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[Sephrenia Katrov]

Name: Sephrenia Katrov

Original: Yes
Origin: None
Race/Nationality: Shadow Elf (mixed)
Age: 270
Build: Slim, frail.

Typical Attire: Sephrenia is usually wearing a light, simple gown in white or dark red, accompanied by a sturdy black cloak with deep pockets. She carries a bow on her back as well as an arrow quiver, filled with red-feathered arrows. Her shoes are simple and made of leather.

Appearance: Sephrenia has pointed ears typical of a Shadow elf, the pale skin, and dark brown eyes. Her hair is a dark shade of mahogany, which in the shadows, looks dark brown. In the sunlight, however, her hair looks like a deep shade of natural red. Her hair reaches the bottom of her back. Sephrenia always has several small scars littering her body from almost-healed minor wounds- they look rather painful on her.

Strengths: Her magic strength and skill is very good, and she can even cast very simple spells without hand gestures. Even though her aim is only "good", aiming a poisoned arrow at a man's heart and hitting his arm usually results in his death all the same. She is strong-willed and determined, as well as intelligent, when she has a moment to sit and think. Sephrenia is also blessed with well-above-average hearing.

Weaknesses: Her eyesight gets worse as she casts more spells. It's not a permanent blinding effect, more like descending stairs into blindness: with each small spell she takes a step downward, with each more potent spell she takes more steps... and just as with real stairs, she can travel back up them, but the farther down she goes the longer it takes to get back up to the top. She speculates that if she ever goes through the door at the foot of the stairs that she won't be able to turn back and the blindness will become permanent. She can still cast blindly, although the risk of permanent damage increases drastically if she does so. Blind, Sephrenia is very clumsy and, of course, has difficulty dodging many attacks (especially more silent ones). Of course, she also possesses the Elvish natural inability to recover from wounds quickly.

Bio: Sephrenia's mother was not a stereotypical light elf. Born with a mysterious case of anemia, she learned to live life somewhat as a human-- rash, and always fearing her death, as one good sword stroke or well-placed arrow could leave her bleeding to death on the ground, rather than sending her to rest in the forest for months to recover as a normal elf. Because of her illness, the Light Elf community refused to accept her, fearing that, if she managed to bear children, her illness would one day cause the entire settlement to die from minor wounds. Furthermore, the elves feared that her blood was a curse, and that keeping her nearby may bring the same illness into everyone's home. She was cast away to live on her own. Fortunately, she was skilled with Essence Magic and managed to survive for quite some time on her own. Eventually, she was taken in by a Shadow Elf settlement in a faraway forest when one elf stumbled upon her and was impressed by her spirit. She married and gave birth there to Sephrenia.

Sephrenia adopted her mother's talent for Essence Magic and longbow shooting (but her father's love of poisoned arrows)―although her aim was never quite perfect, or even very good. She inherited her father's pale skin and his curiously dark mahogany hair. Luckily, she didn't inherit her mother's anemic blood. Over hundreds of years, Sephrenia watched her settlement flourish despite the wars and prosperities of the outside world... but then humans began approaching the Shadow Elves, asking for simple favors―assassinations, in exchange for large amounts of gold, or fabric, or, best of all, rare poisons. Although they were dubious about interacting with the humans, some of the younger elves accepted these strange offers and left. They never returned. Angry, the Shadow Elves closed their doors to the humans and sent parties out to search for their missing young. Oftentimes, the parties never returned. Those that did returned exhausted and empty handed. Sephrenia trained her magic furiously during that span, fearing that the disappearances and rapidly shrinking population of her home were much more than failed missions. Finally, her father, in one of the search parties, made his disappearance. Sephrenia's mother couldn't handle the disappearance of her husband and, in agony, committed suicide, leaving Sephrenia alone to fend for herself. Soon thereafter, tragedy stuck when Sephrenia tried to use a locator spell beyond her scope of power to locate her father. There was a slight error in the articulation of one of her fingers and the spell backfired and exploded, sending essence directly into her eyes, not causing any apparent damage. Sephrenia took the spell having failed as a sign that she should let go of all of the people who'd disappeared, even her father. When next she practiced her magic, she began to notice that her eyes became fatigued quickly... at first, she ignored it and continued practicing, but as she kept casting she began to lose her ability to see. As she continued to cast spells, she noticed the correlation... the more magic she used, the greater the loss of vision! Upon noticing, she immediately stopped casting spells and brought the matter to the attention of the village clerics who could neither heal the blindness, nor explain why the backfiring of the spell had caused such an effect, and so they commanded her to use magic no more. After a few days, her eyesight began to return to her, gradually at first, but with increasing speed as the days wore on. No matter how diligently she tried, Sephrenia couldn't just let go of her father so she gathered provisions and left the village to begin her search to find the only precious thing she had left, or at least find and take vengeance upon the ones who took him from her and her mother... regardless of any cost she might have to pay.

[Steel Samurai]

Good work Approved.