...And here she is. Not the character I intended to use 15 minutes ago but much better suited to the RP.
Name: Elspeth Adrastia
Age: 55
Race: Nord
Gender: Female
Height/weight: 5'9" 160 lbs
Class: Shadowbane Inquisitor
Preferred dialogue colour:
gold
Appearance
Hair: Brown in a pixie cut. The pic below shows her hair and eyes only. Nothing else looks like her.
Eye colour: Brown
Skin colour: Pale
Build: Tall and strong, the perfect proportion of fat and muscle for a woman her age and height.
Usual clothes:
Full ebony armor with a trailing black cape, elbow length ebony gloves, armored ebony knee high boots with pointed toes and a tall wide brimmed hat. Also has a two piece pair of white long underwear underneath to keep her warm (basically long johns).
Personality: Extremely calm and tranquil. Extremely disciplined, strict and has a routine she never deviates from. She is most comfortable around those of like mind and habit but welcomes those of any walk of life in order to keep her perspective balanced. She is often hard and judgmental but only because her code demands it of her. She is warm and kind-hearted when she can afford to be, such as in private with people that have proven their trustworthiness or when caring for children or other innocents.
Positive traits: Strong, focused, honorable, unshakably loyal to those she fights alongside, honest, almost impossible to distract or frustrate, near perfect discipline, selfless, kills without mercy, remorse or reflection.
Negative traits: Strict, rigid, very conservative, predictable, can have her own code used against her, has difficulty relaxing, sees much of the world in black and white with no room for interpretation or compromise, kills without mercy, remorse or reflection, follows her code regardless of moral, legal or social conflict.
Likes: The order her code brings to her life, watching people, making up stories about them based on what she can observe, being warm, a soft bed, red wine, hot well prepared food, meditating, gazing into the night sky, the warmth and peace a fire brings.
Loves: Her daughters, children, cats, shepherds pie, boiled cabbage, Stendarr.
Dislikes: Daedra, undead, drunks, killing innocents, retreating, thieves, assassins, those she deems without honor, laziness, those that put pleasure over work.
Fears: Losing her daughters, having to kill her daughters, being imprisoned, failure.
Aspirations: To wander The Empire for as long as she is able, serving the code, removing evil and meeting out justice. If she dies in battle it would be a good death but if she dies an old woman warm in bed then she will know without a doubt that her life had meaning. She would be able to die in peace.
Weapons: A silver longsword as shown above except it glows white instead of the bluish colour. It is enchanted with restoration magic to produce a white hot flame that can cleave through armor, flesh and bone. That isn't to say it can cut through anything in one stroke but it will break any substance with enough force and repetition. Flesh wounds become cauterized and armor becomes cracked and weakened when struck if it is not cut through outright.
A device that is made like a hand crossbow but uses magika to produce a constant stream of flame. Elspeth calls it a flametongue wand. It works just like a staff of flames except it's smaller and has a more limited range. She can press and activation rune on the top to produce the licking flames at the muzzle and pull the trigger to produce the cone of flame. Looks like the picture above.
Elspeth also has a heavy ebony crossbow she carries across her back. Not shown but it looks just like the one in Skyrim.
Fighting style: Elspeth is a front line melee fighter. When with a group, she is always at the front. When alone she charges without fear or hesitation. She activates her flametounge wand as soon as she gets close enough, then engages her foes in melee combat. The flametounge wand is handy enough to be used as a close combat weapon and is deadly at point blank range but she must be mindful of what she shoots at to avoid burning an ally. She strikes quickly, making the sting of her blade felt through small quick cuts, then pouncing on any foe who stumbles. She executes said foe with as much flair as possible to demoralize his fellows and to make sure he's dead. If taking on a winged foe or an exceptionally large one, Elspeth will use her crossbow to kill or weaken it, engaging in melee combat if necessary to finish it off.
Skills: A master of one handed combat, heavy armor, crossbows, restoration magic, alteration magic, fire based destruction magic and smite magic, essentially weaponized restoration magic. Its use against the undead and daedra is obvious but it is also potent against the living. Elspeth can create a flash of light that blinds and disorients enemies or bolts of golden magic or beams of light similar in effect to fire spells. She can even press her hand against a foe's exposed skin to summon a burning brand of Stendarr. The brand causes incredible pain for its bearer and gives them an overwhelming compulsion to fall to their knees and confess their sins. If placed on armor, the brand has a less severe but more widespread effect, slowly heating the wearer until he starts to cook inside his own armor. Most either fall to the ground from heat exhaustion or madly try and rip their armor off. Both easy prey for Elspeth and her holy blade.
Family: One deceased husband and three daughters, all vampires.
Reputation: Elspeth is a member of the Inquisition of Stendarr, a monastic order created after the Oblivion Crisis to protect the Empire from undead, daedra and other extraordinary threats before they can cause harm. As Cyrodiil is the heart of the Empire any threat to it must be quickly and mercilessly stamped out. The Inquisiton of Stendarr was created with the same goals in mind as the Vigil of Stendarr and was formed around the same people but where the Vigilants are teh rank and file monster hunters of Tamriel Inquisitors are the best of the best. The Inquisition deals with situations that have exceeded what normal men and even Vigilants can cope with. They are the finest monster hunters in all Tamriel and are completely free to carry out their holy mission anywhere they desire. Some Inquisitors are on a lifelong mission of revenge or penance. Others seek a life of service out of duty or fulfilling a purpose. Many members come from the Vigil or the Dawnguard and their experience is invaluable but they all must give up their lives and everything in them to become an Inquisitor. It is a total commitment. There are few who are willing to give of themselves so completely and there is a high casualty rate during training. Those who survive with both grace and honor must prove themselves worthy during initiation, a long and brutal time of training, fasting, scripture education and prayer that ends with taking the Code of the Inquisition. The Code is a long and detailed tome that covers almost any situation but at its heart it is relatively simple. Protect the weak when you can, strike at evil when you encounter it, give the enemies of mortals no quarter or mercy and let nothing stand in your way. Destroy evil by any means necessary.
This last part of the code is what Inquisitors of Stendarr are best known for and is the strongest reason why they are viewed with as much fear as awe. An Inquisitor will do anything and everything, even kill innocents, to complete her mission. If a vampire and his teenage victim must die to save five others, so be it. If a house must be burnt to the ground with its family still inside in order to prevent a werewolf's escape, so be it. If an entire village must be burnt to the ground with its people locked inside their homes to ensure a vampire coven's destruction or its people crucified along the main road to destroy a coven of witches, so be it.
Backstory: Elspeth spent her youth as part of a bandit clan, joining at 16. For a relatively normal farm girl from Rorikstead, it was the most exciting and freeing thing she could have imagined. She spent her days killing, making love to men, doing everything to excess and experiencing all life has to offer. By the time she was 24 however, her choices caught up with her. The clan was ordered by a very wealthy client to storm a small village and take everything in the town center. They were expecting weapons, gold and other riches but what they found was the town's children. Half the clan, including Elspeth, realized their client was a slaver and objected. The other half, including the leader, wanted to continue the job anyway. What resulted was a full on melee in which most of the clan slaughtered each other. Elspeth used the distraction to free the children and lead them to safety in nearby Morthal. She and the clan she was with were well known throughout Skyrim but she was granted a pardon by High King Torygg as thanks for her heroic deed on the condition that she end her life as a bandit. Considering what she had just been through, Elspeth had no trouble accepting and decided to settle in quiet Morthal and rekindle her love of the Divines. The gods she had been taught to revere as a girl and had selfishly cast aside during her maiden years. She found a husband, a priest of Stendarr, and together they started a family.
Elspeth bore three beautiful daughters and was looking forward to sitting back and enjoying her matronly years with her family. For years she did but on her oldest daughter Lassa's 20th birthday, disaster struck. Lassa had taken a shine to a boy named Istvan several months back. There was no boy more handsome, more charismatic or more polite in all of Morthal. He showered Lassa with gifts and was enamored by even her most mundane qualities. She was deeply in love with him and for her 20th birthday he promised her the grandest birthday party a girl could ask for. Preparations began weeks in advance, the entire town was abuzz, the entire inn was rented out just for the party. There were even rumors that Istvan was going to ask Lassa to marry him. The party came and everyone was invited and it was just as wonderful as everyone expected and more. Lassa was the happiest girl in Skyrim and her sisters, far from being jealous, looked forward to their own birthdays, for Istvan had may friends. All just as handsome and wealthy as he and there were many who were interested in Elspeth's girls.
That night, as everyone slept peacefully, Istvan and his friends revealed their true nature. They were vampires from a nearby coven, the same that would be destroyed by the Dragonborn years later but much more powerful at the present time. Lassa and her sisters Yvette and Ria were raped and fed upon by the vampires. The screams from the inn were all the warning Elspeth and her husband got. She rushed to it as fast as she could, donning armor and weapons she hadn't used in years, but she was too slow. It was too late. All three of her daughters were carried off by these monsters and taken to their coven in the wilderness. Over the next few hours Imperial Soldiers, Vigilants of Stendarr and any able bodied men were assembled and Elspeth led them into the vampire lair with the fury only a mother could feel. Casualties were heavy and her husband was lost in the assault but Elspeth's blade pierced Istvaan's black heart. Even so he had the last laugh. Elspeth's daughters were infected with vampirism and were slowly turning. She could not bear to kill her daughters and could provide precious little comfort over the next three days. The disease worked its way into each of them and drove them mad with pain. They all wished for death and their mother wasn't strong enough to give it to them. When they finally turned and had their first taste of blood in the form of a cow, Elspeth felt as if her daughters were already dead. As a priestess she could not keep them with her and she could not kill her own daughters so she looked for another option. Any other option.
The Count of Skingrad in Cyrodiil heard of her situation and summoned the lot of them down south. Elspeth was shocked to find that the Count was also a vampire but was beyond relief when he offered to take her daughters in. They would live here, isolated but safe and comfortable, where all their needs were met. After a long discussion and many tears Yvette and Ria accepted but Lassa did not. She proclaimed that she was free at last from rules and her mother's strict ways and ran off to explore her new powers. Elspeth's heart was broken but she knew exactly what path her daughter was headed down. The next day she traveled to the Imperial City and became an Inquisitor of Stendarr. That was eleven years ago and mother and daughter have grown as apart as could be possible. Elspeth a paragon of discipline and pitiless justice, determined to rid the world of evil at any cost. Lassa a hedonist and murderer, traveling all over Tamriel in search of vice, pleasure and victims to ensnare and then kill in the most ecstatic of ways. Elspeth has not seen her other daughters since then and has given up everything except what she needs to complete her mission. She owns nothing but her armor, weapons and purpose. She has completely embraced the role of an Inquisitor. She has become a holy warrior immune to all vice and fear. Her life has real meaning for the first time ever and she can never truly repay Stendarr for such a gift. But Lassa is still out there somewhere and Elspeth knows that the killing will never stop until her own daughter is dead and buried.
