Melonwei

Name: Melonwei

Race: Human

Sex: Female

Age: 31

Alignment: Some fuzzy grey area between Neutral Evil and Lawful Neutral.  We're talking about a woman in a state of spiritual transition.



Five feet and seven inches is a fair height for an Il'lorni woman, and Melonwei claims every inch of it with her proud posture.  Her skin is a rich golden brown, glowing with the vibrance of vitality and youth, her eyes are a misty aventurine green.  Her hair falls to just beyond her shoulders in tightly coiled curls, shades of sepia highlighted in amber.  All told, Melonwei is a lovely woman to the eye, though many are so put off by her former affiliations that the regal slope of her cheekbones and the proud cant of her nose are simply no longer redeeming enough to make her attractive anymore.

What Melonwei wears depends upon the tasks she expects to be attending.  Mostly she tends to wear the flowing, armored white robes of the Veiled Sisterhood from which she originally hails, although of late she's been adding sturdier and more utilitarian things to her wardrobe, such as the dragonrider's flight kit and other such attire meant for more strenuous activities.  She never used to wear pants or jackets, but this is Teragaia, not Kassan'ha, and she's doing vastly different things than she was before.



Perhaps Melonwei will sometimes seem inconsistent to herself.  She is proud, she is insecure.  She is regal, she is humble.  She is powerful, she is fragile.  She is ruthless, she is vulnerable.  She is badly, badly damaged and she refuses to ever be a victim again.  She is a whole lot of many things that make very little sense to her own understanding right now, largely stemming from a recent change of faith.

No, not a change, a loss.  The instant she showed the slightest shadow of doubt in her god, He cast her aside, no longer interesting, no longer useful, no longer loved.  In turn, Melonwei has cast Nalthraxxi aside, no longer interesting, no longer useful, no longer loved.  Though while Melonwei usually attempts to conduct herself with a sense of boldness and confidence, the truth is she's still a little shaken.  This is all new.  A new world, new rules, a new self.  A new life.  A new path.

And while Melonwei may be forging a better life for herself after her departure from her religion, anyone who assumes she seeks some kind of redemption for her past wickedness is badly mistaken.  The life she lived with the Withered Mask, where she was a torturer of both the living and the dead, is not a life for which she will apologize.  She will apologize for her role in the terrorizing of Teragaia only.  But as far as Melonwei is concerned, Kassan'ha deserved to be terrorized and the Withered Mask was her salvation, the only family she ever had.  Asking her to apologize for that is asking her to apologize for avenging herself of some egregious violations for which she was almost executed, and that rage was completely justified when it sustained her.  She has chosen a new path now, but she is not seeking redemption or absolution.  Merely changing direction the way a river changes direction when confronted with a hill in its path.

Each new day brings a new opportunity for Melonwei to figure out where she stands now, alone for the first time since she was a terrified fourteen year old being rescued from the chopping block by the Withered Mask, and while she may not always react steadily to the same things now, she just has to remember that she's just had a major upheaval in her life and she's a work in progress.  One day at a time, aye?



Il'lorne was not a good nation in which to be born a woman.  Particularly not a half-breed of low status whose unwed mother had been impregnated by one of those shifty, desert-dwelling foreigners from the Southern Kingdoms.  Melonwei's mother was executed for bearing a child out of wedlock, leaving the baby to be raised by her grandparents.  Given the circumstances under which they came into the care of her, they were none too pleased and accordingly none too nurturing.  They trended toward emotional abuse, although they stopped short of being physically cruel, and even at the worst of things, Melonwei could still always say she knew exactly where and when her next meal would be and that it would be quality food, her clothing was always clean and the correct size and trendiest style available to her status, she was provided a nearly idyllic education the likes of which most females in the nation of Il'lorne could not begin to dare to even dream.  Life was not necessarily easy, but she grew up with the idea that her grandparents loved her as much as they could in the only way they knew how, by making sure she had the best of everything they could possibly provide for her, even if they could never quite figure out how to communicate.

In that, her story was not necessarily unique except in the part where her grandparents seemed to value her enough to give her an education.  Particularly at her end of the social spectrum.  Her grandparents were farmers, but her grandfather also collected books, and he had made his wife and children, and then grandchild, literate as well and on a vast array of subjects.  That he had a sharp tongue and a tendency to speak in barbs did not make Melonwei any less grateful for the once-in-a-lifetime impossible opportunity she was well aware she had been gifted.  Her favorite texts from her grandfather's collection were the medical texts written and illustrated by the thanaturges.  Nothing was ever quite so fascinating as the inside of the body and how it worked.  She also dissected the farm animals when they died, eternally curious about what was underneath the surface, what made what else move and live and be.  It was generally assumed Melonwei would be an unorthodox but immensely competent farmhouse wife when she grew up.

Unfortunately for Melonwei, her story was tragically normal for young commoner girls in Il'lorne and she was brutally raped by a group of mercenaries passing through when she was just fourteen.  This was as illegal by Il'lorni law as childbirth out of wedlock, and Melonwei was hauled into the village nearest her family farmstead to face the headsman's block as a result of the attack.  She was to die for the crime of being victimized.

And then, in flowing white robes and bearing skull-and-meat face paint, her saviors flowed into the village square, and they brought the dead with them.

It was a timeless pale woman with snow-silver hair that so gently unfastened Melonwei from the chopping block, introducing herself as Sister Superior Veridanza and offering Melonwei welcome into a brand new family, one that would love her, support her, and give her vengeance.  No longer would Melonwei be relegated to subhuman, less-than, punished for things beyond her control.  Melonwei would never again be relegated to victim, judged or sentenced at someone else's mercy or lack thereof.

Now it was her turn to lack mercy.  The Withered Mask fed so many of Melonwei's needs.  The close personal ties between the cultists fed her need to be loved by a family, her macabre scientific interests were fostered and encouraged, and they took her pain and her rage and they turned it into power.  They taught her how to master her own pain until no one else could ever hurt her again.

Melonwei received training in arcane magic, surgery, and finally took her vows as a Veiled Sister.  Her initiation was to perform surgery upon herself to harvest the necessary bone to craft the handle of her ritual kris, choose a bone within her skeleton to craft into her Phylactery, and to continually use her god's divinely gifted magic -- laced with unbearable agony -- to heal her own surgical wounds, cut with Gravesteel tools.  No being across the cosmos understands pain and suffering like a Veiled Sister, and Melonwei is a Sister Adeptus.





Melonwei was a younger Sister Novitiate when she met a half-elven bard by name of Haeldas.  She was washing her gloves in a river, and he was wandering the banks looking for inspiration in nature.  They fell in love, in the way of the young, and Melonwei began to hope she could love a man and her god simultaneously.

She could, for a while, indeed long enough to become pregnant.  Until one day she arrived at the secret riverside meeting spot she shared with Haeldas and found his tortured corpse pinned to a tree in pieces courtesy of Sister Novitiate Genevieve, a fellow Veiled Sister who felt that Haeldas made Melonwei weak.

Later that night, as Melonwei was grieving her loss in her personal quarters in the Withered Mask cathedral where she lived, she underwent a traumatic miscarriage and lost the baby she was expecting.  Sister Superior Veridanza said nothing when she found Melonwei sobbing and writhing in a pool of blood and tissue, just got her cleaned up and tended to and as whole as she could be made after that.

But after that experience, Melonwei began to feel uncomfortable with some of the practices of her church, specifically the process of turning the offspring of rival religious order the Silver Shroud into Childer Revenants (an immensely torturous process to craft extremely potent undead weapons of mass destruction) when the children achieved a practical size somewhere between the ages of four and ten.  Adults could freely be punished, in her eyes, adults had made decisions based upon free will and forethought that had earned them their torture and all the pain Nalthraxxi could dream for them, but what had children ever done?

Was she not herself a child the day the adults in her life had decided to kill her for being victimized at random?  Was that not the very reason she was even part of the Withered Mask?

Of course, the god of undeath, malignant necromancy, torture, punishment, slavery, pain, and domination is not a god that likes being doubted even in the slightest, and Melonwei found that Nalthraxxi's divine favor vanished, a candle in the wind, blown out by even the softest breeze.  For a time she held on and held out, hoping her doubts would fade and that Nalthraxxi would accept her back, restore her holy powers.  Nothing such ever happened, however, forcing Melonwei to get creative about performing the tasks and duties of a Veiled Sister with only a third of her proper strengths and abilities and without letting anyone else in the order know just what was happening.



It was the whim of the Illogical Field that brought a number of members of the Silver Shroud to Teragaia.  One even became a Weyr dragonrider, almost made friends, for a time, life was good.  It looked like their twenty six thousand year battle with the Withered Mask had come to a close.  Alas for them, the Illogical Field had snapped up a fair number of members of the Withered Mask as well, it just dropped them well away from Haven Village and thus allowed them to go unnoticed for months.

Sister Superior Veridanza, the highest ranking member of the Withered Mask contingent that had been teleported to Teragaia, advised patience and caution.  They were strangers in a strange world that had been transported by unknown means for an unknown reason, and running off without information would be singularly unwise.  Melonwei and an initiate named Nianca would have listened, a Death Mask named Jakoba would never defy Veridanza, but youth and enthusiasm overtook the rest of them.  Too much fire in their hearts and not enough experience tempering that fire, they opted to instead begin attacking and destroying outlying villages.

Yarvale.  Glenbrooke.  Blackthorn.  Survivors escaped Glenbrooke, but it was Blackthorn that ultimately got them noticed by the Silver Shroud...and the friends and allies the Silver Shroud had made in the intervening time since their arrival.

While Veridanza struggled to regain control over the frothing congregation and the troops went to war, Melonwei was left with the sole surviving prisoner, an elven doctor named Calaeron.  Her job was to torture him, surgically augment him into something truly terrifying.  Ultimately she was unable to bring herself to finish the job, as Calaeron proved entirely too compassionate to her in a time when he should have been pitying himself, and her last vestiges of purpose broke.  Melonwei unbound Calaeron from her surgical table and defected from the Withered Mask, fleeing into the rainy night to join Teragaia's defenders with her former victim.



As it happened, it was a good thing she did.  The Withered Mask uses a metal called Gravesteel for their weapons and tools, and Gravesteel does particularly ugly things to those of celestial being or heritage.  Even tiny, otherwise insignificant nicks prove fatal unless the counter-curse is performed, as the Gravesteel itself provides a horrible, excruciating infection...and the only other people among the defenders who could have performed the ritual were either dead or in need of that ritual in order not to die.  Melonwei bought the worth of her life saving Archangel Keldos and Cryptkeeper Jacien, as well as removing the Gravesteel curse from the afflicted non-angels who were nonetheless being tortured by it.

She freely surrendered afterward, surprised to see Sister Superior Veridanza had also given up without much of a fight.



Sister Superior Veridanza surrendered to the Weyr authorities.  Melonwei never quite knew whether she ought to have been surprised or not; Veridanza had never been particularly invested in the attack in the first place.  She was definitely not surprised by her own arrest, however, because traitor to the Withered Mask or not, she was still a Sister Adeptus and she had, prior to delivering Calaeron into safety, been performing a torturous surgery upon him.  She was definitely guilty of some things that deserved some punishments, and Melonwei was prepared to accept the consequences for that.

However, the firelizards of the village and Weyr started singing and flying in crazy patterns as the Veiled Sisters were being escorted to imprisonment, and a frantic blue dragon interrupted the prison walk to start nosing the prisoners toward the Hatching Sands, where Weyrwoman Sandasa's own Yuleth had eggs on the sand.  Eggs apparently ready to hatch.  Given that Weyrwoman Sandasa had to abandon the walk of shame to the prison in order to attend the Hatching anyway...she acquiesced to a detour.

Sandasa just hoped she'd be jailing Melonwei and Veridanza after the Hatching.  Sandasa's hopes were dashed, however, when Yuleth's precious golden egg cracked apart and the baby queen within attached herself to Veridanza, of all people, declaring her name to be Kalynath.  And, just because the Weyrwoman's life can't be easy, a green from the same clutch found Melonwei, and Melonwei's life hasn't been the same since she heard Tualarth's name.

Impression changed a few things.  The Veiled Sisters are dragonriders now, subject to the rules of Haven Weyr, and also subject to the incredible, soul-altering loyalty of a dragon Impression.  Teragaia has done what has been impossible for twenty six thousand years on their native world of Kassan'ha.

The Silver Shroud and the Withered Mask have become obligatory allies.




Vivisectionist, Surgeon -- Melonwei has a vast and detailed and completely firsthand scientific knowledge of how bodies go together.  She has taken bodies apart both alive and dead to see what makes them tick, which makes her more informed than any modern doctor on the nature of anatomy even if medical technology is obviously in a different place on her world.  She is also Not Squeamish and will not blink to sink her hands up to the elbows in viscera, dead or alive.  This makes her equally competent as a healer or as a medical examiner.

Necromancer -- Before she became a priestess, she was a wizard, and Melonwei has a supply of arcane spells at her command.  Most of them have to do with death magic, though she cannot cast spells having to do with the schools of Illusion or Evocation.  She can't make things look like things they're not or fling a fireball, but what she can do is...get creative.

Thanaturge -- It isn't just about casting the right spell, making undead.  Every component piece has its own power, its own mana.  Being able to discern that, listen to each bone, each little history, that's what makes for the ability to construct truly worthwhile undead.  Melonwei also knows rote rituals that actually involve relatively little magic, things she learned from her ancestors'journals in the attic, not from the Withered Mask.  She knows how to put together exactly the right pieces, she can speak to animals that are at least basically intelligent, and if she ever learns how to master the ability she might be able to turn herself into a raven at will.  That last one is a major maybe, though, as Melonwei has never been able to get the hang of it nor has she spoken to anyone who could walk her through the steps.  Melonwei will also eventually get the hang of casting curses, snarling a poetic invective in conversation and striking her victim with some kind of negative effect, unless Melonwei loses the battle of wills, of course, in which case she may end up cursing herself.

Surgically Fortified -- Melonwei is stronger than she looks, and if one looks closely at the scars that cover her body, one can see why.  Under the surface of her lies the reason for her inhuman strength, the sturdiness of her bones.  Her entire body has been fortified.  All of these incisions were made with Gravesteel tools, which means the pain associated with immense.  Her religious sect holds pain sacred, and the ability of the Veiled Sisters to withstand agony that would drop even the toughest men to their knees begging is part of why the Veiled Sisters are so feared even by the rest of the Withered Mask.  Melonwei may have walked away from her order, but she hasn't lost this much.  Pain is still sacred to her.  Nobody can hurt her as badly as she has already voluntarily hurt herself.  She will never be a victim.  Or so at least goes her logic on the matter.




Bone-Handled Ritual Kris --  The wicked edge on this wavy Gravesteel blade will leave a hell of a mark.  Picking it up causes exquisite, unbelievable agony to the person grasping the handle, a handle made of scraped-out fragments of Melonwei's own bones, inlaid and polished smooth.  Melonwei harvested the bone herself as an initiation into the Veiled Sisterhood of the Withered Mask, and that was one of the proudest days of her life.  Grasping the handle is as painful to her as it is anyone else, but this, also, is a point of pride for her particular religion.  Her ability to withstand that kind of pain without flinching was what made her fearsome, respected, terrifying even to her allies.  Being able to withstand that kind of pain on a whim, even welcome it, makes Melonwei feel powerful.  Like no mere mortal will ever be able to hurt her again, like she's invincible for being able to rejoice in pain that would bring powerful warriors sobbing to their knees and begging for their mothers.  Melonwei is fiercely protective of her kris and this little dagger will never leave her side unless she deems 'at her side' to be somewhere she's at risk of losing it, in which case she will secure it somewhere.  It is, without a doubt, her single most treasured possession.

Cleansed Gravesteel Surgical Toolkit --  Given their propensity toward torture, the Withered Mask makes every tool out of Gravesteel, an enchanted and cursed metal that causes horrific pain in its wounds that react badly to healing magic.  Given most of the alterations they make to bodies they turn into their special, custom-order undead types are done perimortem, the Withered Mask actually has highly advanced surgical tools.  The one problem, usually, is that these brilliantly designed tools are made of Gravesteel.  However, Melonwei's toolbox, specifically, was on her person when she performed the counter-curse for Gravesteel to reverse its effects upon Archangel Keldos and Cryptkeeper Jacien, and her tools were blasted by sheer proximity.  They are now simply Withered Mask-grade surgical equipment that is completely safe to use, which in a few surprising ways, for a culture that hasn't discovered automobiles yet, is an improvement on Earth's modern medical equipment.  The Withered Mask has been working on perfecting surgery for twenty six thousand years, and patient survival has always been the goal.

Spell Reagent Belt Pouch -- The Veiled Sisters of the Withered Mask are supposed to be premier spellcasters.  They are one third wizard, one third priestess, and one third thaumaturge, combining the arcane with the divine.  Melonwei carries the supplies for all three aspects habitually, although she really only has her wizardly power left at full strength.  She is also a thanaturge by blood, able to perform some death rituals by rote rather than magic.  She's still capable of thaumaturgy, combining the arcane with divine if she can channel divinity from some outside source, such as when she cleansed the Gravesteel using power she was borrowing from the angel Valariel.  Regardless of what she can or can't do, however, Melonwei likes to say she's prepared for as much as she can reasonably be prepared for.

Thanaturge Journal --  Her great-great-grandmother's journal, it's been in her family a loooong time.  And somehow it always seems to grow new pages, inviting the descendants to continue including their alchemical recipes, their new rituals, their findings and discoveries on the topic.  It carries recipes for special potion brewing, corpse preparation rituals for waking the dead without using spells, notes on animal speech, notes on animal transformation and how to become a spirit raven (this page is very worn, as if it is much-visited).

Personal Journal --  Melonwei has a lot on her mind.  She writes it down.  However, she's multi-lingual and it's not exactly deliberate encryption on her journal so much as that her brain is a stewpot that doesn't always think through full sentences in the same language when she's thinking to herself.  So if her journal wanders between languages mid-sentence, she's simply not paying attention to what she's doing.  It's actually not malicious and she is for once not out to get you.

Spell Tome  --  Melonwei is a wizard, still, even as she's lost her clerical magic.  Divinity stripped, arcane magic is all she really has left, at least as far as what she learned with the Withered Mask.  All the spells she knows as a wizard are in this tome, which she has to study in order to know which spells she can cast for the day.