Dianthe, Child of Crows

Dianthe
Dianthe is a small half-drow necromancer that accompanies the smaller, secondary party. She has a strange fascination with crows and birds, which are her weapon of choice. Weak and small due to her starting her lich transformation early in her life, Dianthe prefers to avoid combat, and when faced with fighting, raises the dead to do her bidding. Because of her stature, she spends most of her time in The Pale Horse as a translator, the company "clean-up crew," and the extended eyes of the company. Dianthe is arrogant, and fully aware of her advanced intelligence. She makes no attempt to hide her constant disinterest in other people, finding more entertainment in toying with the dead, and in books. She is known to contest Miæva's choices, openly debating with the tielfing woman if she feels that she has a better choice. Despite that, she has an incredibly high amount of respect for Miæva, always prefacing her name with the honorific "Lady" in conversation.

Statistics & Basic Information
Name: Dianthe (often referred to simply as ﻿﻿﻿The Crow﻿ in The Pale Horse)

Race: Half-drow (uncertain of father's race)

Gender: Female

Class: Dread Necromancer, Shadowcaster

Alignment: Chaotic Evil

Deity: Fa, Vengou, Movensa

Age: (Deian Years): 38

Age: (Earth Years): 29

Weapon: the only physical weapon Dianthe carries is a small dagger.

Armor:(to be determined)

Appearance


Height: 4'2”

Weight: 56lb

Eyes: black

Hair: Black, unkempt, uneven. Only cut when it proves to hinder her eyesight, and sometimes not even then. Reaches the beginning of her shoulder blades against her back, nose length fringe cut messily above the eyes, face framing sides reaching her collar bones. Rarely brushed. One can often find feathers woven in her hair, though it's hard to tell whether the feathers are there intentionally or not.

Clothes: Dianthe's choices of clothes are typically nondescript, sturdy enough to withstand constant wear. Often wears plain-coloured ankle length skirts split for riding (though she climbs instead), with a sleeveless top. Always wears a thick, long scarf half-attached to a cloak, the scarf is wide enough to be pulled up to wear as a hood with fabric to spare. She wears loose leather sleeves on her forearms, and a large leather glove on her left arm as a perch for her crows. She wears a small dagger on a long leather cord looped from her cloth belt, as well as a small bag of holding on her lower back. She wears a dark, oversized, feather-twined cloak, with the tassels having feathers attached. She wears soft light brown leather boots.

Personality & Traits
Notable Mechanics: Mother Cyst, Sustaining Shadow, Lich Body DR 6

Notable Behaviors: A blank, unreadable expression that is betrayed as soon as she opens her mouth. Arrogant, and usually surrounded by 2-3 crows at any given time. She has an advanced, far reaching knowledge of languages.

Trademark Characteristic:﻿   Small body; she stopped aging at the age of 12 (9 EY) due to her beginning her transformation into a lich very early on.

Fatal Flaw(s): Selfish to the point where she is willing to risk the lives of others for important information, for her own gain. She rarely pays any thought to her teammates in battle.

Languages: Elven, Giant, Common, Oceanic, Undercommon, Abyssal, Infernal, Draconic. Able to recognize and identify almost all other languages even if she is unable to speak them.

Backstory
( -- WORK IN PROGRESS -- )

There isn't much to tell, from Dianthe's point of view, about her past.

Born mute to parents she finds too dull to remember in the Rats' District, the poorest slums of Toru'en, Dianthe did not have a chance for her innate intelligence to shine through. An unnaturally quiet child who showed very early on to be emotionally stunted, Dianthe found the fine line between life and death in the Rats District to be a curious thing. She did not find the presence of a corpse disturbing, and one could even go so far as to say that is was comforting to her. There was no danger in an empty body; what had the ability to hurt her had long since left its vessel of flesh. What she found even more interesting was the carrion that surrounded the bodies. Death fed life, which fed death. Dianthe quickly grew fascinated with crows -- they were intelligent birds, yet picked at scraps and rotting flesh. It did not take long for her to find a crow's nest, as she began watching the birds more and more until they were all she could focus on. In the dead of night, she stole a single fledgling from a nest. At the age of ten, she silently pronounced the bird hers.

A year passed. More chicks were stolen, more birds raised. Dianthe did not have a goal in mind for her crows, these birds raised under her wing. More died under her care than lived, but she did not care. It was a process of fine-tuning, learning what did and did not work. Despite her patience, Dianthe gradually grew frustrated. No matter what she did, her crows grew to adulthood, grew independent, and left her. And like everything, they died. It was no easy task tracking her pets. She painted the undersides of their wings, but even then, traversing across the slums at her size was no easy task. Dianthe loathed the independence and freedom the birds enjoyed so carelessly, flying where they wanted, eating when they pleased, dying when it suited them. n the half-drow's eyes, the whole cycle was inefficient. Even smart birds were dull creatures, after Dianthe figured them out. The girl craved control. And one day, following an injured crow through a part of the Rats' District she was not wholly familiar with, she wandered down the wrong alley, at the wrong time. And that was the day she finally spoke for the first time. But the sound were not words. They were screams.

In retrospect, Dianthe believes she'd overreacted. But at the time, fear had paralyzed the drow girl. She had been down this alley two, maybe three times. She remembered the bodies - it had been a family of four, once. A mother and father, of races she could not yet identify, and two young boys. Crumpled in a pile, unmoving as she had passed them so many weeks ago. Disease had taken them, as took many in the Rats' District, and their bodies were mottled and twisted. Now, before her eyes, they stood, posture unnatural and stiff, shifting with the wind. There was no light in their eyes, rolling without sight in their sockets. A shaky sob fell from Dianthe's lips, and she stepped back. The crow had left her view, her mind. Her stomach was cold, and she could not keep from trembling. Dianthe had never before seen necromancy before, and it stole away the safety she found in corpses. In death, they could not hurt her. Only life gave way to danger. But now, seeing these bodies that were not dead but not alive, Dianthe knew terror. She took another step back, and stumbled, falling down. The bodies took a step forward to contend her own movement, and a figure stepped from the shadows.

Miæva
While Dianthe names no close bonds to anyone but her birds, she considers Miæva a true friend, and is fiercely loyal to her. She holds an unwavering amount of respect for the fiend woman, and while she will openly debate choices that Miæva makes if Dianthe does not agree, she will often agree after pushing hard enough, and will almost always do what Miæva asks of her. In conversation, Dianthe will always preface Miæva's name with the honorific, "The Lady."

Ephra
While the two aren't close, Dianthe finds Ephra amusing and occasionally interesting, though often immature and too impulsive. Their mutual interest in language and travel are their usual topic of conversation. Dianthe never calls Ephra by name when not around her, and calls her "Ellayna," the name Ephra used before her time in The Pits.

Oran
Dianthe dislikes Oran, despite him helping her acquire a new, more functional body in CAEde. She finds him childish and irritating, and often refers to him as a brat.

Darian
The only person Dianthe dislikes more than Darian is Sigodrye. The two have never gotten along, seeing as Darian finds it terribly amusing to crush her birds, and has gone so far as to make a habit out of any crows he sees. As a result, their relationship is rocky, to say the least.

Sigodrye
Dianthe and Sigodrye are as far from friends as two people can get. Sigodrye took great pleasure in harassing Dianthe despite Miæva's constant punishments. She enjoys taking Dianthe's crows as prizes after killing them, and often took Dianthe for "playdates."