Isolde of Gheso

Name: Isolde of Gheso
Race: Witcher
Age: 125
Sex: Female
Alignment: Arguably Neutral
Also Known As: The Golden Serpent

Appearance
Standing at about 5’4”, Isolde of Gheso is probably the shortest witcher to have ever graduated from the School of the Viper and earned the viper medallion she wears at all times -- regardless of the rest of her manner of dress. Her right eye is amber and snake-slit, like a witcher’s eye should be, but her left eye is milky white and blind, with a corresponding scar over her face from a siren’s scythe-like tail. Her hair is long enough to reach the backs of her knees, but she keeps it all in a neat, serpentine braid, a twisting rope of gold that follows her head’s every movement. Isolde favors her relic black Witcher armor to wear, although she has been known to dress down to a white gambeson and a pair of cavalry pants for informal occasions when a hunt is not expected. Most witchers are recognizable for carrying two swords, one steel and one silver, but Isolde carries four slightly smaller swords, two steel and two silver. Often, when trying to look closer at someone or understand what they are saying, Isolde will cock her head to the left so that her right eye and ear have a more dominant point of view.

Personality
Culturally speaking, Isolde is polite. She’s Nilfgaardian by origin, they’re a polite society. That being said, Isolde has had most of her emotions stripped from her by the process that turned her into a witcher when she was a child. That’s not to say she doesn’t feel. It’s just wrapped in many layers of something muffling and on the other side of a pane of very thick glass, meaning an emotion must be strong before it begins to have an effect on her. Someone so far removed from emotion needs a guiding light to keep her right or she might do regrettable things, and this is why Isolde clings to the Path, the way of the witcher. Save the people from the monster, get the coin, and get out of town before people get tired of her. Being as that’s become more problematic of late, she’s set her sights on making acquaintances and getting the lay of the land, hoping to avoid cross-cultural faux pas and misunderstandings rooted in her limited ability to read people and situations. However, many people find her lack of reactions… off-putting, to say the least, particularly in the cases of carnage and corruption. The bright side of being nearly emotionless, however, is that Isolde is always steady and alert, objective and rational. And she’s been trained, always protect the people from the monsters...even if they don’t pay very well.

History
Everyone who knows anything about witchers, the mercenary monster hunters, the mutants who fight the things in the dark, knows they’re all men. Witchers don’t train girls, it’s a well-known fact, which makes Isolde something of a peculiarity. But her circumstances were not unique. Every so often someone can’t pay a witcher in gold and has to get creative, and reward by the Law of Surprise is given instead of pay. The reward-giver’s next boon, or the first personal treasure they lay their eyes on upon returning home, becomes the reward. This means rewards can vary. Sometimes it’s a horse, or a dog, a house...and quite often it’s a child. Isolde, then named Anwen, was the first treasure her father laid eyes on when he returned home from his rescue, and so it was that her new father, a witcher of the School of the Viper, came into possession of a little girl. And as it happens, not many witchers have a clue what to do with a little girl, so Yakob did the only thing he knew how to do, and he went back to his home school, which for the Vipers is Gorthwr Gvaed, in the Tir Tochair Mountains. Having no real idea what to do with a toddler, much less a female one, Yakob...trained her. What else was he supposed to do? (The thought of an orphanage crossed Yakob’s mind, briefly, before he got attached and started training little Anwen to use a blade.) Little Anwen seemed to have a natural aptitude for the witcher training Yakob gave her in place of the parenting he had little idea how to do. She even learned the magic-casting Signs before any of the boys in her age group, and she wasn’t even officially training. Eventually, the master of the School reached the conclusion that Anwen’s future as a witcher, at least, as a candidate, was inevitable, and subjected her to the Trial of Grasses, the agonizingly painful process of preparing her body for the mutagens that would transform her from a human and into a witcher. This was not a smooth process for Anwen, leaving her with more mental scarring than was usual for survivors of the Trials, and dampening her emotions even more than most witchers experienced. But she survived the Trials and the mutagens, which turned her eyes from viridian green to amber and vertically slit. And since she survived, that meant she was allowed to choose her own name, a new name, by which the world would know her as a witcher. And so it was that Isolde of Gheso was born.

And not many years later bungled her first hunt, although she wouldn’t say it was entirely her fault. She and a mage named Angorn were forced to work together, and magical mishap on someone’s part found Isolde and Angorn bound by bond, so each always knows when the other is in distress. It was Isolde’s first hunt, but not her last. Nearly a decade later, a siren’s blade-like tale flicked across Isolde’s face and took out her left eye, rendering it permanently blind, beyond any magical ability to repair more than cosmetically. Following decades found her making normal hunting rounds for any witcher, but racking up a thousand crowns’ worth of debt because while Isolde is a brilliant monster hunter, she is a terrible player of the dwarven card game known as Gwent, and eventually she decided she had best stop with the cards before it became more than a thousand crowns. Soon after that, she found herself a convenient pawn in a life-sized game of chess played by kings and nobles, manipulated into breaking the vows of the Path. In disgust, she left the North and headed back down south to her native Nilfgaard, where she made an ally of a duchess who hired her for a job. They remained friends until the duchess’ death some fifty years later. But long before that time, Isolde was hired to eradicate a specter from a watchtower that had been abandoned for the haunting. While it was a particularly challenging fight to lay the spirit to rest, Isolde found, to great irony, that the spirit had been harmless all the while. People could have simply lived around it the entire time.

Not long after that, she caught the attention of a bard. He made advances on her, and she rebuffed him quite abruptly. This is usually not a wise thing to do to bards, as then one tends to get a reputation one might not want, but when Isolde began hearing tales of the venomous Golden Serpent, she was actually rather flattered. Without meaning to, the bard had gotten her School right. He had probably been referring to her hair when he’d come up with the title, but it was fitting.

It bit her in the ass shortly thereafter, however, when she incurred her first assassination attempt. Someone attempted to kill the Viper with a viper, and while she survived the nearly-fatal bite over her heart, her health was permanently impacted by the venom. Isolde will never admit being frailer than she used to be, but she is. Awareness of this weakness keeps her alive, kept her alive when she made her first deadly enemy in a criminal whom she’d mistaken for an ally -- granted, that probably hadn’t been wise, and she probably should have seen that betrayal coming. She hadn’t predicted his ability to use magic. He remains at large, and very dangerous. Isolde also should have known better than to try her hand at Gwent again to distract herself from her troubles, because she worked up another gambling debt on a hot losing streak Fate couldn’t break if She tried.

Isolde’s most notable hunt before she stumbled into a magic vortex and landed on Teragaia was a banshee. Not just just incorporeal, but incorporeal and clever, the banshee figured out that Isolde’s left side was her blind side and developed a trick of appearing suddenly in Isolde’s blindspot to scream right into Isolde’s left ear. Isolde went to a healer after the fight, as her ear had been bleeding quite heavily and no longer registered sound, but the damage was permanent. She could no more hear out of her left ear as she could see out of her left eye. Which puts her in the precarious position of being a sensory-challenged predator still adapting to her losses.

Powers and Abilities...and Vulnerabilities
Dual-Wielder -- Isolde, being of the School of the Viper, can dual-wield weapons without the usual penalties due to her specialized training. She prefers the Fast Style, but has been known to use the Strong Style and the Group Style when necessary.

Alchemist -- Someone has to make the potions, decoctions, and oils that get a witcher through his or her daily routines and special jobs. That’s usually the witcher him or herself, and like just about every witcher, Isolde has a broad understanding of alchemical processes.

Witcher Training -- Monster lore, meditation techniques, ways by which hexes and curses may be removed or undone...on top of all of the rigorous physical training that makes her very good with her weapons.

Signs -- Simple magical pseudo-spells that witchers can cast with hand gestures.
    Aard -- A blast of air that can knock through loose walls or send enemies flying.
    Igni -- A blast of concentrated fire that can cause things to ignite.
    Axii -- The ability to charm, muddle, or control another’s thoughts.
    Yrden -- A magical trap.
    Quen -- A magical shield.

Weakened Constitution -- Due to being bitten by a highly toxic viper in her sleep in an assassination attempt that did not go as planned, Isolde is not as hardy as she once was and is missing some of her vitality.

See No Evil -- Thanks to the blade-like tail of a siren, Isolde has a lovely scar down the left side of her face, brow to jaw, and the eye has been as repaired as it gets, which means the healers turned it back into an eyeball, but now it is milky white and useless. Blind. This forces Isolde to turn her head a lot to compensate for the lack of vision on her left.

Hear No Evil -- And, due to the efforts of a now-defeated banshee, Isolde’s left ear has been blown to smithereens and sound is a memory getting more distant by the day. This is still a relatively new injury to her, so she’s still adjusting to being half-deaf, but already she’s learned to lead with the right side of her head when she’s trying to pay attention.

Relic Armor -- Admittedly, not all of Isolde’s prowess is due to her natural ability and rigorous training. With Raven’s Armor, she’s much more protected and supernaturally calmed, as well as stronger than she is without it.