Post by Ze Flying Wraithetti Monstress on Feb 22, 2009 21:18:48 GMT -5
Name:
Pele Lahela Serowë (pey-lay la-hay-lah sehr-oh-way)
Age:
A little over 750 years
Race:
Shade
Appearance:
Pele very obviously used to be an elf, although even when she was an elf, her appearance wasn’t similar to others’ of her race. The only things that are really the same are that she has very pale china-white skin from almost never going out into the sun, has long, pointed ears, and moves with grace. However, she isn’t as tall as most of her old kind at 5’11”. Her facial features are also very different- despite her old age, both magic and extensive, agonizing manual care has kept her looking like, to the eyes of a human, a healthy woman in her mid-thirties. Contradicting the normal slanted, cat-like features of most elves, Pele’s face is deceptively soft with low cheekbones, full lips, large eyes, and a small nose, making her seem almost child-like. This is thrown off by her eyes, however, which are a devilish bright yellow, more like a beast’s eyes than a sentient being’s thanks to being a Shade. Standing out starkly against her pale skin, her curly hair is a deep, rich red, and hangs to her lower back. She usually leaves it untied.
Pele’s body also doesn’t fall into the normal category for elves. Unlike their slim, lithe bodies, she has a large chest and very thick hips and thighs, which at first leads most people to think she’s overweight. This is due to Pele’s lack of exercise.
Pele’s appearance absolutely always depends on her current mood, and she will change it at every mood swing. She spends at least four hours a day arranging her hair and make-up and picking out what to wear. The mirror is her closest companion, and she has several hundred in her home. Pele uses soot, chalk, lead, henna dyes, ground minerals and plants, plant secretions, and many other natural ingredients for her make-up. However, some items she uses, such as mercury and poisonous plants like belladonna, cause her to sometimes get very nasty skin infections. She applies it all over her face and body, and the colours match her dress and mood. As for her clothes, Pele always wears skirts and dresses, accompanied with some accessories- she considers a woman in men’s clothing to be strange and uncouth. Her dresses are usually low-cut in the front and back, but the skirts are never above the ankle, as she considers it the highest of vulgarity for a woman to show her ankles. The materials of her dresses are usually made from animals, but not always- black swan feathers, silk, velvet, a wide range of furs, snakeskin, and woven plant fibers are among her favourites. The cut and style of the dresses vary widely, but they are always very elaborate. Pele also has a wide range of colours in her wardrobe- black when she’s depressed, dark blue when she’s thoughtful, deep violet when she’s calm, and so on. Pele never wears light colours, thinking them too aggravatingly happy for her. She makes most of her dresses herself. Whatever she’s wearing, Pele is always well groomed and well dressed.
Personality:
What truly governs Pele’s personality, first and foremost, is that she is completely emotionally unstable. Bipolar to the extreme, her mood swings are often and very vicious. She can turn from being manically depressed to enraged on a dime, and those bouts of fury are her most common emotion. These are due to Pele’s loneliness, though she won’t admit that to herself, her low self-esteem, her sexual inability, the personality problems she developed as a child, and many other things. She snaps and bites like a snake when she’s angry and cowers and cries when she gets scared or unhappy. Subtlety isn’t a word in her vocabulary, either, and she will make no secret of it if she doesn’t like someone. When she does like someone, though, she often isn’t sure how to show affection, and is usually grudgingly respectful of that individual and fiercely protective.
Pele is also extremely vain, and the quickest way to get her angry is to insult her looks. Her castle is filled with mirrors, and she spends at least four hours a day in front of them arranging herself. Despite having no actual standing in the Empire, she demands at least some kind of royal title to be added to her name when addressing her. She finds people who are unhygienic, or who don’t seem to care about their appearance, extremely unflattering.
Plants are anathema to Pele. This is made obvious by the fact that there are no living things around her castle for a mile around. Trees and moss disturb her in particular. She often talks to plants when she sees them, insulting them and cursing them. She also has no love for animals, and she has no qualms about killing them for their hides and eating their meat. This is because she is practically an anti-elf, going against almost all their traditions. She believes in a female God, never participates in their rituals, and despises them altogether- she even hates herself for having been one of their kind.
Pele is a feminist, and gets incredibly aggravated by sexism. In her opinion, the existence of men is almost entirely pointless, except for being something nice to look at for women. This being said, she is much kinder to strange women than to strange men. She hasn’t been romantically interested in any man or woman since Ereshkigal, although a few men have shown interest in her. Pele, however, violently refused them, believing her chastity to be one of her most sacred items- however; this isn’t entirely due to her hatred for men. Pele is barren and so unable to have children, and has an incredibly low sex drive, which makes it very difficult for her to do anything sensual with anyone.
Pele isn’t evil, but she certainly isn’t good either, and remains at a kind of chaotic neutral. She is unspeakably cruel in the face of failure on another person’s behalf, but very rewarding in success. Despite her serious self-esteem, anger, and sex issues, she is a very thoughtful person and engrossed in magic and literature. She loves books more than anything, often quoting them when speaking, and is very connected to the spiritual world. She is very deep and can easily look beyond a person’s physical beauty, one of her few good points.
History:
Pele was born as the daughter of Vivec and Palapye Serowe, the reigning lord and lady of Ília Fëon. Pele had only three living relatives, and they were her father, her mother, and her grandmother, Dibella Serowe. Pele’s childhood was just like any other nobleman’s daughter, spoiled and groomed, except for two things.
The first was that she felt disconnected from the other elves socially and culturally. She found it difficult to forge and maintain relationships, and because of this became moody and an outcast. Culturally, she absolutely despised the elves’ traditions and still does. Trees and plants bored her, and she had no problem with eating meat. The love of nature in all elves never once touched her. Alienated, her personality issues grew worse, and her family didn’t really know what to do about it. The second was that, when Pele turned 100, she began being courted by the men of the palace. However, she wasn’t at all interested in any of the men, and it wasn’t because of rebellious adolescence. She wanted a husband, and all of the men were beautiful and charming, but she simply wasn’t attracted to any of them. The very few men she did sleep around with were few and far between, short-lived, and very minor.
Life like this continued until Pele was 224, when Pele was wandering the streets of Ília Fëon when a hooded stranger caught her eye. It was a female elf, and very different from all the others because she was so plain. She had the cat-like features, the slim frame, but a crooked nose, small mouth, thick black hair, tan skin, and other less-than-desirable features made her no real beauty. This fascinated Pele, and they spoke together. Her name was Ereshkigal, and she had recently moved from Kirtan, driven out for practicing dark magic. Smitten, Pele often visited her in her home. The two became closer than sisters in the few years that followed. Eventually, a few more years later, though Pele tried to keep it secret, she took Ereshkigal as her mate.
This sparked gossip and outrage in the court. Pele’s parents demanded she take a male consort- a countess with a female lover was simply uncanny, and Pele obviously would be able to produce no heir from a woman. Pele refused all the suitors, only wanting Ereshkigal, which alienated Pele from her family for a very long period of time. Eventually, though, about fifty years later, Vivec and Palapye’s physical strength began to wane due to their ages and they grudgingly placed Pele as countess. Pele rose to power with Ereshkigal while her parents moved away to Ellesméra.
However, a little after that, Ereshkigal offered Pele something far greater than ruling the city. One night, Ereshkigal revealed to Pele that she was actually a Shade, which at first repulsed Pele, but then Ereshkigal offered to teach her sorcery- the art of summoning the undead souls and demons as slaves. Pele fell in love all over again and readily accepted, her new position almost totally forgotten to her. Sorcery was her inner strength, the thing that had been missing from her life. Ereshkigal taught Pele carefully so she wouldn’t overdo it and become a Shade herself. 200 years passed and Pele became very powerful in the school of conjuration.
But then, one night, Ereshkigal was attacked. Assassins from beyond Du Weldenvarden, humans, snuck into Pele and Ereshkigal’s bedchamber and fired arrows through her head in her sleep. After screaming with pain, she suddenly disappeared. Pele, infuriated, and thinking that her mate was dead, attacked the assassins. She killed all of them except one, and forced information out of that one. The contract had been given by Ereshkigal’s younger sister. Then Pele dispatched the assassin, swearing revenge.
But Pele knew nothing of the lands outside of Du Weldenvarden, and became depressed almost to the point of insanity from losing Ereshkigal. She didn’t look for a new mate- no elf, male or female, could replace the Shade. Pele practiced her sorcery so much that she was constantly drained of energy, and sought refuge in literature. She read everything- Dwarven scripts, every elf script that she could get her hands on, but especially human scripts. She learned everything possible about humans from them. She even started reading Urgal writings, when they were invented.
One day, about twenty years after Ereshkigal’s death, Pele found a book about Shades. When she read it, she discovered that Shades could only be killed by being shot through the heart. Thrilled, she got the idea into her head that she might be able to somehow contact Ereshkigal by becoming a Shade herself. And so, willingly, she overloaded on the amount of souls she summoned one night. A couple were truly evil, and, drawn to her strength, quickly infested her body. The change was incredibly painful and took several days, but Pele survived. Oddly, she wasn’t very different in personality, although her magic had increased tenfold. Pele searched the spirit realm for Ereshkigal’s souls, and, finding them not there, figured that she had to still be alive.
And so, Pele set off into the human world. She merely disappeared from her city, no longer caring for her position there. She expected cultural shock, but was actually very pleased with what she found in the Empire. The purity and perfection of the elves filled her with loathing, and she found the humans to be quite a pitiful race, and not the greatest to look at either. Excited, she took some of her wealth with her and bought a large mansion in Urû’baen. There, she continued with her summoning, expecting to have a peaceful life while she searched for Ereshkigal, but what she didn’t count on was Galbatorix.
Her magic made her shine like a beacon, and Galbatorix, realizing what she was, sent some of his most powerful magicians to capture her, led by himself. Pele was powerful, but with the king aided magically by his dragon, she was quickly overpowered. However, he was oddly kind to her, and allowed her to come along peacefully. There, he presented Pele with two options- she could either serve him, or die. Pele was hardly used to taking orders, but she agreed and let him take her true name, not willing to give up finding Ereshkigal for such a tiny thing as humility. And so, she was placed among Galbatorix’s magicians.
Pele has since participated very little in the events forming across the Empire, but Galbatorix has recently been pushing her to start doing something about the Varden.
Other:
Pele is a sorceress, meaning that she specializes in summoning the undead. She summons spirits and places them into bodies to make them her undead servants, but doesn't actually bring them to life- she just makes them, quite literally, the walking dead. She is very powerful in that aspect, but weak in other forms of magic- she has none of the love of nature prominent in all elves, and has difficulty manipulating the physical world. She makes up for it, however, by the power of the demons she summons and by her close ties to the spiritual realm.
