Post by Heron on Feb 17, 2022 3:29:09 GMT
Name: Aisling Beaumont
Race: Half-Elf (Aen Elle)
Age: 457
Sex: Female
Alignment: Neutral Good
Appearance
Aisling is a tall, pale woman with white hair, the top half of which is pulled into a bun while the bottom half is allowed to blow free in the wind. Her large, shimmering eyes are green, reminiscent perhaps of flawed emeralds cracked and flecked with impurities. Her ears are pointed, but lack the length of point of her elven father’s. Scars completely disfigure what might have once been a pretty face. Aisling sometimes hides beneath a hood, sometimes throws her hood back, wearing a protective doublet designed by Halflings not to look like armor and padded pants to protect her legs. She always carries with her a greatspear made of living petrified wood, the bladed ends of which are affixed with great green gems.
Personality
A long history of betrayals and misfortunes has left Aisling a…cautious woman. Guarded and even paranoid at times, she doesn’t let people close easily. Her basic philosophy in life is that good people deserve protecting and bad people deserve stabbing, but usually the world doesn’t boil down that simply, and her other instinct is to cut and run as soon as people get too close to her. Getting too close to her is dangerous. But she tries to do good, and loneliness does get the better of her on occasion, even when she knows better than to stick around.
History
Most people from Aisling’s home world consider the Wild Hunt to be mythical. Phantoms, at best, meant to scare children and the gullible. Aisling knows better. Her father is one of their omnidimensional Navigators, one of those tasked to guide the elite warriors of Tir Na Lia wherever the King desires to conquer. The Aen Elle are a race of elves that would master the multiverse, if anyone let them, at least under the current king. Of course, Muiredach, Aisling’s father, owes King Eredin very little loyalty. A regicide isn’t worth much, after all, in fact he’s a national travesty, and so it is that Muiredach managed to disappear long enough to have a baby girl with a human witch. He had to flee and abandon them when Aisling was only seven, leaving a note saying the Hunt had caught his scent, that to protect them from harm, he had to leave, but the only thing Aisling understood at that age was abandonment.
Not that life got easier without him. The world frowned on inter-racial children, especially human and elf children, and Aisling never stopped catching hell just for the shape of her ears. Finding out she was a Source too? The most feared and reviled font of pure Chaos (magic) in the world? This is when life was easy. All she had to do was try to get a grip on abilities that seemed to jump and flee ahead of her, far beyond her control.
She aged without aging, in the way of elves, a gift from her father. In this time, every lover she ever had, she was forced to kill. She was cursed, twice. One of those curses was probably responsible for at least half the death and devastation. The other left her hallucinating every person she ever failed to help…including everyone she ever had to kill. Aisling was disfigured in an accident after centuries of collecting favors, turning enemies into friends and friends into enemies. She walked worlds, was knighted in Camelot, found Havenbeams and a greatspear made of them in the Yondering Lands.
Muiredach found her again four hundred and fifty years after he abandoned her, as brimming with love as she remembered but four and a half centuries too late to make apologies, in her opinion, whatever his reasons had been, however noble his intent. By this time she had unwisely gathered a party of companions to travel with. Her Wanderer’s Curse turned into Aharon’s son getting kidnapped, the doctor getting violated, all sorts of trouble. Ultimately the only cure, she was told, was to sacrifice the one person she loved most or lose everything. Muiredach volunteered to die, but no matter how much Aisling resented her father, she couldn’t kill him. Not to save herself. She let herself be robbed (benignly at first, and then not), then kidnapped, and her kidnapper tortured her into believing she was his dead wife, Iris. Eventually Muiredach and the party found her, killed her captor, and… It took some months to repair her, put her personality back together. Break Iris away and bring Aisling back out, but once the process started, Aisling fiercely fought her way back. The one thing she’s always had is a ferocious will to live.
Which is good, because the party barely tolerated her when she regained her senses. Aharon actively chased her off for what happened to his son, and that’s where her story here begins, one world jump away from where she tried to start again and failed. Maybe Teragaia is a story of new-new-new beginnings, redemption for evils committed by proxy, and a place for a lost girl to find herself again.
Powers and Abilities
Self Control – Risk surrounds any Source that taps into their raw magical potential, for anything is possible and all manner of chaos may be unleashed. This could result in anything from properly formed spells to a massacre of Chaos.
Will of the Forest – Aisling goes nowhere without her leafy wooden greatspear, the Will of the Forest, which does substantially more damage than you’d guess by looking at it, and also plants a full-sized adult tree wherever it claims a kill.
Worldwalker – Because her father is a Navigator, Aisling inherited the ability to walk dimensions freely.
Cursed – Aisling still sees people she failed to save as hallucinations and often interacts with them.
Damaged Goods – Aisling has been through more than most and isn’t still all-together. Sometimes she forgets she has a strong accent. Sometimes she forgets friends aren’t going to hurt her.
