Born Duchess Arianna-Trazrellan of House Daxera, she was quickly engaged to Prince Francis of a Kingdom that has long since fallen. He had been 13 and she 2 years old when they were engaged. By time she was old enough to marry him she was 16 and he was 27. They had their first kid, the heir to throne the same year they got married, Crown Prince Helion. Prince Francis had a few mistresses and concubines but overall their marriage was a successful one. She threw herself into her studies and learned how to manipulate people so she could use the power she wielded without being seen as a threat because of her womanhood.

She was especially skilled with military tactics and torture tactics not that anyone knew that as King Francis often took the credit for her ideas. She found the hardest part of being queen was always needing to hold her tongue and never being allowed to just feel her feelings because everyone always had something to say about every little thing she did no matter what it was. King Francis was prideful and vain but ambitious so the two started a military campaign against one of the other smaller kingdoms to conquer it which over the course of ten years, thousands dead, three new additions to the royal family, and one miscarriage, they were able to conquer it.

She felt that the most logical thing would be to sit back and make sure that their hold on the new lands was secure before they moved out onto the other kingdoms. Securing the borders while it may have seemed like the worse option was the better option to her and all of his advisors but King Francis was drunk on the success and combined with a healthy amount of no proper maturing, paranoia, ego, and stress he made the more immediately satisfying answer, more war. She knew that this wouldn’t be good so she did her best to prepare the cities by ordering wall construction, an increase in crops growth, and a draft of all able bodied peoples to join their army.

It was during this time that many in the court started to see her as the more reliable ruler and the backbone of the kingdom. Her punishments during this period may have been harsh but they kept the kingdom in check while they were being pushed to their limits to fight a war only the battle hungry wanted to fight. She watched the armies die and the kingdom shrink and the wars get more and more bloodthirsty. On a siege of the castle two of her children, Princess Katerina and Crown Prince Helion were captured by the opposing armies forces. She attempted to negotiate with them and when noticing that that wasn’t going to work she attempted to derail them while sending in a team to go collect them and a batch of troops to go burn down and loot some of their cities.

Her attempts were….in some areas successful and in others not. Princess Katrina but the crown prince had been killed and strung up outside the capital city walls that only held in an abandoned city by the time their armies got there. This led to an immense outburst of rage from Arianna where she broke everything in her sight when the armies came back with her daughter. While she may not have agreed with the war initially she was able to recognize that they were too deep in it now to back down. To add that with the brutal killing of her eldest son this war was now personal. She wanted that royal family's heads on spikes outside her castle, served on silver platters at dinner, and burning in a pyre keeping the outcasts warm.

She took the reins of the war from Francis who she was able to get declared unfit for the job and then set an execution date for him under the label of “war crimes”. She knew she couldn’t surrender, they weren’t strong enough to fight them on their own, they had no allies, and they would be crushed if they stopped fighting without a deal of surrender in place so to avoid the many landmines in her own kingdom that may blow up should she misstep as well as the ones outside her own court she made a plan. A complicated plan in some regards but a plan nonetheless.

She set up a small pact with her advisor, nobles and three remaining kids where she explained her plan to them. She was able to get all of them to agree and then set it into motion. The first section played out like this: a section of her nobles under the leadership of her son Prince Terrance would speak to the other kingdoms about a coup against her. They would drum up allies and forces to separate from the original kingdom or take it over. Meanwhile Arianna would be working on her image by publicizing the trial of her husband so that other kingdoms would be forced into talking about her as the new ruler of her kingdom.

This allowed her to get an audience with some of the kingdoms her son Terrance was “secretly” going to for help as well as some simpler smaller bystander kingdoms. She was able to build a reputation as a queen who simply cared about her kingdom and had been in a bad situation just trying to survive. Something good came out of Francis taking credit for all of her ideas at least. This led to a very hesitant offer of peace along with some flowers that symbolized remorse from the kingdom that killed her eldest son. She wrote them a blunt and hesitant letter not wanting to come off as too eager. Over the course of the next two years with the help of the other kingdoms the two reached a truce.

The other kingdom pinned the death of her son on an overeager commander of theirs who was promptly executed and she blamed all the war crimes on her husband who had already been executed. Then the second part of their plan fell into motion. Only shortly after peace bells had been rung was there a new problem on the horizon. Her son Terrance was leading a rebellion against her and was seeking to overthrow her. She couldn’t bear the thought of sending out armies to hurt her son and was so distraught her daughter Crown Princess Katrina had to take up temporary management of the kingdom.

This made the now truce kingdom come to her aid and put their soldiers on the line to fight armies that were unknowingly being backed by their ally kingdoms. Prince Terrance using the assisting armies captured the heir to the truce kingdom and kept him locked up under the same treatment Prince Helion had been shown. Arianna watched them fret and worry over their son drinking in their pain and letting it fuel her anger further. It seemed almost as if her anger was slowly affecting everyone else around her as well making them enjoy the suffering the truce kingdom was going through to make a show of defending their new “allies”.

When the truce kingdom and all of their allies were weakened thoroughly Arianna’s kingdom rose from the shadows as a joined force, quickly, brutally, and efficiently conquering their previous “allies”. She then beheaded each member of the truce family herself and had the Crown Prince drawn and quartered. Her thirst for vengeance on this quenched she was now able to move onto other matters like keeping control over her new territories.

You may be inclined to think she wasn’t able to properly judge or make good decisions after this point. You may even want me to humanize her and say she was grieving which she was but she also wanted to watch this kingdom they had been fighting for so long suffer. She wanted their victory to be a permanent stain to each enemy's history. She knew how to keep the conquered countries in line. She made good deals and made sure they were well off and well anyone who disobeyed met the sharp end of a blade.

She ruled for many more years after this till she gave her crown to her daughter Katrina. Her son Terrance was head of the military and her youngest daughter Henna worked within the financial and noble circles maintaining the family name and reputation for success long after Arianna’s passing. It was no surprise to her that when she died she became a demon, after all it was all her ideas that had given her husband the moniker “Red King” during their first military campaign.

Blood soaked fields and destroyed cities left a mark on one’s soul. As did being responsible for torturing of many many soldiers, nobles, and military strategists in ways that left them insane, dead, or just a bit twisted. Ways that determined all future techniques that were used by rulers from many different kingdoms after her. Then looking at everything she did afterward you can also see how she became a demon but it was the rage that still lurked deep within that was unleashed when she died that made her the demon overlord of wrath. She quickly took to her new position of power and over time made that title even more fitting to the wonderful ruler.

"Her Wrath Got So Big It Blocked The Sun Out"

She was adopted by Ettius and William Moores and spent her early childhood in Maryland. They raised her on their farm and started noticing weird behaviors when she was 7 years old. She would wander off in the night and sit at the beach, just watching the shores. She’d tell them she was waiting for someone and finally after two months of her sneaking out in the cold a woman’s body washed up on shore, looking like she had been killed three months prior. She said to her parents that she finally arrived once she saw the body. Thoroughly freaked out they convinced themselves that it was all just coincidence.

She wandered out of the school and went around town, often revisiting places that would later be the site of car crashes or murders. When she was 13 her parents brought her to a therapist after she kept stumbling upon bodies, as they were very worried about her mental health. She told the therapist about the voices that led her places and told her things they couldn’t tell anyone else her therapist was worried enough about the girl’s health that she prescribed her medication and therapeutic methods that might help distract her from the voices if she heard them.

Her therapist discussed these voices with her parents who asked if this would go away and to be honest she didn’t know but if it got worse it would be best if they signed her up for a stay at a facility with better trained people. When Charlotte turned 15 she started feeling more and more like an outsider, like she wasn’t quite living a life that was hers. She had dreams and visions of different times she hadn’t seen but it was like she was living it. She would be doing something and thoughts and memories that weren’t hers would pop into her head. She would be sitting in a classroom and she would hear a conversation no one else could hear.

She started having a hard time separating the voices that led her to death and the voices and visions that showed her things she couldn’t understand. She felt like she was going crazy. All of this hit its peak as she was driving through town when she was 16 and a vision overtook her. She got in a car crash and the person in the other car went into a coma. She woke up in the hospital with a severe head wound that made her issues worse. She described it as feeling like her head was stuffed with cotton and like there was something pushing against her head trying to get out. Like she was pushed aside to let other people in.

She would wake up with almost none of her own memories but the memories and opinions of someone she didn’t know. She ended being charged with unintentional vehicular manslaughter at 16 after the guy in the other car died a few days after the crash. She spent two years in juvenile incarceration and one year in a women's prison facility. She was lucky enough to be let out on good behavior and parole. She had to take medication that worsened her mental health and scattered her voices even more. She’s not allowed to drive.

When she was 21 she left Maryland and took a bus to Chicago where she lived for a year before she ran into a supernatural who told her about a town full of people with weird abilities. That maybe she wasn’t as weird and unnatural as she felt. She took a bus over there where she wandered around town and slept on park benches and streets for close to two years unable to piece together her memories, her past memories, and the dead who were constantly screaming at her.

On a particularly cold night she woke up in a stretcher next to an ambulance. Apparently someone had seen her lying out in the cold with blue lips and called them. She was taken to the ER and warmed up. This is where she met Marilyn who noticed how out of her own body and mind she seemed to be and decided to offer her a place to stay while she got back on her feet. She stayed at Marilyn's place on her own for quite sometime but eventually moved in with Vica, her girlfriend, who is someone who had suffered a lot like her too but similar to her, had found ways to survive and grow larger then everything they had done or had happened to them.

She has gone by many nicknames or rather, has had many assigned to her. The Executioner, Jack, Mae, Bone Witch, The Great Evil, Death Broker, Duchess of Death, Duchess Pierrat, and Gold Skull

Physical Features of Note: She has scars on her hands and they twitch uncontrollably from time to time. She has bad burn scars on her feet, legs, and back. When her eyes turn pink the space around her eyes turns dark black. She is unable to have children due to her connection with necromancy. Her eyes shift colors depending on what magic she is using. She has an adjustable height. When she is angry it’s almost like you can see a skull’s face on hers and her flesh seems to briefly disappear. It’s frightening to witness. Her heart can exist outside of her chest and can be split into smaller pieces but it hurts her to do that. Only she or someone she loves can rip her heart out. If crushed it kills her.

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Jack was born in Akelda to a weapons dealer and a healer. Growing up she was taught a few rules. Remember which hands helped you and which hurt you. Never let ambition overtake preservation. Morals are a luxury, so don’t depend on yours or others. Never forget how to fight back. Don’t trust people who have all the answers. You can’t say yes if you can’t say no.

People give expecting something in return, it may be trust or thankfulness or it may be more but know what is being given and what is being taken all the time. It’s better to be seen as weak and get a job done with help than it is to be seen as strong and fail. Lastly, if you’ve made a promise, keep it or you are worth nothing to others. She was taught how to keep yourself afloat while you figure out what someone wants from you or while you work with them.

She showed a natural inclination towards death and dying as a child. She was able to tell when someone was too far gone to be saved in this life form and she could tell when someone had recently killed someone. She said some people just smelled like death or looked like they wore death around them. She could feel it like the strings of life death were visible to her. All she had to do was reach out and do it. The first time she killed someone she was 3 years old and she didn’t really understand the whispers she felt around someone but we’ll get to that later.

Mira would bring her to business dealings in Akelda so she could watch how people reacted when they had a stake in the situation. She learned how to anticipate when someone was about to freak out, when they were about to pull a weapon, and when they were lying. She became skilled at using weapons and checking counterfeits (signatures, money, art).

Her father Juno was a skilled healer with a penchant for working for shady or immoral people, often smugglers, traffickers, and fighting dens. He struggled with alcoholism and gambling. A lot of the money him and Mira earned being wasted. There was a lot of fighting between the two of them for most of Jack’s childhood and teenage years.

She learned how to stitch up wounds and heal people from him. She also learned how to tell when someone was being forced by another person or general life circumstances to do something they don’t want to do. The worst thing she learned from both of them was how to completely excuse and disregard lapses in morals or judgment. When she was on a job with her father at a fighting ring she was left on the sidelines to read a book while he went to go tend to one of the fighters.

She was wearing pretty raggedy clothes and had smudges on her face which led her mother to later assume the man had thought she was one of his products. She was reading on the benches when a man grabbed her arm and yanked her down the way. Her screaming for help was smothered by the hollering and cheering of the crowd as a fight reached its peak in the ring. She remembered feeling her heart race quickly and the entire nosy collage of people die down to a muffle as her head felt like it was being pushed underwater for a minute then it cleared and all she could hear was whispering.

She looked up at the man as he dragged her to one of the back rooms where other kids were shackled in the dark. She saw the death around him and reached out. In his head, he heard a small child-like voice say “Your heart is cold and dark. You deserve to die. You will die. Your heart will stop and fill with blood till it BURSTS. LET GO!” She watched him stumble back and fall to the ground dead.

She turned and ran out of the room, stumbling, crying, and exhausted. She looked around and saw her dad frantically whipping his head around as he looked for her and she ran straight for him, wrapping her arms around his legs before she passed out with blood running out of her ears. She was taken care of and she woke up back home with her parents looking over her. Her mom talked to her and got her to explain everything that happened which led to her father getting yelled at for leaving her alone in a place that was dangerous.

They figured out she was a necromancer and tried to find a teacher in Akelda for her. Many claimed to be practicers of the dead magics but none of them were. Mira used her connections to scout out in the other cities but nothing there too. Settling on that they wouldn’t be able to find any practitioners of necromancy they sought out just a very skilled magic user to teach her so she could learn how to control her powers. Her teacher was a wise and intellectual witch named Kore (Core-Ray). Kore was also a skilled fighter.

When she was 16 her little sister Angelica was born. Unlike her older sister Angelica’s powers dealt in plants and healing as they figured out when she was three years old. Angelica was kept from her parent’s business dealings and Jack tried to protect her using the reputation she was gaining as a skilled necromancer.

She remained under the tutelage of Kore till she was 20 when Mira died leaving her weapons business to her. She needed to work her ass off to get the business from the hands of Mira’s business partners and to pay off her father’s debt. She gained the title Death’s Broker as she used her abilities to get people to work fairly with her and respect her or at least fear her. She paid off her father’s debt then restricted how much money he had available to him to gamble.

Angelica was enrolled in a school for healers that had about 4 other people in the class as not many people in Akelda study medical fields professionally however Jack knew this was one of the better ways to get money than some of the more dangerous methods. Jack continued to run her mother’s business for a while. She became very good at engineering and weapons-making.

She was good at figuring out what properties a weapon or object held. During these years she made Trapper with the help of one of her mom’s junior engineers. The object became very useful for her because she was still learning about the extent of her powers and knowing she had some extra energy to expend or fall back if she needed to made her feel like it was okay to make some mistakes.

On a job transporting weapons to Usaven she ran into a camp of demons that she and her crew had to stop in their tracks and wait in the shadows to avoid getting jumped further down the path. She overheard a plan they were making to attack the castle in Zaweth and kidnap the crown princess at the time in exchange for money. She didn’t quite care about the plan but alerting a noble or military officer might get them an inside connection to the capital and if they are lucky, the castle.

Once the demons fell asleep she and her crew finished the mission. She had one of her men at the time who she had in her inner circle go to the capital using their disguising and forgery abilities. They were able to set up connections with some of the military officials and one low-ranking noble who made their title in the mercantile trades of wine, iron, and cheese. This opened up weapons trade into the capital and in with some of the greedier nobles.

She ran her trade in this efficient and successful manner for many years before the attack happened. Some group of ruffians with something against the ancestors who were sent to Akelda came and wrecked the shambling town. Buildings were burned down, people were killed, and the land was damaged. Among one of the people killed was Angelica who tried to help some of the people escape the attack. Juno found his daughter’s body in one of the burn piles and pulled her body out. He went looking for Jack to bring her back and as he looked around he knew he wasn’t the only one looking for her to do something similar.

Jack on the other hand...was trying to fix her hands. She had been caught by a few of the attackers and they noticed her trying to use her powers to stop them from burning a few buildings that still had people inside them. They had one of their hidden members slam an iron staff against her spine that forced her to the ground and they had another member stretch out her arms. The one who had been giving the orders used his weapon to crush the bones in her hands and wrists. Her powers lashed out and killed 2 of the men in the 3 minutes he spent crushing her hands and wrists.

They skittered away from her but not before knocking her unconscious. By the time she woke up, Akelda was mostly destroyed and she was alone, broken and bleeding, in a darkened alleyway. She looked up in a numbed daze then looked down at her hands and shook in a moment of absolute fear and horror at the disfigurement of her hands. She fell against the wall as the pain from her head, spine, wrists, and hands wracked through her. Bits of bone in her hands and wrists stuck out through her swelling purple and blue bleeding hands.

She used her knowledge in medicine to try and access some of the damage in a more critical way but she could do anything about it considering she didn’t have either of her hands available to use. She could feel them going numb and knew she didn’t have much time. She didn’t even know how long she had been unconscious, or if there was anywhere to get help from. In her shocked and pained state she stumbled out of the alleyway and tried to orient herself so she could get to the closest healer or medic.

As she stumbled along she heard someone shout her name and she turned to see one of her men carrying their husband toward her, dead in their arms. She saw them beg and cry and for her to assist almost like she was watching from a third-person perspective. There was a girl who was injured and in pain, losing time as she stood there, and there was a man with lost love in a town of ghosts and blood. She knew she had a duty as their leader to lead and steady them but she didn’t know what to do.

Her mother’s words echoed in her head, “You are worth nothing if you don’t keep the promises you made.” She looked down at her hands then at the man and stumbled towards him using her waning energy to pull his soul back from the dead. She watched his body knit back together and then his eyes burst open. She watched him stand out of his husband’s arms and turn towards her. She heard the sound of more people coming and saw the crowd of people looking for her to come and bring their loved ones back.

She looked back at her worker and his husband for a minute and they both saw the exhaustion in her. Her worker swooped her up and threw her over his shoulder and motioned for his husband (her loyal servant) to follow them. She didn’t want to go but she was too exhausted to stay awake. She watched through slowly closing eyes as the crowd bounded towards her but past the masses of grey and red, she saw her father with her sister in his arms.

She reached out and in what she would describe as the only miracle she had ever seen, her powers reached her sister alone and pulled her soul back. It would be the only time she would be able to bring someone back to life that far away and with so many dead people also surrounding them. It nearly took her life and reduced her to a near-death state for what she later found out was 2 weeks. She woke up in a small tent where she could hear the sound of the water rushing and a fire crackling.

As she orientated herself she looked down at her hands and saw they were wrapped in bandages just so that it was like her hands were in mittens. She couldn’t move her fingers or wrists, not that she wanted to. She could still feel the pain she was in before but she didn’t focus on that. She pushed past and stood up shakily, making her way out of the tent to the fire that had been set up. She saw her new loyal servant and her worker both talking to each other and making some food from berries and rabbits they had caught.

The three of them ended up staying in the forest for the next week before moving on to Xanchoir unsure exactly of where to go since her worker, Abraham McKnight, and her loyal servant and Abraham’s husband, Emmett McKnight, didn’t feel like it was the safest option to go back to Akelda right now. She felt like she needed to go back for her sister but she hoped her father would have the good sense to find someone safe to stay with while she was out of the city. She had her items with her and she had two people willing to help her add to that issue with her hands the way they were she knew she would be able to travel anywhere on her own.

They rented a small cottage in the outskirts of the city and then Abraham went off into the city to find a healer for Jack’s hands while Emmett stayed to watch over her. Abraham came back to the cottage with a healer from the city who seemed a bit afraid once she realized that Jack was a necromancer and that Emmett was undead. She attempted to leave the castle but considering Abraham was a weapons dealer and bodyguard he quickly was able to stop her and intimidate her into working past her fear.

She healed Jack’s hands to the best of her capabilities but Jack’s necromancy when she had been in her weakened state had permanently damaged her hands. The woman quickly left and even forgot to take her payment from Abraham as she scurried out of the house. It was a moment that the trio would look back on and wished that they had stopped her. For the next few days, the reclusive group spent time healing and just relaxing unaware of the panic and fear that was being stirred up as recounts of what the witch healer saw when she was in the cottage and what she sensed from Jack spun out of control.

They called her the queen of the dead and the great evil here to raise the dead armies and enemies of the past. Unwelcome and unwanted by all that was natural and good in the world. The religious leaders and followers prayed and preached about the danger of allowing a necromancer to live and an even further danger in allowing her to live in the center of all things religious and holy. The legal side of things decided that her practice of magic that had been made illegal years prior made it completely fine for her to be burned at the stake. The whole city was convinced that she was a threat to the safety of the innocent and came for her.

They came in a large mob of townsfolk and priests to come and take her to the stake. The cottage door was ripped off and Jack who had been reading by the fire whipped her head up. Emmett stood in front of her but they quickly bound and grabbed the inexperienced fighter. Abraham was holding his own in the fight but one man against a hoard did nothing. They used their weapons and magic to bind and trap Jack. She felt the weapons poke and scrap at her body.

She saw a Priest of the Church of Sun and a Priestess of the Temple of Life use their divine blessings to paralyze and knock her out. It took a few minutes of struggle and she killed the four of the townspeople who were gripping her. She used her ring, Hummer, to disrupt some of the effects of their powers but she could only hold it off for so long. Once they realized she was using a ring to fight back they ripped it from her hand and continued to carry her off. In a last act to save herself from being completely disarmed she ripped the soul out of the priest and priestess, binding them.

From the townspeople's perspective it looked like she had just killed them which only furthered their desire to kill her. As she was put into a state of near unconsciousness she saw a blurry view of Emmett being tied and gagged. She screamed out an order for him to escape. Abraham being sat down and held down by some of the townspeople with magical ability who believed him to be under some spell. As she watched him she reached out a hand in vain but did successfully rip one of the souls out of one of the people that was holding him down before she was only able to view darkness once a cloth bag was put over her head.

She watched as they tied her to a stake and she did kill two of the people who tied her to the stake using her telepathic communication but when one fell another took their place. Eventually, she ran out of energy and couldn’t keep going. She let her head fall and they pulled the cloth off her face so they could see her as the fire burned up her. She begged them for a few minutes to not burn her but they did. She felt the tears run down her face as she knew that not only would she die but her sister would die again and Emmett would die.

She felt the fire burn and melt her skin and muscle as it consumed her. She heard the cheering and chanting of the crowd fill her ears and drown out her thoughts. Her eyes watered up from the smoke till she couldn’t see anyone. Her back folded, her body filled with toxins, she choked and sputtered on the smoke, and her insides churned and burned. She didn’t even know when she fell out of consciousness but she knows when she woke up in the dead lands and that was enough for her.

She first came to awareness and saw a figure sitting in a chair. She knew she was in the dead lands because she had been here before but it was empty….and it was never empty. All she saw was a figure in a dark coat and hat sitting in a chair looking at their watch as if they were waiting for someone. She walked towards the person but as she touched their shoulder there was nothing in her hands or sight except a coat and a hat. She looked around but saw no one for miles and miles.

She barely had time to question it further before she woke up in her body...in extreme pain. She screamed and shouted then felt a gag enter her mouth to keep her from biting her own tongue off as someone attempted to medically treat the burns on her torso and legs. She looked up and saw a man who looked familiar but in her delirium, she wasn’t able to think correctly enough to figure out who. She blacked out again and only woke up in a quiet room that was heavily decorated with what she was able to quickly note as expansive and rare items.

She attempted to stand up but was wracked with pain at her attempt. She fell back into the pillows and continued to stare up at the ceiling with a confused and almost desolate look in her eyes. She had no idea what had happened and for the first few hours on her own, she couldn’t even think about it without it being in pain. She closed her eyes and just let her body calm down briefly. The doors opened and she saw a group of nurses in white uniforms come in to slowly adjust her. They numbed her pain as they worked on redoing her bandages and healing her wounds.

They told her the flames used were divine in nature which means the scars from the burns wouldn’t be able to make go away with magic. She watched in a daze as they applied all their magic and goo and potions to her body. She knew what some of it was from watching her dad but still with the fog in her head she took a bit longer than usual to formulate the questions she knew she had. Once she asked who had saved her and where she was she was shocked. She was in the royal palace and it was the current queen who had sent in a group to save her. Considering the nurses didn’t say army or any officially known group she assumed that they had hired mercenaries.

She wanted to ask about Abe, Emmett, and she wanted to figure out what in the damn hell the Queen wanted from her. She knew for a fact it wasn’t some sort of generous gift because there was too much at stake reputation wise. The queen helping a practitioner of dark magic wasn’t something she probably wanted floating around. Jack knowing her own skill set concluded that there was either someone the Queen wanted dead or wanted undead. No one except her and a few others knew enough about her soul bind powers to have the Queen want her help so if it’s about her powers it must be the necromancy aspect.

A different angle she thought may be true is that she knew how expansive Jack’s weapons business was getting and wanted to know more about it to either shut it down or buy something from her. She doubted it though since there were safer and less challenging ways to get weapons on the low. She was sent back to sleep and woke up in the dark room with a male figure standing by one of the windows looking out at the rainy city. She saw a flash of lightning illuminate the silhouette making the room feel more ominous than it had before. She groaned as she forced herself to sit up and called out for the man to turn around and talk to her. He turned around and she felt her heart raise in spirits when she saw it was just Abe. He looked more than worried about her health, she could see the lines of pain in his face.

She cocked her head and asked him what was wrong and he said that the Church of Sun still had Emmett in their possession and he had been trying to negotiate with the royal advisors and councilmen he had been privy to encounter but none of them would listen to him. This gave her two new points of concern and questions. How were they going to get Emmett back and why were so many people aware of the situation? You’d think the queen would try and keep her association with a necromancer who an entire city under her purview wanted to kill. She told Abe to go and spy on one of the councilmembers and get more information then to go talk to the nobleman they had connections with.

She watched him leave the room but before he walked out she made sure he heard her promise that she would get Emmett back. She saw some relief enter his eyes and walked out to do the task asked of him She waited over the next 5 days for any change or information but nothing happened until the sixth day when the nurses came in with tailors and maids who were going to get her set up with proper attire to wear for a meeting with the Queen. They dressed her in a long dark black dress with a long neck. She wore dark black gloves and they returned to her both Hummer and Trapper. She slipped Trapper into a coat pocket and slipped Hummer on.

She was taken to a private royal meeting room and left to her own devices for an hour or two before the royal guards came in with the Queen. She wasn’t used to dealing with royalty but she knew you bowed when you saw them but she didn’t do that. She sat down at the table after the Queen sat down and asked her what she was doing and why she was here. She hid the immense amount of pain she was in because her legs, feet, back and whole lower area was still burned. The queen informed her that she was dying and that her son, the crown prince, was too young and inexperienced to take the throne. The nobles were greedy and just waiting for someone they could manipulate to take the throne.

They were planning behind her back to work with one of the other kingdoms to make sure her son was either too scared to assert himself as king or that he couldn’t at all. Jack was surprised but didn’t show it. She didn’t expect the queen to give so much information to her so soon. She couldn’t help but laugh at the idea that she would be able to help much in this situation. She was a necromancer. Matters of state and court were not her dealings.

She could bring the Queen back to life once she died but the nobles would contest every order she made saying that Jack was the one manipulating her into doing it. There was no amount of explaining it to those people because they didn’t want to understand that just because she was a necromancer didn’t mean she was awful and conniving. She was sometimes but it wasn’t her only side of her. The queen said she knew this but that wasn’t what she needed her to do. She needed her to act as a force of intimidation. She needed Jack to be a defense against the nobles hurting her son.

She could send the crown prince away and she could hire all the guards in the world but

nothing compared to the fear she saw in the noble's eyes when tales of what Jack had reached the capital. She would pardon Jack of her crimes of practicing necromancy and give her the protection of the royal crown or she could have Jack executed for practicing necromancy. Jaqueline immediately sobered. This isn't a negotiation. Or a request. It didn’t matter if the Queen’s plan and line of logic was...illogical in many aspects the queen wanted Jack to be her weapon so she would be.

Jack had no way of denying her request without killing people she cared about so she agreed, or she said yes even though she didn’t want to. You can’t say yes if you can’t say no but she couldn’t say either yet she had to go along with it. She felt the walls closing in on her and in that moment as she looked at the queen she flashed back to being a little kid in the fighting ring being dragged off by a trafficker would have sold her to be someone’s weapon, servant, prostitute, or fighter. Someone who didn’t care about her fate or life but wanted her to do something that would sacrifice both. In that moment...she wanted to do the same thing she did to him to the queen but she knew that would be the same as saying no to her deal.

Jack was taken back to her room and while she wanted to trash it, she wanted to scream, she wanted to destroy something she was too tired and in pain to do anything except lie back on the bed and stare at the ceiling. She couldn’t even escape if she wanted to. She didn’t even have the mind to ask the queen about Emmett while she was in there. She rested her head back and went back to bed gripping her sheets as she sunk into dreams of dark alleys and burning flames. The next day she was mostly unable to grip anything because her hands were twitching and spasming which made her even more frustrated.

She was able to get a message to the queen about Emmett which helped ease some of her general frustration at the whole situation she was stuck in. Weeks of healing passed and she got more information passed to her by Abe about what was going on in the court. She was able to verify the information that the queen gave her about what she and her son were facing in the courts. She wanted to ask Abe or the Queen to go get her father and her sister but she didn’t want to bring anyone she cared about any closer to this dangerous situation. She was introduced to the Crown Prince a few weeks later and quickly realized how unprepared he was to take the throne.

Months passed of her being briefed on her role. Basically she was just supposed to keep everyone in line by being intimidating and using her powers to back the future kings claim to the throne. She was given quite the gilded cage she thought when they had her situated in a house on the property of the royal castle. She was getting ready there when the front door opened and Abe with Emmett walked in. Emmett looked well taken care of to save the burns on his upper arms that had flayed the skin off his arms. He wasn’t in pain, if anything he looked happy to be back around familiar faces and with his husband. He had managed to escape the crowd and hide during all of this because her order had felt so strong he couldn’t not do everything he could run.

She informed them of the situation and they suggested they could run away but they all knew this wasn’t a viable option. According to the queen she only needed to do this for the next 50 years then she could live out her life on funds given to her by the crown. She was going to be given a magically binding contract that she was going to sign if it suited her needs. Fast forwarding to the contract reading she had Abe in her presence to act as an extra ally in the room as they negotiated the rule in the contract.

She mandated that all people she be given ten slots she could use for anyone to give them the same protection she had from the crown as long as they hadn’t done anything that was along the lines of SA, trafficking, or treason. She also required that this contract need Jack’s approval to have it looked at from people outside of the royal bloodline.

Everything else met the standards she had expected from the gilded cage she was entering. She would be given more than enough access to wealth, properties, and protection for the next 50 years. She would be pardoned of her “crimes” and she would get to continue publicly doing her necromancy. She would receive a noble title which would give her and anyone she passed it down to a better starting point then what the queen referred to as “the akelda slums”.

She addressed the issue of her father and sister to the queen and both of them got their own addendum to the contract that allowed for them to receive a noble station and would be allowed to leave Akelda for the capital city if they should please Agreeing to these terms both parties signed the contract and were magically bound to obey it. Once Jack’s father and sister were brought to the city the next twenty years passed without much things of note for Jack. She was a social pariah as far as anyone was concerned and no one wanted to get on her bad side but then again most assumed she didn’t have a good side either.

She didn’t have many friends and even the people who had killed more people than she had, soldiers and commanders, were wary of her. She was doing her job and she wasn’t the type to get lonely over people avoiding her but she couldn’t help but notice the difference in treatment. In Akelda she was seen as someone to fear and be in awe of her. Her powers garnered her respect and admiration but in Zaweth and every other city in Yecca, she was a bane on society. A bother that should have been killed ages ago. She was feared but not respected. She learned how to enjoy it because society is like water. If you don’t learn how to swim in it then you’ll drown in it.

She kept to her sister who she unbound from her control which elevated her sister's mood drastically. She couldn’t use her powers but she got to do other things. She took up painting and gardening. Angelica didn’t mind being an oddity in court and Emmett treated her like she was his little sister and since they were both undead they felt like they had a lot in common. They were both stared at and people seemed to be afraid to be near them or touch them. Often they walked into a room and it quieted. People stared at them and pointed but after a few decades Angelica and Emmett ignored it. Twenty years passed and she met and became friends with the man who would turn out to be the older brother of the woman who would become Jack’s first wife.

Andres de Accora met her at a gala after he came back from a diplomat mission for the king. He was drunk and curious about the one person everyone seemed to avoid. Even after all this time she still drew attention. Jack looked up as Andres stumbled over to her and started asking questions. Entertained she continued to talk to him till the party ended where they both left and she deposited him at his guest room. This started a long friendship between the two of them. Surprisingly, at least to her, Andres and Abraham hit it off. The two started to hang out a lot which made Emmett uncomfortable but he didn’t say anything to Abraham but he didn’t talk about it with Angelica and Jack.

This closeness led to Abraham cheating on Emmett which caused a rift in the friendship between the group. Everything settled eventually but Emmett and Abraham separated, not divorced, but separated as Emmett wanted Abraham to sort out his feelings. During this time Jack ended up talking a bit more with Andrea, Andres’s younger sister, who managed the family’s position on the royal council specifying the financial branches of the kingdom. Andres was avoiding talking to Jack or Abraham temporarily which led to Jack and Andrea talking. While she didn’t like that her friend's marriage had been interrupted she did like that she was getting to have a reason to talk with Andrea.

Andrea eventually decided to ask Jack out on a formal date but asked that she keep it lowkey because she didn't want to ruin her reputation if things didn’t work out with Jack. They dated for 8 months before making their relationship public which caused quite the commotion with the social circles. Some saw Jack as a threat due to her multiple access points into the higher society and politics. During this Jack had to up her intimidation as the nobles were becoming a bit antsy and threatening the King’s rule. They quickly backed down not really wanting to go up against the royal necromancer.

A small rebellion in the outskirts that was led by demons led to Jack also becoming the royal executioner and torturer which added even further to the reputation and lore surrounding her presence in court. A few more years passed and her and Andrea got married. They lived rather happily for a few years and Abraham acted as her best man and Emmett planned the wedding with Andrea since Jack really just didn’t want the whole court invited and wanted the six people she cared about most to be there. Their wedding wasn’t officiated by any religious figure as Andrea knew about Jack’s past with such people and didn’t want the wedding to be a reminder of any bad memories.

Decades of time passed and the contract on her end expired which allowed her to retire to her noble title and remain the royal executioner and torturer if she wanted to. A new king took power and there was an attack on the castle during a council meeting that ended up killing two council members who defended the king from attackers. One of these council members was Andrea.

Thankfully one of the healers was able to keep her alive long enough that Jack was able to get to her. She asked Andy if she wanted to be brought back and in her last 20 minutes she said she did so when Andy died she resurrected her as a loyal servant and gave her a piece of her heart to put it in her chest which unbound her from her control.

Jack needed to rest after breaking another piece off her heart but when she woke up she saw Andrea sitting beside her brushing the hair out of her face. She cried for the first time in decades when she saw Andrea alive and well. They stayed together for another few decades but in the reign of Arsenio there was a lot more criticism of necromancer holding so much power in the court and when Andres died Andrea took on all of the family business including the diplomatic missions. Andrea struggled to get people to work with her when they all associated her with Jack.

She couldn’t help it but a part of her started to resent Jack because all she wanted to do was do a good job and keep her family’s name intact but she couldn’t do that when she was married to Jack. This led to many cracks and holes in their relationship to start to become bigger till the divorced. Now the whole group, Jack included, lives in the court doing their jobs and making time for the things they enjoy in life and trying very hard to not get fucked over by fate.

Born in the forests near Sleria to a fairy and a demon she didn’t have a lot of friends because she didn’t fit in with any half-demons or with the fairies. She spent a lot of time with the animals of the forest and when her mom passed away she left the Slerian forests and got a job working in one of the noble houses as a maid. She slowly rose in the station till she was of enough skill to apply for a job at the royal castle with her boss’s permission. She was 18 when she started her job at the castle and while she was there she also started polishing her combat skills that she had learned from her father. She got a lot of shit from some of the staff at the castle due to her demon blood which always made her angry but she worked to hide it because she didn’t want to prove them right that demons were always bad.

When she was 21 she met Idiaia, a cherry tree dryad, who worked as the castle’s groundskeeper. The two dated for three years before they got married and they used magical means to have a child between the two of them, Koko. Koko was born the same year as the eldest royal child was born, Arsenio. As Arsenio’s parents weren’t able to spend constant time with him they looked through the royal staff to find a suitable nurse and companion for him. She had recently had a child of her own and was selected to be his wetnurse. Arsenio and Koko grew up together and she treated Arsenio like he was her own.

The next few years were rather calm and she spent time getting better at being a guard, companion, and caretaker of the kids. She had her second kid with Idiaia when she was 36, Kesiray. Kesiray was a very happy kid who stuck close to her brother’s side who was 11 when she was born. Two years after Kesiray was born Idiaia was killed when the tree she came from was felled. This caused Lily to go into a rage and stay in demon form for 7 months. When she calmed down she spent a few months with her kids healing and making sure they knew that their family unit wouldn’t change too much if she could help it. She took her job back once she felt ready.

During this time she focused on being good at being a mom and doing her job within the castle which became more difficult as Arsenio got older. She took an interest in gardening and assisting in managing the royal garden as doing this reminded her of Idiaia. She spent the next few decades in a pretty good state healing and growing. She spoke to her dad a lot when she left the capital city because she wanted to know how he got through his grief after her mom died. He said he never stopped loving her or missing her but he learned to grow around the grief and love things about living again.

When she was in her 50s she got to see Arsenio meet and marry Lutana who became the Queen of Yecca. She treated Lutana like her daughter because of how good of a person she could see that she was. When Arsenio started seeking physical affection outside of their marriage Lily tried to talk to him about being more considerate of his wife’s feelings but he wouldn’t listen to her. When Kiara was born she helped Kiara’s mother take care of her and she noticed a brief shift in Arsenio’s behavior as he did seem to show some affection towards Kiara but that all changed when Elios was born.

With the birth of the crown prince Arsenio didn’t want to threaten the survival of the royal legacy and didn’t want the nobles to rise against them so to create a stronger front he distanced himself and the rest of his family from the products of dalliances. She disliked this approach as it wasn’t creating a healthy environment for any of his kids, current or future, and it was making the nobles think they had more power than they should actually have. She knew it wouldn’t end well if the enforced imbalance was continued to be brought down. She felt that there were probably ways to make it evident that his out of wedlock kids were not a threat to the royal family that didn’t include hurting the psyche of his children.

During all of this she met a demon who she found herself falling in love with. The woman who she fell in love with is someone she met when she was looking for Arsenio. He had left the castle to meet up with someone he was hooking up with and had taken up a room at a discreet brothel downtown. She found him and met Fyrira who was a beautiful demoness. She started to go out to the brothel to talk to her and spend time with her. They went on dates around town and by the river. She wasn’t ashamed to be seen with a demon as she was one herself or at least...part one. They dated for a few years and got married. They had a child together who was named Scorpia. She was born shortly after Kiara was born and the two spent time together. This allowed her to be a wetnurse to Elios when he was born and yet again she watched another child grow up to become a king.

She started to feel a deep hatred for Arsenio, a person she had considered to be like a son to her, because of the way he treated Elios. She tried to protect him but she could only do so much without getting into trouble. She felt a lot of sadness over the pain that had to endure to become a ruler. She tried to make time for him to have some happiness though which often just met spending some time in the garden after tutoring and training. Swimming lessons in the pool or teaching him how to bake certain things. When his mother committed suicide she yet again was hit with a lot of grief but she pushed it aside to take care of the young princess and the crown prince who now had an added weight to his shoulders.

When Elios fell in love with Svena she was so happy for him because she felt that he really deserved to have some happiness in his life. She spent the weekends with her kids and Rira. They would go out and explore into the woods or practice magic. They’d just spend the day at home hanging out with each other. She would sometimes bring some of the younger royal children with her so they could spend some time out of the castle just hanging out. Now fast forwarding a few years things have changed again.

Her and Fyrira have had another child, Miley who later changed his name to Miles. They welcome their new addition to their family with a lot of love and care but something unexpected happened a few months after Miles came into the picture. Feyrira was summoned back to the deadlands by a powerful being, it appears that a few other demons were too. Due to some issues with demon rebellions King Arsenio had ordered that any full blood demons within the capital city and Akelda be put back into the dead lands if possible. Unable to contact or get to her wife she felt an immense level of anger and sadness but she kept it under control because she needed to for Miles and for the royal children who she considered to be one of her own.

She disliked still having to be cordial to the King at this point but she couldn’t risk getting fired because then who would take care of the royal children. A year or two after this Elios’s fiance Svena becomes pregnant a few months after news that the King has had another child with a woman he had casual relations with. She took care of Alena and helped Svena take care of Yeccalia when she wanted help but Svena had good instincts for this so she didn’t need a lot of help. Three years past with little note except that Elios was finally happy despite all the pressure he was under and there were three happy children in the royal castle.

It came to head at the end of these three years when Svena was found dead in her bedchambers. She had committed suicide and as far as the courts could see there was no reason for her to have done this. They didn’t want to look into how the pressures they had put on the young woman had affected her or how her natural mental health state was already. They wanted someone to blame and they found it in the eldest child of Arsenio, Kiara. She was accused of many things by the nobles including treason, failure to do her job, and conspiracy.

Even Arsenio blamed her for Svena’s death and this only made it harder for her sentencing to be reduced. She saw how Elios was fighting through his grief to do his best to advocate for her and get her free of these charges but there was only so much you could do when everyone had already decided they were going to blame someone. She was sentenced to 1 year in Halesworth and this seemed to further break Elios’s already hurting spirit. He spent all of his time inside of his room after this. She took on the job of raising his daughter hoping that knowing Yeccalia was in good hands would bring him some ease.

She would visit him at night if the night terrors were especially bad and sit with him. She used to do this when he was very young but back then she would also hold him and sing him to sleep. Now he didn’t seem to want any comfort but she wasn’t willing to give up on him. She didn’t pester him but every once and a while she would go in there and force him to get out of bed and do something even if that thing was just sharpening his weapons or sitting upright and reading a book.

When he finally did emerge from his period of grief he was a different person and that broke Lily’s heart because she could see too much of his father in him. She saw the pain in his eyes but he hid his pain behind a wall of apathy that seemed to block out all light. She made sure to shower Yeccalia in love so she knew that there was nothing wrong with her and tried to explain to her why her father acted the way he did. She would invite the princess out to her house to have dinner or hang out with her family on the weekends still and she hoped this brought some light to their lives in such a dark time. Now she continues to do her job of taking care of the royal children and taking care of her own children. She is also trying to find a way to contact Fyrira.

Fortuna was born to a Selia in Delfontae. A Selia is someone who is hired by a company to have a kid and give them that kid. Usually, this is so they can raise someone to fit whatever specifications they need. Blaze Frira had given one of her kids to the mining company she gave Fortuna to 5 years before she was born, Eliza ended up being trained to work in the same mine that Fortuna was trained to work in. Blaze was given a decent amount of money in exchange for her kids so she was willing to have and sell them off. They were kept away from the ocean or large bodies of water for most of their life which left them with an ache in their chest. Fortuna and Eliza were in different groups but they worked in the same mine.

The company they worked for, Rostara Mining, had the starting age for mining was 13 years old. Being disruptive or getting into trouble was punished by lashes. Eliza was a good kid and survivor so she usually did what was asked of her and kept her head down but Fortuna couldn’t and wouldn’t. This is where she got the layers and layers of lashing scars on her back from. During one of these lashings when she was 16 she summoned Vapki who killed the person who was lashing her. His appearance scared off the rest of her group and he flew her out of the mine and into the wilds of Delfontae.

He didn’t know how to heal her so he just sat with her as long as he could before he was sent back to his realm. She had slept through all of his watches but she woke up next to a lake that she just stared at for a long time. She eventually dipped her toes in and nothing happened which confused her because Eliza and Fortuna’s id card always labeled her as a mermaid. She was afraid to go in now because she didn’t know how to swim. The showers in the Rostara Dorms were protected by antimagic which prevented people from manipulating the water or in her case (she assumed) shifting into mermaids. Little did she know it was simply a case of her believing so strongly that she wouldn’t be able to turn that she just never did.

Injured and unsure of where to go or how she even got to where she was she decided to walk to the nearest village she could find. Fidiri was the first village she came across and thankfully they had no connections to the mining community which gave her some breathing room. She went to the village healer but since she didn’t have the money she did a deal with the healer. She would offer her services as an assistant or worker in exchange for healing. This passed and she was fully healed. The healer, Kira, was also a proficient magic-user who helped Fortuna figure out her abilities for the next ten years including getting in touch and breaking down the mental barriers that prevented her from believing she could shift.

By the time she was 26 she had mastered being able to summon 4 of her creatures/beings, Vapki, Zephyr, Jayla, and Todd & Brick. She was still learning about her abilities in luck manipulation but she had a hard time summoning it at the right time. She decides to go back to the capital and try to clear her debt to Rostara and free her sister. She went back to the building and they tried to capture her but she summoned Todd & Brick to defend her from them or at least distract their forces long enough that she could make her case to the head of Rostara’s employment branch. She wasn’t able to get them to agree with her on her plan but she was able to get a meeting with the head. She talked it out with him for the next few days and agreed that she would do a job with him in exchange for her sister and her own contract.

He wanted her to kill someone for him. The person he wanted dead was a corrupt member of Rostara who was cutting side deals for mining products with criminal organizations. She sent Vapki to go kill him once she found out where he lived. He killed the man then went back to the under realms. She delivered his body to the Head of the Employment Branch and was given her contracts. She knew her and her sister would need to leave Delfontae to avoid prosecution from the government so he brought them a boat which would take them to Amescier Haven Island. They ended up docking at a random beach on the island which made it so they walked around the island for days before coming across civilization in the form of the capital city Drasmore.

They went to the high council and explained the situation. It was decided that for fairness Fortuna would have to spend 30 years in prison to compensate for killing someone but that when she was let out she would be properly trained and given a job as a catcher. A catcher is like a bounty hunter who works only for the high council. She would be in charge of tracking criminals down and delivering them to the High Council or the respective court depending on the situation. Her sister would be given a place to stay in public housing while she sorted out her job. Fortuna didn’t like the idea of being in prison but she didn’t feel like pushing her luck any more than she had already.

Fortuna was taken to prison and while it was hard and taxing on the mind and soul she learned a lot. She learned how to talk to people from all walks of life and got very good at different types of bodily combat. She spent time reading, learning languages, painting, training, and fighting. She got to know people from many different criminal organizations which would turn out to benefit her later in life.

While she was in prison she also got good at working under pressure which became something she would need to know and be very good at as time went on. When she was let out she felt like a completely different person. She was a more confident person who felt like she could take care of herself with or without her powers. Yes, some of the shit that went down in prison has scarred her but she had gained a lot too and she had no desire to ignore that.

She spent a year recovering from her time in prison and hanging out with her sister before she felt like she needed to do something. She couldn’t just kick back and relax. She went to the high council and signed up for training which was an interesting experience of learning about different types of weapons, laws in different courts, regions, environments, poisons, animals, ships, reading the stars, the arts, disguises, and a lot more.

She was instated as a catcher with a partner while she was still learning about what to do. Her partner was a werewolf named Matthias who had been a catcher for 50 years. He had been asked more than a few times to become an investigator but he wanted to stay a catcher. It was more up his alley and less pressure. They were quite the good team after a few months even though initially there were some issues in their difference in communications styles.

She was able to use her connections in the underworld to get people’s guards down, get information, convince people, and track them down. A few hundred years passed and Matthias retired shortly after she took the job as an investigator as well as a catcher. As an investigator, she got to deal a bit more with individual cases and figuring out who was the culprit of what and make sure that the crimes someone committed were properly detailed. She was well-liked in the criminal communities to some extent due to her focus on getting the right person for whatever crime.

Fortuna was feared just as much as she was liked because of how good she was at her job. Few things remained hidden when she dug into them and she was exceptionally good at tracking people down with or without magic.

She has citizenship in all five courts due to her work in the high council and for personal reasons which gave her a backup in case, she quit her job in the high council. Part of her job was investigating cases that involved multiple courts to prevent any court from thinking that the investigator was biased against or for a certain party.

During one of her investigations in Nytellian, she met a noblewoman, Countess Thea who she eventually started to date once she had solved the case that implicated Thea for being involved in the murder of a Delfontae noble. She and Thea dated for a long time before getting married. They were together for 300 hundred years with the normal ups and downs of a relationship. Perhaps some more extreme and passionate ups and downs but still nothing that was completely out of the ordinary. During this time her and Thea decided to have a kid and used magic to have one together. They had a son, Rowan who was a beautiful young boy.

Thea was one of her greatest loves and when she died her heart was broken completly. It took a hundred years for her to heal and feel like a normal person but during all of this she had her bright lights in her work, her sister, and her son. She doubted she would ever be back to the way she was before but she was better than she was before. She inherited Thea’s properties, money, and belongings. She spent a few hundred years doing her normal job and getting raises and also casually dating people here and there but nothing too serious. It’s been a while since then but she is now open to serious relationships. Her reputation precedes her in many circles and she is both respected and feared by people.

She was born to Fiona and Sirius Marley and was their first kid out of 6 and had been 9-10 years old when the war of the false king started. Her mother was a spell weaver, someone who makes new spells, and her father was a farmer. They lived out in the wilderness away from the city on a medium sized farm with a lot of sheep, pigs, cows, and chickens.

She was taught the arts of sword fighting and bodily combat by her father and how to take care of a farm.She was taught multiple languages, how to tailor and make clothes, how to spellweave, how to cook, how to wood carve, how to read a map and more by her mom. Her father didn’t like going into the city as he struggled with extreme paranoia so she would escort her mom there when she was younger then go by herself or with her younger brothers when she was older.

She learned how to evade the false king’s guard and how to make her and her mother seem less powerful then they were so they wouldn’t be forced into either side of the war. She assisted under a anonymous name, Tempest, giving her new spells, runes, and weavings to local rebellion groups who were able to coordinate with large groups

She took up the job of head of the house after her father died and her mother got sick. Her job became to manage the farm and it’s products, keep the house in order, teach her younger brothers, sell her’s and her mom’s spells and weavings, and find spouses for her brothers and herself. She taught one of her brothers, Ronan, who like their mother and herself had a high ability for making spells and weavings.

She taught two of her other brothers, Marcellus and Terrance, how to take care of the farm and it’s business. Her two youngest brothers Ocatavian and Sirius II were leaning towards joining the city's local guard so she hired a combat teacher for them and practiced with them as well. When she was 22 she met a woman, Elaine Barrena, who was from the coastal cities and ran a vampire coven with her husbands, Darius and Percival.

Elaine and Julianna got to know each other and spend time together. Eventually the two started dating and after a year of being together she started to date Darius and Percival too. It took some adjusting to getting used to being in an already existing relationship since they had a past and a way of operating in their relationship but it worked after a while. She didn’t stop working on her farm while being in a relationship with them but they moved to a nearby city and settled their coven down around there.

Elaine, Percival and Darius as well as their whole coven were working with the Sparrows to overthrow the false king and Julia helped them when she could but only under the name Tempest. When she was 25 they turned her into a vampire after a year of preparing her and making sure that she wasn’t just doing it for them but because she actually wanted to be a vampire.

Julianna saw the rises in the aggression of the army and the level of casualties caused by both sides trying to fight for their cause and she wanted to be strong enough to not be hurt by the common things, the things that could take her away from her family early. She had rough time with controlling her new set of powers and bloodlust, more so than usual but Elaine, Percival and Darius said the harder the bloodlust was to control the more likely it was that she was going to be a strong and high ranking vampire.

Elaine, Percival, and Darius had both been turned by people who were 2 lines down from the original vampires which made Julianna someone who was 3 lines down. This means that unlike many vampires, her powers would work on other vampires. Any vampire 4 or less lines down from the original vampire will have venom that affects other vampires, be hard to compel or mess with psychically, be stronger than all vampires in a line below them, have a higher chance of making vampires when they do it, and have a sire bond with those they turn.

Anyone 5 lines or lower from the original vampires won’t have a sire bone with their creator. (The Sired complies with the direct and indirect orders of the Sire in order to show its loyalty). Elaine, Darius and Percival had her go through an extremely difficult process of breaking the sire bond which took a year and there were more than a few points where her willpower almost gave in but she kept fighting.

The four had a happy relationship and were able to make something out of all the chaos going on from the war. Then tragedy struck when the false king’s army and the Sparrows armies collided in the nearby city, the city that Elaine, Darius, and Percival lived in. The Coven of Barrena was killed by a group of witches working with the false king after they were able to hunt down some of the Sparrows' associates. Julianna found Elaine, Darius, and Percival all dead. Julianna and 10 other members of the coven were able to escape.

After this she went into a blackout state of sorts and slaughtered over 580 members of the false kings army subsequently putting a target on her and her family’s head. This event garnered her the nickname Red Widow and overtime the event was exaggerated and her identity disappeared in this story leaving just the name and the event however there are some besides her still alive that know what actually happened on that night.

She paid one of the local families to bury the coven in a grave plot she paid for, she inherited all the wealth that her three partners had accumulated once they were killed (Magical inheritance) and she took their three bodies and buried them in this beautiful meadow in the forest where she buried both of her parents. She has it protected by woven magic she made before she had turned into a vampire so only people she permits may entire the secret meadow.

She gave the farm animals to a local farmer, had the property spelled with protective magic and left the town. She traveled around a bit with the 10 members of the old coven and her brothers. She was able to get them places to stay and food but she also found ways to help out the rebellion when she could. She wanted the war over and done with. During this time her main choice of color for her clothes was mourning black. The grief she felt was immense and to the point where she would describe it as soul crushing.

The war ended when she was 29 and shortly after the old Elurid Kingdom was split into the four kingdoms with the unknown city of outlaws and criminals, Kilrest. She bought a castle in the mountains where she stayed with her brothers and the other ten vampires. Her brothers eventually ventured out and settled down in different kingdoms. She was proud of them to see that they were able to start a new life in the rubble of the past.

After a while of spending most of her time in the castle except for when she was feeding she decided to leave. She started to integrate herself in the social circles of each kingdom, from high to low, since she had experience with being in almost all of them. She and 6 other high ranking vampires made the Council of Iron, a very low key and secretive group that’s name is only known to those six people.

Whispers of a council that watches vampires from the shadows and comes to put certain ones in their place when they step out of line exist but no one knows for sure who makes it up, how many there are inside the council. They don’t hold any business, make any money, or govern beyond that.

They just dispose of those who are causing too much trouble and watch over vampires from the sidelines, observing the growth and who is added to the population. Julianna jokes to herself that it's more of an exclusive club than any form of power really beyond scary bedtime stories to tell to the newborn vampires.

She was able to accumulate a wide net of people she trusts and she turned a lot of people into vampires. She always made sure to check and wait to see if this was something they actually wanted before turning them. No matter how they all fitted into her life the people she turned were people she cared about or grew to care about. There was no way to really determine how they would fit into her life unless she had a prior relationship with them before they turned that went beyond “she’s a vampire who could turn them”.

She learned to grow around the pain and grief. She learned how to open herself up to love again. She lost some of her sired family and she grieved them the same she grieved her family but this time with less murder unless they were murdered by someone because in that case they usual ended up with their head and limbs ripped off.

She dated people that she loved and cared for but she never really fell in love again till she met Victoria. She had met Victoria while on a mission looking for a small coven of vampires that had been giving the rest of the species a bad name by going around and killing innocent people.

She found herself very interested in this young woman but as she was already betrothed she decided to do her best to just remain her friend. She knew that even if she said to herself that she was keeping her distance and just being a friend...that she wasn’t acting like that. She was flirting with her and doing things for her that she wouldn’t have done for just anyone. She wanted to tell Victoria how she felt and stop her from marrying someone she knew she didn’t love.

Unbeknownst to her, the same night she was planning on going to Victoria’s family and showing them how wealthy she was and that she truly cared for their daughter was not only the same night Victoria was telling them how she felt about her but also the same night that the coven she had been tracking rolled into town. She immediately sought out her love and found her in her parents house.

She pulled her close and told her that everything was going to be okay. So as the town was in flames and screams echoed in the night air, she kissed her and she broke a rule she had been abiding for quite some time, she turned Victoria into a vampire without making sure that that was something she wanted.

She brought Victoria out and watched her feed on the people she wished to feed on. Julianna was able to save a good 50 people, children and the elderly, from the coven and then she slaughtered the coven except for their newborns. She sent the newborns to covens she knew would take them in. She didn’t mind all the fire and screaming but she did have to put a cap on it at some point.

Once Victoria got her fill she found her and put her jacket around her, escorting her out of the village and to her castle where she helped Victoria break the sire bond between them. If V wanted to be with her she didn’t want to have to worry that it was only because she wanted them to be together. She doted on and cared for V and made sure she was never without what she wanted or needed whether that be food, objects, entertainment, or her love. Eventually the two got married and she was very thrilled to make Victoria Jade, Victoria Marley.

Eventually the couple moved to Saforia where Victoria and Julianna started to engage more with the vampire community there. While at a party Victoria met a man named Victor who she felt a bond with after a few hours of talking to him. After a few weeks of them talking she introduced him to Julianna who found him interesting and felt a similar attraction to him. Her past was a constant shadow for her in her relationship and while Victoria knew about her past she hadn’t been ready to share that with Victor.

Despite the pain, the love she felt for him was strong enough that she moved past it to be in a relationship with him. As her individual relationship with him grew and their relationship as a group grew marriage was the next step they took. She is still salty that he won’t change his last name though or even hyphenate it. He knows she grew up on a farm and that she was turned into a vampire by someone she knew but then she picks up her history when she started to travel around the kingdoms.

She keeps those memories locked up so no one even knows they’re there or can access them without her permission and since at this point it’s just her and two other members of the Coven of Barrena left she doesn’t have to worry about anyone saying something out of turn. She has a vacation/getaway planned for the three of them back to her...or what’s left of her hometown so she can take Victor to Elaine, Percival, and Darius’s grave and open up those memories to him.

Illy was born during the start of the King Uriah’s reign and grew up in poverty with the Kings guard policing the city. Her family were outliers species wise so they taught her to cover her third eye with a headband or scarf when she was 5 years old. Her mother was killed in the raid against the castle when the violence used to keep people in line became too much. This left her,( 9 yrs old) and her father to hide from the guards for months while they looked for family members of the people who raided the castle.

Eventually they found the hideout where they and a few others were staying, he sent his daughter to hide from the guards and don’t resurface till the guards leave. It was his job to distract them and it was her job to run, that’s what he always taught her. She stayed there for hours while they swept the area and stated as her father and the others were dragged out of the hideout and killed.

The guards left but she didn't. She went out and sat with her dad for a few hours then set his body on fire only taking his wedding ring with her and went back into the capital city. As she got older she became more morally grey but it was excusable for her considering the extreme circumstances.

She used her third eye as an advantage, she became an attraction. Have your fortune foretold by the mystical Illiana Darian. Be one of the few she graced with her otherworldly sight. She grifted people and scammed them but she stayed afloat. She also used one of her powers to spy on the king's guard to see where they were going and when.

She used this more for personal reasons rather than help an organization by looking for the person who killed her father and their associates. Which she eventually did but she knew she wouldn’t be able to kill them on her own so she started looking for help. She was connected to a woman called Green Sparrow, a high ranking member of the associates. She agreed to help Illy under the agreement that when they needed help in the future she would assist them.

Green Sparrow brought a few of her people with her and Illy when they attacked the regiment. They killed every member in less than an hour. Once this was done Illy felt a sort of lack of purpose even though she hadn’t made her life about hunting these people down it felt like she was missing something. Some sort of excitement, interest, something, she couldn’t put her finger on it and she wasn’t sure she wanted to confront it.

Illy started to help out more and more with the Sparrows and while she didn’t official join them she became more of a valuable asset, than a valuable person to them except to the Green Sparrow, Rochelle, who found her company to be a welcome reprieve from the depressing seriousness of a lot of the people in the Sparrows or the manic recklessness some members had that everyone else had to control.

Illy still did her grifting for a while but she eventually decided to switch to appraisals. She had an eye for what was valuable and what wasn’t, she was also a good blacksmith and forger. She worked with the bounds of the Sparrows but did work for many people who worked outside the confines made by the Elurid Kingdom.

Illy would eventually have to make a hard choice when Rochelle decided to take a higher position in the Sparrows furthering the amount of danger she would be in. Illy didn’t want to be in danger. She didn’t want anyone even thinking about putting her at risk but if there was one person who had stayed by her side and helped her when she needed it it was Rochelle. She didn’t want to take a high up position but she started using her abilities to get more information for the Sparrows and eventually the Malithorn Guild.

Tragedy struck when Rochelle and a few others from the Sparrows were attacked in the war for the capital city. They were kept in a dungeon for weeks on end with little care attended to them and no information being passed as to what was happening to them, what was going to happen, or even if they were still alive. The Sparrows took the stance that while they didn’t want to leave their people in the clutches of the King’s Army they couldn’t risk their very necessary forces to save them. They knew what they were getting into and as such the consequences they faced were theirs to manage.

This infuriated Illy to the point that she abandoned the Sparrows to seek her own way of saving Ro. She was able to get a few other members of the Sparrows to help her discreetly but for the most part it was on her to figure out what to do. She got in but the King’s Army didn’t want their prisoners to escape so they set fire to the building and surrounding town area. The fire killed 6 of the eleven captured and left the remaining five severely injured.

Rochelle’s face, neck, back, arm, the side of torso were all burned to such a high degree she would be permanently scarred. To save her life Illy made the decision to allow one of the vampires who was a part of the sparrows to turn her into a vampire as well. When Rochelle woke up she was beyond pissed. She didn’t want to be immortal, she didn’t want to be something that fed off the life of others, and to a lesser extent living with the permanent burns reminded her of the failure she felt as a leader.

When the war ended Illy and Rochelle were not on speaking terms despite Illy’s want to be in Ro’s life. Once the kingdoms started being established there was still a gap, still a group of people, Illy included, that didn’t feel at home in any of the kingdoms so they founded Kilrest. It was a decent sized group of people who decided to make it so it didn’t take long for them to make their underground network and city. Illy stayed there appraising items people brought to her, making jewelry, weapons, decorations out of expensive materials or helping out her fellow outlaws.

About 20 years ago someone came back into her life, Ro. She wanted to live in Kilrest and escape the feeling of being the other, she didn’t feel like she was at home anywhere. She didn’t feel like she was able to grow with the times as seamlessly as other immortals were able to. She wanted to be somewhere where the majority of people wouldn’t give a damn who she was but she wanted to check with Illy because unlike her she asked people before she did something that could affect their life in a big way. Well...for the most part she did.

Illy didn’t feel like she had any room to deny Rochelle access to Kilrest but if she was honest the idea of being in the same city as Ro forever made her feel more anxious than anything else. Currently the two are…”co-existing” in the same space living out their lives in the city of outlaws and outsiders.