Alias: Angel of Vengeance, Ember
Race: Araviel
Initial Alignment: Neutral Good
Height: 177 cm
Weight/Build: 34 Kg
Age: 48 (although she usually tells people she's a century old)
Eyes: Dark violet, irises of texture akin to amethyst with pinpoint pupils, shimmering in the dark.
Hair: The same pitch-black just as her feathers, usually framed in a short chin-length bob.
Deity: None particular, not a religious person.
Base Class & Proposed Development: Bard, Shadowdancer
Notable/Distinguishing Features:
With an immediate glance the avariel is composed of two drastically contrasting shades - her porcelain pale skin and her pitch-black wings and hair.
With a closer look, the first thing calling for attention would be her eyes that glow a rare hue of violet.
Appearance:
A lithe avariel cloaked in black plume, broad wings striking elegant arcs ending with feathers at wingtip resembling extruding blades, when she stands, carried on her back gracefully like a mantle weaved with inky shadow, shrouded by it is pale skin as impeccable porcelain. A short, simple bob frames a delicate face, sharp eyes glimmer a dark amethyst-like tone. Dressed often in a quirky choice of attire matching the esthetic emphasized by her dark wing, lending an enigmatic air to the artistic elf.
Personality Profile:
To the everyday crowd and surroundings, Cocytus often appears to be carefree or even flighty, paying little concern to her display of language and behaviour, although being an actually sophisticated person, coming from an experience of a scholarly occupation and artistic métier, Cocytus is an intellectual well-armed by her mind despite her demeanor.
Behind the flighty mask hides a profound anxiety, one that comes from a sense of alienation by the world Cocytus is living in and by her very self, being in a world and a mind she is unable to recognise. Consistently Cocytus would feel like she is driven not by her own autonomy but the anxiety, that often turns into a rage both outwards and inwards. Cocytus tries to target the outward rage towards the cruelty in the world - those that aid in creating a world alienating not only herself, but countless others; yet her internal rage against herself only seethes trapping within her soul without a way to release.
The same rage is channeled into her art. Her music is always aggressive and indignant, as a way to vent her dysphoric passion that could only be grasped in an aesthetic manner. As a reflection, Cocytus also holds a poetic outlook on her condition, finding an aesthetical justification for her struggling existence.
Albeit having a tendency for violence, Cocytus is a deeply compassionate person, feeling others suffering and distress the deepest, which comes in turn fueling the rage towards those who are responsible for those suffering and distress. She isn't one to compromise to injustice, is willing to stand up in defense of the weak and wretched almost in a self-destructive fashion.
An urging desire for thrills drives Cocytus into a constant search for mysteries, where her scholarly interest and appreciation for theatrical beauty in the unknown take hold. There is an obsession possessing the elf for things yet without a worldly explanation, often pushing her to as far as weaving singular events into theories of conspiracy.
Background:
As far as Cocytus' memory goes, her life started inside the walls of Caer Callidyrr, capital of the human kingdom Callidyrr of Moonshae Isles. It is a mystery to Cocytus how she ended up there, beside her adopted parents' words of finding the baby araviel in a dark alley wrapped in a drenched blanket after a night of storm. Detached from elven culture and community, Cocytus grew up among urban Ffolks raised by her adopted family, artisan parents and an older sister, and was given a human name: Ember.
Since young, little Ember's adopted parents taught her how to conceal her prominent "alien" features, always wearing a large cloak when out in the public, which she was limited to do. Pretending to be a normal "earthly" elf or even a regular human, wearing a hood or a big hat to hide her ears, looking down to not let others notice her eyes. Being told that the humans wouldn't take kindly a figure so different from them, Ember was made to believe that fear would be stirred if she reveal truly to others in the city, and in return she should be fearful of them.
However as a child, her restless curiosity and convenient elven trait of lack of the need for sleep always led her to sneak out during night, without as much concern to hide herself from the public, to properly appreciate the city under the nightly veil, and admire the star-adorned firmament on a rooftop or in a dark corner of the street, shades of the night had been her friend since her very youth, helping her to avoid the unwanted attention and dangers not lightly taken for a kid. Although her favourite activity was always the rare times when she was taken outside to the streets of Caer Callidyrr in day, among the busy markets and performances of varies of musicians and entertainers, watching all the art and talents the city had to offer.
Childhood was long, adolescence only felt more so, yet human life isn't. At the point when Ember lived through just three decades and three years of her life, her adopted mother died of age, the same year the father followed, died of grief, Ember then was taken care by her nine years older adopted sister. The events of loss at such an age made the young avariel start to grow cynic, resenting fate for condemning her to such tragedy. Same year Talos released havoc upon the Moonshae Isles, anxiety of war and great destruction swept the city into chaos, aiding in the further decline of mental wellness of the already distressed avariel girl, filling her life with fear and lamentation. The only way Ember could find to ease her trembling mind is music. She locked herself in a room most of the day to play and practise violin - the last thing her adopted parents gave her before their decease. In which time she discovered her gift to weave music, and her very own emotion into magic, producing an intense light during a power chord.
The Talos crisis passed eventually, city returned to a more peaceful semblance, and the young avariel grew. The older Ember was, the more she felt aliented not only by the world around, but also by her own self. Many questions regarding both haunted more than ever before, so she started to collect books, and sneak into the local library in night, to search for answers in the pages. With a brilliant mind and feverish third for answers, Ember absorbed enough knowledge of a variety of fields to rival a scholar of academy. However she still couldn't answer the questions to the reason of the anxiety she felt the more she lived.
Around her time at adulthood, Ember could only learn to get used to the increasingly restive dread. Still an outsider of distinctive features, the avariel wandered the city at night, veiling her grown more prominent wings under a bigger cloak and using Prestidigitation to conceal the little inconvenient details, to ponder her existence under the open sky and often dull her sense with a poison named alcohol. One night after sufficient amount of mead, Ember walked down a dock after the trading quieted down. On the empty street only several figures persisted, noisy and restless. Attention drawn, Ember came closer, in the dim street light she witnessed a couple of Amnians beating up a slave, the scene of abuse invoked a rage in the tipsy avariel. Encouraged by alcohol, she rushed forward attacking the slavers, her cunning and agility enabled her to stand on her own in a fight with a couple of humans, yet without any actual fighting experience, she was eventually overwhelmed, the Amnians grappled her by her cloak as she was dodging a hit, in a pull the cloak removed, Ember's vast crow-like wings sprung from her back, under the lamppost casting down flickering shadow looming over her enemies. The slavers were immediately horrified, ran away without regard of the slave, screaming about a "demon", while the slave was also scarred by the avariel, caught the chance slipping away into the night. The moment Ember truly understood her parents' words about fear, and the true weight of it. Struck by both frustration of her perception by the one she just saved and a sense of pride of her action against cruelty, the same moment Ember was inspired, if she couldn't be accepted by the world, she might as well utilise the intolerance to better it.
Soon, the rumours on the street would speak of a figure with wings dark as a crow lurked in the shadows of the night, taking on slavers, robbers and cutthroats. While mainly using her presence of intimidation, Ember also gradually accrued experience of combat, striking from shadow and evading coming blows, purpose primarily being freeing the victims from the danger, and was never meant to deal crucial harm to the perpetrators, as a result most of them lived to tell the story. They named the winged vigilante "Angel of Vengeance", an urban legent that inspired fear to those committing evils under the shroud of night.
While her life as a vigilante was unveiling in nighttime, Ember started to pursue the life of a musician during day, although never one that participate in public performance, she composed multiple catalogs of experimental music, the most famous one being "The Ninth Requiem", known to be wailing, plaintive, and aggressive in the local circle, written to "moan those who were lost from the beginning". Ember gave herself a stage name, Cocytus - the wailing, and soon to use it as her everyday name instead of "Ember", for the loss of her identity with the name given by her parents.
The vigilante work seemed to have amplified the rage within Cocytus, the more evil she witnessed the more angry she grew towards the world, and not before long her ambition reached beyond stopping petty crimes and individual perpetrators, her scholarly mind led her to point the issues of the city to its system - what allowed all the little injustice to brew, and the greatest injustice of them all. And her first target, starting big, was slavery - the organised crime against autonomy. Cocytus pinpointed the officials that oversee the trades with Amn, the ones that actively enabled and benefitted from the slave-trading, she decided to pay each of them a visit in the darkest nights. Yet, her plan failed at the first stop. As she was trying to sneak into the mansion of the first official she seeked, overestimating her ability in walking the shadows, she alerted the guards and was soon surrounded by fully armed and trained soldiers. Knowing it is nothing like dealing with the individual petty criminals, Cocytus escaped, managed to fly away from the arrows and bolts. And much unlike the individual petty criminals, the assault of "Angel of Vengeance" wasn't dismissed as an urban legend by the government official, demanding the vigilante that dared to attempt to barge into their house to be found and questioned.
Knowing well that she couldn't possibly hide forever from the city's official authority's attention, Cocytus made the decision to leave the city when she's yet to be revealed, before it exacerbated to potentially harm her adopted sister - the only one left there she still cared about.
Another night, Cocytus took flight, under the clouded sky she departed Caer Callidyrr. Her life since then was stranded to the road, wandering around the lands aimlessly. But no longer concealing her wings even in distinct civilizations, maybe she didn't want to hide anymore, or just stopped bothering.
And then she came to Waterdeep.
Goals:
One without any purpose in life as now. Although Cocytus would still be into artistic creation, discovery and righting the wrongs.
Enemies:
Still a mystery in Caer Callidyrr, and not one that the government would take as friendly.
As a kid, Cocytus lived in the anxiety of the constant conflict of Ffolks and the northlanders, like the rest of Caer Callidyrr, fearing that one day a total war would break out and life consumed. Although Cocytus doesn't hold any particular grudge or prejudice towards the Northmen, she does despise their society and others alike that are fueled by wars and pillages.
As an artist, scholar and vigilante, Cocytus opposes all oppressive authorities. She always disdained the slave trades in Caer Callidyrr. With many slaves traded from Amn, she particularly holds an adversarial stance to the Amnian state aside from its totalitarian reputation.
As an avariel who has little connection to the elven culture as a whole, Cocytus really doesn't like elf supremacist.
Possible Plot-Hook Ideas and Misc Facts:
Cocytus' origin remains a mystery to her. She never bothered to search for information regarding her birth, yet she is certainly curious about them, if given a chance to know.
With Waterdeep's more diverse population, she may as well retain the work of winged vigilante while holding a front as a regular avariel.
