Nikeisha's page

Small, lithe and unassuming, Nikeisha has a subtle beauty and grace that can charm. Her dark skin is covered with a number of small nicks and marks from her childhood, the tale of a thousand adventures in staying alive, but none of them are especially large or prominent. She keeps her hair short and neat, as it is easier to handle with limited access to water and soap.

Her clothing is typically light and airy in blues and greens, with a long skirt and whatever armour she wears, although she prefers to avoid armour when possible. She wears a number of silver rings on her fingers and toes, and a silver chain bracelet on each wrist and anklets on her feet. As she wasn’t able to afford footwear until she was an adult, and even then only recently, she typically goes barefoot when possible. She carries some sandals for those occasions are not possible, but hates boots with a passion.

Nikeisha typically speaks in a quiet, mezzo soprano voice with a Rydwyrna accent. She’ll smell of soap when she can get it and not if she can’t, but she doesn’t typically use perfume as it seems like a pointless extravagance.

Nikeisha is pleasant, and charming as she needs to be, able to bluff and deceive at will. She prefers honesty but has no issue in using other means when needed. Survival doesn’t come with a score, after all. The same pragmatism extends to combat - she prefers a battle she avoids. And if she does have to fight she doesn’t care about honour, or fair play. If you have to fight, you have to win.

Uncaring about law, or even good and evil, Nikeisha cares about people. At the end of the day that’s all that really matters, and everything else is a luxury. She has long since learned that people can’t always be trusted, of course, but she tends to become intensely loyal to those who are loyal to her.

As a result Nikeisha is a useful ally - good in social situations, brutally pragmatic when it comes to survival and deeply loyal to those she can trust.

Nikeisha is a child of the streets, someone who never knew a father or mother. Her earlier memories are of orphanages, of warm alleys cowering with other children, or snatched foods and angry shopkeeps. There are a lot of dangers on the streets for a young child on the streets of any city, quite apart from the very real dangers of exposure and starvation. But fast wits and a clever tongue could count for a lot, even in a child.

...but not enough. One by one she saw friends, acquaintances and enemies get wounded, get sick, die. Sometimes, people she knew simply...vanished. Sometimes she looked for them, if they were important. And sometimes she didn’t. Either way, she didn’t find out what happened to them.

Nikeisha grew up, as children do even with poor food and occasional pestilence, unless of course they don’t grow up at all. She didn’t grow tall, nor did she grow strong, but she was surprisingly fast, flexible and robust and quite charming. She managed to acquire an education of sorts, gaining basics in writing and mathematics. Simple jobs followed, and it appeared that Nikeisha was in for a simple life.

Fate doesn’t always make itself obvious.

Nikeisha began to grow paranoid, firmly believing someone was watching her, but could never catch anyone doing it. Relatively pretty young girls certainly get stares occasionally, but Nikeisha was reasonably good at spotting them. This was different. It wasn’t constant, but at least two or three times a day. It got worse, and worse and she remembered all the times as a child she’d hear others talking about the same feeling…

And one night went to sleep in her bed...and awoke somewhere else. A ruin of some kind, deep beneath the city. Looking around, Nikeihsa began to assume that this place was, in fact, the city of Rydwyrna, but from the past. Most people know that a city that exists for long enough becomes built on itself as the city is built up, and Nikeisha assumed this one was no different. The question became how did she get here?

As she wandered the lost cellars and buildings, she began to find remains. Children and young people, some of whom she remembered. She had found those who had vanished...and none of them had a chance to die of starvation. But she couldn’t find a way out. And she was being watched, all the time. Sometimes, she caught a glimpse of something or someone, but they faded away before she could get a good look. But those glimpses got more frequent…

Strange things began to occur as well. Illusions of water, of exits out, of the people lost. Confused, hungry and exhausted, Nikeisha struggled to keep hunting for an exit, for anything that might help her. She saw, finally, what was hunting her - a Ghost. She had no idea why, but she was being stalked by a Ghost. How did you kill what was already dead? She had seen swords and knives, scorch marks on the walls. Magic and weapons would struggle to kill such a thing…

The Ghost began to appear without care, to cut, to taunt or simply to scare her. And Nikeisha wasn’t even sure it was always so, as she suspected she was hallucinating. Or maybe it was the Ghost, creating illusions to break her mind and spirit before it killed her. She couldn’t be sure. She was certainly convinced she hallucinating, however, when she found the Tree.

A huge chamber, deep in the ruins, lit by what she could only assume was magic, housed the biggest Tree a city dweller such as Nikeisha had ever seen, a massive things with deep green leaves edged with gold. The young girl staggered to the Tree and touched the bark, perhaps hoping that by touching it to confirm that it was real. But when she touched it, she knew.

The tale of what had happened here was not told to her, by whatever being the Tree housed or belonged to, but simply placed in her head as knowledge. The Ghost behind her had been a killer, in its mortal life, a serial killer than had hunted and slayed until the people of Rydwyrna had hunted them down and driven them below. But the killer had never been able to escape the pursuit, and had died in the tunnels, hiding and waiting...and dreaming of the victims he couldn’t take. That dream, that black and bile lust, was so strong that even death could not contain him, and he rose again as a Ghost.

The Tree had seen centuries of suffering, of people hunted and killed before it, and tired of it. The Hunt was only just when the prey and the hunter had and equal chance, and against an undead stalker, these people -many of them children - had none. So it offered the choice. A power and a connection to the Fey, in return for the chance to destroy the Ghost.

Nikeisha accepted. She had almost no choice, other than death.

A long branch was lowered to her hand, and she grabbed it. The simple branch formed her arcane focus, and with it - and the knowledge she now had - Nikeisha turned to face the monster chasing her. With the staff in one hand, she tapped the ground and muttered a word in Sylvan - and an Eldritch Blast seared the monster with raw force.

Shocked by the sudden turn of events - by an enemy with a weapon it was not resistant to - the Ghost tried to move in for the kill, and got another Eldritch Blast for its trouble. It tried to flee, but could not flee fast enough to get out of the range of the magics. Perhaps it was simply too proud to escape to the Ethereal Plane, or maybe it remembered being chased so long ago and panicked, but it fled into the corridors of the ruins, with Nikeisha following behind it.

And there, alone, chased through the dark, the Ghost succumbed to the grave once more. With the knowledge of the Tree, and its roots spread throughout the complex, Nikeisha found her way out of the ruins and to the streets. Tired, hungry and thirsty, but alive.

Fates change. By making a pact Nikeisha had changed her future. She had one now, for a start. She also possessed the magical abilities necessary to qualify for the Arcane Order. She did so because it was a way out of the limited and small life she had led before this, and because it would allow her to harness more of the strange gifts she had been granted. But she would never forget the city that had made her.