Comments welcome! [hider=Angelique 'Merci' du Mersot] [b]Name:[/b] Angelique du Mersot (Mer-so) . She goes my Merci as Angelique is kind of a mouthful. [b]Age:[/b] 24 [b]Gender:[/b] Female. [b]Race:[/b] Breton. [b] Appearance: [/b] Angelique is a young Breton woman a little below average height. She possesses the classical beauty of her race with high cheekbones and a neat, heart shaped face. She has dark eyes and dark chestnut hair which she keeps cut above her shoulders; lest it interfere with spell work or alchemy. Years of living on very little have left Angelique unhealthily thin. This has also resulted in a slight hollowing of her face and eyes, granting her an intensity that can be a little off putting. Surviving on the streets has not given Angelique the luxury of idleness that many mages enjoy and as a result she is in excellent physical condition. Running and climbing have given her tight, lean muscles without the bulkiness often seen in swordsmen or warriors. [b]Personality: [/b] Despite her relatively hard life Angelique is fairly pleasant, even friendly. Betrayals and abuse have made her wary but she wants to be accepted and be part of the group in a way that only those who have been kept on the outside for a long time can understand. Morally Angelique is very flexible, working with many disparate groups, has given her a mercenary's bland acceptance of the world that is, rather than the world that ought to be. Moral judgments and outrage can be expensive when eating tonight depends on pleasing others. Magic is Angelique’s true joy and her whole demeanor frequently changes when she practices it. She loves magic in all its form and has an insatiable appetite for new lore and knowledge. All the sacrifices she has made seem worth it when she pulls together a particularly clever spell or masters a new technique. She can be a little resentful of those who have had the privilege of a more leisurely education in the arcane arts, particularly if she feels that the practitioner is lazy or wasting their blessings. [b]History: [/b] On the distant shores of Daggerfall in High Rock, far to the west, lies the small village of Marne. In this village, under the sign of the Lover, Angelique was born. Her parents were social climbers, well to do for tradespeople but not spectacularly wealthy. Like many Breton children Angelique showed early magical promise. As she grew older, this promise turned into a fascination bordering on obsession. Not infrequently she would be punished for pestering some wandering spell caster for a lesson or a bit of lore. Unhappily, formal education at a magical school was far beyond her parent’s limited means and she tried, without success, to accept this. As the years passed Angelique grew into a strong willed and beautiful young woman. She learned a little alchemy from her mother but in her heart she always dreamed of studying magic. On her sixteenth birthday Angelique was betrothed to one of the younger sons of the local nobility. It was considered quite a coup by her parents, despite the fact that the gentleman in question was a younger son and unlikely to inherit much beyond a few poor acres. Entree into the nobility is the dream of every aspiring peasant after all. It was too much for young Angelique, after a screaming argument with her father, in which suicide as threatened and the prospect of her being taken to the altar in chains was raised, she stormed off to her room. After hours of weeping an idea occurred to Angelique that was only possible in the romantic mind of a teenager. Gathering a few belongings she crept down to her father's strong room, opened the simple lock and stole the dowry that he had spent years laying away for her. Fleeing into the night, she left Daggerfall for Wayrest, able to pursue her dreams of magical study. Or so she thought. Unfortunately, what a sixteen year old girl from a small town in Daggerfall imagines is a lot of money doesn't go very far in a city like Wayrest. She obtained some instruction but within a few months she was broke. With no place to live, no way to continue her studies and unable to return home, things looked dire. By a combination of luck and determination she made her living on the street. She picked wild flowers and made potions which she hawked to the desperate and foolish. She learned that a pretty girl could relieve a drunken merchant of a few septims, if she had the stomach for it, and she found the ins and outs of the local underworld. Through these networks of pickpockets, pimps and cut purses, she found the means to continue her education. A lesson on illusion from an old nightblade in exchange for some company and a few bottles of mead, a vain wizard willing to give a pretty and fascinated girl a few pointers on a cantrip, a drunken priest that would expostulate on healing magic. Bit by bit she was able to patch together a semblance of training while keeping body and soul together by the barest of margins. And then, of course, there were the Cults. It is an open secret that every nation in Tamriel is riddled with Daedric cults of one type or another. Some of these, like Azura’s, are relatively benign but the kind of cults interested in a desperate young woman with magical abilities tended to be the other kind. Here, a midst smoke, blood and sweat, she received what might be euphemistically described as her foundations in conjuration. She might have ended here like so many others, drawn into the ever constricting circles of cult life, hopelessly addicted to drugs or other vices but for a strange chance. During a particularly debauched ritual she came face to face with another worshiper. To her horror, she recognized the face of her former fiancé, worse yet, he recognized her. With the realization that he would certainly have her killed to prevent the possibility of exposure or blackmail she fled. An old acquaintance in the mercenary trade vouched for her and she was hired on as a guard for a caravan headed east, to Cheydinhal. [b]Skills:[/b] Angelique's skills lay primarily with magic. She has received an extraordinarily eclectic education and is basically competent in most magical disciplines. Conjuration is a particular area of strength as this was the easiest area in which to find instruction. She is also slightly better at illusions and restorative magic as these were the most essential to survival on the streets. She has a small degree of skill with alchemy but has had little practice beyond love potions and hangover cures since she was a girl. Although not a master thief by any stretch of the imagination, living on the street has given Angelique the basic tools of an urban criminal. She probably can’t steal it for you herself, but she can find someone who can. [b]Equipment: [/b] Leather pack Walking Staff Dagger [b]Birthsign:[/b] The Lover [/hider]