Strange Bedfellows

[*Rhicora]

This will be a joint biography and background for three characters who we expect to remain together in their explorations of Sigil. They are played by myself, A. Thereal, and Sordid Jester.


Lu'alin Direline

(Rhicora)



Basic Statistics

Age: 121
Class: Favored Soul
Occupation: Warrior, Religious Scholar
Race: Drow (dhaerow, or Ilythiir)
Alignment: Chaotic Neutral (Free Spirit)
Deity: Lolth, later Eilistraee
Place of Origin: Maerimydra, Underdark

Physical Statistics

Height: 4'11" (1.50 m)
Weight: 90 lbs. (40.82 kg)
Skin Tone: Charcoal
Eye Color: Amethyst
Hair Color: Snowy

Description Summary

LuÂ’alinÂ’s amethyst eyes observe the world absently from underneath long lashes, leaving a first impression of cold detachment. Beneath a delicate nose, her prominent cheekbones frame a pair of dark, full lips. Charcoal skin arcs to a wide chin, rounding out her features. Long, snowy hair cascades across her shoulders and over the womanly contours of her breasts.

Alongside others of her race, she stands unusually tall, with the supple build of a fighter who favors swift grace over sheer strength. The calculation and confidence of her voice, and the slow sway of her hips as she walks, more appropriately befits an Underdark drowess than an Eilistraean. The muscles of her arms are toned by what must have been many years of wielding swords heavier than those to which drow are typically accustomed.

A small wrought-iron symbol hangs around her neck, most likely the mark of her deity - for what it is worth in Sigil.

Drow Dictionary

dalharil: daughter
dalninil: sister
darthiir: surface elves, an epithet often used for Eilistraeeans as well
Ilythiir: dark elves, a positive distinction from dhaerow or drow
Ilhar: mother, though devoid of any nurturing connotation
kivvil: surfacer
rivvil: human
Qu'ellar: House, specific to noble families (a fairly subjective term in itself)

Seras Riv'ven

(A. Thereal)



Basic Statistics

Age: 143
Class: Ranger/Fighter/Greatsword Master
Occupation: Hunter and Eilistraean Sentinel
Race: Sylvan Elf
Alignment: Chaotic Neutral (Free Spirit)
Deity: Eilistraee & The Seldarine
Place of Origin: Semberholme, Cormanthyr

Physical Statistics

Height 6Â’ (1.82 m)
Weight: 165 lbs. (81.64 kg)
Skin Tone: Olive
Eye Color: Sage
Hair Color: Jet

Description Summary

Seras enjoys the common aquiline features of all the Fair Folk. Healthy black hair falls freely about his handsome face and serves to alleviate the severity of a stern brow, high cheek bones, and a strong jaw-line. Intense green eyes shine with intelligence and calmly observe his surroundings, absorbing his company, measuring distances, and checking angles. His features, sculpted with dusky skin over a good bone structure, remain disimpassioned and imperturbable.

Seras stands at an impressive height for an elf – perhaps betraying his Toril nativity - and sports a marvelously athletic musculature. His moves are deliberate and shift his powerful muscles just so, his strong arms bent at the elbows, his fingers curling and flexing in irregular rhythm. He steps with the gait of a soldier, corrupted by a predatory swagger in manner that indicates he will either ravage or murder his current prey. When he speaks, his tone is calmly resolute, but without inflection.

Upon his back rests an expertly maintained and deadly heavy sword.

May'thrae Hun'viir

(Sordid Jester)

Basic Statistics
Name: May'thrae Hun'viir
Age: 102
Class: Bard
Occupation: Sensate, Performer, Tout, Planewalker
Race: Drow
Alignment: Chaotic Neutral (Free Spirit)
Deity: Undecided
Place of Origin: Sshamath, Toril

Physical Statistics
Height: 4’ 6”
Weight: A Girl's Secret
Skin Tone: Obsidian
Eye Color: Amber
Hair Color: Bold white, with a slither of silver

Description Summary

Through the long plume of snowy bangs do the fiery orbs of this drowess peek, their molten core betraying a devilish curiosity that seems to take fascination in everything they see. Such betrayal extends to other emotion, as well - it's rare that her mood can't be read with a simple glance of those molten, amber eyes. She's almost always presenting a pretty face, however. Her features are typically sharp for the elven kind, though do hold some softened edges and hints of a feminine roundness, particularly with the plump of her full lips. She's a creature of obsidian; smooth and dark. The length of her snowy mane stretches to the small of her back, often tied to a rising ponytail, with her straight and prominent bangs reaching beyond her neck.

For a drowess, one shall find May'thrae standing upon the upper boundaries of what's the average height, though her lithe and limber body's slight build could well present the idea that she is taller, or shorter, than what she is - depending on the comparing race. She's of a dancer's grace, not owning the strength to be properly athletic, and so her body remains a modest balance between being well-toned, and delicately supple. There's an ample curvature about her body, the swell of her pert and perky breasts presenting a gentle and entirely elven rise though her hips and backside are more blessed as being of purely drow stock; her bottom is tightly packed and round, while her hips flare with a womanly vibrancy, though fall short of meeting the full child-bearing beauty of a human.

There's a steadfast confidence in the way this drowess carries herself about. She's often briskly paced, though not so swift as to chase away the allure of properly swinging hips. She understands her own beauty, often guiding each motion to accentuate herself someway, and most definitely always dressing to impress - or simply flaunt. If there's a moment where the drowess isn't sharing a sultry motion with her languid grace, then times must be grim!

If she's wearing her cloak, she wears it with a small pin that tells of her place within the Sensates.

[*A. Thereal]

Seras Riv’ven – Strange Bedfellows

Politics, sex, war, and necessity make for strange bedfellows.

The first thing Seras saw when he awoke from reverie was LuÂ’alinÂ’s lovely drow face nestled into his chest. He wanted to smile at the sight of the innocence upon her peaceful features, but an old vow and the irony of perceiving any drow as innocent held the expression in check. Instead he stroked her long, silky hair and kissed her brow. Drow or not, she truly was beautiful beyond words, and he had been growing increasingly fond of her since he first defeated her.

But that was another time and another world, and not even Lu’alin’s splendor could distract him from the hard truth of recent developments. Whatever his life had been – whatever he had been – was over now. His new location demanded a difference from him.

His gaze reluctantly slid passed his sleeping companion to find the haphazard mess of armor on the floor. Just the thought of the attire inspired a frown. It had been collected and given to him the night before, a piece meal array of various suits collected by their hostess. It wasn’t that Seras was ungrateful, as the only article within his possession was a pair of black leggings. But the armor was a ghastly clash of white metals and black cloth and leather. It was the metal elements that bothered him the most. He was a tracker, a hunter – not a clumsy human warrior cast in metal skin.

Carefully slipping away from LuÂ’alin as not to disturb her rest, he pulled on his leggings and found a shirt within their hostessÂ’s wardrobe. It was too tight upon him, and stained, but he couldnÂ’t be bothered. He took one look at the plate boots of the black and white armor and decided to proceed barefoot.

LuÂ’alin was still sleeping soundly when he slipped from the bed chamber and into the parlor of the inn room. Their hostess, another drow women brought even more inexplicably into his life, rested upon a collection of pillows and cushions tucked into the corner. Her name was MayÂ’thrae, and they had met her the day before. She was the first person they encountered when they arrived.

May’thrae, like Lu’alin, was a beautiful drow woman, but in a different way. She was shorter and slighter, her hair arranged in a provocative display tied to the back of her skull, and while Lu’alin maintained a respectable air of propriety – if edged with select displays of suggestion – May’thrae was all suggestion without a hint of propriety. And so were her clothes – for even as she slept she was dressed in a scant top and bottom that hugged to and barely covered her womanly portions.

She wasn’t the type of woman that a man could pursue, Seras decided as he strode for the door. Admire and take, certainly. But there was no apparent depth to May’thrae and any liaison would ultimately equate to depravity and sex – which sent a tremor of bestial lust to his groin, for he had admired May’thrae and could enjoy said depravity.

But LuÂ’alinÂ…

There was a woman who could challenge a manÂ’s conviction and bring joy through love and consummation.

Seras put the thoughts from his mind and left the inn room, and finally the inn.

Stepping into Sigil’s environs was gentler than the day before, when the very sight of the city threatened to shatter his mind. Now he found himself curiously looking about, more fascinated than disbelieving, though his discomfort squatted in his belly like a stone. The bazaar stretched out before him, all manner of proprietors and shoppers conversing in hushed and loud volumes. He watched as a strange construct of cubic form ambled by on skinny legs, only to be followed by tall and gangly figure of green flesh and white hair – and hovered. The nearest proprietor was a woman whom he first thought was a half-orc, until his eyes focused through the light smog and he saw that she was beautiful and winged. Some distance off a massive creature with fiery eyes growled at a cluster kobolds who yipped among themselves. The kobolds were dispersed by a large man dressed in bizarrely crafted red armor, who was then promptly distracted by fat frog-like creature with ugly blue skin.

Seras took a breath of acrid air and stepped bare feet to Sigil cobbles as he weaved his way through the open air market. A womanly voice called from nearby, taunting him to sample her wares, but when he looked he found that said wares came in the form of her mostly nude – and pock marked – body. A cruelly dressed man bumped into his shoulder and growled, “Orb it, berk!” But then moved on when he saw that Seras offered nothing by way of valuables – but still managed to look dangerous.

Pressing on Seras kept his search for something familiar, something he knew must be among the throngs of strange peoples. And at last, he found it. A single merchant hawked goods of elf-style quality, and when he swept long hair from his ears, Seras saw that he too was elven.

Thank the Seldarine, he thought to himself and approached.

“Aaye, cousin,” he greeted.

“I’m no kin of yours, primer,” replied the elf. “Well, not really anyway. What can I do for you? I’ve got plenty for the discerning elf.”

“How about the discerning tel’quessir?” Seras corrected.

“One of those, hrm?” The merchant countered, turning a studious eye on Seras. “Toril, right? Let me guess – Evermeet?”

Seras blinked and shook his head. “No, Cormanthyr.”

The merchant shrugged. “Doesn’t really matter, Toril elves are all the same. Have an arrogance about you that’ll get you killed. Think you’re top tier, and that sort of thing won’t do in Sigil. Mortals are just mortals here.”

“Thanks for the advice,” replied Seras, irritation growing.

“Advice is free,” said the merchant. “Wares aren’t. Buying?”

“I need arms and armor. But-”

“But what?” The merchant interrupted a moment before a grey skinned man who looked more like an emaciated elf than anything else slammed a rag-wrapped hand onto the counter and snarled.

“Elf! You cheated me!”

The merchant turned toward the new comer and offered a pleasant smile. “Just one moment and I’ll be right with you.”

“Now!” Growled the strange humanoid, and looked to advance beyond the counter.

Seras couldn’t miss the aggression in the new comer’s stance, the rage the rolled off him. Leaving his bonded blade on Toril may have drained him of much of the preternatural abilities he had developed, but he still knew how to observe the obvious. “Just a moment,” he said to the strange creature, “and you’ll have his undivided attention. I assure you.”

The creature whirled, something Seras said having burned away the last of his restraint, and a wickedly curved dagger slashed for SerasÂ’s throat. But just as he still knew how to observe, he also still knew the flow of combat. Body swayed to the left, right hand sweep to the dagger hand, left hand blow to the ribs, step in, right elbow to the jaw, head blow to the nose.

The creature crashed into the merchantÂ’s counter and collapsed to the street.

“Hells!” Cried the merchant, “Never seen a Clueless handle himself so well. What are you?” He demanded of Seras.

“Was a Night Hunter – Shevarashan,” Seras replied, kneeling and checking the defeated creature’s pulse.

“Whatever that means. They all fight like-” The merchant trailed off as the large red armored man strolled over to eye Seras and the fallen creature through a full-faced helm.

“Elf and githyanki,” his voice buzzed through the helm. “Is this altercation settled?”

“Settled,” scoffed the merchant. “The gith was going to gut me and this elf saved my life. Where were you?”

“Is this true?” The armored man buzzed, ignoring the merchant.

Seras shrugged and rose to face the man. A moment passed between them before they each nodded in turn, and the armored figure bent to carry the githyanki away.

“Close one,” commented the merchant. “He could have arrested you – or killed you.”

“He could have tried,” replied Seras.

“You’re good, but don’t get arrogant. Small fish in a big sea here in Sigil. Here, listen,” he bent and hefted a beautifully crafted case of white and black stained wood. It was about six feet long and three wide, and the merchant obviously struggled with it. “Want you to take this. Less valuable than it looks, but I think you could use it.”

“What is it?”

“Looks to be about everything you were asking for. Used it for display, but people kept trying to steal it. Do me a favor to take it off my hands.”

“I have no money.”

“Call it payment for services rendered then.”

“Very well.” Seras easily lifted the case and laid it over his shoulder. “Thank you.”

“Sure. And keep your eyes open. Sigil’s a dangerous place.”

Nodding his reply Seras turned and weaved his way toward the inn once more. Back in the room’s parlor he found that May’thrae had vanished to somewhere. Probably nowhere wholesome, he thought to himself, as he headed for the door – which immediately opened to reveal Lu’alin dressed in the contour fitting leggings and corset that shaped her breasts wonderfully. Both were gifts from May’thrae.

“Good morning, Seras,” she said, blessing him with a dazzling smile.

Once again he found himself wanting to share the expression, and his old vows slipped just a little more.