Name: Morana "Raven" Ithildin

Gender: Female

Age: 24

Appearance: 

[img]http://img2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20140425131627/dragonage/images/0/0b/Leliana_in_Inquisition.png[/img]

Homeland: Valaria

Race: Human

Spells: None
.
Bio:

Morana was but a child when the war against Malfear took her parents. She was just one of many poor children to be orphaned during the war, but there were only so many people willing to take them in or places where they could find refuge and shelter. Morana found neither. Instead, she was captured by slavers and sold to a whorehouse. She remembered feeling relieved at first, trading shackles for a large mansion that seemed lavish and luxurious. She had thought some nobleman had purchased her off the slavers and she was free, or at least all she had was a life as a servant.

It wasn't until she learned the true intention of her purchase did life take a drastic turn. She was young, but that was how that particular brothel operated. They took in girls at a young age, trained them to be courtesans and paramours - women who could take on any role and charm any man. The Velvet Room was infamous for catering to the perverse tastes of the nobility. It was the wealthy and powerful who paid good coin to de-flower a girl, and the appeal of a woman who was willing to say and do anything you wanted was worth a lot to them. She taught to read and write, to play the lute and sing, to paint and dance. She was made to clean room while the older, mature girls were servicing their clients to de-sensitize her.

Once she was old enough to start growing curves, that was when the real training in the art started. At least, that's what the madame in charge of the Velvet Room called it. Morana was taught what was expected of her while she was with a client and how to do it. By this point, years had passed and she had long ago lost all sense of propriety about such things. It was the only life she had and it was made abundantly clear to her that escape was useless. She had food, clothing, shelter and a bed here - even if they stank of the men she was expected entertain. Her life was forfeit if she tried to escape.

If her parents had taught her anything about the sanctity of her body before their deaths, she no longer remembered such lessons. Her first client was a refined gentleman, if a little old. He paid a handsome sum to be the first man to have her and all Morana could really remember of that night was how much wine he had made her drink before having his way with her. Well enough that she didn't remember - she awoke the next morning to find her dress torn and bruises on her wrist. According to the other girls, she was lucky that was all she suffered.

So began her life as a courtesan, telling men what they wanted to hear and stroking their egos for coin. In time, a few were so enamored with her that they would exclusively seek her out and her alone when they visited the brothel. She was never told to expect them to show her any affection, nor did she have any notion of what romance was - in truth, that was hardly what she would have called it even if she did. They spilled their secrets and lives to her with each visit, and while Morana thought they were just emptying their burdens onto her, a forgettable face, she soon came to realise the value of what she had heard.

It came two years into her time as a courtesan - one night the client who entered her room was not a man but a woman. She was surprised, to say the least, but had heard that such things occasionally happened. It was a strange night for other reasons as well - her client had paid coin to be the one doing to seducing. Morana had had no experience with women prior, but soon she was eager to have the woman visit. Jolaine, the woman offered her name on her third visit, and their conversations grew longer each time she called. It wasn't long before Jolain started paying to have Morana for entire nights, and the woman's intent became clear.

Jolain was a spy, and she had approached Morana for the sake of finding out what her other clients had confided in her. Morana was smitten by now, and when Jolain offered her a life away from the brothel, a life that she could spend with a woman who loved her, and filled with excitement and intrigue. While Morana continued working at the brothel, selling secrets to Jolaine whenever she came to share the bed, her new mentor would teach her how to fight, how to manipulate and coerce information out of someone, how to wield a dagger if she needed to kill... How to poison a man, how to plan the hunt like a viper, sneaking into the bed of her prey to silence them while they slept.

On her twenty-first birthday, Morana was made a free woman at last. Jolaine had bought her freedom from the Velvet Room and took her in as a partner. The two soon established a system where Morana would seduce their targets, distracting them while Jolaine stole letters, information and secrets from their home. Some times Morana would simply walk out with the papers tucked underneath her dress the next morning. When they were paid to kill, Jolaine always made sure Morana's target was guilty of some crime - it was easier to kill the guilty who deserved death.

That would eventually form Morana's moral code. She was discovered one night by a chamberlain after she had silenced a guard captain, and the alarms rang immediately. She managed to evade capture but found no trace of her lover and mentor afterward. A day passed before she realized the truth - her mentor had been killed that same night, covering her escape. It turned out they had been fed false information, in an attempt to capture and kill them both. Someone must have wanted whatever information they had, and Morana regretted not sensing something was amiss. Jolaine had trained her better than that.

Her mentor now dead, Morana worked alone. Soon, she built a name for herself - "Raven". The underbelly of society knew her only by that name, and most believed she was a ghost story. Nobody wanted to believe that a lone woman was cunning or skilled enough to bring down slaver rings and cartels on her own. Nobody wanted to admit that they might have unknowingly gave her the information she needed when they hired that wench in the tavern, or chatted up that lady strolling along the pier. The guards knew, as well, that if they ever needed help finding criminals, all they had to do was post a bulletin and a letter would reach them the next morning.

To this day, only the Raven herself knows the true motivation for her actions - to find the one responsible for her lover's death.