About Alysandra de l’EscalinaAlysandra de l’Escalina Human (Chelaxian) Cavalier (Daring Champion) 4 / Slayer (Cleaner) 3
==DEFENSE==
==OFFENSE==
==STATISTICS==
Background:
Alysandra has always had trouble remembering much before the orphanage. There were vague recollections – the loving arms of her parents holding her, a farm, an older brother – but for all intent and purposes, it had always seemed to her that her life had begun the moment she walked past the Monastery’s imposing gates, one of the many orphans the Goblinblood Wars had left in their wake.
The Sisters told her that her parents were dead, killed by the rampaging hobgoblins that had poured out of the Chitterwood and ravaged Isger’s countryside, and that the Golden Erinyes were the only family she had now. From then on, they would craft her into a servant of Eiseth, first of the Whore Queens, an instrument of vengeance who would never have to run or flee anymore. At first, she could not make sense of most of the words she heard that day, the fullness of their implications still mercifully eluding her young mind, but the last part – that one she could understand. A painfully shy girl, she nodded with grim determination, and never looked back. For a while, she showed promise. Swift, nimble, and a quick learner, Alysandra managed to impress her severe tutors enough to survive, and even thrive, in the harsh, competitive environment the Sisters had created around their apprentices. It was around her thirteenth year of age, however, that she discovered that she could not quite keep the pace of her peers. The proverbial runt of the litter, she more often than not found herself outmuscled and outmatched in the sparring sessions against her fellow novices – a good dodger whose blows lacked bite or skill. Worse yet, her inner anger and frustration prevented her from achieving the mental focus required for mastering the more complex techniques of the hamatulatsu, something the frequent corporal punishments only managed to exacerbate. Mercy and compassions being rare commodities among the Golden Erinyes, it came as no surprise when, ten years after she entered the monastery, she was denied admission to the Sisterhood and instead ‘invited’ to join the Hellknight Order of the Chain. Being forced to follow a path usually reserved to their male counterparts would have been an intolerable insult to any other Sister, but Alysandra, for one, welcomed her fate. In time, she had grown disillusioned with the diabolist teachings of the warrior nuns; instead, perusing through the dusty tomes of the convent’s library, she had discovered cryptic references to a Celestial equal of Eiseth, a paragon of vengeance and fury who eschewed the Erinys’ maliciousness in favor of righteous retribution – born in Hell yet ascended to the very Heavens by virtue of his deeds. Ragathiel was his name, and Alysandra secretly thought his story well mirrored her own, welcoming him in her heart. Indeed, the Hellknights proved a far more fertile ground for Alysandra’s own talents to flourish – despite their name, she soon discovered how the Asmodean grip over Cheliax only barely extended to the organization as a whole. Through a self-imposed routine of rigorous martial training, she developed a unique fighting style which combined agility and power in a series of elegant, yet deadly, swings. Perhaps just as importantly, she soon found out how, when it came to apprehending criminals, that penchant for stealth and misdirection she had honed to perfection in her years as an underdog at the orphanage was now giving her a considerable edge over her fellow Armigers’ more traditional yet blunter methods, ensuring a meteoric rise to the rank of Maralictress. And yet, her permanence among the Hellknights was destined to be even shorter than the time she’d spent within the cloistered walls of the Monastery. Perhaps the most defining moment in her life happened during a brief dispatchment to Westcrown, assisting a team of Order of the Rack specialist in eradicating a dangerous cult of Urgathoa which had managed to take root among the city's underbelly. On the last day of her assignment, she found herself wandering unseen though the Order’s underground archives in Citadel Rivad, when among the piles of moldy books (be it through some twisted form of serendipity or divine will, she still cannot say) a lone scroll suddenly caught her attention, one bearing a household name she hadn’t heard in a very long time: her own. And in it, written in an unflinching, bureaucratic prose, she found the details of how the de l’Escalinas, having moved to Isger to flee the Blood Revolution in Galt, had managed to somehow fall under the Order’s scrutiny as potential spreaders of revolutionary ideas, and before a formal investigation was even allowed to take place, were subsequently targeted for assassination using the chaos of the Goblinblood Wars as a cover. Meticulously putting the scroll back where she’d found it, she made sure no-one had been following her before sneaking back to her chambers. Anger, pain and betrayal rose and waned, leaving only one all-encompassing certainty in their wake: that Cheliax was rotten to the core, and that it was time she embraced Ragathiel’s vision wholeheartedly and purged its hellish taint from the face of Golarion. She couldn’t defect immediately – they would come for her – but she didn’t have to wait long for her chance, either. A couple of months later she was assigned to escort a cargo ship on its way to Ostenso when they came under attack from a detachment of Andoren Grey Corsairs. Her commanding officer, a sadistic Paravincar by the name of Ronorbo Corlanter, ordered her to toss some of the ‘cargo’ overboard in order to gain speed – that ‘cargo’ being, as she discovered to her horror, slaves. Little he knew that with that order he had sealed his own fate instead – as soon as he had turned his back on her, she impaled him on her sword and dispassionately watched the dark waters he was sinking in slowly turn crimson. No sailor dared question her actions; when the Corsairs boarded the ship, they found her kneeling on the poop deck with her blood-soaked sword laid in front of her, implicitly putting her life and that of the slaves she had freed into their hands. ******************************************************************* A couple of years later, a black hawk brooch discreetly pinned into the folds of her mantle, a hooded figure nervously makes her entrance into an inconspicuous office located in a seldom threaded hallway in the Golden Aerie's lower floors. ”Alysandra de l’Escalina reporting for duty. How can I give my life for Andoran?” Personality:
”I've never been the best among my peers. But never underestimate an underdog – especially one who's trained her whole life to get where she is now.” | In the monastery, among the Hellknights, during her Twilight Talon training – Alysandra has always felt the pressure of being surrounded by more capable individuals. Instead of cracking under it, she has merely redoubled her efforts, a firm believer that an iron will can temper even the feeblest body.
”You've never heard of me? Good. That means I'm doing my job right. And that somewhere, some heroic captain can now claim victory in Andoran's name without his glory being tarnished.” | Can Good triumph without inevitably corrupting itself in the process? Alysandra has accepted the grim answer can only lie in people willing to get their hands dirty so that better, more heroic people don't have to – secretly helping crafting a utopia they deep inside feel they would not be worthy to join. ”Evil people won't be so courteous as to use chivalry in their fight against us. I don't see why we should, either.” | Of the tenets of Ragathiel – vengeance, duty, chivalry – the last one is also the one Alysandra's struggling with the most. Deep inside, she's still the scared girl lying beaten and panting on the monastery's training room floor, only waiting for her opponent to turn her back on her to seize her chance at striking back. Appearance:
A young woman of unremarkable height and sharp features, Alysandra has mastered the art of wearing faces and identities as if they were dresses. Indeed, perhaps her most distinguishing traits are her piercing blue eyes and the diaphanous, almost preternatural grace highlighting every movement of her slender figure.
Ht: 5'4"
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