Archery |
||||
---|---|---|---|---|
First Archery Excellency | 1m/die | Instant | Reflexive | Die buyer for Archery rolls |
Essence Arrow Attack(Righteous Judgment Arrow) | 2m or 3m | Instant | Supplemental | Add Essence to Damage, if 3m, add 4 more (RJA) |
Archey Essence Flow | Permits use of Excellencies as non-Charm. | |||
There Is No Wind | 3m or 5m | Instant | Supplemental | 3m, remove all penalties except wound, flurry. 5m, range max sight distance. |
Accuracy Without Distance | 1m, 1wp | Instant | Supplemental | Perfect attack, hits with 0 extra successes if it would have missed. |
Occult |
||||
Second Occult Excellency | 2m/succ | Instant | Reflexive | Success buyer for Occult rolls |
Artist of the Soul | All Thaum Degrees +1, all Thaum costs /3 round down. | |||
Awareness |
||||
Surprise Anticipation Method | 1m | Instant | Reflexive | Always succeed awareness rolls for hidden danger for the cost of 1m. |
Dodge |
||||
Second Dodge Excellency | 2m/succ | Instant | Reflexive | Success buyer for Dodge rolls |
Reflex Sidestep Technique | 1m | Instant | Reflexive | Removes 'unexpected' from unexpected attack |
Seven Shadow Evasion | 3m | Instant | Reflexive | Perfect Defense; Conviction Flaw |
Shadow Over Water | 1m | Instant | Reflexive | Ignore all penalties to DV for one attack. |
Flow Like Blood | 5m,1wp | One Scene | Simple | No onslaught or coordinated penalties for rest of scene. |
Imtithal is only of average height, for a woman of the Delzahn nobility. They are a warrior class, and better fed than your average peasant, so she is probably a few inches taller than the 'average woman' for all of Creation.
That is about the only thing that is average about her appearance. Her eyes are large, and almond colored, deep and inviting with long lashes, even untouched by any cosmetics. Her cheekbones are high and delicate, her nose perfectly formed, her lips full and red against the richness of her skin, slightly darker than Delzahn standard. Her skin is as soft as the touch of morning dew in the desert. Even her ears, usally decorated with inexpensive but attractive piercings, are perfect.
Though she typically wears the modest tan or white robes of woman with no need or desire to seek a husband, even the flowing fabric can not fully conceal the exquisite body beneath them; every motion she makes and every little breath of wind moves some part of the cloth against her, to borrow a perfect curve; she has curving, elegant hips; long, shapely legs; a narrow and toned waist; and breasts which are both generous and uplifted. Her posture, as her body, is as perfect as any human can be, her spine shapely and her carriage elegant. Her hair is long, and dark, and usually braided with minor ornaments to match her earrings. Her limbs betray little muscle, but what muscle is there is well toned, and her reflexes are swift and her motions infinitely graceful and agile.
All told, she is stunning gorgeous - any more and she would be inhumanly beautiful, surreal instead of solidly, distinctly /real/. The honor of a Delzahn female is her beauty; she is considered the most honorable of her generation, among the nobles of Chiaroscuro.
Imtithal was born to one of the minor merchant nobles of the clan Radeen, Ha'lad of the Radeen. Her father was not the most skilled merchant, or perhaps simply not the most lucky, but he maintained a reasonably comfortable fortune by a variety of trading interests and land-owning concerns. Imtithal and her younger brother grew up wanting no material need, though on occasion, denied luxuries they might have wished for as well.
Like any child of the Delzahn, as a child, Imtithal learned to ride and to hunt with a bow. She was tempted by the grey sash of the Dereth, but her mother took ill when she was twelve, and by then, her father had one son for an heir, and no other daughter; with her mother ill, there was no woman of the household save her. She swallowed her dreams of being a warrior, and returned home as a woman, rather than a man, for the sake of family and clan. Her mother died within a year, and Imtithal fully accepted her duties as the lady of the household.
Unfortunately, as Imtithal was growing up into a responsible and generous young woman, her brother was growing up into a twisted bastard. No one recognized the warning signs young; if the prey he brought in was extensively cut up, well, it's a pity he wasn't quite as good a hunter as his sister would have been, and couldn't kill so cleanly. It would have been an insult to mention it to him, and no one did. Perhaps because of the unkind comparisons, he was never fond of his sister, and in fact, when not forbidden by his father, acted to make her life harder. More than once, some precious book she was reading or a piece of cloth she was sewing on found its way to destruction at his hands, though he never actually touched /her/.
He married fairly young, wooing a young woman of a family barely counting as noble; everyone thought it must truly be a love match, and no one opposed the marriage, for her father approved the idea, and her family didn't have enough rank or wealth in the clan for the Khan to interfere. Only after he married did his darker side fully reveal itself, for Imtithal soon found the young woman coming to her for help; her brother was beating his wife, and she was terrified of her formerly charming suitor. She immediately took her sister by marriage to her father - though the young wife was scared to impose on the patriarch of the family, Imtithal knew her father would not tolerate this.
She was, in fact, right; Ha'lad was furious with his son's behavior, and the lecture seared the ears of the eavesdropping servants. It bought his wife some peace. Against such dishonorable behavior, Ha'lad was willing to threaten even his only so with disinheritance. The woman still had to endure the same threats and harassment that Imtithal always had, and he was not gentle in his lovemaking, but the direct harm stopped cold.
Until, as time will do, time sickened Ha'lad as well. One morning, her sister in law came to Imtithal in tears and bruises. There was no doubting that Ha'lad had entered his final illness, and Imtithal was loathe to bother him - but she saw the way of the future. Her brother would terrorize them both once her father was dead.
Imtithal knew she had an escape; all she need do would be to don the robes of a woman seeking a protector, and she would have her pick of many of the noble men of the city - married and unmarried, since the Delzahn permit men to take multiple wives. But she could not help her sister through that, not unless she found a man kind enough and powerful enough to challenge her brother on the behalf of his wife. And that would still shame the clan and the family.
And, too, the risk that she, too, might have a charming suitor turn out to be a cruel husband. Imtithal considered the idea of escape, but discarded it. Instead, she waited for a day when her brother had gathered several of his wastrel friends. They were drinking, and went out into the courtyard to shoot targets and boast of their prowess. Stealthily, she added extra to their drinks, ensuring they would be drunk, and stole from the quiver of one of his friends - a noble of clan Adif, both wealthy and connected to the Tri-Khan - a single arrow.
Taking her bow - intended for hunting, not for war, but just as capable of damage - she went to the second floor of the wing across the courtyard from the targets, and waited. As the young drunkards became rowdier, she steadied her aim, and shot her brother clean through the chest with a single arrow, then slipped swiftly back to her quarters.
When the uproar reached her, she was as shocked as anyone else, and though she is a terrible liar and her heart was racing, no one questioned her or sought to find guilt, not grief, in her face. For though no one saw how the arrow had ricocheted, it was the arrow of the young Adif, and it seemed wisest to simply note it as the accident it surely was, rather than demanding an accounting and shaming the powerful clan.
The grief, perhaps, hastened her father's end, or so Imtithal sometimes guiltily thinks, but in truth, she knows he was dying swiftly anyhow; within a month of her brother's death, her father also passed to the ancestors. Imtithal, his only surviving child, was perforce his heir, though a daughter; she and her widowed sister by marriage remain in the household, but all the men are gone.
Imtithal knows she is very vulnerable. Her brother's ghost could return and might be able to point her out as the killer, though she doubts he saw her shooting any more than anyone else that was in the courtyard that day. She could be forced into a marriage by her clan's Khan. And even without those risks, her knowledge of the merchant's trade is slim to none; she has good reason to believe she will waste the wealth that gives her a comfortable life without her father's skill.
This led her to hire a bodyguard from the F'meeq, an honorable noble clan of near legendary faithfulness, still one of the desert nomad tribes rather than Chiaroscuro nobles, to accompany to her to a ruin her father once found, in hopes of finding artifacts and wealth there enough to defend her from all threats. It's a vague grasping after security, but it /feels/ right to her.
And thus she came to be adventuring into a ruin...
Social