[hider=Lisette Köhler][h3]Name[/h3][indent]Lisette Köhler[/indent]
[h3]Nom de Guerre[/h3][indent]The Charnel-Souled Minstrel[/indent]
[h3]Occupation[/h3][indent]In her past life, she was the member of an influential family and first string concert violinist and operatic soloist in the Royal Philharmonic.[/indent]
[h3]Physical Attributes[/h3][indent]Formerly a woman of distinction and poise, recent years razed her sybarite veneer. The prime of female youth, her mid-thirties, she spent severed from society by brick walls and an iron door, her only light distorted by grating two meters up from a cold plank floor—just high enough that her fingers were warmed in the dawn star’s rays when she stretched up her arm, tipped her toes, and grasped the sill. During her self-inflicted confinement, her straight jet hair grew lustrous and long; her olive gaze dulled; her skin, juxtaposed by a steady increase of silver tattoos mostly covered by a rough-knit charcoal cowl, paled to a cadaverous white; and her boyish countenance sharpened to a melancholy, yet nevertheless rather plain, interpretation of female beauty.[/indent]
[h3]Mental Attributes[/h3][indent]Once pleasant, albeit serious and astute, her occult coquetry gradually burgeoned to a disruptive amour. Inevitably, it took its toll and maligned her personality until oft overlooked and modest flaws became intolerably poignant. Vexed by unseen and unheard scenes and sounds, she comported herself as an introvert, brooded, murmured, languished, and succumbed to nigh-constant urges to play with profligate abandon the most utterly lachrymose violin solos and raise her once-beatific voice in malevolent half-murmurs. Such a dramatic change in her manner unsettled her sophisticated peers and led to her societal exile.[/indent]
[h3]History[/h3][indent]Daughter of a wealthy and influential noble and elevated, by virtue of her talent in addition to the usual cronyism, to first chair concert violinist and operatic soloist in the Royal Philharmonic, she was liked and admired by her peers, partially on account her demure personality but mostly for not being so lovely as to incite jealousy, demonstrated as she waltzed through a seemingly-endless series of balls unable to secure a suitor. Then her great uncle passed away and bequeathed on her a personal effect—a violin. Its appearance frightened her at first; however, once she played it she knew her fate was inexorably bound to the device. Playing it became a preoccupation. She realized this, knew danger neared, but her capacity to care was whelmed by desire. Over time, she further observed that all who heard it bent to her whims. They felt what she wanted them to feel and applauded when she longed for adulation. This merely increased her urge to perform. Still, at first unbeknownst to her, it was not merely others who were transformed, but herself. Inspiration struck and she began to compose her own works, strange dirges that evoked mental vignettes of violence, despair, and heresy. She obsessed over those things, even crafted her own bow from a ceremonial tattoo needle illicitly obtained from a foreign peddler. She wove her hair into the bow string. She played, and played, and played, until, eventually, her music summoned [i]them[/i]. Entities from beyond the veil. Almost overnight, she lost interest in friends, family, and her busy social life. She no longer performed in public, but instead played endlessly in her quarters. She began talking under her breath, her utterances as grim as they were gruesome. Eventually, her father could take no more of it and insisted she self-admit, for forced commitment might reflect poorly on the family, at an asylum where she might recover her senses.

Like most sociopaths, she learned to mask her deeply troubled mind, but in truth her condition worsened. The asylum staff became victims of her musical manipulations and after several years of confinement she convinced them to release her to a convalescent home in the countryside just outside of the small city of Temnorapool.

This story begins on a train ride thereto.[/indent]
[h3]Abilities[/h3][indent][b]Vitality [sup](7)[/sup][/b] Born to health and privilege, she was as well fed as she was looked after; even in the asylum. Vigorous in her endeavors as an occult violinist, her inward focus distracts from the strenuousness of physical hardship and accommodates lengthily and monotonous engagements.[/indent]
[indent][b]Strength [sup](3)[/sup][/b] While neither weak nor sickly, she has not, throughout her life, been required to lift anything heavier than an occupied violin case, a fault evidenced by her below average strength and diminutive frame.[/indent]
[indent][b]Finesse [sup](9)[/sup][/b] Adroit and constantly in motion, her fingers and limbs are adept at the mastery of new patterns and tasks, her body lithe, movements supple, and reactions uncanny.[/indent]
[indent][b]Perception [sup](3)[/sup][/b] With her mind often turned inward or beyond and thoughts focused music, much of the physical world around her drifts by unnoticed.[/indent]
[indent][b]Intelligence [sup](9)[/sup][/b] Raised in privilege and educated as such, her mind, cultivated by expert tutors, is as sharp as her instrument and, when she does speak in anger, her tongue.[/indent]
[indent][b]Wisdom [sup](3)[/sup][/b] Perhaps hers is not so much a lack of wisdom as a surplus of apathy and a constant condition of distraction.[/indent]
[indent][b]Faith [sup](7)[/sup][/b] A witness to the beyond, her only lapses in faith coincide with doubts as to the soundness of her own mind.[/indent]
[indent][b]Occult [sup](9)[/sup][/b] Her entanglement with the Eidolic Violin has brought her down a path where the occult world is practically all she knows and what remains is the mastery of her musically-derived powers.[/indent]
[h3]Equipment[/h3][indent][b]Eidolic Violin [sup](5)[/sup][/b] A masterwork instrument of unknown provenance beyond its passage as a family heirloom to her from her mad great uncle, the [I]‘Eideolic Violin’[/i] is an instrument of disquieting beauty. Bone exterior with a scroll of shrunken skull, crimson soul, and silver hardware, he insisted in his fantastic diary it was the corrupt synthesis of a holy saint’s reliquary and an infamous demoniac’s sarcophagus. Aberrant equally is its bow and tebori instrument that marred her flesh with tattoos, a device as twined in purpose as in form—her own hair and an unnaturally elongated femur silver-inset with occult motifs. When played by a virtuoso, its baleful strains physically manifest as sanguine condensation along the bow and strings. Queerer still, its music has been observed to influence the whims and emotions of its listeners, warp desire, paralyze will, and even conjure a commune beyond the veil.[/indent]
[indent][b]Passport [sup](0)[/sup][/b] A pocket binder of her identification paperwork.[/indent]
[indent][b]Purse [sup](0)[/sup][/b] A small purse concealed in her robes with enough coin for a person of meager means to retire on comfortably. In the city, it would buy her family a night of dinner, entertainment, and revelry.[/indent]
[indent][b]Cowl [sup](0)[/sup][/b] A rough-knit woolen cowl, dark gray in color, with an oversized hood, sleeves, and robe that covers her from head to heel.[/indent][/hider]