Aletha (Wainwright) Hoarfrost

Name: Aletha Hoarfrost

Race: Human

Sex: Female

Age: 27

Alignment: Lawful Evil



Appearance: Aletha is a tall, statuesque woman of 5'11", slightly more broad-shouldered than is feminine, but her muscular bulk is also lithe, strength as bendy as it is sturdy.  Seen in more minimal clothing, her sculpted musculature is more apparent, lean and chiseled, some artist's rendition of a warrior's ideal physique, perhaps, though hers is as much earned as it is natural genetic luck.  Her daily rituals involve a few hours devoted to keeping herself in shape.  Her skin is naturally pale, a porcelain complexion that almost suggests a noble pedigree, but unlike a princess or a duke's daughter, Aletha's skin is also crosshatched with scars of all manner.  Sword cuts, burns, calluses torn and re-healed, knuckles battered by countless hours spent punching a heavy bag of grit -- or opponents, be they enemies or sparring partners.  Aletha's ink-black hair extends to her clavicles in length on the rare occasions she lets it down, though more often than not it is restrained back into a ponytail, a braid, or some combination of the two.  Her eyes are usually a sort of intense, steely blue-grey, though they drift more towards blue or towards grey based on circumstance.  Purpose, intent, stress, adrenaline, anger, that sort of intensity bleaches the color from her eyes and makes her stare a darker, more intimidating pewter.  More human and humane emotions, however, flush the blue a little richer and brighter, giving her eyes more of a cloudy sky look that might almost be beautiful.  Her cheekbones are high, her lips shapely, her nose regal rather than ladylike, or it was before her warrior career began and it was broken a few times.

Perhaps stereotypically for a woman of her profession, Aletha prefers to wear black, often trimmed in shades of crimson and steel.  Her casual clothing is black.  Her armor is black.  Her cloak is black with a red border.  The one thing that truly doesn't match the rest of her attire is the ring she wears on her left ring finger, an intricate piece of masterwork copper that must be an alloy of some kind to keep its shape so well for all the abuse the ring takes.  The ring itself is an ouroboros, a snake swallowing its own tail, but woven around the serpent are three successive bolts of lightning, their ends braided into a seamless, continuous loop.  The lightning bolts themselves are off in color, definitely alloys with other metals, perhaps platinum for one, darksteel for another, rose gold the third maybe.  Only two small pieces of lapis lazuli in the serpent's eyes interrupt the masterful workmanship.

The other thing always found on Aletha’s person is Poetic Justice, a finely crafted longsword that appears almost forged from gold, with a polished lapis lazuli in the pommel.  It may be gold in color, certainly, but Poetic Justice is not a soft-metal blade, no ornament, no ceremonial decoration to show off.  When drawn by Aletha, the blade erupts with holy white flames, although the power that hums down the blade is forboding and sings of darkness and pain.  A blade of her faith, a holy avenger that can, ironically, only be wielded by a Blackguard, one who has dedicated his or her life to the commission of evil.  The paradoxical sword is a match for Aletha herself, however, and it is rarely apart from her person.



Personality: Most people who hear "Blackguard" expect a cackling lunatic or a sadistic sociopath, but Aletha is neither.  At times she is nearly a sociopath, true, as she experiences most of her emotions from behind a thick, obscuring curtain that mutes most everything down to a dull tap of rain against the windows of her heart, closed away and distant from her here-and-now, but Aletha does not fight for personal gain, nor does she desire to destroy the world.  Her words can be brash and often cold, but those capable of sensing the darkness in her soul need not worry quite so much.

Sometimes evil is not evil for evil's own sake.  Sometimes evil doesn't even oppose good.  In Aletha's case, evil is an ouroboros, a cannibalistic thing that devours itself: she is an evil that harms only evil by design.

Straightforward, more often succinct than unnecessarily wordy, Aletha's personality is laconic and maybe sometimes abrasive.  She carries an intimidating presence about herself, and she leans on it with the cold certainty that scaring people is healthier for them than killing them, usually.  While not impatient, she dislikes unnecessary dancing around points when directness better suits.  And Poetic Justice remains in its sheathe more than not, because it is not misnamed.  Aletha's cause, the thing that drives her, the purpose that carries her through every day and every trial, is justice.  And, failing justice, vengeance.

What sets her apart from most anyone else in her profession, though not from anyone in her religion, necessarily, is her sense of honor.  Her honor is non-negotiable, and it binds her more surely than any regional law and certainly more than any gut reaction to a situation.  She has RULES.  And that personal code of conduct guides her every move, no matter what smarting or bitter snark comes out of her mouth.

History: One might venture a guess that "Hoarfrost" isn't Aletha's original family name, and one would be correct.  Actually, her family name is Wainwright, a family of humble origins.  



Her father was a hard-faced man who worked long hours building and repairing wagons just outside of Beregost, a small town along the Sword Coast.  She also had two sisters, one older, one younger, though their mother died birthing the youngest and their father never seemed able to forgive Sinead for that perceived murder, always treating her the most harshly, although he was hardly gentle with Aletha or Tabitha, the eldest.  He was strict, controlling, impossible to please, and intensely liberal with the backs of his hands when his girls transgressed against him.

A wandering minstrel seduced impressionable and desperate young Sinead when she was a tender sixteen years, but left her pregnant and alone.  She hid her heartbreak and pregnancy both as long as she could, but at some point it became too much to hide, and the intervention of her sisters between her and the father intent on hurting her for her sins got all three of them booted out of Beregost.  Hopeful for a better life, all three sisters headed for Neverwinter, looking for a fresh start.  Sadly, the journey was too much for Sinead; between malnutrition and stress, she fell ill easily and it took her life on the road, unborn baby and all.  Aletha, seventeen, and Tabitha, nineteen, pressed on, however, determined to keep their sister alive in spirit even if her body was in a cemetery they might never be able to visit again.



Tabitha felt the Call, the beacon to service that beckons fledgling paladins to their gods' causes, and fell in with the church of Tyr.  Easily done in Neverwinter, as Tyr is one of the city-state’s most revered gods, lord of justice as He is.  Aletha, for the time, picked up a longsword and made her way to the Trade of Blades, a mercenary hub.  Not quite an inn or tavern, not quite a barracks, but both, it was a good place to learn.  Aletha made a promising warrior and skilled mercenary for some time while her elder sister served the church of Tyr in good standing, and all was well.

It couldn't last.

Tabitha never did clear up the details of her attack to Aletha, though she did press charges against one of her superiors in the church.  Aletha came back from protecting a caravan to find her battered, bloodied sister, still quiet and endlessly dignified as church officials tore into her statements, looking for inconsistencies.  It wasn't that they wanted to doubt her, they said, it was that accusations like that were a big deal and they had to be sure before they ruined a member of the clergy so thoroughly.  While the questions themselves angered Aletha, she understood that they had a point.  Due process was due to the victim and the accused both.  It wouldn't do to convict the wrong man for Tabitha's...attack, although Aletha only had suspicions as to the nature of the extent of that attack.  The case went to trial in a few weeks.  The judge found the accused innocent of all charges, not simply not guilty, and Tabitha was relieved of her church duties and sentenced to disciplinary actions for slander.

Shortly, Tyr revoked His divine blessings from Tabitha.  In hindsight, Aletha has come to see that perhaps Tyr was not disapproving of Tabitha so much as trying to indicate that she needed to rest from her duties and heal both body and spirit before continuing, but gods have never been good with words and the message was not, at the time, understood.

Some time after the trial, Aletha had retired to her room at the Trade of Blades after a long day of hard training (she still had a lot of anger to vent and it was better to hurt dummies than people) and a correspondingly long stay at the bathhouse.  It was maybe two or three in the morning, Neverwinter was asleep but for the patrolling Greycloaks on guard duty, the Many-Starred Cloaks running their late-night experiments, the thieves doing their thief-ly things in the darkness.  Aletha was down to a thin sleeping shift and bare feet when a cold feeling of dread plunged through her and without knowing why, she ran out of the Trade of Blades and up through the city to the Temple of Tyr.  She ran hard and fast enough to bloody both feet, leaving a trail of red footprints in her wake, terminating in a sloppy crimson skid in front of the altar in the main prayer chamber where in daylight hours the masses would assemble to say their peace to the Maimed God.  Aletha cradled Tabitha’s limp form in her arms, her banshee's wail echoing off of the vaulted stone arches of the temple's tall architecture.

Aletha begged Tyr for a miracle.  Tabitha died in her arms.

Despite the screams, no one from the church had offered aid or healing magic because the small silver dagger, ornamental, probably a decorative letter opener, had been rammed into Tabitha's chest by Tabitha herself.  And healers never touched suicides, attempted or successful.  Partly because it seemed disrespectful to countermand the decedent's obvious final wish so pointedly, partly because it was thought to be extremely bad form to consort with suicides, something offensive to the gods, something cursed.

Even knowing that, the embers of hate still burned solar-hot and arctic-cold and acid-bright in Aletha's heart.  The Prelate got to keep his job at the Temple, having harmed a paladin and then humiliated her in court.  He was rewarded, she was punished.  Punished!  By the same court that should have protected her!



She broke into the Prelate's appointments at the Temple of Tyr a few days later, after her sister's funeral in the Warrens off of the Beggars' Nest district, the only cemetery that would take the unholy and unsanctified addition of a suicide.  Aletha had her sword poised and cocked back to plunge through the whimpering Prelate's heart, relishing that the fat old toad was too scared to scream, when her sword arm was grabbed from behind by an arm not shaking with grief and rage, and a cowled and masked man led her away while an identically-dressed woman proceeded with what sounded, to Aletha's human hearing as she walked away in the stranger's grasp, like a sound beating and what might be more personal violations.

The people who took her from the Temple of Tyr, and from the Trade of Blades, and from Neverwinter totally, leading her far away to an entirely new start, were from the church of Hoar -- the other god of justice.  Unlike Tyr, however, Hoar is not the beacon of legal system justice that can so often fall corrupt from within by simple human error, but the Lord of Three Thunders, the god of poetic justice, righteous retribution, and vengeance.

Since Aletha's induction into the church of Hoar, her skills as a warrior have been honed into the lethal precision of a Weapon Master -- her weapon of choice the basic longsword, simple, elegant, and versatile -- and she has taken the vows of a Blackguard, pledging her life to the service of eternal evil.  Although in her case evil exists to work so that good can sleep safely at night or, should such protectorship fail, be avenged in a river of blood.  

Eventually she earned enough of a rank in the church to be granted the right to try her hand at picking up a very special golden sword on the church altar, a sword forged by a master dwarven blacksmith and enchanted by arcane might and Hoar personally both.  A vorpal holy avenger, a longsword almost more art than blade, the two-faced coin held to the light emblem of Hoar worked into the pommel in three different types of semi-precious stone -- turquoise, lapis lazuli, aventurine -- on both sides of the blade, surrounding a star sapphire that hums with power.  It takes a special sort to pick up Poetic Justice, the most paradoxical blade ever created, but to nobody's real astonishment at the time, the sword left the altar readily in Aletha’s hand and white holy fire seared down the length of golden blade.



Aletha has done a lot of work for the church of Hoar, protecting the innocent and brutally avenging the fallen.  Nothing's ever shaken her quite so badly as the last thing she ever did in the name of her god on the face of Faerun...before her unexpected trip.

It was pure chance she happened across the wounded rangers in the forests of Cormanthor, but it was in Hoar's name that she heard out their story.  A Baron, set to be overrun by the Zhentarim (only the ugliest group of slaving, pillaging destroyers across the Realms), in a panic.  A demon summoned in a moment of desperation.  The demon's price...the Baron's son, just three years old.  For his barony, the Baron was willing to make the sacrifice.  His soldiers were not.

Somehow young Melorius Waldlaw had ended up in the hands of the drow, and self-same drow had thoroughly trounced Seeker Jorian's rangers.

Poetic Justice demanded drow blood and Aletha was in a mind to agree with the blade, and so she took up the fight the rangers had been unable to complete; she would save Melorius Waldlaw.  500 Amnian drakes were on offer, but she wasn't in it for the money, just the injustice of a toddler being served to a demon and then rescued from that only to be snatched by the drow...likely agents of that same demon.

Forests full of spiders and a cave full of drow and Aletha finally freed Melorius from the binding wards that held him only to find that the three year old -- if that was even a totally accurate estimation of the boy's age -- spoke not only like an adult but like an arrogant master wizard, taunting Aletha for her suspected motivations for coming to his rescue (none of his musings accurate, but that was not the alarming part).  She took the boy back to Seeker only to find that--

...Seeker served Melorius.  Something was gravely wrong here.  Aletha was left with the impression that Melorius Waldlaw, the real one, if he'd ever existed in the first place, was very, very dead.  The drow had likely captured the summoned demon and imprisoned him against his will, and the demon's servants had needed help freeing their master.  A master in the form and face of a scared little boy to move even the most dark-hearted soul to break to his cause.

But as the world erupted in a flash of teleportation magic, Seeker and Melorius and the "wounded rangers" that Aletha now very much doubted were either wounded or rangers at all...Aletha found herself swept up in it, too, and then she left the world of Faerun very much behind her.


Blackguard -- As a Blackguard, Aletha has a number of powers and perks.  Spell-like abilities to increase her personal strength, to summon fiends (in her case from Hell, not the Abyss), to summon undead (rarely used), to fortify her personal strength and durability with the force of her personality much like a paladin...except not so pure and bright.  She also has the ability to channel negative energy and inflict wounds of various severity and, once daily, cause someone to contract a horrible disease.  Inversely, she is extremely difficult to infect with diseases or catch off-guard, or poison, for that matter, though her knowledge of poisons is slightly terrifying if one takes the time to catalogue it.  She can also Turn the undead much like paladins and priests, though she’ll admit their holy might is much superior to her own.

Weapon Master -- Less to do with her faith and more to do with her intensive training with the longsword -- particularly Poetic Justice, which has become an extension of Aletha’s body, mind, and soul -- Aletha can channel a personal spiritual force called ki down her blade every so often to augment how much damage she inflicts when she lands a hit.  Also, she is nearly unstoppable with a longsword in hand, specifically.

It should be noted that any non-longsword melee weapon in her hand is clumsy, untrained, and she is totally forbidden from even touching ranged weapons.

Conviction -- Aletha is extremely difficult to scare or sway off course when she's sure she's right.  When her faith gets involved, when it becomes about her god and about her cause, Aletha is a locomotive that cannot be taken off its tracks or brought to a stop before impact.  This can be a good thing, and it can be a bad thing, but mostly it is just a thing-thing that exists as a core part of her personality.