Dianelopa

[Dianelopa]

Player Name: Dianelopa
Name: Dianelopa (Di a neh lo' pah)
Age: 19
Race & Gender: Female Shifter (half human - half lycanthrope)
Height: 5'8"
Weight: 135 lbs
Occupation: potentially (cleric-priestess)
Belongings: At the start Dianelope has only the clothes on her back (a hooded cape, blouse and skirt, leather boots), a pendent of black jade, a bag with food in it.

Appearance:
Dianelopa has long unkempt ash-gray hair, yellow-brown eyes, a long thin face with a long nose, Her skin color is greyish tan, but aside from the somewhat grayish cast, she looks very human and actually quite attractive. Because she's had little contact with the world outside her home, she is unsure of herself in public places, but unbelievably lithe when she scurries through the shrubby plains around Shim hunting for rabbits, snakes, deer or any other animal which she and her family could eat. She has no weapon, but catches them using stones and her bare hands. She sometimes also uses her teeth to skin them.
She has never met a man her age, so she has little sexual knowledge and knows nothing about flirting or even about sexual attraction. This could change.


Combat:
Dianelopa does not yet know what her powers are. But as she searches for her real identity she will gradually learn them. However, she is an excellent hunter, and can stalk her prey with great patience, hardly ever failing once she's spotted what she wants. She uses thrown stones to stun the prey. Her powerful hands can crush a small animal's bones. Her canine teeth are a bit larger than normal, but not enough to arouse suspicion. However, at night they seem to grow larger. Only Dianelopa has noticed this and found it strange and inexplicable. She also prefers to hunt at night, again something that always mystified her parents. But when the moon shines she is able to see clearly long distances and is even a better hunter than during the day.


Weaknesses:
Dianelopa is ignorant. She has learned very little from her parents and although she tried many times to leave the farm where she grew up, she did not succeed. What prevented her from succeeding sooner than at age 19 could perhaps be a bit of mental laziness, or just late development, although she is definitely curious. She always felt a certain responsibility to care for and love her old parents, who became more and more frail as she grew up.


Personality:
In the presence of humans or human-like creatures, Dianelopa seems soft and pliant. She listens, doesn't say much and when she does talk, it's usually to ask questions. No one has ever seen her get angry. But then again, the only people who've ever seen her are her parents and the seldom visitors to the farm. But these people, were they to describe her, would say she is kind, humble, and always willing to help. Only at night do her eyes which normally seem to radiate beams of compassion, sometimes turn fiery. Her parents when they saw this would be scared, and yet they could not say that there was anything noticeably evil in it.

Motivation: Right now Dianelopa's motivation is to find out more about the world and about her identity.

History:
What Dianelopa does not know is that her human mother was a witch or rather a priestess of the goddess Diana. When the worship of Diana was banned, she went into the wilderness along with other priestesses, to escape the threats of destruction. It was there that she met Dianelopa's father, a lycanthrope, though she did not know that when she fell in love with him. The other priestesses noticed the attraction between the two and warned her, reminding her that as a priestess of Diana, she was not allowed to have sex with a man. But it happened. Just how is unknown. In any case, she became pregnant. For this the other priestesses, her supposed friends, abandoned her, leaving her alone in the wilderness. But apparently the father was not about to let her die. Of course, she soon found out the true nature of this man, who at night turned into a werewolf.
Apparently the two of them lived together for about two years after the child was born. But something made Dianelopa's mother decide that this way of life could not continue for the baby and she brought her to an old couple, living in Shim, whom she'd heard were childless and wanted to adopt a baby to inherit their land. Thus Dianelopa came to live on a farm on the outskirts of Shim.
Anyone with linguistic knowledge would know that the name Dianelopa in itself might give some clues to the girl's origin. Diana - from the goddess of the hunt and lopa = wolf/human. Dianelopa has within her all the potentiality of her priestess mother with the powers she received from the goddess Diana, as well as of her lycanthrope father.

Story begins:
Dianelopa has just arrived in Marn. At first glance she looks to be a farm girl, wearing a rather worn brown felt cape with hood, muddy boots and a plain off-white homespun skirt. Her hair, as much as is visible under the hood, is long, ash gray and tangled. She is squinting, as if observing the strangeness of the city intensely. In fact, she is very curious. She has never been in a city before.
Dianelopa is 19 years old. She grew up on a farm in the Shim area as the only child of a now quite old farmer couple. They did their best to protect her and never allowed her to go beyond the bounds of the farm. During her childhood Dianelopa tried many times to "explore". But she was always caught. She suspected that her parents had some magical means to locate her whereabouts. And thus she spent years trying to figure out how to evade them. Not because she wanted to leave her parents but because she wanted to know what was out there.
Dianelopa is not stupid, yet in spite of all her efforts she did not come up with a solution. She had searched the house, the barn, the outhouses, and she could review in her mind virtually every inch of the land from which her parents tried so desperately to scratch a meager living. All she ever found was a necklace, a pendent of black jade with a cat carved on it hung on a chain of crumbling ancient grass. It was hidden in a kitchen drawer with a double bottom. Dianelopa didn't touch the necklace for fear the crumbling grass would give her snooping away.
But as her parents got older and older, it was obvious to both of them and to Dianelopa that they might die leaving the mystery unsolved, but also leaving Dianelopa at the mercy of whatever they were trying to protect her from.
So one day as they ate their thin soup and rye bread, Dianelopa said, "I know that I am being held here by some magic power."
Her parents' faces paled, their lips trembled, and Dianelopa knew she'd hit a sore point. "I want to go," she said. "I am grown up now. I need to know more about the world."
There was a long silence.
Finally her mother said, "Dianelopa! We have done what we can for you. But we will not be here much longer. You will have to decide for yourself what you do with your life."
"Thank you," said Dianelopa. "So can I go?"
"But this is a good place to be," said her father. "This farm belongs to us. It will be yours when we depart. It has provided for us all our lives. Out there, there is nothing but danger. Where do you want to go?"
"To Marn, to the city, to meet other people, to learn..."
"Learn?" said her mother. "You know everything you need to know. You learned to farm this place, you can hunt, you can cook and clean and fix anything that breaks."
"Learn to read," said Dianelopa.
"No one reads," said her father. "That is silly."
"But I need to know more," said Dianelopa.
There was silence again.
Just as Dianelopa was about to get up and go to bed, her mother said, "OK, I will tell you everything you need to know."
Her father grunted disapprovingly, but her mother ignored him.
"We are not your parents," she said. "Your mother brought you to us when you were two years old and asked us to bring you up as our own child. She was in great danger at the time and she wanted you to survive."
"Is my mother alive now?" Dianelopa asked. She was not so surprised at this news. Somehow she'd known deep down. There was this vague and inexplicable memory she'd had of a young woman cuddling her. Now she knew it was true.
"I don't know," her mother said. "We never heard from her again."
"What is her name?"
"She did not tell us. But she left one thing for you. She told us to keep it well hidden and never let anyone know about it, but to give it to you when the time came. I think the time is now." She went into the kitchen and came back with the necklace. The grass chain had completely disintegrated when she'd touched it, but the black pendent seemed to shine when Dianelopa took it.
"She was a witch," growled Dianelopa's father, frowning. "That thing," he pointed at the pendent, "is evil."
"No," said the farmer's wife. "It isn't evil. It has been in this house for 17 years and nothing bad has ever happened to us."
"So I can go?" Dianelopa asked again. "And nothing will stop me this time?"
"You can go," said her mother. "I will pack you a big lunch tomorrow morning. I wish I could give you more, but we have nothing."
And thus it was that Dianelopa set off for Marn.