Giselle Sartarius
The Mad Queen
{{ Female || 48 }}A middle-aged human, Giselle is tall, standing at just over 6 feet. She carries herself with grace wherever she goes; her back is always arched, her hands held together at her midsection, her chin always held high. Her hair is golden blonde, and always arranged in intricate braids trailing behind her. Strands of silver woven intermittently give her hair an ethereal shine. Giselle wears a golden choker-type piece of jewelry to hide scars on her neck of a previous attempt at hanging.
BIOGRAPHYGiselle Sartarius, Queen of Helwaine. That was her title, once. In the Free City of Helwaine, an obscenely rich city standing on the Gold Coast, trading with dozens of other cities with a massive merchant fleet. The key to Helwaine's success was their gem mines; underneath the city ran miles of nodes of emeralds, rubies, sapphires and diamonds. Above the mines stood an extravagant city for the wealthy, full of beautiful sculptures and marble streets. Underneath the nearby cliffs of Zair, right on the Le Meur Sea, existed the Shanty, a town of thousands of miners who only traveled to Helwaine to work for the noble aristocracy.
That was during the reign of King Jean-Claud Sartarius, the father of Queen Giselle. A brutal overseer, Helwaine was run with an iron fist, but prospered immensely. Helwaine was, like the other free cities, relatively multicultural and progressive - there existed a Citizen's Council with members of the aristocracy and merchant class, in addition to representatives from Wrelmsmen, Northmen and Orc racial minorities and ambassadors. Giselle was the eldest daughter of three children, the two other boys - but according to Helwaine law, the eldest regardless of gender was set to inherit.
This was much to the chagrin of Helwaine nobility, and King Jean-Claud himself. Giselle, by the time she reached puberty, was an outspoken critic of Helwaine. Ever since finding a mysterious trinket in her bedroom, and spending many nights locked away in her room, she chastised the economic inequality between the miners and the aristocracy, and criticized the political structures that created an absolute monarch. Giselle made several, notable, visits to Shanty - she was beloved by the people, who had grown in population to outnumber the actual residents of Helwaine. It was this that kept many would-be assassins away - that, and Giselle trained in the arts of the duelist, and was considered a quite competent swordsman. Finally, she also is a practitioner of the Sartarius family Aether-arts - common among nobility in the Free Cities, Giselle manipulated the aetheric forces to bend people to her will. She can make herself more attractive, more persuasive, and appear less of a threat - all through subtle tweaks of the perceptions of others.
When Jean-Claud died, Giselle assumed the throne at the age of 22. One of the first acts she took was to integrate Helwaine and Shanty. In a project that took over ten years, the population of Helwaine was doubled as houses were built around the city to accommodate the workers. Several reforms followed - labor unions were created, taxes were increased to provide social support to the worst off, and a constitution was drafted to limit the powers of the Monarch.
The end point of these reforms was the creation of the Grand Parliament of Helwaine. A revolutionary experiment in democracy, the Parliament was to consist of one hundred representatives elected from districts around Helwaine, and from their ranks elect a Prime Minister to rule Helwaine. With the support of the under-class, Giselle abdicated the role of Queen of Helwaine, declaring it dead and irrelevant. She ran for a seat in Parliament, intending to become the future Prime Minister of Helwaine.
Things did not go as planned. The former Shantymen and women who ran for office were outcompeted by the aristocracy, who had a vast sum to spend on political campaigns. In the end, the makeup of the Parliament was 54 aristocrats, 33 of the merchant class and only 13 Shantymen. Including in the aristocrat numbers were Giselle and also her younger brother, Henri Sartarius, who was promising the aristocracy a grand return to the monarchy, and the banishment of the Shantymen from Helwaine.
Henri Sartarius was the first, and last, Prime Minister Helwaine had ever seen. Almost immediately, Giselle was arrested, branded a traitor, and sentenced to death. Henri declared himself King, dissolved the Parliament, and announced a return to the rule of law. Once fearing the Shantymen, this recent victory granted the aristocracy confidence - which backfired. A revolution had begun in Helwaine, as the Shantymen revolted for their beloved leader. They stormed the palace and freed Giselle as she was moments away from death, but it was too late. The army of Helwaine was dispatched into the streets, slaughtering thousands upon thousands of the Shantymen. It was a slaughter... a genocide.
Giselle, with tears in her eyes, could only flee the city she had loved. The city she had destroyed.
The Exile Queen learned something that day. The poor, the downtrodden, the lower class would always be oppressed because of the greed of the aristocracy. Talmuth, although she was extreme in her beliefs, was right, essentially - human nobility had grown corrupt. Giselle had tried to reform her city, and that led to ruin. She realized she should never have given up power. The aristocracy would never disarm themselves - they needed to be disarmed.
That was two years ago. Giselle fled far, far away - out of the Free Cities, where her face was far too recognizable. Helwaine struggled under King Henri, but Giselle tried to ignore the reports. Labor shortages. Riots from the surviving Shantymen. Mine collapses. A mass exodus of the richest and most powerful. What once was one of the most powerful cities in the world had begun to decay to a ghost of its former self. As for Giselle, she drifted until she ended up at the Vahkranite Imperium. She quickly identified a young Baron, Calvin, who was ruthless, abusing the women of his farmland and sending his guards out to harass the men who complained about it. Giselle embedded herself into the community, organizing the farmers and training the women in combat. Just before she left to heed the call of the Legionnaires, the peasants stormed Baron Calvin's hall in protest, using their newly-found combat ability to overcome the small guard force and force Calvin to abdicate. Although Talmuth urged Giselle to kill the Baron, the exile refused, instead casting him out and setting fire to the Great Hall.
SKILLS-- DiplomacyGiselle is incredibly well spoken, and a natural leader. She is empathetic and inspires not only confidence, but loyalty. If she had chosen to rule with a traditional style, she could have been the most powerful Queen Helwaine had ever seen.
-- DuelistGiselle is considered adept at the art of one-one-one light dueling, proving quick and implacable in combat.
-- Illusion AetherConsidered the 'King's Aetheric', Giselle can subtly influence emotions and perceptions. She can amplify emotions already being felt, kindle new emotions, as well as cast illusionary tricks, such as making herself invisible for a short (under 10 seconds) yet significant enough time to confuse the enemy. One of the most potent uses of this skill is to convince her enemies on the battlefield that she is not a threat, making them ignore her until it is too late.
WEAPONSGiselle has a long, thin sword made out of fine steel, with two small pearls indented in the hilt. It is the ancestral Sartarius dueling sword, which she managed to steal before she fled Helwaine.
TOTEMThe necklace found in Giselle's artwork.
PERSONALITYBorn an accident, a daughter of a homeless woman prostituting herself to a nameless merchant for a night's meal, Talmuth had never known material possession before she had taken it for herself. She has always held a deep-seated hatred of all Human, Wrelmsmen, and Northmen society. She abhors power structures present in them, and when she was a Legionnaire, she fought to create an anarchic society with no government or power structures. While Giselle is a reformer, Talmuth is a 'burn it all down' accelerationist - it was Talmuth who fed Giselle the philosophy that she knew would destroy Helwaine. A master political strategist, Talmuth knew that the nobility would eventually revolt -this is what she wanted. She wanted Helwaine destroyed, and she sees Giselle as an idiot, a useful pawn that will infiltrate human power structures and destroy them with her utter naivety and optimism.
Talmuth presents to Giselle as an old, kindly woman - this is not the true Talmuth. In reality, she is cruel, she is sadistic, and she despises everyone who has ever benefited from ingrained power structures - not only Giselle, but most other Legionnaires she fought with.
Talmuth is also defined by her cynicism. She fully believes that they will fail, and Giselle and the rest will be executed again. But Talmuth is an anarchist, she has no plans beyond wreaking enough chaos to ensure society will never function properly again.
SKILLS-- ForesightTalmuth has near-prophet like ability to predict the future. She can see the action everyone will take at every moment, both short-term and in the future. In the short term, she can see their actions as ghostlike movements before it happens. Long term, she divines their heart and learns their intentions and plausible reaction to any given scenario. This is what has made her the strategist that led the Legionnaires to such success.
-- DominationTalmuth can bend people to her will, making them unquestioning slaves.
-- DestructionTalmuth
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can disintegrate material goods at will, which she most often used to destroy the wealth, jewelry, gold and other items in treasuries she would come across, leaving only stone, wood and common metals in her wake.
