[hider=Aethra, Witch of the Argent Vale][center]
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[url=https://dicecloud.com/character/xKK7o6pvRK3eMd8Py/Aethra-of-the-Argent-Vale]D&D Character Sheet[/url][/center]
[INDENT][INDENT][INDENT][center][h1]Who I Am[/h1][/center]
[color=gray][i]Though she is known as something of a cryptid to the locals still inhabiting the area around the ruins of Ardenfeld, the so-called "Witch of the Argent Vale" really... doesn't live up to the hype. Spoken of in hushed tones, she is reputed to be a horned demoness who preys upon those who go too close to the old village, searing them to the bone with hellfire. In some tellings, she is a vengeful spirit -- a village maiden who gave herself over to the dark powers to survive the disaster, now driven mad with agony by the very flame she bears within her. In others, she is simply a fiend called forth by death and destruction that needs to be cut down. Still others claim she's nothing but an old wives' tale, while others claim to have caught glimpses of her with their own eyes; a fleeting horned shadow in a black cloak seen watching from afar, her eyes burning like embers amidst the shadows of the forest.

Despite these fanciful stories and poetic descriptions, however, the truth of the matter is significantly more mundane. Aethra is simply a sheltered, reclusive individual who, seeing how feared she is, withdraws from any and all human contact. And, sure, perhaps she might have used her powers to create eerie, flickering fires to scare off people who got too close to her camp, but she never actually [i]attacked[/i] anyone!

In any case, she is painfully shy, and though she hides it well, dislikes being looked at and doesn't really know how to talk to anyone with two legs. She doesn't become a blushing, stammering mess when forced to interact with others, mind you -- but even if she keeps her composure, she seldom says more than a couple words unless they're practically forced out of her. This may give the impression that rather than being shy, she's simply without feeling, or actively hateful of others. But though she never forgets an insult -- a scornful glance, or a derisive remark about her horns -- she does not [i]hate[/i] people for acting this way. Rather, interacting with them simply makes her sad, and so she'd just rather not bother. Needless to say, this also makes her somewhat neurotic about her appearance, to the point that she usually wraps her forked tail around one of her legs and hides it under her skirt, and keeps her head down in dark places to avoid having the fiery glow of her eyes seen. Only her horns are too large to adequately hide, but even then, she does the best she can, draping a hood over her head at all times to hide the point where they actually connect to her scalp. Maybe she hopes they'll be taken for some form of decoration or garish accessory, rather than an intrinsic part of her person?

She's much more comfortable with animals, however -- especially when she thinks she's alone -- and can often be seen conversing quite cheerfully with various creatures she encounters, using the magic taught her by the spirits to communicate with and befriend anything she thinks won't judge her too harshly for being different. While her unnatural heritage does sometimes thwart these attempts too, most animals don't think twice about her horns, tail, or gleaming eyes -- after all, in this sense, she's quite similar to them.

Despite her cold exterior, she's also quite childish, displaying no small measure of awe or even fear in the face of very simple things. Big cities are utterly foreign to her, having lived first as a country girl, then as a hermit. Fanciful baubles and trinkets catch her eye quite readily, and she has a tendency to fiddle with almost any unusual or interesting thing she encounters, displaying an almost magpie-like attraction to shiny objects. And, thanks to her deprived upbringing, her standoffish attitude can oftentimes be defeated with the help of tasty food, especially sweets. Wild berries, roasted fish, and the occasional morsel of meat are all well and good, but given her insatiable curiosity and voracious appetite, she just can't resist.[/i][/color]
[center][h1]My Story[/h1][/center]
[color=gray][i]Born as a peasant girl, the girl now christened with the fanciful appellation "Aethra" originally bore the much simpler name of "Mary." Her father was one of the village of Ardenfeld's foremost hunters, and was a gruff-but-gentle man who doted upon his daughter extensively. Her mother, on the other hand, was a wanderer from elsewhere -- a gypsy of sorts of unknown heritage who had ended up in Ardenfeld on her travels and cared for her father when he was, coincidentally, injured during a boar hunt. Ultimately, she decided to settle down there and marry him, and though her origins were originally regarded with some measure of suspicion at first, the other villagers quickly stopped caring. The family didn't have any outlandish customs, nor did the foreign lady have any particularly alarming physical traits. They got along well with the community and all did their part, and so quickly became just as ordinary a sight as anyone else.

Her parents loved her very much, and she would often help her mother around the house with chores or errands. She learned to cook, the basics of mending clothing, and other common household skills -- as well as a few small tricks her father taught her, such as how to carve and play a reed flute. They would wile away the hours sitting on their back step, with Mary clumsily tooting away on a small, shabby instrument of her own creation, and her mother singing along from inside. The memories are bright and warm, like a flame -- but they have since flickered and faded as the years drag on, until only embers of those warm, happy days remain. Aethra remembers little of that time now, for her peaceful childhood ended when she was only eight years old -- and after that, she tried her hardest to forget.

Her father's voice, telling them to run.

His hand, clutching an old sword.

His back as he rushed out of the house.

Her mother's grip on her hand.

A stifled cry as that grip went slack.

The fire, all around her.

The pain, the heat, the choking smoke -- and then suddenly, nothing at all.

Someone had pulled her from the flames and carried her to where the other children were hiding. Miraculously, she was mostly unharmed. Her skin was burned in places, leaving scars upon her back that persist to this day -- but she survived. Initially, this was seen as simple good fortune; but when a fire mysteriously broke out in her room at the orphanage, too -- from which she also emerged almost entirely unscathed -- people began to grow worried.

It was around this point when the dreams began. Nightmares, visions of fire and death and bloodshed -- landscapes left barren and lifeless by war. Whether it was the trauma of the attack or some kind of vision of things to come hardly mattered to her at the time, however -- because the more immediate concern was that the flames in her dreams persisted when she awoke. Opening her eyes to find fire in the palm of her hand would set her screaming, only for it to disappear when people came rushing in to check on her. She thought she was losing her mind... and others thought she was possessed. These fears only became more founded when one morning, after a particularly bad nightmare, she awoke to find that her hair had become white like an old woman's, her ears pointed, her teeth sharp, her eyes like blazing embers, and, worst of all -- horns and a forked tail had grown upon her during the night. She panicked, and this in turn once more drew people to come running to her room -- only this time, the evidence didn't just go away.

She was locked in her room, priests were called to conduct an exorcism, and Mary, not unfamiliar with what happened to monsters in fairy tales and already quite aware that she was feared by those around her, was certain that she was going to be killed. In her panic, she broke out of her room and made a run for her life. Though several people caught sight of a horned girl fleeing the city, the search parties that followed lost her trail in the deep woods, as she instinctively began to follow old hunting paths that led her back to her old home.

Arriving amidst the ruins of Ardenfeld, she found an unexpected sight. The fallen houses, the charred landscape, and the ravaged ruins that had haunted her dreams had long since given way to verdant greenery. Vines, flowers, trees, and shrubs had completely overtaken the former town, leaving nary a trace of the hell she remembered from her nightmares. There was a certain tragic beauty to it -- one that burned itself into her memories even more strongly than the trauma of that fateful night.

She wandered aimlessly through the ruins for longer than she can really remember. For a while, she occupied herself with searching for familiar places or items -- old, burnt dolls pulls from the wreckage of her house, a broken reed flute found trampled in the village lane, or a book of fairy tales she couldn't read that the headman's wife had once read aloud to the village children during the harvest festival. She gathered all these mementos in one place, and then, not knowing what else to do with them, with her tiny hands she set about burying them as a kind of memorial to what once had been.

The final trinket she found, however, she couldn't bring herself to bury. It was the broken-off handle of a shattered sword -- an heirloom that had never been meant to see combat. It must have failed its user in his hour of direst need, or surely -- [i]surely[/i], he would have been able to save them all. If only the blade hadn't broken, her father never would have lost his noble fight. Yet, even though he must surely have been defeated without a weapon, she couldn't find any signs of his body. Perhaps it had just burned to ash along with the others, but maybe... just maybe. Hope rekindled itself in her heart, not because she truly believed it to be possible, but quite simply because she needed something to believe in. So, she held on to this ruined keepsake, promising that she wouldn't bury it until she was certain her father was dead.

It was in this state, however, that someone -- or rather, something -- found her. On the first night, it came as a great wolf, from which the young girl hid in terror. Since it could not find her, it left -- but returned upon the second night in the guise of an owl, circling high overhead to search her out. When it found her hiding place, it left, and then returned upon the third night as a white deer -- a doe, but bearing horns like a stag. It came to her hiding place and asked of her...

"Why do you linger here, mortal? This land has already been lost to your kind, and none here yet live."

She, unsure of how to respond, answered only that she had nowhere else to go.

"Why do you not go among the living? Among your own people?"

She shook her head and said that she could not go back, for she was not welcome among them.

"And why is that?"

Because she was a monster. A bringer of fire and destruction -- and so, she only belonged in a place like this, where there was nothing left for her to destroy.

"Tell me, Little Flame, what do you see around you?"

A graveyard.

"Nay. I prithee look again, for you will find not a graveyard, but a garden. The end of your people need not be the end of this place. For the birds will build their nests among your fallen homes, and their songs shall be a lullaby to those who sleep beneath the soil. Look, Little Flame. Look and see. Even atop these graves you have dug, flowers will one day bloom."

It was beautiful, yes... but she wasn't any less lonely for knowing that. And, if that was truly the case, then she had no place here, either -- for she would only serve to destroy what nature hoped to build.

"Then, what if there were another like yourself here? Another with no place and no purpose, save to wait for and tend to what comes after the flames?"

If there was such a person, then she wouldn't want to hurt them. It would be better for her to stay alone.

"Ah, but that person needs you more than you know, Little Flame. There is a place not far from here where few tread -- a blighted, sorrowful land where the trees can no more grow, where the grass withers and fails, and from which all creatures shy away. That place was once her home, as this was once yours. And if you were to burn the rot away, then that place, too, might become a beautiful garden. I'm sure that she, and all those who once shared that home with her, would be happy."

It beggared belief that the strange power she had been granted might be used for such a purpose... but ultimately, she accepted. If that person showed herself, and could accept her as she was, then maybe she could do some good for someone who shared a similar sorrow to her own.

And so, on the fourth night, the one who came to visit her was not a wolf, or an owl, or a deer -- but rather, an old woman with a kindly smile, who introduced herself as Mithra. The girl said that she had been named Mary, but all those who knew her by that name probably hated her by now. And so, the woman gave her a new name: Aethra. A little flame, but one which could offer much to the world by burning brightly, be it in the seclusion of the wilderness or for all mankind to see. It was a name weighted with expectation, but made light by hope and joy -- for finally, there was someone who would walk with her and talk with her, and tell her that she wasn't mad and that neither the world nor her place in it had yet come to an end.

In the years that followed, she learned much under Mithra's tutelage. They lived together amidst the wild, with Aethra tending to the chores that were appointed her by her new mentor, and Mithra teaching the young Tiefling to control the flames within her, and to suppress them if need be. She learned that her powers could be used to heal and to create life in addition to simply destroying it... but also that there was a place for destruction, just as there was a place for new life to take the place of the old. Within an ever-snowy northern forest of rotted, whitened trees, hidden in a secluded valley unknown to mortal men, she worked tirelessly to perfect her craft, so that she could at last fulfill her promise to Mithra, and create for her a garden amidst this wasteland.

But there was another promise that weighed heavily upon her mind -- and as the time came to fulfill it, Mithra ordered her not to break her word, reluctant though she was to leave. And so, her two tasks became one. She would go back to the home she had left behind once more, and tend to the garden there. She would make good on her promise to speak once more with her old friends, even if they hated her or didn't recognize her after all the changes she had gone through. She would travel the world outside the Argent Vale once more, and once she had learned everything she could learn from seeing all the hopeful beginnings and fiery ends that life had to offer... she would return to Mithra, and share the fruits of her knowledge, creating a beautiful garden amidst that lifeless valley.

And yet, throughout all of this, still she is haunted by the dreams of all that she has seen -- and all that may wait for her in the world beyond. Something dark and terrible looms upon the edge of her awareness, and all that Mithra has taught her may not be enough to prepare her for it. If that day comes where her flame fails her as her father's sword failed him, or where the essence of life she strives to uphold slips from her grasp as her mother's hand slipped from hers... what will she do then?
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[center][h1]Going Forward[/h1][/center]
[color=gray][i]At the moment, Aethra would say that she simply wants to make her mentor and surrogate grandmother Mithra proud of her, and to fulfill her promises. However, that's not entirely true. In part, her real goal upon this journey is to try to prove, both to herself and to those who once called her a monster, that her power really can be used to do great things, and that she's not the bringer of destruction she once feared she was. In seeking this, she'll also have to contend with the difficulty involved in changing people's perceptions of her, and her own wavering confidence in her own abilities as she wonders what, precisely, even is the right way for someone like her to live.

Secretly, she also perhaps holds out hope that her father might have survived the attack and still be alive somewhere... and that maybe, just maybe, some of her old friends who might still remember her from her childhood as Mary won't hate her when they see what she has become. Finally, she's also curious as to why she was cursed with the flame she bears to begin with, and from whence her daemonic heritage springs -- hoping that, perhaps, if she understands the roots of her own nature, that may bring her closer to triumphing over it, and over people's perceptions of her as a result of it.

But even leaving aside her plethora of emotional issues, the fact remains that Aethra is horribly sheltered and ignorant as to the workings of civilization and society as a whole, and she has a lot to learn before she is ready to truly save -- or destroy -- anything. Where her path and her reunion with the other survivors can take her, who can say? And what further trials fate has in store for her, only time will tell...[/i][/color][/INDENT][/INDENT][/INDENT][center]__________________________________________________________________
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Sorry this ended up so long. I got carried away trying to tie a lot of the imagery and stuff in her background together and be all poetic and shit. I'm well aware that it's just overly elaborate high-concept bullshit, and that mechanically speaking, it doesn't entirely line up -- like, yes, she has Produce Flame as a Druid Cantrip, but I had her creating small fires in her backstory even before that and acted like it's a racial ability because it was more dramatic that way. Regardless, I can provide cliffnotes if needed, but I figured I'd leave it as is for initially submitting it since I was kind of proud of the result.

Also on a lighter note, I am officially the first non-cat in this party. Except not really because I'll probably turn into a cat once I get Wild Shape. All cat party anybody?

TL;DR, sorry for being so edgy, and looking forward to RPing with y'all. XD