Priscilla Malatrast

[Priscilla Malatrast]

Priscilla Malatrast

Age: 104
Race: Human
Height: 5'1"
Weight: 88 lbs

The skin on either side of Priscilla's prominent nose sags, butting up against her mouth to form deep creases that continue to her jawline, where the skin hangs down in two age-spotted flaps which meet the dangling folds around her frail neck. She walks slowly, hobbled by age and arthritis. Her aristocrat's nose hooks downward like an eagle's beak, her hawkish appearance further supported by her deep-set eyes, irises the color of a bottomless pit.

Her teeth are yellow, stained by the years, square and still strong, but seldom put on display with a parting of her grave, small lips.

She has cycled her hair through many colors, finally settling on a gaudy, rich orange. It has grown freely over the last decades, and her attendants spend hours combing henna through it, pinning it up, and draping it with one of Priscilla's frilly black shawls every morning before escorting her on her laborious walk to the Hall of the Magistrates, just next to the more imposing Hall of Justice.

The newer officials at the Hall see her as a impatient, dour woman, given to violent outbursts of elaborate, cursing threats. They have learned to avoid her when possible. The old guard, of which she is a well-received, if not respected member, knows her personality more accurately. Though she is, indeed, very intolerant of the bumbling incompetence of her newer peers, she is a very patient woman, who has provided much wise, conservative counsel over the years. Despite her acidic, vulgar tongue, she can be quite personable.

Possessions:

Although Priscilla considers her salary to be modest, it far outstrips the average salary of the average citizen of Marn. It has afforded her a smaller-sized mansion on the outskirts of the government center and comfortably supports Priscilla and a staff of two handmaids, a cook, a butler, and a groundskeeper, despite Priscilla's sudden bouts of extravagant spending.

Imp-bone Cane - a macabre solution to a rather mundane problem, Priscilla relies on this vertebrae-bone cane to walk about. It is capped with the small, horned head of some unidentifiable creature, and banded at the bottom and under the grip with a sturdy but expensive looking metal. The grip has been worn smooth, and the eye-sockets of the creature have been set with old, dark rubies. Priscilla's closest confidants know that it also serves as a focus when performing summoning rituals.

Ritual Knife - a long dagger, hooked almost like a scythe with a smooth, gradual curve and a fat midsection. It is made of a silver alloy, and the grip is set with inlays of obsidian and emerald. The tip is sharp, perfect for pricking when small amounts of blood are called for, and the edge at the bottom of the hook is suited for making larger cuts.

Powers:

Position: her wealth and influence are her chief assets. Although she could not directly influence the decisions of Marn's true rulers, the Judges of the Hall of Justice, she could have a few words spoken carefully into their ears.

Channeling: over the years, Priscilla has built up a casual rapport with beings, mostly devils, of other planes. Lately, she has become consumed by the allure of dark magic and devotes much of her time to gruesome experiments. With ample preparation, she could put herself in contact with several devils. With ample sacrifice, she could secure assistance from them.

Weaknesses:

Frailty: at the age of 104, supported only by a cane and whatever wicked pacts she has made with dark creatures, Priscilla can hardly walk, much less run. Unprotected, she could easily fall victim to almost any assailant.

Magical Weakness: As an exchange for the services of devils and other magical beings, Priscilla has sacrificed much of her former vitality. There are days when she struggles even to breathe. Any further dark magic would require even more sacrifice on her part, a significant demonic agreement would leave her bereft of energy for weeks.

Scrutiny: although somewhat sheltered by her position, Priscilla must still be very secretive about her magic use. Having been privy to the Hall's scrying schedules over the years, she has managed to avoid discovery, but every encounter with a Judge fills her with the inner terror that she has finally been caught.

History:

Priscilla was born into a comfortable, upper-class family, where she was trained in the domestic art of being an aristocrats wife. She married at seventeen and spent the next sixty or so years living the suffocatingly privileged life of a magistrate's wife, cloistered away in luxury.

It was not until her husband died that Priscilla realized the tragedy of her life. Approaching eighty, without her husband, and possessed of no skill effective outside of the domestic sphere, she existed without purpose. It was in these too-late years that something finally happened, part by chance, part brought on by her own desperation.

At seventy eight, Priscilla was still remarkably spry, perhaps because her joints and muscles had been spared by servants from years of unnecessary use, and she took up daily ventures into the heart of the city her husband had presided over so confidently, a city that she soon realized was something beyond her reckoning. It was filled with scoundrels and thieves, charlatans and charmers, and one of the latter attracted her attention. She was a dirty woman, frizzy, knotted hair barely contained by the cloths she wrapped it with. She wore rags, thin fabrics once brightly colored, and she peddled primitive magical wares. Priscilla was particularly attracted to one item, a silver hooked dagger, embedded with mysterious green jewels and pitch-black stones. According to the street merchant, it was used in rituals for communicating with the dead. Fortunately, she also sold a book that described those rituals.

Priscilla felt a tightening in her chest, an impulse that overcame her usual miserly habits. She purchased both, not even bothering to haggle with the woman over the obviously unfair price. She could afford it.

She took the items back to her house, where sheets were being pulled over the furniture, preparing it to be moved to a smaller, more modest home whose upkeep her husband's pension would cover. Night after night, she pored over the tome, thumbing back and forth through its smudged, crumbling pages. There were some things she couldn't make out, sometimes pages were missing, but, after a few days, she thought she had the gist of it.

She waited until a night with a new moon as one of the first, most intact rituals had prescribed. By then, most of the furniture had been taken from her home. She was set to move by the end of the week. The stone floors of the house's empty great room provided her ample space to draw out the summoner's circle, inscribed with the strange, jagged design shown in several diagrams throughout the book. She capped each of its seven points with three drops of her blood, that flowed eagerly from a simple prick made at her wrist.

There were pages and pages of strange words to recite. She had practiced them under her breath as she was out directing movers and servants over the past week. But she had always stumbled. Now, standing there in the circle, dagger raised high, they flowed with unnatural ease. She didn't even have to peek at the book at her feet. They came to her, all at once, in a flash, and her voice echoed in her ears, strong and young as it had once been as she spoke them. When she was done, it was silent. She could even hear the noises of night critters, chirping over the sound of her own breathing.

She called out for him--her dead husband--but he did not answer. The silence pressed on her, and the tight surety she had once felt in her chest melted away into despair. She sank to her knees, crushed by her failure. Then, as she knelt painfully against the hard stone, someone answered her call. It was not her husband's voice, but the manifold voice of many at once, speaking in ugly, cacophonous unison.

"We have heard your call," they said. "Why do you disturb our slumbering?"

Her heart began to pulse harder than it had ever done before in her life. She feared it would explode, and she clutched at it, clasping the dagger to her chest with both hands in abject terror.

"SPEAK WOMAN!" the voices roared, and she found her voice. She recounted the troubles of her life, the aimlessness she felt at her dull, pensioned widow's existence. And they listened.

The next day, she went to the Hall of the Magistrates, an old law book in hand, relevant passages underlined, to claim her husband's position, citing a forgotten law that had been written for times of war to provide for government in the absence of men who had gone off to fight. Its relevance came into question, but, daunted by the persistent cunning of the old woman before them, the magistrates acquiesced and presented Priscilla her husband's title.

She stayed in communion with those spirits, adding others warily over the years to her pantheon of contacts, and grew in wisdom more in twenty years than she had in the previous sixty. Each day, her trained domestic manners fell away more and more, like chipping at a once beautiful facade, leaving her a vulgar, ugly imitation of what she had once been.

But at least she was a product of her own making, and she was proud. Haughty, filled with disdain, impatience, mistrust, and scores of other ugly, thrilling emotions she has never really known before, she knows she is in her last years, and she clings to each day more desperately than the last, not willing to give up the life she has just begun to live.