Vakase was born under strange circumstances, in a small, nearly forgotten village in the middle of nowhere. A lone star in the sky turned blood red during the hour of her birth. Vakase isn’t her birth name, but it’s the one she goes by.
She was raised as a normal peasant girl, working on her family’s modest farm. When she reached early adulthood she noticed that she was different. And then the horns and tail sprouted. And Vakase discovered she could do things with her voice and her eyes, create strange sounds, minor visual disturbances, inhuman things.
Her family tried to keep her hidden after that point, thinking they were cursed. Her mother finally admitted to a tryst with a strange handsome traveller just around the time Vakase was conceived. He was devilishly charming, so to speak. On a particularly cold winter day, Vakase’s father led her deep into the woods and left her there, intent to put the whole thing behind him.
That first night, alone in the woods, Vakase had two visitors. The first was an extremely handsome and devilishly charming traveller, who claimed she was his offspring, and tried to make her an offer for great power. The second was a passing cloaked woman with a raven, who had come to witness her father’s death as he’d been felled by a hungry wolf. She too had an offer for the confused young woman.
Fearful over what she was, and what she could become, she chose to go with the woman rather than the man who might be her father. He shouted into the darkness that he’d find her one day and she’d be his.
The cloaked woman promised to teach her magic so she could get by in the world, and performed a ritual to summon her patron, the Raven Queen, goddess of Death. Vakase began to understand death as the natural order of things and pledged her servitude to the Raven Queen. Really it seemed like the better deal of the two, and certainly better than becoming a hungry wolf’s dinner.
She spent a few years studying about all things magical, until she was bestowed with a raven of her own by her patron and sent out to find her way, waiting for visions to guide her.
Because of her infernal heritage, work is hard to come by, so she’s had to deal with seedier types who don’t ask questions and value her natural skills in intimidation and her unique abilities. And they know not to ask about the bird.
Most recently she ended up on the road to Belhaim, working for a man named Silas Gribb. He didn’t ask any questions, and neither did she.
