Contents
Isabelle Auxerre | |
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General Information | |
Full Name: | Arangire Isabelle Auxerre |
Race: | Vampire |
Gender: | Female |
Sexual Orientation: | Asexual |
Age: | 857 |
Country of Origin: | Arangoth |
Appearance | |
Hair Color: | Blonde |
Eye Color: | Green |
Height: | 5'1 |
Weight: | 110lbs |
Additional Information | |
Religion: | None |
Alignment: | Lawful Evil |
Creed: | Rely on your own strength, and never forgo an opportunity to acquire more knowledge |
Occupation: | Arangire of Nixke Nelki, Mistress of the Sanctum Arcana |
Income: | Extremely wealthy |
Marital Status: | Married to Asnerith Dreth |
Player: | Nemmiecakes |
Biography
Isabelle was born to a wealthy Goxal family over eight hundred years ago. Showing some magical talent, she was encouraged by her family to study the magical arts. By the time she was a teenager, she had become an astute sorceress, practicing a range of different magical fields. She was married in her early twenties to an older man who was intrigued by her; it was a significant match for her family.
Her natural talent eventually drew the attention of her sire, Dominicus Foratti. He watched her for a few years before he ever approached her but when he did, he knew that what he could offer her as her mentor was far greater than she could ever achieve in life. Isabelle's ambition and lust for power blinded her to whatever realities of the vampiric condition that might have dissuaded her. Abandoning her husband and family, she disappeared with Dominicus. Made his ghoul, she became his apprentice.
She spent the next several centuries caught between life and death, existing solely at the pleasure of her sire. After roughly three hundred years, her sire finally decided that she was worthy of the gift of vampirism, and turned her. This physical transformation heightened her mage abilities, granting her greater resources and now the life time to pursue her arcane studies. Eventually, her fascination turned to the Void and the magic of controlling and manipulating shadows and darkness.
When she reemerged into the human world, Isabelle seduced an Arangothian nobleman, Korlak Auxerre of Nixke Nelki in Transdariania and enthralled him. He quickly asked for her hand in marriage, which she was pleased to grant to him, if only because it would once again entitle her to certain luxuries. Her husband passed only a few years later in a tragic hunting accident, mauled by a she-bear. Though some suspicion was on his beautiful bride, there was no evidence of her involvement. The accusations fell away as she took over management of the Auxerre lands, as there was no heir from their marriage bed.
A chance encounter some years later introduced her to a strange elven lord named Ixylo. She later learned that he was a shadow dragon called Ixylo'xnx and her fascination with him grew. Ixy has tolerated her companionship as he would a favoured pet. Despite whatever pride she has as a very old vampire, she has a sort of reverence for the older creature.
In 485, Isabelle announced her marriage to Ixylo, who took her last name. She funded the expedition to rid Drache of the magma wyrm, Drogyoldiiv, who had been plaguing the city for the previous two years. Her motivations for this were twofold. The second dragon was a competition of resources for her companion and had to be dealt with. Additionally, she hoped to eventually secure her legal citizenship within Drache, despite her status as vampire. Due to her willingness to participate in the wyrm's destruction, she was given a seat on Drache's Interim Council following the city's declaration of freedom from Arangoth. She continues to serve, her identity both as a vampire and her connections to the Great Shadow undiscovered.
When the Great Shadow of Ruthmarna emerged and conquered Lurintheti-Netri, the capital of Ruthmarna, this effectively made Isabelle the queen of Ruthmarna, though her role as such is virtually unknown by anyone outside of the Great Shadow's immediate retinue.
Following the Great Shadow's departure from Ruthmarna, Isabelle shortly retreated from the region as well. Inheriting a dragon's library was better than monetary wealth, and she soon returned to Drache, continuing on as a member of the Interim Council. With the close of the Arangothian Civil War, Isabelle, alongside the other councilors, broke the kingdom up into seven sithrangel, or duchies, each to be administered by an appointed local noble. As it fell out, with some engineering on her part, she was appointed Sithire of Transdariania. Invested over the summer of 487, she took up the mantel and workload of seeing over the bustling Drachean port and the Transdarianian farmlands.
Her first acts were to endow both the Royal University and the Mage's Guild with stipends of cash to foster Drache's growth as a seat of magical learning. Together with the Mage Guild's Mistress, Annanistael, Isabelle founded the Darian River cleansing project. She also endowed Lane Silverbow with the authority to form the Bathiretil, a dedicated squad of the Civic Guard tasked with ending vampiric threats in the years to come.
Following the Arangothian Civil War, Isabelle wed the Sithire of Minkbrantha, Asnerith Dreth as a means to forestall his reaching grasp seeking out Drache. Their unholy alliance resulted so far in the arcane birth of their first daughter, Prima ul-Asnerith Dreth, heir to the Minkbrantha sithrangel; she was born on 2.XI.488. The actual details of her conception were unknown to the general public, but it was through the loan of a magical apparatus that allowed the vampire to gestate a child of their flesh. Prima was born blind as most daughters of the Dreth line, inheriting a curse passed down through the generations.
In the autumn of 489, an anonymous source outed the Sithire as a vampire through the Rumor Mill. Arangire Uzzo Salksilek came to offer agreeable terms that would retain her control of her county, as well as maintain her status as a citizen of Transdariania. Seeking to avoid plunging Arangoth into disarray and war so soon after the Civil War some three years earlier, Isabelle prevented her husband, the Minkbranthan Sithire, Asnerith Dreth from marching on Drache.
After returning the clone of Ixylo’xnx to the dragon, she conducted a hunt of another mid-size shadow drake from the same realm that Ixy hailed from. Isabelle currently exclusively feeds from this shadow drake, kept restrained in her magical laboratory in the shadow realm.
Personality
Isabelle is cold and remote, feeling very little in terms of normal mortal or human emotions. She is a consummate actress and mimics proper emotional displays, dredged up somewhere from her long ago mortal life. Her expression is usually controlled and displays a proper noblewoman's distantly smiling mien. Anger is usually the only true emotion that stirs her much anymore, though she has occasionally felt hints of fondness for her third husband, Asnerith Dreth.
Physical Description
A petite and exceedingly fair noblewoman, Isabelle is barely an inch over five feet tall. Generally considered beautiful, the diminutive woman has a commanding personality that makes up for her relative small size. She is very pale, with almost translucent skin. High cheek bones and a high brow, her well bred features show little signs of the ravages of age. Her golden hair is nearly to her waist and well tended to. With delicate bones and lithe limbs, Isabelle possesses an almost supernatural grace in all her movements. She appears to be in her late twenties.
In actuality, Isabelle is a vampire. Over the last few years, she has fed exclusively from the Great Shadow of Ruthmarna, Ixylo'xnx, a shadow dragon. Her exclusive diet of potent magical blood has given her greater resistance to sunlight (though not invulnerability) and a false aura of life. Determining her undead status is more challenging, but not impossible. These boons allow her to pass as human in most situations.
Abilities & Skills
Physical Abilities
- Vampiric Attributes: As a vampire, Isabelle has many of the standard benefits and drawbacks of the vampiric condition. She is much stronger than an average human and can lift several hundred pounds easily with both hands. She is much faster than an average human, and can move faster than the human eye can track. Her constitution is superior to the average human's, and she can withstand extreme amounts of damage with minimal effect. As one of the undead, she does not bleed without willing herself to do so. Despite her best efforts, the vampire exudes an aura that tips off those sensitive to the undead of her condition. She cannot fully mask this with either magic or pretending at life. Animal shifters, rangers, druids, clerics and paladins are usually among those that can detect this aura without much effort on their part.
Isabelle is utterly reliant upon the blood of other creatures to sustain her unnatural condition. Her blood is addictive to many types of living races and enhances those that consume her blood's speed, strength and constitution.
Isabelle cannot withstand direct sunlight, and will combust when exposed to it. She can travel heavily under cover by day, but usually limits her movement.
Mundane Skills
- Alchemy: Isabelle is skilled in the creation of potions and elixirs from herbs, minerals and water, both mundane and magical. She often times imbues certain potions with drops of her blood to not only bond servants to her, but to enhance their abilities. Endowing potions with magic is an easy feat for her, though usually reserved for special uses.
- Combat Awareness: Though not often found in battles or confrontations, any vampire intent on surviving beyond their first century must have some notion of how to fight. While Isabelle usually employs her considerable command of shadowmancy in fights, she also knows how to use blade weapons and how to fight hand to hand. She does not usually allow herself to fall into such a desperate scenario, and obliterates her enemies through magic.
- Natural Sciences: Isabelle has made extensive research into the natural world. She has studied many lifeforms through from birth to death, and has conducted extreme experimentation on various creatures to study them. It is not uncommon for her to mix her studies of the natural world with the use of magic.
Magic Skills
- Enchanting: Isabelle knows how to imbue objects with magic to create temporary and permanent enchantments in them. These objects are usually only for personal use as aids in her casting, or in her continued studies of the arcane and its applications. Very rarely has she made gifts of enchanted objects to others.
- Necromancy: While the creation of actual undead is illegal in Arangoth, Isabelle's studies of this school of magic are quite extensive. Not only does she have the ability to manipulate other undead, but she has made extensive use of blood magic, manipulating not only her own blood, but others' as well. Skilled in the use of flesh crafting, she has not only altered the appearances of those in her service, but also cloned organisms through the manipulation of the flesh. She is capable of true resurrection, but only if it serves her purposes.
- Ritual Magic: Isabelle is quite proficient in various ritual magics. She can easily follow instructions left behind in others' grimoires to perform various acts of thaumaturgy. The vampire can also focus her will inwards to enhance her physical attributes.
- Shadowmancy: The creation and manipulation of shadows is Isabelle Auxerre's calling card. She is quite adept in the use of shadow magic, from manifesting shadows in places of light to using shadows to travel across distances near and far through the use of permanent gateways. She has been known to create tentacles, to infect others with poisonous shadows, and use shadows to strangle living creatures within her immediate area of twenty feet. Imagination is the only limitation of the vampire's command of shadows and darkness. The range of her effects on the spot are within fifty feet, but ritual use and augmentation can result in incapsulating large areas, such as that of her manor or a city block in shadow at will.
Equipment
Weapons
- Ritual Knives: A number of rituals or acts of magic that Isabelle practices requires sacrifices of blood. While she does not regularly carry knives on her person, she has a number of knives made of different materials like gold, silver, mithril, iron and platinum to be used as necessary.
Armor
- Enchanted Clothing: While not strictly armor, Isabelle does have a small collection of non restrictive clothing usually in black, that are enchanted against fire and acid. Most often, she wears this clothing in her laboratory, or when moving clandestinely around Drache.
Tools
- Arcane Library: When Ixylo'xnx left the Sivethian plane, he left behind his collected hoard of magical tomes and volumes. A literal dragon's library collected over centuries of existence, the depths and breadth of Ixy's old library are unknown. It has been an undertaking to catalogue the entire collection, and one that could not be left to others. Many of these volumes have been transferred into the care of the Sanctum Arcana, but she has held onto the vast majority of these books. Isabelle's library's total sum of knowledge is unknown, even to her.
- "Dragon Keg:" Within Isabelle's laboratory is a twenty to thirty foot long shadow dragon held in stasis. From this dragon, Isabelle has all of her 'nutritional' needs met. She primarily feeds from this dragon, and rarely has the need or the desire to feed from other sentient beings. While this dragon was not as ancient as Ixylo'xnx and does not enhance her magic quite as well, it serves her purposes adequately.
- Laboratory: Isabelle’s laboratory is located on the same shadow plane that Ixylo’xnx hailed from. It is constructed in an inactive volcano in the dragon’s domain and hidden through magic. There are a number of different rooms, and access is only available through one of the shadowgates constructed on Siveth. Isabelle conducts the majority of her research and study here where it cannot be tracked or located. Once one passes through the shadowgate, they appear in the atrium of the laboratory, an area that is locked off from all other doorways in the lab.
- Magical Apparatus: Isabelle has a number of apparatus in which to perform magic in her laboratory. These devices are to assist or to amplify her projects and studies. Some of them were acquired from other sorcerers, or constructed by herself. A number of them are unused. Included among them is an arcane womb used to gestate her daughter, Prima.
- Shadowgates: These gates are located in a number of places on Siveth, primarily in Arangoth. Among their locations are the Sithire’s chambers in Castle Black, Isabelle’s manor and townhouse in Drache, her manorial estate in Nixke Nelki, and the castle at Caern in Minkbrantha. These gates are keyed specifically to Isabelle’s magical signature, and are left in their inert states, hidden along the wall. To use these gates, a person must be keyed to the gates itself, and the destination must be in the forefront of the user’s thoughts. Travel between gates is possible, but they are also used to access Isabelle’s laboratory.