When Halan of Gimirrai recreated the Vampire Creation ritual matrix, he took one of his niece's descendants, Oleastra, as apprentice (there were plenty of sibling and cousins, so the favoured lineage was in no danger of extinction.) He had tried this before, but with indifferent success--often it was religious scruples that prevented his relatives from taking the final step, but Oleastra was different: she took to sorcery amazingly well (she is actually smarter than Halan), beating his short apprenticeship by a year or so, and became a vampire fairly soon afterwards. Like Halan, she has no qualms about using Soul Reaving (a grim necromancy which uses mana from victims instead of the sorcerer's own to create magical items) on 'those who would assault or rob a young woman on her own in the city.' This has led her to collect quite a few zombie servitors...sometimes she magically disguises them as ordinary people to act as her retinue.
Oleastra also was of farmer stock: she soon noticed that vampires made horses too skittish to ride, so she sought about and eventually bound several keplians, huge black horse-like demons with red eyes, to their service.
She recently took possession of an abandoned, reputedly haunted, mansion on the eastern border of Hengistan. Known as Lord Shorpin's Keep, it was the site of a last-ditch defense, betrayal and magickal assassination some ninety years ago--coincidentally almost her own age. The locals shun the place even now: it was perfect for her purposes. She has quietly upgraded the defenses of the manor, while maintaining the ruined look of the exterior and grounds--except for the great summoning pentagram in the middle of the main courtyard, which she has also upgraded, with permanent stone-chip lines--no risk of Something erasing a line and escaping here!
She also recently had a run-in with Elissa, shaman of the Laraachin nomads, who had a long-standing feud with Halan over the death of some of her kinsmen. Oleastra was posing as a young noblewoman come to The Land in The Mountains to view the fine selection of silks available in the market there. Fortunately for Oleastra, Elissa flubbed her Summoning and was eaten by the Doomgaunts she had called up. Then Oleastra had to aid a party of passing adventurers in dismissing the beasts before they ravaged the charming valleys of Resh Fagli in the mountains--and had to flee the town with her zombies before she was unmasked by the judicial inquiry called into the matter. She was rather annoyed by this, of course...
Current State
Oleastra is playful and rash, but does have an eye for her own survival. She likes to develop binding spells for all sorts of creatures. She follows Halan's agenda most of the time: while technically not her ancestor, he is close enough to being the eponym that he has a lot of authority in her eyes. As a fellow vampire of much longer standing and greater experience than her--some fourteen generations, if we do the math--his suggestions are almost always so obviously sound that she doesn't care to dispute them. And as her mentor and former sorcerous master, he again wields a great deal of influence over her, from decades of her following his direction and lead. (Now that she is an independent sorcerer, she is gradually re-asserting her independence.)
Nonetheless, she doesn't live his ideals with the same zeal, not having had the long-ago experiences that Halan had. In particular she can't get very excited over the idea of a country that hasn't existed for almost twice her lifetime, even though the fate of Gimirrai is massively important to Halan. While any of Halan's apprentices (except Akchan!) is welcomed in Meyitshehz, which basically is his demesne, it's just a place to her: currently her home is Lord Shorpin's Keep. And she has her own pursuits: researching binding spells for creatures she has summoned, creating zombies from the bodies of those foolish enough to assault her, and having fun with her life existence.
Description
Age: 88 (looks 19)
Height: 172 cm
Weight: 64 kg
Frame: slender
Hair: black, long
Skin: fair but pale
Face: oval
Eyes: blue
Ears: average
Nose: pert
Voice: sultry and powerful
Expression: unreadable
Quirks: can be playful and coquettish, even rashly so--but she has powerful defenses...
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? Responses (8)
This looks really strange. Y'know there's a link to the html converter on the sub creation page. I assume that's what went wrong here, unless you've intentionally taken a short sub and tried to make it longer.
I assume you mean the link to 'keplian', which is indeed null: the link to 'Halan' works fine for me. I will change it to just bold when I am back at my desktop--after all I define keplians right there.
No, I mean the fact that all the text is compressed into the left corner. You don't see it? Did you write this on a phone, or something?
Actually, Gossamer, I viewed it on a phone, and the problem wasn't that obvious. I pasted as HTML from a reduced Notepad window--I guess the scrunched format carried over. Will try to fix it now.
Okay, removed the comments so I won't clog up your sub, now that it's fixed. As it stands right now, it's rather short, but since she's a minor character I'll overlook that.
I assume Soul Reaving is explained in the Halan sub? I would suggest adding a short description to it here as well, for clarity's sake.
What's good about it, is that it is system neutral. And even though it seems to be mostly background information at first glance, most of what makes up an Npc is all there.
Maybe explore her motivations some more, you wrote that she follows Halan in most things, but why? Is it simply because she is his sire, so she's forced to do so? Familial ties? Forbidden romance? Basicly, what makes her tick.
I read it twice but was still confused as I went through it. Just general ideas seem partially explored leaving me expecting something to add clarity. It is clear you know the character but not sure we got it all. I could see this being a solid 4 with a little work.
Update: Edited to give more insight into her motivations.
A good character, but I think she need a bit more motivation to be a more prominent player.
