New Character Submission - Lairillia

[Nehetsrev]

Player/Bioware Name: Nehetsrev Llun
---
Character Name: Lairillia
Race/Sub-Race: Elven/Dark Elf
Class: Ranger
Height: 4 ft. 3 in.
Weight: 120 lbs.
Skin Color: Black
Hair Color: White
Eye Color: Crimson
Age: 130
Alignment: Lawful Evil
God: None
Languages: Dark Elven, Common, Undercommon, The Silent Language

Personality:
Lairillia is quiet and subdued, and a bit paranoid in some respects. He is watchful and aware of his surroundings at all times. For the most part cool and level-headed, he strives at great lengths to keep his mistress Taevnil Jindaern pleased, knowing should she become displeased with him she might quickly end his life.

Background:
Born on the 8th day of Jular in the year 1300, Lairillia was part of a minor House in the under dark, one which valued the power of the Weave and held to a code of honor of sorts, so much as any Dark Elf House might have. However, being less in-tune with magic than most of his kin he was the least favored of them. As his peers progressed with their magical prowess, they would often jeer at his failed attempts to unlock the secrets of the Weave. Lairillia began to find himself the target of spells cast in 'practice', those same peers seeing him as the easiest target to be eliminated in the Dark Elven life-struggle for power and dominance, especially since he also received the least protection from elders within the House. Lairillia knew he needed to find a way to survive that he could excell at, and began venturing to places where he could elude his peers as much as he could. His time alone allowed him to sharpen his wits in other ways, and he began to formulate plans on how to eliminate his rivals despite their magical dominance. In the time between his sixtieth and his eightieth year, he had outwitted and killed six of his peers, using careful manipulation and clever traps. Yet still the elders of the House took little notice of his abilities because of the pride they placed in magic over all other means of power. In fact, they became even harder upon him as those he'd killed were often those who showed the most promise with wielding the Weave.

This lead him to spend much of his time alone in the tunnels outside the city when he was allowed to by the Elders of the House. His frequent trips took him further away from his House and their love of magic each time. Soon he was learning the ways of living off the fruits of the subterranean realm and gaining an intimate knowledge of its nature. He also learned to improvise for his needs from things he could find in the dark wilds, allowing him to wield a great many odd and exotic things with at least moderate skill.

One of his closest brushes with death occured when he was caught off-guard by a pair of hungry troglodytes while taking a drink from a subterainean stream. He fought off their initial attack, but had been seperated from his weapons and most of his other gear in the process, forced to flee while the blind creatures tracked his scent and the sound of his hurried retreat. As he moved through the cavern to stay ahead of his pursuers he began collecting objects to use to his advantage. Starting with a few fist-sized stones and some leather cord that had served as his bootlaces he fashioned a pair of bolas while on the move. Circling back upon his own trail, he sought out the remains of an umberhulk he'd noted while passing the first time, and with some effort tore off it's large, sharp mandibles to use in his defense as well. Continuing to move through the dark, weakened by loss of blood, Lairillia found a position from which he believed he could fight off the troglodytes and made his stand there. Only minutes later they were within sight and approaching him hungrilly. Lairillia threw his make-shift bolas, the cords between the rocks tangling around the legs of the troglodytes, sufficiently imparing their movement and causing them to fumble and fall with screams of frustration. Moving in as quickly as he could manage, he dealt them each killing blows, slitting their throats with the sharp umberhulk mandibles he'd collected, and then to be sure of their death impaling each of them through the heart. As the second troglodyte struggled in its dying moments, it caught hold of Lairillia and bit his arm while raking his chest and legs with its flailing claws. He had survived, but his own wounds were severe enough that it was days before he recovered enough to return to the stream. He used the flesh of the troglodytes to sustain his nourishment in the mean time. He had learned once more that being the hunter was preferable to being the hunted, and being alive was preferable to being dead.

His return to his House after the run-in with the troglodytes was not cellebrated, and in fact his was punnished for his longer than approved absence and chastised for the wounds he'd received that left scars and defaced his body. The Elders revoked his privalage to roam outside the city, and forced him to study magic even more, but his aptitude for the arcane simply was not there. His peers saw an opportunity to eliminate him once and for all, and a trio of them set to plotting his end in a temporary and un-easy truce. Lairillia had lived enough to see the signs of their impending treachery, however, and laid his own trap. Manipulating members of a rival House by killing one of their best potentiates in secret, and setting up the trio to take the blame through cleverly laid rumors and other subterfuge, Lairillia didn't shed a tear when his own brother was killed in the resulting strike of vengeance along with the trio and several others of his peers within his own House. In fact, the House eldars seemed more upset over the deaths of two of the House's skilled slaves who were also killed in the attack, and caused Larillia more regret over that when he was found out than what was made of the deaths of the others. Larillia learned slaves were valuable, and thus perhaps a bit more protected than peers.

Finally, one of the elders of the House took notice of Lairillia's shrewd manipulation, despite his abhorant inability to learn the arts of magic. Soon after his House found a use for his skill in hunting and quickly put him to work hunting other dark elves from rival Houses. This became his most recognized skill within his House, yet it did little or nothing to improve his status within the House which valued magic over his more mundane skills. Further, he was taught the Silent Language when it was decided his skills would be useful during certain types of raiding missions against rival Houses.

Later he was captured by a rival House, and taken to be interrogated and ultimately executed. Fortune would intervene on his behalf as the hand of his executioner would be stayed from the final blow by a third Houses carefully planned strike. Believing his only chance of living being that of pledging himself into slavery, Lairillia persuaded a female dark elf of the third Houses raiding party, named Taevnil Jindaern, into allowing him to serve her. She spared his life and in return he gave her his word of honor that he would serve her loyally as a slave until she deemed his debt to her paid. At the very least he viewed life as a slave preferable to death, and a slave might have more protection. He also felt that Taevnil posessed a measure of power and authority, and power could be used to his advantage later if he could find out how to manipulate it. Perhaps one day he would have the chance to seek revenge against the enemies of his own House and gain higher status of his own.

Taevnil has proven to be a rather harsh mistress, frequently beating him, or lashing him with her whip almost joyfully for even the slightest hesitation or cause of her displeasure. Still, Lairillia reminds himself that if not for her he'd certainly be dead.

• Always keeps his word of honor if given to another Dark Elf. All other races are beneath him and thus not worthy to receive his word of honor except in extreme circumstance.
  
• Lies to and cheats those he considers not worthy of his respect.
  
• May or may not kill an unarmed foe dependent upon circumstances. If it seems more prudent to kill a being for future safety or gain, then he'll do it. Also, if Taevnil tells him to, he will as he's given his word of honor to serve her.
  
• Never kill an innocent but will harm, harass or kidnap. It should be noted that since he's a Dark Elf, he doesn't view any of the other races as innocent, neither is he naive enough to believe many Dark Elves are innocent either.
  
• Never torture for pleasure but will to extract information.
  
• Never kills for pleasure - always has a reason.
  
• May or may not help someone in need.
  
• Respects honor and self-discipline. Has no time for the law.
  
• Will work with others to attain his goals.
  
• May take dirty money, though if he does he will likely pass it on to Taevnil since he is her slave and all that he has he sees as belonging to her until such time as she may free him from his oath.
  
• Never betray a friend. Of course, since he has none, this isn't likely to be a problem any time soon.

Taevnil's (formerly Ebony) character submission thread can be found here:
http://forums.layonara.com/character...ubmission.html

[darkstorme]

This submission is under discussion. Please bear with us, and thank you in advance for your patience.

[darkstorme]

Hi again - sorry for the delay!

While you're approved for an evil alignment, we'd like to see Lairillia's bio expanded a bit. Though the point-form notes do fill his character in a bit, a few anecdotes from his past to reflect his personality (and better still, to indicate what in his personality might make him choose the life of an indentured servant) would provide much more by way of insight into both his character and what about him is Lawful Evil.

Some past dark elf submissions to look at:

• Joslyn
• Quarral Mae'zynge
• Zilvra Nal'arlith
• Yvale

(At the moment) you brush over the fact that he was less talented than some of his kin, and spent a lot of time in the extremely dangerous wilds of the Deep. This, likely, would be a good thing to expand upon, to illustrate choices he made, and the way he was trained.

Thanks!

[Nehetsrev]

Updated with a bit more background information as requested.

[darkstorme]

This looks much better. As it is dependent on another submission (Ebony), it will wait until the pair can be approved - but it is otherwise just fine.

Feel free to expand on the submission in the mean time, if you wish.

Thanks!

[Nehetsrev]

As my wife's initial submision for her character needed some adjustment, I've adjusted Lairillia's submission here to reflect the new name she's chosen for her character, which is now Taevnil Jindaern.

[darkstorme]

*nods* It all looks good (by which I mean evil.). You and your wife have fun.

Your character has been approved.

Server address is west.layonara.com
Password is layoplayer

Some final notes on character creation:

• Please note that racial adjustments for players with subraces are skin based and thus get applied after getting in game.
• Only two ability scores can be less than 10 and only one can be less than 8 after racial adjustments
• Brownies, when selecting a head, the head you choose on the halfling selection will correspond to that numbered head for elves (for example, clicking right 6 times on the head selection during character creation will take the 6th head when clicking right on the elf creation)
• Half-giants and ogres, please ask for a GM (type /dm Anyone here?) if you would like to change to a custom skin.

Good luck!