor to grant her care and medicine.
In her fevered dreams at night, she met a man who was not a man. A man who had the shape and look of something mortal, but who beyond she could sense an endless black chasm. He came to her with smiles and promises, with gifts that she had but to accept. He swore those who harmed her would pay if she but granted him the smallest boon of service. It was a choice that was no choice. Languishing Sky agreed and the smiling man touched her, the feel of his touch a chill of endless torment as her shattered body began to knit itself whole. He kissed her and his lips sucked the breath from her lungs and her name from her very soul, and with an tongue of ice-fire inscribed into her a new name that was a title. And she lived. Her health was shattered irreversibly and her insides so torn as to make baring children of any sort an impossibility, but she lived.
If what became of her could be called life at all. Always a cold girl before, when Languishing Sky arose from her sick bed, she became positively frozen. Her red eyes could mimic emotion, her pretty face could smile, her skin could still flush and gleam with sweat. But there was an unbearable chill of emptiness around her, less passion within her than even the silent dead entombed below the city. People could barely stand to look at her without being induced to shivers. Her mothers attempt to sell her to the whorehouse for another night were met with flat refusal. No man wanted to sleep with a corpse.
From then on, only Copper Rain desired anything to do with her, and the young woman’s desire for more knowledge from the ancient spirit was insatiable. More and more, she spent entire nights shivering and coughing in the cold tombs to study with the ghostly general. Many times she came home only at the break of dawn, fevered and dead-eyed with exhaustion, plodding mechanically into the backbreaking labor she barely had the strength for anymore. She waited, and she learned, she trained her martial prowess as best as her weakened body allowed her and sharpened her mind into razors edge.
Her time finally came late one night. Her kidnappers came for her and she went without scream or struggle. The next morning, there was more relief than care about the ghostly girls disappearance. Her mother paid for a new slave, bitter more to have to train another assistant than in her daughters sudden vanishing. Copper Rain was the only one to sigh in sadness, but she had known already what was to be happening. Her part in the drama had explained a long time ago.
The young Deathknight and his undead minions took the girl who was once Languishing Sky far to the north and then west towards Whitewall. She was clasped in chains, yet allowed to ride behind the Deathknight on his unearthly steed. Her clothes were torn and dirtied, but she was given warm blankets to see out the bitter nights. Towards the end of their journey, the Deathknight battered her nearly to death while Languishing Sky stop calmly before the pain.
The little town was near the southern coast, built in the shadow of a dingy Imperial palisade. During most of the year, nothing garrisoned the old fort but rodents and vagrants, but now the bright banners of the Realm flew in the strong northern wind and her soldiers patrolled the walls with patient diligence. Raiders sent by the Deathknight’s master ensured that the Empire would send some manner of force to investigate. It mattered to not what would be sent, merely that they would be there. And without hesitation, as his shambling troops came upon the fort, the Deathknight thrust them into attack.
Left with the baggage in the back, the barely conscience girl had only dim awareness of the battle. She would remember the Legionaries marching from their fort, but being driven back slowly before the Deathknight and the shambling undead. Remember later the young Deathknight coming back and telling her with a pleased smile that there was a change to the plan and this place would become a new shadowland instead. Then came the thunder, the screaming crash, and before her injuries drew her back into unconsciousness, she remembered the unusual sight of several hundred rotting corpses flying into the air.
When she came to, it was in a nest of soft blankets and to the sight of a smiling young woman with skin nearly as pale as her own and gleaming silver hair. One who was very much alive. The man appeared next. His eyes were black and endless, giving far more attention than his plain, stern face should have warranted. He wore the molded Jade armor of a Dragon-Blooded captain and at his side, he carried the Deathknight’s black blade. The Maiden smiled at him faintly, caught the twinge of interest that flickered across his face a moment, and found a cold pleasure in knowing that despite the Deathknights brash claim, the plan had not changed at all. Her debt could now be paid.
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