Ardys

[Ardys]

Player Name: Tovi

Character Name: Arecia Dores "Ardys" Garralista

Age: 52 (but the way shifters age, she looks around 24)

Race: Rat shifter

Born in: Belleza

Appearance: In rat form, Ardys is a black rat with a coat that she keep meticulously clean. She has dark eyes and a long hairless tail. Ardys is about seven and a half inches long, with her tail extending another six inches behind her. In human form she is the essence of the word sleek, usually keeping her black hair pulled back in a severely straight fall down her back, which accents her angular, somewhat exotic-looking face. Her irises are completely black like a rat’s and her nose is somewhat pointed beyond what a human’s would be, but it is not overly obvious. Her body is rounded nicely and she is very fond of her bum, which she points out on occasion as being a ‘helluva good ass, ain’t it?’ She stands at around 5'3" tall, and keep her hands obsessively clean.

Ardys wears a short, tight tunic with a wide slit up the side to allow for easy movement (and shows a little more skin than is proper around the hip) and tight, velour pants in various colors. She owns red, green, purple, and a bright blue set, purloined from a dealer to the Far East on one of her trips. She is very proud of her boots as well, and wears them daily. These boots are black leather with big brass buckles, and have silent soles.

Possessions: Ardys carries a small bag that is charmed to carry everything she stuffs into it as long as it can fit through the mouth of the bag, regardless of size and weight. She picked up the bag on Darleone Island, having stolen it from an elf that she thinks could probably have charmed another just as easily. Inside the bag she stores her life - or whatever she’s fond of at that moment. She’s highly attracted to sparkly things and carries around a multitude of crystals for purely sparkle-value, but she has hidden in the bag a decent selection of precious gems and Bishani, as she has liberated a small fortune from various people who surely didn’t need it.

Also in the bag is a somewhat extensive selection of clothes, including her beloved velour pants. She has a bright red velvet cloak as well, and a set of silk cloaks in black with silver lining, grey with a great bronze clasp, red with gold trim, and purple with gold trim and lining. As well she has a set of gold and green harem silks with plenty of jingly, sparkly decorations on them. She carries a variety of brightly colored silk dresses and an assortment of shoes, along with a veritable fortune in jewelry and hairpieces. Not all of them are high quality pieces, but they are all very sparkly. Ardys resents the fact that she cannot wear most of her clothes without strange looks, but she tends to do so anyway and tells herself that others are just jealous of her fashion sense.

Ardys doesn’t bother to carry food, as she needs little to eat in her rat form and can eat pretty much anything. When she eats in rat form she doesn’t need anything more to sustain her human form, so she seldom goes hungry. She does, however, wear a small iron knife belted on a bronze chain around her hips, purely for the look of things. She fears very little, being that she can slip away into the city and mingle with the rat population without detection, and so doesn’t really give a damn about what might happen if someone tried to attack her.

Strengths and Talents: Ardys is very good at stealing, both in rat and human form. Locked doors very rarely prove a problem for her, because rats can get anywhere and then she can open a window to get her big loot out, or if it's small enough just slip it in her magic bag and leave as a rat. She is extremely adept at hiding, because going to ground and hiding among her fellow rats is easy. She can easily appear sympathetic and compassionate while listening to people bemoan their losses to thieves while snickering inside.

She has a special type of magic that occurs very rarely in members of her family, which is spread by either biting people in her rat form or very forced and intense concentration - the ability to spread a disease much like the bubonic plague. The more people she infects the quicker the plague spreads, but it tends to mostly affect the elderly and children, and those already with compromised immune systems. She rarely uses this magic, except on people she feels really deserve it, such as those who won’t sell her pretty clothes or jewels, those who beat others (this includes killing ‘vermin’ like herself), and people who like cats.

She has a great skill with languages, and has picked up many tongues in her travels. She can adopt quite a number of accents but usually settles for a rough slang unless she's trying to impress someone. She also is good at getting her way through sexual favors, as she has learned about seduction in her travels too.

Unlike some shifters, Ardys's clothing shifts with her when she transforms, so she never has to worry about being caught in an indecent fashion. Whatever she is wearing transforms - this includes her magical bag.

Weaknesses: When Ardys concentrates on giving out diseases rather than just simply biting she gets extremely exhausted and punch-drunk, and will speak the first things that come into her mind - usually a list of the things she’s stolen in the past month or so, which can have bad results. She can take up to two weeks to recover partially, and she usually doesn't feel completely herself again until a month has passed. She can also lose control on it fairly easily - through she may only intend to infect one or two people, the plague she spreads is contagious and sometimes fatal. However, the plague does not spread quickly - for every person she bites, maybe twenty will catch the plague, and around four or five others besides the bitten person will die. It can spread from there to others, but with each generation it is less and less fatal.

She absolutely hates getting her hands dirty, so much so that if she decides there is too much dirt on them she will set whatever her current task is on hold until her hands are clean. She is the same way about having her face and clothing clean, and she loves to bathe at least once every two days and can get testy if she goes unwashed for long (to her, three or more days) periods of time. Despite this particular fastidiousness, Ardys has abhorrent table manners and doesn’t care what people think when she slurps her stew.

Not caring what people think sometimes has led to being exiled from various communities, though Ardys maintains that she goes off of her own accord, because ‘they just can’t understand me, the little simpletons. No respect for high-class.’ She can get very high and mighty, and often loses her temper and shouts when someone makes a snide comment about her style of dress and all its bright colors.

Like all shifters, she has an allergy to silver and it burns her when she’s touched with it. Other wounds heal abnormally quickly and never get infected, but silver takes a while to heal, though it too is never infected. This is more likely due to being a rat shifter specifically rather than simply being a shifter.

History: Ardys was born to a large family in Belleza on the far west of the main continent. They had extremely little of value while she was growing up and she and her brothers and sisters learned from an early age to steal, while their parents looked on proudly. Ardys was a middle child, four out of eight and the second daughter of three. Of the second litter, anyway. The young rat shifter didn’t know everyone in her family, as they lived all over Corezo.

She was born to rat shifter parents in the underbelly of the city and grew up quickly. She ran away from home, as was expected of about half the litter, at the age of fourteen and stole aboard a ship bound for Darleone Island. This was her first trip to the island and she quickly assimilated with both the rats and the locals around the trading center, despite being more like a human than an elf. She learned the language and the culture with a speed that surprised some people, but most were sailors were more interested in her body (despite her age, she looked and acted much older than she was because of her lineage) than her linguistic skills.

While on Darleone she learned to read the skies and tides from portsmen, was taught basic woodcraft from a few young elves, and picked up a few trinkets for herself. She caught a ship next headed for Semerkhet, where she picked up the art of dressing skimpily. She still carries harem silks in her bag, and loves the sultry dances she learned from courtesans.

Her next ship was sailing for Ji, which taught her the art of talking dirty and sexy, and how to apply make-up for different occasions. Then she left for Odbijani, riding on the back of a wagon train. She found her beloved pants there, and discovered that when she was angry she could inflict disease onto the person her anger was directed at. This was also the first place she had to flee from, running north because of crimes she’d confessed to while her mind was recovering from the curse-casting.

Intrigued, Ardys spent time in her next city passing bites to people who made her mad, especially those who killed rats. She managed to decimate a third of the small city with a type of plague that brought death is around four days, and she watched with a scientific curiosity as members of the populace died. She acquired her adored cloaks in this small city as well, before leaving of her own whim and heading south back to the sea.

Over the next several years she continued her travels, picking up her magical bag on Darleone and attaining her small fortune of jewels and money inside it. Once she tired of the sea she disembarked her final vessel in the port city of Keltaris, residing there for a time then hitching a ride with a wealthy merchant. The man didn’t notice one of his horses snorting in panic as a sleek black rat raced up its leg and settled comfortably into its saddlebags.

Once the horse had reached its final destination, Ardys found herself in Marn. Again, she quickly assimilated to the culture and spent most time underground, as she drew a bit of attention with her bright clothes. She spent her time over the next few months in the city learning the local language and stealing valuable things, though she’d never attempt to go after anything that wasn’t pretty, bright, or sparkly. Despite its drabness compared to some of the other places she had been, she found Marn fascinating, and has taken quite well to listening in on important conversations as a rat and then wondering idly at times who she could sell her information to.

[Saruna]

Approved.