Post by Ze Flying Wraithetti Monstress on Apr 28, 2010 12:46:33 GMT -5
Name:
Euryale (yoo-ree-ah-lay) Gorgophone
Age:
One hundred twenty
Race:
Elf
Appearance:
Euryale, when it comes to pure natural looks, is indistinguishable from other elf women. With a slight body, light colouring and attractive features, she wouldn’t be any different from any of her kin if not for her bearing. Euryale, unless entirely alone and surrounded by books, is usually found gnawing her nails, chomping her bottom lip and generally looking nauseous. Her skin, already very light and nearly pink from how rarely she goes out into the sun, usually has some kind of sickly pallor, and her elegant almond-shaped eyes are usually wide with terror. Therefore, her elven beauty is usually downplayed to only pretty enough to get a second glance, and those glances are usually confused ones.
Were Euryale not prone to spasms and panicked hysteria, she would be very attractive. Living by candlelight for over a hundred years and her biggest worry being how a book would end until very recently, her face is remarkably youthful, even failing to sport the prominent lines and bone structure of most of her race. She has low cheekbones, a small nose, large, almond-shaped ocean blue eyes framed by thin lashes and straight blonde eyebrows, thin but wide lips, a small forehead, a tiny jaw, and a pointed chin. Euryale’s small face is framed by thick, wavy hair that hangs to her mid-back. The exact colour is platinum, which can look either very pale blonde or completely white, depending on the lighting. Her body is similar to a column, slim but not quite skinny with average-sized breasts and hips. She also isn’t tall in the slightest for her kind, hovering around an unimpressive 5’8” in stature.
The concept of makeup and fashion is very new to Euryale, since up until a few months ago all she really wore were nightgowns and the occasional warrior princess get-up as a small child when acting out her favourite stories. She mostly relies on her three maids as her personal stylists, but since they have such conflicting tastes she’s often forced to change her outfits several times a day. Euryale could be waltzing around in a cotton candy pink ball gown one minute and then ordered into a regal black slip the next, and then into a summery violet dress that shows off her legs mere moments later. Her makeup can either be fresh and unnoticeable or bright and overly attention-grabbing. Whatever she wears, Euryale is always dressed like the wealthiest princess, even if she doesn’t behave like one.
Personality:
Most people picture elves as stoic, wise, and mysterious. Euryale could not conform to this stereotype any less. Having spent her entire life among the same four people and in the one same building, she’s nonplussed by suddenly being thrust into the real world. Patronizing elves, curious, prodding humans and a swarm of administrative duties has worn down her nerves almost to the point of breaking. Though not driven to insanity just yet, she does snap more often than not and explode into spasmodic shrieking and wailing about the smallest nuisances. She is panicked, hyperactive, and chronically nervous, and usually the only thing that can convince her to relax is locking herself in her room with enough books to fill several libraries and being totally undisturbed for at least twenty-four hours.
Euryale is intensely overwhelmed. Otherwise, she would be a very calm, level-headed sort of person. However, in light of being uprooted from the only home she knew, her lack of self-control and devastating bouts of hyperactivity has raised more than a few eyebrows. Though Euryale is not nearly experienced enough to be wise, she is an intellectual, and harbours a very decent amount of intelligence when she isn’t a nervous and emotional wreck. Easily frightened, strict, worrisome, and a fretful perfectionist, she fears failure above all things. Though terrified and resentful of her position as the elven trading ambassador, Euryale is eager to succeed in it, both to help her dying father and to impress Queen Islanzadí for the chance to go home to her libraries in Ellesméra and stay there.
Euryale is also socially awkward. She does have a fair amount of control over a lot of people in the trade she oversees, and with them she tries to be strict and commanding, but doesn’t usually come off the way she meant to. Among other elves and those equal to or higher than her position, she is blatantly submissive and nervous, especially with men, since the only one she was ever close to is her father. She also can’t lie, and can’t make false friends. This usually leads to good people distancing themselves from her and the more manipulative types trying to get a hold on her. Despite her lack of wisdom, Euryale does have some good intuition going for her, and she’s usually quite decent at reading these sorts of people as bad. However, they also make her even less motivated to try and make friends, so she usually ends up embarrassing herself further and then fleeing back to her maids and her books to lose herself in the epic romantic tales she so adores or the soothingly familiar drone of treaties and ancient commandments.
History:
Euryale’s parents were both well-known and wealthy. Her mother was Mehra Moghedien, a centuries-old Dragon Rider who rode a deep copper female dragon named Semirhage. Her father is Cælestis Gorgophone, First Librarian and one of Islanzadí’s councillors, who is the caretaker for every book, every history- any and all texts written by the elves or otherwise. Both were elves hailing from Du Weldenvarden, and both were avid fans of philosophy and literature. They met in one of Ellesméra’s many libraries one night, and after discovering each other’s shared passions for reading, began to visit each other on a regular basis. Within a matter of short years, they became mates despite the distance barriers- Mehra flew to other cities and even other countries, while Cælestis’s duties required him to stay in Du Weldenvarden.
Despite how rarely they could meet, Cælestis and Mehra carried on their romance mainly through the use of draumr kopa, and whispered sweet nothings and other exchanges of love of the sort typically found in bad romance novels. However, they were happy. And so about a hundred years later when a young Galbatorix captured and tortured Mehra and Semirhage as well as several other dragon and Rider pairs, Cælestis dropped all of his work to come running to their rescue. Naturally, an aging bookworm, even an elven aging bookworm, stood very little chance against the Forsworn. He was immediately imprisoned alongside his mate. This was directly at the beginning of the Fall of the Riders, and so Cælestis and Mehra were actually tortured very little. Galbatorix was too busy fighting off his opposing forces. However, they were still trapped in the intensely fortified dungeons with no hope of escape or rescue.
Mehra became pregnant with Cælestis’s child over the few years that they were imprisoned. Months later, Euryale Gorgophone was born in the Ilirean citadel. Her birth inspired Mehra with a desire for escape. Before, she had only been focussing on getting every single prisoner out alive, but now she just wanted Euryale to get away free. However, none of the Riders or dragons would escape notice if they attempted an escape, so she decided on her mate. Without the consent of the other Riders, she and Semirhage cast an intricate cloaking spell on Euryale and a protesting Cælestis before combining energies and using explosive magic to blow a hole through the dungeons. In the massive infighting between the imprisoned Riders and the Forsworn that ensued, Cælestis fled with Euryale, running straight to Du Weldenvarden.
His reappearance was received very warmly. The First Librarian alive and well was a ray of hope for Du Weldenvarden. However, he hid Euryale. Elf children were highly prized, but he worried about what her existence might mean during such a crisis. And things only seemed to get worse. Within a matter of days, news arrived of Mehra and Semirhage’s slaughter at the hands of the Forsworn, as well as all of the other imprisoned Riders. Within a matter of months, King Evandar was killed. The elven population was horrifically decimated at the hands of Galbatorix, forcing Du Weldenvarden’s armies to retreat and then exile themselves within their borders, permanently closing them off to the rest of the world. While the war went on for humans and dwarves, the elves became locked in a painful political struggle. Hundreds of their kin were dead, making tensions high and trust nearly non-existent. Children were even rarer now.
Cælestis, the timid librarian, was suddenly in a very unstable position. Uprooting of statuses and even assassinations were becoming commonplace, and he feared for the life of what would probably be his only child and his one remaining piece of Mehra as well as his own well-being. And so, he hid Euryale’s existence. Originally, he’d planned to reveal her if the war went well, but with its dismal end and the constant presence of spies and wavering trust, he told nearly no one of his daughter. He resumed his duties as First Librarian and counsellor, and kept his young daughter in a variety of secret rooms to be raised by three nursemaids- Klotho, Lakhesis, and Aisa. All three elves had been grievously injured or mutilated during the Fall- Klotho had severe scarring across her entire body, and so was no longer able to physically fight, Lakhesis had been injured mentally and was unable to use magic, and Aisa had been a Rider whose dragon’s death was so traumatizing that she had gone a little crazy.
Euryale only saw these three women and her father throughout most of her lifetime. She was raised by them from infancy into girlhood, and proved to be a healthy, if lonely, child. Even though most elf children led very lonely lives, often only being surrounded by adults, her sadness depressed Cælestis. Despite loosening tensions among the elves, he found himself terrified of exposing Euryale to the outside world and the loss of innocence that would follow growing up. Instead, he offered Euryale an alternative- books. After all, she lived in the biggest collection of texts in the known world and beyond. Euryale was taught how to read and write at a very early age. And for over a hundred years, that was all she did. Every piece of literature in every dialect of every known language was consumed by her passion. Though she never saw the outside world, pictures and words filled up her imagination. She knew everything from the most tragic romances to the most successful battle strategies, and then some. And she was happy.
However, all good things come to pass. After a hundred years of desperately hiding the existence of an elf child, and the fact that Cælestis was old, even for an elf, he was beginning to get worn down. With a weakened perception among other things, he failed to notice an odd collection of tiny white spots on his salad one evening. Shortly after ingesting the food, he became grievously ill. The next morning, Klotho found him unconscious in the library. Cælestis was too sick for the likes of any healing spell the nursemaids knew, so they rushed him to Islanzadí’s court. There, he was placed in a bed and treated by several doctors, and his life was saved. However, the disease had taken a tolling effect on him due to his previous weakness- slowly, but surely, he was dying, and no cure could save him.
In fact, Cælestis was one of the very first to suffer the effects of eating vegetation blighted by the Taint, a mysterious infection poisoning southern Du Weldenvarden and the northern reaches of the Empire. The First Librarian’s illness caused talk, and eventually, accusations started to jump around. But Cælestis had other things to worry about. With his impending death, other elves would be keen to assume his position once he was gone, and he loved his library too much to trust it with just anyone. And Euryale knew the whole building upside down and backwards. She was his first choice for his successor, but then there was the little detail that she wasn’t even supposed to exist. He’d spent decades purging rumours that Mehra had been pregnant before she died, and his trust with the Council would be shattered. But he realized that Euryale couldn’t spend her entire life indoors. She needed to get out and see the world.
This was the exact opposite of what Euryale wanted. Already paralyzed from her father’s close call with death, suddenly being dragged out into Ellesméra by her nursemaids was far from comforting for her. Her very existence was met with shock, confusion, and rage, especially from Islanzadí, furious that a child had been kept from her for so long. Cælestis approached her with his proposal to make Euryale his successor, which she replied to with an adamant no. Besides the fact that she’d been invisible until five minutes before, she was very young, far too young to sit on the Council, being only a little older than her daughter Arya. Cælestis begged Islanzadí to give Euryale a chance. She was level-headed, intelligent, and very well-versed in ancient treaties and histories. Eventually, out of friendship and pity for Cælestis, Islanzadí decided that Euryale could become his heiress if she could prove herself worthy of the title.
However, exactly how that would be proven was a mystery. Du Weldenvarden had recently secured a trade with the Varden and Surda- in return for older, yet powerful magical spells from the elves, the humans would trade them metals needed for the upcoming war against the Empire. However, Islanzadí deemed it necessary that an ambassador go to Aberon to oversee the trading there. However, few elves were willing to live among humans, and the Council was already understaffed with the battle against the Empire and the recent appearance of the Taint, something no elf had ever seen before. Euryale’s expertise wouldn’t help either of those causes, but the mere overseeing of a trade would please Cælestis and give the girl experience. Islanzadí placed the responsibility on Euryale.
The next few months bent Euryale to the point of near breaking. Suddenly, she had Klotho, Lakhesis, and Aisa force teaching her how to behave like a proper lady, as well as rememorizing every treaty, protocol, and etiquette found among the humans. However, she was sorely rushed- after the events of the summit in Feinster went horribly askew, Euryale was ordered straight to Aberon. She’d only had weeks of training, and she was pushed out of Du Weldenvarden, which she hardly knew, and marched straight to Surda. Once there, she was given a room of her own in Borromeo Castle, as well as a smaller room for the entourage of her three nursemaids that she’d been allowed to bring. Euryale has since spent the last two weeks getting used to the humans, her new home in Surda, and to her new position.
