Asphodel Leary
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| Asphodel Leary | |
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| Social Rank | 5 |
| Fealty | Grayson |
| House | Leary |
| Gender | Female |
| Age | 24 |
| Religion | Pantheon |
| Vocation | Scholar |
| Height | average height |
| Hair Color | Black |
| Eye Color | Icy Gray |
| Skintone | Recluse Pale |
| Journals | |
| Authored By / Featured In | |
| Active | |
Description
First is the stretch of ruin scarred deeply into her pale face's right half. Beginning above the brow, furrowing through the eyeless socket - the eyelid's skin sunken in sightless folds over the hole to heal shut in irregular joins of flesh like melted wax - and devastating down to cleave the right corner of her upper lip, a grievous scar is the memory of what must be an axe's wound dealt with terrible force.
Aside the brutal wound there are vestiges of beauty. An oval face once held a pleasing symmetry, with large, wide and icy gray eyes, their color making a stark palette with hair a pin-straight, lustrous black. Her nose slopes finely to a smart little ball-tip above full, lush lips and a soft, rounded chin, a collection of youthful and doll-like features that would make a picture of innocence if not for the cruel chasm splitting her visage.
Personality
Asphodel Leary was a charming and happy child, the life of gatherings, and a fast friend. Her disfigurement has changed her, making of her presence an aloof, quiet and strange thing, prone to unwelcome observations and offputting metaphors. A young woman who was once an open book has become something of an enigma with a preference for solitude, the macabre and the hidden. Despite her trauma and seclusion she is capable of society, and those who tolerate her obliqueness may find a friend or a resilient ally offering uncommon perspective.
Background
A sunny and precocious young woman of a Leary branch, Asphodel could be found wherever there was merriment. A roadside inn at harvest-time was such a place one evening, with Asphodel laughing among and enjoying the company of common folk. All shared song, drink and warm jests. Asphodel, always sharp-tongued but kind enough with it, made a jape about a man's fashion, setting the room to laughter. Most would laugh it off. But some innocent mockeries cut more deeply than the dealer could ever expect, and the hearts of men can be both bitterly vengeful and shockingly explosive.
Asphodel had visited the inn without a guard. Foolish. Outside, as the night's festivities waned, the mocked man pulled Asphodel from the palfrey she'd mounted to depart, threw her to the dirt, and buried a hand-axe in her face with a choice word shouted. He would have struck again, had a wayfaring Knight of Solace not been stepping from the inn just then. The knight arrested a second axe stroke and saved Asphodel from death, but not from a lightning bolt of shattering pain, her darkest year to come, and a life forever changed. All due to a thoughtless joke.
She awoke days later. Medicine cured the infection, but could not make her whole. Ahead lay a year of shadows in a shut room, each day a series of objects thrown in anger, curses, desperate prayers, wailing and sobs with enough pain to drive the servants from hearing. But after months of anguish came an equilibrium of silence. Books and a quill saved her from worse. In solitude, she exhausted the library, as servants pleased to see her occupied brought tomes to her room on request. She devoured history, legend, poetry, philosophy and fiction. Unsatisfied, she began to add her own work, but given her limited experience, mustered only critiques of certain dated historians and poets. Foremost of her learning was that she had so much more to learn, and that one library could not satisfy.
She needed more to read, and more to write. Where to find it? She'd read of Arx. With a year passed, she at last left her room, more pale than before, more inquisitive, and altogether changed, for the city.
