tadcfnaf
teenangstlife
Xaltwind
Ohm
Not a Sayan
Shmoopsydude
ChronicleMan
Skyswimsky
Giselle de Farry
'Sella'
♀
Standing at 5’ 4”, she possesses an average, if somewhat slim frame. Her pale skin is a near match for her paper-white hair, often done up in fluffy twintail locks that reach down to her upper back. Her blood-red eyes, typical of her kind, twinkle with amusement, to match the refined elegance of her way of carrying herself. She enjoys discerning, often bare-shouldered dresses, and usually of her own creation.
Abilities
As a lady of blood, Giselle takes the art of bloodcraft to its upper bounds of refinement. Acting as the artist or conductor of her own world, she paints the environment around her in tasteful blood. From the elegant dresses she wears, to the beautifully crafted weapons she wields, to even the exquisitely decorated chairs and tables that she sits at, they are all her creations of blood.
Once upon a time, transmutation of such valuable ichor into immutable, fantastic masterpieces was not beyond her. It was not uncommon for her to reward the most loyal of her friends and followers with thoughtfully crafted weapons, equipment, and sundry. To others, for the right price.
Although her work embodies creation, it does not belie her destructive potential, either through her creations themselves, or by brute force of blood as is favored by many of her kind. Possessing a secondary affinity for illusion, a task she puts to use in friendship, it can be otherwise insidiously dangerous in battle, in light of her abilities of creation. How can one feel safe, after all, if one knows what they face is a creation, but not of what type?
Personality
Giselle is an unusual character for her breed, insofar as one can be as an undead being whose unlife and purpose revolves around lifeblood. Secular as much as one can be without being too out of line with Ichor, she treats humans as intellectual equals to her own kind, preferring to judge people on their individual merit and without the bias of unlife— show respect and have your wits about you, and she will return the favor, and more. That, however, doesn’t stop her from finding many of them wanting, and subsequently, beneath her notice.
To humans, she is one of the more pleasant characters among her people, if somewhat smug and self-satisfied. She’s able to find intellectual companionship with the humans and vampires that she finds herself able to respect, and somehow finds amusement out of the antics of those that she does not. Those that she favors she does all in her power to protect or win to her side, slotting them into her retinue with their free wills (mostly) intact, dispensing favors and rewards with an even hand. Many eventually serve in her employment as maid and butler knights, as thralls and valued humans alike.
Content to talk, listen to stories, and act as ambassador between the two worlds, she does not kill unless required to do so, finding the act a waste. Satisfied with her own thing in peace, she subscribes to the mind your own business school of ethics. She, however, responds by rote with significant force escalation if even slightly provoked otherwise. To Giselle, the taking and giving of blood is transactional—if she respects you. For the right price, she may even allow one to walk alongside her as a fellow daughter of Ichor.
In the wake of the ashes of an era crumbled to dust, for how the world has fallen, only sense can be found in returning her queen and liege lord to the world.
Biography
An era and a half ago, long lost to time, Giselle was once the heir to a great princely house. Just and fair, wise for her years, a consummate diplomat, and unblinded by religious zeal, she was the ideal successor to rule the lands of the great house. It was this same lack of dependence on the whims of the gods that made it easy for her to fall when a vampire passed into her domain.
Finding stability in a particularly decadent ritual together with some of her court, once turned, her attention simply returned once more to tend to her domain with a careful but firm hand, as she always had, securing peaceful futures for her human and undead subjects through personal diplomacy—backed by her loyal order of maid-knights.
In time, she became respected for her immutability and diplomacy by both living and undead alike, joining the orbit of the Queen as one of her trusted, if aloof, generals in the role of ambassador between the two societies. She was the bridge between her kind and the humans, the gateway to the undead, and the undead to the living. Connections, special goods, and services that might never have existed between the two did, through her.
It was a respect and a reputation that went a long way, her land and court remaining a finely balanced neutral safe ground even well into the war of the crusade of the Hundred Paladins, carefully maintained by ironclad treaties and agreements.
Yet still, the paladins would not suffer a single vampire to remain untouched, especially one that would provide the last safe haven to her kind. Fortress as it was, booby-trapped beyond reason, guarded by its own elite order of knights and secured by human alliance, it was no deterrent. Eventually, they came for her and her people still, as society and general order unraveled as the era came to a close. The last days of the crusade burned bright and hot as vampires fought against paladins, knights against knights, humans against humans, the Paladins paying dearly for every inch of soil taken.
There was only so much an isolated enclave in a collapsing world could take, however, before it too would fall together with their Lady and the rest of them all.