[COLOR=dimgray][CENTER][sup][h1][center][img]https://i.ibb.co/bWmRkHY/image-2023-05-07-081133253.png[/img][/center][b][center][color=black] S H Y S C A A U S L E Y[/color] [color=palegoldenrod]S H Y S C A A U S L E Y[/color][/center] [/b][/h1][/sup] [color=silver][sup][b]"Everything's different now. I don't understand. Is [i]this[/i] the Divine Aeter's path for me? Was the Virtuous Mother lying to me all along?"[/b][/sup][/color][/CENTER][table][row][/row][row][cell][center][sub][sup][sub][h3][b][color=black] C H A R A C T E R P O R T R A I T[/color] [color=palegoldenrod]C H A R A C T E R P O R T R A I T[/color] [/b][/h3][/sub][/sup][/sub][sup]_________________________________________________________[/sup][img]https://i.ibb.co/XYGqB4b/image-2023-05-07-082016327.png[/img] [/center][indent][sub][sup][sub][h3][b][color=black] C H A R A C T E R N O T E S[/color] [color=palegoldenrod]C H A R A C T E R N O T E S[/color][/b][/h3][/sub][/sup][/sub][/INDENT][sup]_________________________________________________________[/sup] [COLOR=silver][INDENT][sub][color=palegoldenrod][b]Shysca Ausley[/b][/color] is a young half-elf [color=palegoldenrod]Cleric[/color] who swore herself to a faith that worships an entity known as the Divine Aeter, and was gifted powerful divine magic. She doesn't [i]need[/i] any kind of focus, but she finds that it helps her think more clearly if she uses a long metal staff colored white to match her clothing. Why metal? Well, in addition to a kind of spellcasting focus, it's also surprisingly useful for whacking a stubborn adversary over the head. Speaking of her magic, it's very supportive in nature these days; healing, shielding, curing, reviving. While she [i]can[/i] unleash the smite of the Divine Aeter in a flash of white light and flame, she very much prefers not to do that, firmly believing that violence should be the [i]final[/i] recourse. --- [i]"I love you so much, my little light."[/i] It feels like it's been a lifetime since then. [i]"Oh wow, Shysca, did you make that all on your own?"[/i] Like a whole world has come and gone in the time it took to blink the memories back behind her eyes. ...Had it really only been ten years? The cool morning air smelled of the past. Of early morning dew and early spring frost. Of strawberry pastries and pinecones, and the wide bank of the river. It smelled of the stones that she used to skip over the gray water. She breathed deep and closed her eyes, savoring this old simple joy, and all thoughts of guilt and redemption evaporated like mist in the sun as she walked lightly through Ardenfel like a great weight was gone, like she'd never known it was there. As she walked, she saw the children that she knew so well. Danyl on the other side of the street. Lyndii would be reading, probably, even on a day like this. A kind of foolish pleasure seeped through her as she smiled. Her beloved Mary was walking in the other direction towards her, and her heart swelled. She opened her mouth to call out when another smell undercut the blissful haze. Smoke? She blinked, and the world was suddenly a blur. Fire. Steel. Screaming that she didn't realize was her. She looked around frantically and found everyone gone except her sister. And as soon as she started towards her, her hands ignited in searing pain. She looked down in panic and found th[i]em livid with a seething white radiance that soon spread over the rest of her body as she fell to the ground, twisting in agony. She looked up, trying to find MARY again through the white light,a nd onl y f oun d h e r s e l f--[/i] [/sub] [/INDENT][/color][/cell][cell][INDENT][sub][sup][sub][h3][b][color=black] C H I L D H O O D I N A R D E N F E L D[/color] [color=palegoldenrod]C H I L D H O O D I N A R D E N F E L D[/color][/b][/h3][/sub][/sup][/sub][/INDENT][sup]________________________________________________________________________________________[/sup] [COLOR=silver][indent][youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NvO_p7KuXmw[/youtube] Shysca's first memory is of the road. She remembers little enough of it; just faint flashes of her mom carrying her down a gravel path in a forest, snuggling up against her an inn's bed. Only the vaguest of images, now, but enough to remind her that wherever she was born, she would probably never know. But that doesn't matter, she tells herself. Though the vague flashes of town and wilderness nip at her heels now and then, Ardenfeld was [i]home.[/i] An end to the traveling; a roof over her head; a warm fire every night; a father; and most important of all, a sister. Who she loved [i]dearly.[/i] They were only half siblings, of course, but she didn't fully understand the concept at the time. All she knew was she had a little sister now, and she was the [i]best.[/i] Her new sister Mary was a handful, certainly; disappearing for hours at a time, showing up bruised and dirtied and causing Shysca no end of worry. But despite the struggle, she took to it like a duck to water. Patching up a hurt knee here, trying to keep her from running off into the woods there, singing some of their moms' old songs to help her when she was having trouble going to sleep: anything and everything she could do to help. And somehow, she just couldn't bring herself to be mad. Maybe a bit chastising; mom and dad were worried, after all. But then Mary would say something sweet, and press a pretty stone that she'd found near the lakeshore into Shysca's hand, and she was all smiles again. She would line the pretty stones and strange branches next to the fire, right against the wall on the left side. Perhaps some are still there, even now. And of course, though it started with Mary, it certainly didn't end there. Shysca had gotten a taste of caring for people, and it [i]stuck.[/i] Before she knew it, she'd become a pseudo-older sister to many of the other kids in town too, with careful hands and a gentle smile. She never knew where her mom came from, and where [i]she[/i] came from either. She never asked; she simply didn't care much. She didn't remember much of where they'd traveled, given her age, and she had new family in Ardenfeld. Leaving it was out of the question. That said, by the time she was eight or nine, she came to the realization that her ears were shaped different from the rest of her family. Her mom, dad, and of course Mary all had nice round human ears; but hers were quite pointy, more than enough to recognize. Unlike the whole rest of her family, Shysca was an elf (well, at least half of one). It brought a host of conflicting feelings with it; isolation, pride, fear, intrigue, confusion. Over the course of the next few years, she eventually untangled these feelings, coming to the childishly simple conclusion that it really didn't matter, because even if she wasn't the same as her family—she even [i]looked[/i] different, even from her mom—they were still her family, they loved her, and she loved them. Though perhaps she should've gotten used to that feeling of isolation and fear Because then, the bandits came for Ardenfeld. And just like her life on the road, there are—mercifully—only flashes. Scattered, fractured images. The warm fire in her memories, now consuming everything like a ravenous beast. The roof that she'd come to rely on crashing into itself. Her mother running out to fight and not coming back. Her father's slumped body. She remembers Mary's tiny hand trembling, cold as ice against her own. She remembers running. She doesn't remember quite where. The horrible feeling of her whole life crashing down around her. Everything was just...[i]gone.[/i] [/indent][/COLOR] [INDENT][sub][sup][sub][h3][b][color=black] L I F E A T T H E O R P H A N A G E[/color] [color=palegoldenrod]L I F E A T T H E O R P H A N A G E[/color][/b][/h3][/sub][/sup][/sub][/INDENT][sup]________________________________________________________________________________________[/sup] [COLOR=silver][INDENT]Everything except Mary. Mary, and the other kids that had survived the attack. Who had also seen their entire lives shatter. And Shysca made a resolution, hard as it was. She was the oldest, and she was one of the few—if not the only—who hadn't lived her whole life in Ardenfeld. So she had a [i]responsibility[/i] to them now. They needed someone they knew to turn to, she thought. Someone from home that wasn't crying. Stability. [i]Comfort[/i] She didn't know what the family who owned the orphanage were like when they first got there, so, quite simply, she devoted herself wholeheartedly to making everyone's lives better. She threw herself into it and didn't look back. All smiles, all the time. She tried to talk things through with Teth, even when she didn't want to listen. She spent hours around Danyl; he always seemed to lean on her so much, after all. She spent a whole year like that. It wasn't a particularly good life. It CERTAINLY wasn't a comfortable one. But it was all that she needed in the end, right? And above all, her sister. The sounds she made during her nightmares broke Shysca's heart every night, and the flames that would race over her during them had her worried [i]sick[/i]. So whenever she would fall asleep, Shysca would creep over and lie down next to her, stroking her hair like their mom used to. A horrible hollowness ripped at her whenever she thought of home, but she could [i]not[/i] let it eat her. Not while Mary was still here. Then came that horrific night, when the last leaves were shaking themselves free from the skeletal trees outside. When Shysca fell asleep early by mistake, too tired after a long day to keep her eyes open. She'd awoken to Mary's nightmare-torn cries, and to phantasmal fire rippling over her body. And, guilt tearing at her for not staying awake, she rushed over to try and shake her sister awake. And the fire had lashed out. She remembers screaming in sudden agony and shock as her arms and forearms were eaten by the flames and horribly burnt. The blinding fear, rendering her senseless to anything else as she shrieked until her voice grew ragged. The matron of the orphanage desperately trying to help her, and so delirious was she in her panic she thought that mom had come back. Her memories of the next few weeks, like so many others, are mercifully just the thinnest torn shreds of what they were. Horrible pain in her hands, that somehow grew only worse. A foul smell. Fever. A priest kneeling over her bedside, speaking indistinctly to the matron. Drinking something foul-tasting. And then, the church. The strange, vaulted ceiling above her, and the [i]fear.[/i] "[color=palegoldenrod]Who are you? Where am I?[/color]" And then, chief in her thoughts: [i]"[color=palegoldenrod]Where's Mary?[/color]"[/i] They let her ask. They let her scream. They let her cry. And only once she was done did the monks tell her with solemn voices that her sister had been corrupted by demons. The sickness that had gripped her—cured, now—was the grip of infernal fire. And then a final awful revelation: when her sister had been [i]corrupted,[/i] her hair had turned silver-white, and her eyes a burning yellow-orange. ...Just like hers. She was under threat of corruption as well, they said. The only way to hold it under was to follow the righteous path of the Divine Aeter and purge the rest of the demons from the world. She didn't want to believe it. But they [i]had[/i] saved her life, they said, and stopped her from being corrupted like her poor sister. She had a duty to them now. They said it over and over. Until—still a child—she eventually believed it. [/INDENT][/COLOR] [INDENT][sub][sup][sub][h3][b][color=black] O N W A R D: A N E W P A T H[/color] [color=palegoldenrod]O N W A R D: A N E W P A T H[/color][/b][/h3][/sub][/sup][/sub][/INDENT][sup]________________________________________________________________________________________[/sup] [COLOR=silver][INDENT]But she didn't remember that for long. Threw herself into her duties as a member of the Church of the Virtuous Mother until she forgot, and all that was left was the knowledge that she [i]had[/i] to do this. And...she did. Over those ten years, Shysca is unsure of how many people she [i]cleansed[/i] with the divine fire of the Divine Aeter. Things that she would've been [i]horrified[/i] at not long ago, she barely noticed, she was so thoroughly indoctrinated into this cult. It was like she had only half a mind of her own. Word began to spread about her, slowly bubbling through pockets of people: stories of the wrathful black-clad cleric with the burn-scarred hands... And yet... As much as she knew she [i]had to[/i] for reasons she could no longer remember, she couldn't ever bring herself to imagine Mary as anything but her baby sister. And not long ago, she remembered something that she'd nearly forgotten. Old friends. An old promise she'd made to meet with them again. People—children then—whose faces she could still see ever so clearly, so much she felt she could almost touch them. And as she thought about their smiles, an intense and sick revulsion rose in her throat. They would never smile at her again, if they knew what she had done. With no warning to the Virtuous Mother or any members of the church, she dropped the amulet that marked her a member into a mountain chasm beside the monastery, tore apart her black church robe and replaced it with a dress of pure white, then fled off into the night to return to her old home, see the old faces. Perhaps it is only when she does that she'll resolve the crisis of faith that swirls inside her skull, and the horrible nightmares that have again to begun to plague her will perhaps abate. And though the Church is behind her, she knows what she'd done will follow her to the end of her days. So all these long years later—no longer a child by her mother's side—Shysca takes to the road. [/INDENT][/COLOR][/cell][/row][/table][hr][/COLOR]