About AntumbraBackground:
Antumbra
On the day she was born Antumbra woke up screaming. Her voice was shrill, charged with lightning that cracked down on her writhing, naked, pale flesh. On the day she came into being she had aged already one-hundred-ten years of her elven life. Almost her entire body, reaching from chest to thighs, was covered in scars. The pain was debilitating, excruciating. Burning with white-hot intensity, each of the scars oozed and seeped with a slithering black substance that eked out of the permanent wounds. Amidst the pain, Antumbra went to touch the substance, to pull it away, to block it from seeping out, anything, but she found that she couldn’t, she found that the material was not substantive, not corporeal; it was nothing; it was but shadow. Her hands gripped and tore at the earth she laid upon, her eyes darting back and forth at the tall oaks that loomed above her in the forest, pressing inward, blocking all light, blocking all sensation but the pain that enveloped her. But that wasn’t why she screamed. She could feel the pain, she could feel the shadows as they pressed out of the long-since closed wounds. She screamed because the only place left, away from the pain, was herself, who she was before she was born here again, and she remembered where she earned these scars in the first place.
It wasn’t long before she final could force herself to move. Little by little, encroaching slowly, painstakingly, she propped her naked body up against one of the mighty oaks. It was there that the voice finally spoke to her. It wasn’t audible. All sound was blocked. The forest, wherever it resided, was silent. No leaves rustled. There was no wind. There was no sun, only sharpened creeping umbrage. Shadows within shadows. The voice spoke in her mind, playing on the backdrop as the images of her past arrayed themselves before Antumbra in her mind. She remembered them, but they were not memories of her as far as she could tell, rather as far as she could hope. The sound cascaded slowly like a creeping glacier as it roamed up inside her consciousness. It spoke, a voice ancient and dominating, powerful, deep, thrumming like an everlasting bass chord. It asked her, “what is your name?” “I don’t know,” she replied. “You do,” it answered in return, “but you don’t dare speak it.” “It’s not me. I remember these things, but they’re somebody else’s memories, not mine. I know the name of the woman who did these things, nothing more.” Tears welled up on the sides of her face, splashing on her naked corpulence. As the tears fell the shadows danced, moving with sentient initiative to dodge them where they landed, reassuming their ugly forms straight again after. “She is you, yet she is not you,” it spoke, softly. “These are both your memories, and the memories of a woman who is far past. These are both your scars and the scars of a woman who died in the throes of passion.” “I am not her!" Her voice was pitched with caustic indignation, reaching out, trying to find the entity that resided within her in her. “Who are you?! What do you want with me?” Impossibly, its voice grew louder, thicker, pouring into every fold of her mind, obscuring the memories in the deepest of hazes. “I am the shadow that looms over Golarion. I am the greatest darkness cast by the darkest light. I am the entity that only exists as a mirage, forever there, but visible only to those that watch the sun as it sets across the world. I am the Umbra, and soon darkness will fall.” She stared, eyes and mouth agape as the words undulated through her imagination. Her vision was gone, removed from the forest. “But why me? How did I come here?" Her voice was soft, pleading. She felt herself, her past, and her at the present and she realized she was not the forgone woman in her nightmares. She was somebody different, but she did not have a name. "I know how I... she died, but where did I come from? I…” The Umbra’s voice was soft, quiet, but spoke with an intensity that stopped all of her questions immediately. “Where there is no light there is no shadow. Soon the world may be bathed in darkness. This must be stopped. You will help stop it.” “But what is it that I must stop? You have told me nothing, and I’m lost and alone. Please, just tell me what I have to do!” “You will learn in time,” it said to her, its voice trailing off into the darkness, reaching from the antumbra, the penumbra and into the deepest recesses of the umbra.
Appearance:
Antumbra is a beautiful Elf by almost every account. Her eyes are an intense grey with speckles of black dotting the pupils. Her hair is a ghostly color, blue-grey, that catches sunlight, seeming almost to absorb it, darkening the area about her ever just slightly so that she appears ever so slightly apart from this plane.
Her regalia is odd for an Elf however. Sticking not to any sort of fashion sense her dress seems rather haphazard and ill looked after. The clothing is bundled so as to cover every inch of her body from her chest to her legs. Underneath is a latticework of scars that could make even the most hardened, battle-worn warrior cringe at the sight. It appears like no creature should have been able to survive the gashes accumulated across her entire body, and the appearance, whenever glanced upon by any normal man, woman or child, is almost enough sometimes to make them flee in terror. Antumbra tries to keep the scars covered whenever possible. Goals:
The even of her birth happened six years ago to date. Without a name to go by, she picked up the name Antumbra, never daring to share her name, her other name, her body’s true name, out of fear of what her past life’s mention will reap. She has since roamed the countryside of the Inner Sea, learning more of what task her shadow patron had designed for her, and what it meant by the darkness that will fall. In the meantime Antumbra has worked to study the strange arcane powers gifted to her, working through Sol to attempt to discover the inner-recesses of her capabilities.
Her vigil was bestirred at the mention of “the blot” a large dark cloud looming over Riddleport at the northern end of the Lost Coast of Varisia. Her contact there, “BLANK,” a friend she met far back in the beginning of her travels, has offered to keep her safe at her arrival. Hoping that this might finally be the key to unlocking the mysteries surrounding her revival, as well as dreading too what she might find there, Antumbra prepares to venture into the crime-ridden hive of Riddleport. Crunch:
Antumbra CR 1/2
Female Elven Witch 1 NG Medium Humanoid (Elf) Init +3; Senses Perception +3 -------------------- DEFENSE -------------------- AC 13, touch 13, flat-footed 10. (+3 Dex) hp 6 (1d6+0) Fort +0, Ref +3, Will +3 -------------------- OFFENSE -------------------- Spd 30 ft. Melee: Rapier +0, (18-20/x2), P, 1d6 . . . . Ranged: Longbow +3, (x3), P, 100ft, 1d8 and . . Dagger +3, (19-20/x2), P or S, 10ft, 1d4 Witch Spells Known (CL 1, -1 melee touch, 3 ranged touch):
Skill:
Languages Common, Elven, Sylvan Combat Gear Longbow, arrows (50), dagger(3), arrow (smoke)(3), rapier; Other Gear Backpack (16 @ 21.5 lbs), Bedroll, compass, Ink (1 oz. vial, black), Journal, Parchment (sheet) (10), Pouch, belt (4 @ 3.5 lbs), Spell component pouch, Waterskin, cleric's vestments,
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