Elysia Sweetwater is a junior cleric of Aphrodite, hailing from Crinon Iral and currently living in the city of Highmoon. She is the only original member of Club Doom to have remained with the group from its beginning to its retirement from ((Sycron's Challenge)) in the spring of (year).
Appearance-wise, Elysia is in her late teens, with curly auburn hair, hazel eyes, and an olive complexion. She is uncharacteristically reticent and scholarly for a member of the Aphrodesian clergy, preferring to devote her efforts to working on her temple's long-neglected archives and social justice projects rather than the faith's more traditional ways of worshiping the goddess.
It was revealed after the end of the Crimson Rasp arc of Sycron's Challenge that Elysia is not all that she appears to be. She began her life as a Crinonian priestess of Asteria named Mother Eurydice Blackstorm, who was born more than a century before the current timeline. Eurydice was the daughter of a highly placed secular functionary of the Asterian Church. When she was four years old, her parents and most of her family succumbed to the original Crimson Rasp plague, leaving her and her older brother orphaned and without caretakers. A local wizard offered her seven-year-old brother an apprenticeship, and although this was uncommon practice in the faith, the Asterian Church accepted Eurydice as their ward in recognition of her father's faithful service. Although Eurydice was too young to have formed strong memories of her lost family, she always retained a secret revulsion and fear of the sinister-looking plague doctors who came to dispose of her parents' bodies and inspect her and her brother for signs of the sickness.
Eurydice, raised conscientiously but not very warmly by a stern, austere clergy, grew up with a strong sense of duty to the temple that had taken responsibility for her care. She took vows in the church when she came of age. She devoted her life to the study and practice of law and rose to prominence for her management of the "forbidden" section of the Crinonian church's archives: that which contained artifacts and tomes of dark sorcery confiscated from criminal magic-users. Eurydice's keen intelligence and zero-tolerance approach to crime allowed her to advance quickly through the ranks of the church, and when she had gained sufficient age, experience, and gravity for the role, she attained the rank of High Magistrate of the Crinonian church of Asteria.
Mother Blackstorm was a figure terrifying to lawbreakers and subordinate clergy alike; she cultivated no close friendships or relationships and remained austerely celibate her entire life. She undertook administration of her office, prosecution, and sentencing without mercy. She punctiliously attended and witnessed every flogging, branding, and execution that she ordered, and never expressed regret for the decisions she handed down. Many whispered that, far from being a dispassionate and impartial judge, she actually took cruel delight in the suffering and fear she inspired. Not even the other clerics who worked with her were able to gainsay that, although nobody dared to say it where she might hear it. She seemed to harbor an especial, irrational hatred for the Aphrodesian Church, which she believed was a debauched hotbed of civic insurrection and sanctuary for escaped criminals. Whenever able, she brought the full force of the law down on individuals associated with the Aphrodesians, but often lamented that she could not uncover enough evidence to break their church once and for all.
By the time Eurydice Blackstorm was at the height of her clerical power and long past the age when she might have easily reversed her misanthropic nature, she had begun, unknowingly, to harbor the seeds of corruption in her soul. She found that her persecution of the Aphrodesian Church was hampered by the restriction placed on her own powers, which were capable of bringing down destructive holy retribution on criminals, but only those who had been judged guilty through the Asterian Church's justice system. Eurydice became convinced that she alone was aware of criminals who were slipping through the net of that system, and began seeking a way to remove the limitations on her powers. She turned to a source that she, unlike her other law-abiding peers, knew very well: the very same forbidden archives that she had once devoted her life to safeguarding.
Mother Blackstorm's descent into moral degradation came to fruition in her one-hundred-and-fourth year, when she began hunting down rumors that the Aphrodesians were harboring a small-time but prolific thief and general miscreant named Maravin. Her quarry eluded her with maddening ease, and finally, she reached the limit of her patience. By this time, she was more than a century old, and even the blessings of the goddess could not stave off mortality for much longer. Although she was still a formidable and frightening adversary, she was physically weakened, brittle, and half-blind. Even the few simple comforts she'd allowed in her austere lifestyle had long lost their savor, and the thrill exercising her will over people and seeing them duly punished was the only pleasure left to her. She increasingly began to fear that she would die of simple old age before she saw her judicial crusade through to the end, and therefore, she began preparing to enact a ritual to summon an entity that would grant her the unrestricted powers she craved.
Eurydice Blackstorm commenced her ritual to summon (name) in the last waning days of (year). The strong forces of magic involved in the spell drained her and reminded her acutely of her extreme decrepitude — as she drew from her own strength, she felt her bones weakening and her little remaining hair falling out — but she grimly went on, assured of renewed strength once she had harnessed the infernal power. Before she had succeeded in calling up the demon and making her bargain, however, a terrifying apparition materialized and disrupted her incantations: a statue of Asteria in the form of Blind Justice. The manifestation of the goddess pronounced the terrified Eurydice guilty of her crimes, and even as the corrupted priestess still expressed faltering defiance, Asteria cast her fallen servant into a blinding, all-encompassing light that Eurydice was certain were the eternal flames of the Hells.
The individual who had once been Eurydice Blackstorm awakened on the first day of the new year (year), finding herself sitting in the snow on the steps of Crinon Iral's Aphrodesian temple. She was astounded to find herself — with her full memories intact — occupying the body of a young woman in the full bloom of late teenage health. To her chagrin, with no resources or idea how she had taken this form, she soon found herself in the care of the very priestesses of Aphrodite she had been persecuting. While she was in the temple, the newly named Elysia had a brief conversation with an unfamiliar celestial voice that seemed to be Aphrodite herself, and was horrified to learn that Asteria had handed her over to Eurydice Blackstorm's nemesis to atone for her sins and learn important lessons. Unlike the austere but extremely magically powerful woman she had been, Elysia was now the opposite in every way: prone to be emotionally overcome by things she had scorned like art and physical pleasure, but with only a tiny spark of magical ability and no commanding presence. Worse yet, she found herself under a geas that rendered her unable to speak of her past life and compelled her to seek out a position in the hated Aphrodesian Church as a lowly novice. It quickly became clear that in her current form, Elysia had no hope of rising to the position and influence she'd enjoyed in the Asterian Church.
Knowing nothing of her time as their judicial tormentor, the Aphrodesians welcomed Elysia with open arms. She refused to embrace her new life with the same enthusiasm, however; although she did feel treacherous relief in the respite from the pains and terrors of old age, she hated the betrayal of feeling pleasure in things she had despised and yearned to find a way to return to her previous power. She learned through local gossip that the body of Eurydice Blackstorm was lying in a deep coma, and that most people were relieved that the old woman's reign of terror might be over. Her only comfort was Battleaxe, a beagle puppy that she had rescued while on the streets, but even this friendship seemed to be a betrayal of her previous self. When an unexpected letter came from Sycron the Collector inviting Elysia to participate in his Heroes' Challenge with a promise of unnamed rewards for the victor, Elysia saw this as a possible way to escape the bizarre punishment Asteria had sentenced her to. She traveled to Highmoon to take part in the Challenge.
Despite the claim that Sycron's Challenge was allegedly meant to showcase the best and most heroic natures of Galon's hopeful adventurers, Elysia found herself in a group that consisted mostly of people who seemed as morally questionable as herself: Ludwig von Paine, a cleric of Blandakk who was hoping to become the cruel despot of a small nation, Natasha Kournikova, a witch who (somewhat similarly to Elysia) had made her own infernal bargain and had found herself young, beautiful, and stripped of all intellect, and Ellia Tangletoes, who despite being the only morally good member of the group, was under constant suspicion because she was a kender. Club Doom's membership altered frequently throughout the Challenge, but other early members included Kristiana Tollias, an aspiring devotee of the pain goddess Loviatar, Kerrick Agorian, a secret but enthusiastically devout worshiper of Markira, and Tyrlora Firebourne, a cynical mercenary who was profoundly traumatized and twisted by
a run-in with a monstrous plant sorcerer and an insanity-inducing period of entrapment in an empty pocket dimension due to a teleportation accident.
During the early parts of the Challenge, Elysia remained aloof from her fellow team members and fixated on the cause of restoring her lost powers. The first challenge, a scavenger hunt, returned Elysia to Crinon Iral, where she was able to trick Ellia into retrieving her demon summoning book for her. However, while Club Doom was in the city, Von Paine's contacts alerted him to a secret that shocked Elysia: the Blandakkian Church had infiltrated the temple of Asteria through the machinations of a priest named Gambrose Alistair, and his agents were gaining power through unauthorized torture of Asterian prisoners. Elysia was appalled to learn that this corruption had been going on during her tenure as High Magistrate, and that her own dabbling in evil affairs had made her blind to the crimes occurring on her watch. She vowed to eradicate Alistair's influence in her former temple.
Elysia's crusade put her in a few very uncomfortable positions. Not only did she find herself ironically aiding the escape of her old nemesis, Maravin, to Highmoon, but she also had to petition for the assistance of her brother's grown son, the wizard (name) Blackstorm, whom Eurydice's memories still painted as a grubby, bad-mannered child. She and Club Doom defeated Gambrose Alistair, ultimately, and returned to Highmoon to take first place in Sycron's Challenge.
(work in progress)
Elysia has curly auburn hair and an olive complexion, and isn't terribly beautiful, although many find her moderately attractive. Her fairly average looks and reticent demeanor don't give her much status in the Aphrodesian church. Perhaps to compensate for this, she has a tendency to put on airs and act like she's a lot older than she actually is. During her time in Club Doom, though, she's become a little less shy, and has taken an unusual interest in both social justice issues and starting fights in taverns. She keeps a pet, a small beagle puppy named Battleaxe.
Appearance-wise, Elysia is in her late teens, with curly auburn hair, hazel eyes, and an olive complexion. She is uncharacteristically reticent and scholarly for a member of the Aphrodesian clergy, preferring to devote her efforts to working on her temple's long-neglected archives and social justice projects rather than the faith's more traditional ways of worshiping the goddess.
History
The First Crimson Rasp
It was revealed after the end of the Crimson Rasp arc of Sycron's Challenge that Elysia is not all that she appears to be. She began her life as a Crinonian priestess of Asteria named Mother Eurydice Blackstorm, who was born more than a century before the current timeline. Eurydice was the daughter of a highly placed secular functionary of the Asterian Church. When she was four years old, her parents and most of her family succumbed to the original Crimson Rasp plague, leaving her and her older brother orphaned and without caretakers. A local wizard offered her seven-year-old brother an apprenticeship, and although this was uncommon practice in the faith, the Asterian Church accepted Eurydice as their ward in recognition of her father's faithful service. Although Eurydice was too young to have formed strong memories of her lost family, she always retained a secret revulsion and fear of the sinister-looking plague doctors who came to dispose of her parents' bodies and inspect her and her brother for signs of the sickness.
Eurydice, raised conscientiously but not very warmly by a stern, austere clergy, grew up with a strong sense of duty to the temple that had taken responsibility for her care. She took vows in the church when she came of age. She devoted her life to the study and practice of law and rose to prominence for her management of the "forbidden" section of the Crinonian church's archives: that which contained artifacts and tomes of dark sorcery confiscated from criminal magic-users. Eurydice's keen intelligence and zero-tolerance approach to crime allowed her to advance quickly through the ranks of the church, and when she had gained sufficient age, experience, and gravity for the role, she attained the rank of High Magistrate of the Crinonian church of Asteria.
Mother Blackstorm was a figure terrifying to lawbreakers and subordinate clergy alike; she cultivated no close friendships or relationships and remained austerely celibate her entire life. She undertook administration of her office, prosecution, and sentencing without mercy. She punctiliously attended and witnessed every flogging, branding, and execution that she ordered, and never expressed regret for the decisions she handed down. Many whispered that, far from being a dispassionate and impartial judge, she actually took cruel delight in the suffering and fear she inspired. Not even the other clerics who worked with her were able to gainsay that, although nobody dared to say it where she might hear it. She seemed to harbor an especial, irrational hatred for the Aphrodesian Church, which she believed was a debauched hotbed of civic insurrection and sanctuary for escaped criminals. Whenever able, she brought the full force of the law down on individuals associated with the Aphrodesians, but often lamented that she could not uncover enough evidence to break their church once and for all.
Temptation
By the time Eurydice Blackstorm was at the height of her clerical power and long past the age when she might have easily reversed her misanthropic nature, she had begun, unknowingly, to harbor the seeds of corruption in her soul. She found that her persecution of the Aphrodesian Church was hampered by the restriction placed on her own powers, which were capable of bringing down destructive holy retribution on criminals, but only those who had been judged guilty through the Asterian Church's justice system. Eurydice became convinced that she alone was aware of criminals who were slipping through the net of that system, and began seeking a way to remove the limitations on her powers. She turned to a source that she, unlike her other law-abiding peers, knew very well: the very same forbidden archives that she had once devoted her life to safeguarding.
Mother Blackstorm's descent into moral degradation came to fruition in her one-hundred-and-fourth year, when she began hunting down rumors that the Aphrodesians were harboring a small-time but prolific thief and general miscreant named Maravin. Her quarry eluded her with maddening ease, and finally, she reached the limit of her patience. By this time, she was more than a century old, and even the blessings of the goddess could not stave off mortality for much longer. Although she was still a formidable and frightening adversary, she was physically weakened, brittle, and half-blind. Even the few simple comforts she'd allowed in her austere lifestyle had long lost their savor, and the thrill exercising her will over people and seeing them duly punished was the only pleasure left to her. She increasingly began to fear that she would die of simple old age before she saw her judicial crusade through to the end, and therefore, she began preparing to enact a ritual to summon an entity that would grant her the unrestricted powers she craved.
Justice
Eurydice Blackstorm commenced her ritual to summon (name) in the last waning days of (year). The strong forces of magic involved in the spell drained her and reminded her acutely of her extreme decrepitude — as she drew from her own strength, she felt her bones weakening and her little remaining hair falling out — but she grimly went on, assured of renewed strength once she had harnessed the infernal power. Before she had succeeded in calling up the demon and making her bargain, however, a terrifying apparition materialized and disrupted her incantations: a statue of Asteria in the form of Blind Justice. The manifestation of the goddess pronounced the terrified Eurydice guilty of her crimes, and even as the corrupted priestess still expressed faltering defiance, Asteria cast her fallen servant into a blinding, all-encompassing light that Eurydice was certain were the eternal flames of the Hells.
The Birth of Elysia
The individual who had once been Eurydice Blackstorm awakened on the first day of the new year (year), finding herself sitting in the snow on the steps of Crinon Iral's Aphrodesian temple. She was astounded to find herself — with her full memories intact — occupying the body of a young woman in the full bloom of late teenage health. To her chagrin, with no resources or idea how she had taken this form, she soon found herself in the care of the very priestesses of Aphrodite she had been persecuting. While she was in the temple, the newly named Elysia had a brief conversation with an unfamiliar celestial voice that seemed to be Aphrodite herself, and was horrified to learn that Asteria had handed her over to Eurydice Blackstorm's nemesis to atone for her sins and learn important lessons. Unlike the austere but extremely magically powerful woman she had been, Elysia was now the opposite in every way: prone to be emotionally overcome by things she had scorned like art and physical pleasure, but with only a tiny spark of magical ability and no commanding presence. Worse yet, she found herself under a geas that rendered her unable to speak of her past life and compelled her to seek out a position in the hated Aphrodesian Church as a lowly novice. It quickly became clear that in her current form, Elysia had no hope of rising to the position and influence she'd enjoyed in the Asterian Church.
Knowing nothing of her time as their judicial tormentor, the Aphrodesians welcomed Elysia with open arms. She refused to embrace her new life with the same enthusiasm, however; although she did feel treacherous relief in the respite from the pains and terrors of old age, she hated the betrayal of feeling pleasure in things she had despised and yearned to find a way to return to her previous power. She learned through local gossip that the body of Eurydice Blackstorm was lying in a deep coma, and that most people were relieved that the old woman's reign of terror might be over. Her only comfort was Battleaxe, a beagle puppy that she had rescued while on the streets, but even this friendship seemed to be a betrayal of her previous self. When an unexpected letter came from Sycron the Collector inviting Elysia to participate in his Heroes' Challenge with a promise of unnamed rewards for the victor, Elysia saw this as a possible way to escape the bizarre punishment Asteria had sentenced her to. She traveled to Highmoon to take part in the Challenge.
Club_Doom
Despite the claim that Sycron's Challenge was allegedly meant to showcase the best and most heroic natures of Galon's hopeful adventurers, Elysia found herself in a group that consisted mostly of people who seemed as morally questionable as herself: Ludwig von Paine, a cleric of Blandakk who was hoping to become the cruel despot of a small nation, Natasha Kournikova, a witch who (somewhat similarly to Elysia) had made her own infernal bargain and had found herself young, beautiful, and stripped of all intellect, and Ellia Tangletoes, who despite being the only morally good member of the group, was under constant suspicion because she was a kender. Club Doom's membership altered frequently throughout the Challenge, but other early members included Kristiana Tollias, an aspiring devotee of the pain goddess Loviatar, Kerrick Agorian, a secret but enthusiastically devout worshiper of Markira, and Tyrlora Firebourne, a cynical mercenary who was profoundly traumatized and twisted by
a run-in with a monstrous plant sorcerer and an insanity-inducing period of entrapment in an empty pocket dimension due to a teleportation accident.
During the early parts of the Challenge, Elysia remained aloof from her fellow team members and fixated on the cause of restoring her lost powers. The first challenge, a scavenger hunt, returned Elysia to Crinon Iral, where she was able to trick Ellia into retrieving her demon summoning book for her. However, while Club Doom was in the city, Von Paine's contacts alerted him to a secret that shocked Elysia: the Blandakkian Church had infiltrated the temple of Asteria through the machinations of a priest named Gambrose Alistair, and his agents were gaining power through unauthorized torture of Asterian prisoners. Elysia was appalled to learn that this corruption had been going on during her tenure as High Magistrate, and that her own dabbling in evil affairs had made her blind to the crimes occurring on her watch. She vowed to eradicate Alistair's influence in her former temple.
Elysia's crusade put her in a few very uncomfortable positions. Not only did she find herself ironically aiding the escape of her old nemesis, Maravin, to Highmoon, but she also had to petition for the assistance of her brother's grown son, the wizard (name) Blackstorm, whom Eurydice's memories still painted as a grubby, bad-mannered child. She and Club Doom defeated Gambrose Alistair, ultimately, and returned to Highmoon to take first place in Sycron's Challenge.
(work in progress)
Elysia has curly auburn hair and an olive complexion, and isn't terribly beautiful, although many find her moderately attractive. Her fairly average looks and reticent demeanor don't give her much status in the Aphrodesian church. Perhaps to compensate for this, she has a tendency to put on airs and act like she's a lot older than she actually is. During her time in Club Doom, though, she's become a little less shy, and has taken an unusual interest in both social justice issues and starting fights in taverns. She keeps a pet, a small beagle puppy named Battleaxe.
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