Name: Luyk
Age: 83, with a physical appearance of about 20 in human years.
Race: Fae (subcategory: tak’kai)
Gender: Female
Occupation: Scholar, Ranger
Physical Description:
As all Tak’kai, Luyk has extremely pale skin and completely black eyes absent of any discernable pupils. She stands at 5’5.5” and weighs 127 lbs, a little short, but roughly average among her people.
Most days, she wears her Sentinel uniform: a grey wool sweater (with a neck capable of being slipped over the lower face for secrecy) topped by a dyed leather chest-plate and arm-plates. The sweater extends just past her elbow. Her forearms are wrapped with a leather-like material and have a hidden slot for the daggers she typically stores there. Her black pants are internally fur lined and slightly baggy; they bunch over the brown jaki-tabi [commonly referred to as “ninja shoes”] she wears.
As is typical to her people, she has many tattoos and piercings. Her face is adorned with the following piercings: two eyebrow (left), two anti-eyebrow (right), labret, lower lip ring(left) and nose stud (left). She has various other surface piercings on her upper arms and legs, all in places that don’t cause an inconvenience. Luyk has what would be called “industrial bars” and an assortment of other minor piercings on each ear.
She has one rather large tattoo of a mass of purple flames. It extends from the left side of her face, wrapping counter-clockwise down her neck, swirling in her stomach, and finally ending at the back of her upper-right leg. To accentuate the larger piece, several smaller diamond-shaped ‘flames’ are located in key places, such as the inner ear, below her labret, and on each wrist and ankle.
Each pointed ear has a scar running diagonally from the point down a few centimeters, a result of Luyk’s desire to point her ears all by herself. Though her body has by now rejected most of the thread used to sow them back together, along the scar there are still miniscule holes.
Her hair, though naturally white, was customarily magically dyed black her 30th birthday. Out of curiosity she left a few chucks of white in, giving her head a ‘striped’ appearance. She lets the hair on the front right side of her face grow long to balance the amount of piercings she has on her left side. On the right side it covers her eyes, but on her left it barely reaches her eyebrows. The back of her hair is a ‘pixie’ style cut.
Rather than deriving an advantage from muscularity, she uses her lithe frame to take advantage of speed. Luyk is fairly strong from all the traveling and exploring she partakes in, but since she doesn’t have a need to life heavy objects she doesn’t bother to try and improve her strength. This results in a toned body without much fat or muscle definition.
Her hands are small and slender. They have a weathered look, and have various minor scars. She keeps her nails clipped close to the bed so they don’t interfere with anything.
Possessions:
Long-Knife: slender blade about as long as a short sword, but balanced for throwing like a dagger or smaller blade. More difficult to wield, but can result in more grievous wounds in the hands of a skilled user. Versatile. 2 lbs, blade length of about 25”
Daggers (3): Fights with one at a time, but keeps more than one on her person. Typical daggers; fashioned in the style of her people. Made for throwing and jabbing. Black hilts, little ornamentation. 1 lb, 8 inches each.
Flint and steel
Backpack: leather; weathered and well-used but holding together well.
Rations
Whetstone
Waterskin
Extra leather wrappings
Ornate charm on a chain (worn around the neck): Carved from some sort of precious black stone, the charm doesn’t reflect light. On the contrary, it seems to suck the light near it within itself. No decipherable shape; collection of swirls and circles. Two inches in diameter.
Tattered notebook (2): various drawings and writings written in Tak'kai; records and observations taken over time.
Powers or Strengths:
Innate shadow-magic: all tak’kai are born with an innate shadow-magic that attracts the shadows of people and other objects to the user. Gives the appearance of shadows constantly ‘licking at their heels.’ In a skilled mage, the power can be used to turn an enemy’s shadow on itself or enslave various shadows. Luyk, however, is not a skilled mage. Her powers are limited to wrapping herself within shadows (a form of invisibility), ‘drinking’ shadows to heal, and using shadows as a form of primitive defensive magic. As a result of this magic, tak’kai are significantly stronger in the dark.
Speed: She’s very fast. It’s her main advantage over her opponents.
Heightened awareness: as with most races with a magical connection, tak’kai have, to a degree, heightened senses. From living in the dark for so long, their hearing is extremely acute.
Knowledge of flora/fauna: From studying and drawing, she knows much about the forms of life on Pal Tahrenor.
Weaknesses and Flaws:
Lack of emotion: To deal with the nightmares of the dark corner of the astral plane, the tak’kai abandoned feeling emotion to save their sanity. They are no longer able to feel higher emotion (happiness, sadness), instead feeling primitive emotions (anger, fear) and small flickers of what we would describe as the real qualia. This makes Luyk unable to empathize and therefore less likely to create allies. It often gets her in trouble. She would rather kill whatever is causing the problem than drudging through the emotional muck to find a productive solution.
Lack of strength: If Luyk is overpowered, it’s likely she won’t be able to accomplish her goal. She relies on speed too much for her own good; when she’s caught, she’s down.
Linguistically challenged: She doesn’t pick up languages very well, often creating problems. She only fluently knows a pre-changer war dialect of English and the astral form of tak’kai. She can speak fragments of other common languages, but not fluently.
Curiosity: She’s prone to sticking her nose where it doesn’t belong.
Sunlight: Too much light of most any kind gives her a headache, making her mostly a nocturnal creature. She does venture out in the day, but not for more than a few hours at a time.
History:
When the astral plane ripped open at the beginning of the changer war, a band of power-hungry humans fled through the tear into the astral plane in search of magic they could wield against their enemies. Instead they found themselves lost and unable to escape. They had travelled into the astral home of nightmares, darkness, and shadows. Most were driven mad and committed suicide, but a few were able to adapt. Their skin lightened from lack of sun, their hearing improved in the dark, and they lost the emotion that drove them to insanity.
While the changer war raged on, the band of humans now known as tak’kai raged against the dark magics of the astral plane. Unable to find a way out, they finally decided to settle in their unfortunate surroundings. Under the warped time of the astral plane, many many generations flew by, creating a race more fae-like than human. They aged far slower, had heightened senses, and had begun to bond with the shadows they feared. Unable to feel emotion, they began to seek out other ways to make themselves ‘feel.’ They lived for the adrenaline rush, and took to doing risky endeavors and heavily dappling into body modification as a result. Though there is no known live-span, many die simply because they were doing something hazardous and suicidal. Social status, then, was determined by what actions an individual could do and get away with. The riskier an achievement, the more respect you demanded.
Luyk was born when the band of humans had been in the plane so long they were permanently changed. She was born to a form of royalty, but abandoned because she was female in a long line of females; the tak’kai wished for a male ruler. She grew up with no ‘House,’ a family unit comparable to a clan. Because of this, she was never allowed to claim a last name for herself. Houseless infants and children are given to the Sentinel to train so they may defend the settlement against the horrors of the astral plane. Though bitter about her parentage, she grew up under the tutelage of the men and women there and grew to be fiercely defensive of her home. She took little interest in magic other than what the Sentinel was required to learn, but often was found pouring over the writings of the first settlers. She wanted to know more of the physical plane; the definition and certainty of it was fascinating compared to what she was used to.
Around her thirtieth year (time being hard to track in the astral plane) her white hair was magically dyed black (as is custom). She cut her long hair, knowing full well it was unlikely to grow back.
She continued to fight and train, and finally settled into a pair of weapons she excelled at: the long-knife and the dagger. She could proficiently battle with most other weapons, but far preferred the lightness and swiftness of a graceful blade compared to the strength and heaviness of a mace or Morningstar.
About her forty-third year the anger and bitterness she had felt all her life boiled up, and she attempted to kill her younger brother, a renowned leader and magician. It was a vengeance kill, and had she succeeded she would have taken the throne. She did not succeed, and was chased from the settlement – not without injuring many a guard and royal on the way. Luyk was allowed in the wall of the settlement to gather her things, and told to leave.
She expected to go mad in the wilderness and uncontrolled environment of the astral plane. She survived there for two decades, encountering various beings and beasts. Eventually she created a small dwelling she could operate from in an area that was less magically active.
She returned to her dwelling from hunting one day to find an elf inside. She was shocked, as she had never seen another humanoid being before then. So, rather than killing him (which had been her first instinct) they sat down together and exchanged information. When she noticed his pointed ears, she promptly decided she wanted hers to have the same aesthetic appeal. Unexpectedly to the poor elf-mage she ripped her dagger out and sliced her ears diagonally, repositioning the wounds to make her ear pointed. As he rushed to clean the blood and stitch her up, she used her shadow-magic to heal herself. He still insisted that he give her stitches, so she let him. Eventually the threads fell out, but the marks are still here.
The elf, whose name was Nyterran, told her of the physical plane and how she might go there. In exchange, she told him to story of the first settlers and her people. Each expressed an interest in seeing the other, but when she explained why she couldn’t go back he was disgusted at the barbaric action. With a little less respect for what he thought was a young woman, he asked if she could at least lead him to the settlement that he might see the dark fae that used to be humans. She agreed, as long as he could provide safe passage to the physical plane her ancestors had left.
She led him through the dark world she had left, right to the gates. He was received by her people with a curiosity and a great many questions about himself and the outside world. Luyk, unwelcomed by her kin, left for her home where she would meet with Nyterran in a week.
After that week had passed, Nyterran arrived – with guests. There were apparently other tak’kai who wished to travel to the physical realm. Though Luyk was rather upset at the company (you can be sure the company was upset with her) they traveled without incident.
Rogeth, one of the other tak’kai, began taking a fancy to Luyk. Despite Luyk refusing to acknowledge him, she too felt something. This was terrifying for her, because she had been so used to independence. To have your contentment based on someone’s presence was unacceptable.
Rogeth continued to pursue her, even attempting to woo her with his magical prowess. She continued to ignore him. As a gift, he gave her a charm made from hikuro stone, a rare stone unique to the astral plane that had a tendency to turn surrounding light into shadow. It's prized by the tak'kai, and can only be shaped by the most talented of shadow-mages.
Luyk wore down more and more on their months of travel, finally secretly admitting her attraction to Rogeth. They made love a single time, and she refused to see him alone afterwards. She still thought it was too hazardous to become attached.
It was a huge internal battle cumulating in his death. Luyk, confused and unable to properly decide what to do, decided to dispose of the problem entirely. She killed him in his sleep and blamed it on the various beasties hiding in the shadows. Immediately afterwards she was irritated she had wasted such an ally, something she didn’t often have. Rogeth had been the one individual that seemed to care for Luyk, and she killed him for it. Luyk had a feeling that Nyterran suspected something, but neither mentioned anything. To tak’kai, it wasn’t unusual when no one grieved upon a loss. No one asked any questions. Luyk kept the charm he made her.
About a month later, the party arrived at a portion of the plane where Nyterran could transfer them all over to the physical plane. Luyk remembered the stretching feeling the most, and then the sudden brightness. They had entered into the physical plane, arriving at a place Nyterran referred to as Theogios’ Causeway on Darleone island.
Luyk and the four other tak’kai were completely blinded by the amount of light that fell from above. Nyterran helped them to the nearby city of Saendror Thysaer, where they were studied for a time. One by one, the tak’kai left, looking to learn and see the world that was completely. Luyk left first, determined to learn as much as she could.
Since her arrival at Saendror Thysaer she has continually travelled west, explored, took note, and learned the basics of the common languages of the land. She writes and records everything in various notebooks. In her travels, she’d collect and discard books frequently, desiring only the information within them.
After traveling for some years, she finally arrived outside of Virdara Woods. She hung around, always drawn back to the area. By now she had thoroughly blocked memories of her childhood from her mind, seeking only to see and study. These woods would be the perfect place to do just that. Realizing she needed somewhere to stay, she irritably admitted she was going to have to hire someone to build a house for her. In the dark of night, she entered the town called Shim in search of a late-night craftsman.
