Character Name: Zaskia "Stella" Cielum Eturnus
Age: 23
Race: Human
Height: 5' 7"
Weight: 134 lbs
Physical Description: From her mother, Zaskia was granted the good fortune of soft facial features and warm, tan skin. At first glance her face might seem average, but attractive. Her smile is rich and warmly satisfying to look at, but she doesn't smile much anymore. Standing with a fairly tall frame and decent posture, her body is thin and well built, with curves that spark jealous eyes from older women and a shape that makes men weak. Her hair is a bold black color, thick and straight; it reaches down past her hips and is usually well-kept. To keep it mostly out of the way, she wears her hair half-up while she is working, but prefers keeping it down and does so when she isn't working. Due to her skin and hair color, her appearance is often seen as exotic, heightened only by her unlikely blue eyes, light in color but not emotion. She often is seen wearing makeup made from natural ingredients, sometimes obscene amount of it, along with ladies' perfume.
She often dresses in a very constricting red corset with black stitching that is designed to force weak-minded men to stare at her exposed cleavage. With this she also wears a risque burgundy frock and darker peasant blouse to match which is bound at the hem in such a way that it exposes an improper amount of her legs, which are usually dressed in dark-colored stockings that tend to have rips and tears in them. With these she also wears lace-up ankle boots, which tend to change style but are usually black and heeled. Her clothes change color and style often, but all of them serve the same purpose; to accentuate her attractive figure and help to drain the wallets of her customers. Nearly all of her garb is also very uncomfortable, but she has grown used to this. Very little of her clothing would be considered publicly acceptable, except for a whore. Her nails tend to be painted red or black.
Because of her unstable nature, she is often beaten by her superiors and/or her clients to keep her in line, and thus usually has cuts and bruises on her face and body. She hides these as best she can with clothing and makeup, as they distort her fine appearance.
Possessions:
• Small wooden figurine of Theogios
• Small pearing knife
• Inconspicuous box containing assorted stolen jewelry
Personality: Due to her past and current "career", Zaskia has become a darker individual. She often feels that her true life was stolen from her by the corruption of society, and is unable to see a way out of the dark pathway she was pushed toward. Because if this she often contemplates suicide. There are very few things that make her smile these days, but she has learned to feign interest and happiness in order to please those around her. The business of pleasure has never been a pretty one, and it is not one that she actively chooses.
Despite her beauty, she does not consider herself a beautiful individual because she envies the lives of other women, and is ashamed by her own actions. Her thoughts are dark and she dislikes most people. She is prone to fits of anger, rage, and fear from things that shouldn't set her off in such a way. Emotionally she is a piece of work, because none of the things she has ever desired in life are things she has received. Though she dreams of one day escaping her situation and finding happiness, she is convinced that it will never happen. She is extremely good at driving herself further into emotional darkness, as she tends to overthink anything good that ever happens to her and turn it into something bad.
She is not terribly religious, but her family consisted strictly of Puradynes and this has made her afraid of most magic, although she has never been to Marn. She is mildly racist and untrusting of anyone who isn't human, but is forced to interact with them for business and is more than capable of overcoming that. She believes, like many, that humans are superior to other races.
Powers or Strengths:
Manipulation - Zaskia, or rather Stella, knows how to get men to give up their money. She is experienced sexually and her advances, while often blunt and to the point, are usually successful. This is the only way she knows how to earn money.
Quick Reflexes - There is a knife that Stella keeps hidden within her clothing at all times. If ever there were a need to use this knife on a man, she would be able to do so without flinching and probably before he knew what was happening, unless he had supernatural abilities (not out of the question) or a lot of experience in martial arts. This reflex has also saved many a drinking glass from falling and breaking.
Will to dominate - There is a strength that Zaskia has that is not often realized because of her social situation and status. She is a bold-minded individual and has a sense of entitlement that does not suit the cards she has been dealt. Men often find themselves with far more than they can handle because this strength so often is channeled sexually. Given the right opportunities, Zaskia could have become great because of this, but life does not work in such a way.
Intelligence - Both a strength and a weakness, Stella is blessed and cursed with a quick mind. She is uneducated, but her thinking is deep and clear. She is also fairly quick-witted, and this makes her behave sarcastically when she lets her guard down, and lands her in a whole lot of trouble with her superiors and clients. Once more, with this strength and given the right opportunities, Zaskia could have become far more than she is today.
Weaknesses:
Manipulation problems - Stella only knows how to manipulate people sexually, and is far less practiced in all other areas. Because of this she rarely actually gets what she wants. Her intelligence has never reached a point where she was able to manipulate a situation to her liking with her behavior and actions, and it is why she is in the position at hand.
Lack of skills - Zaskia cannot cook, is not practiced with cleaning anything other than her own body, cannot defend herself generally speaking, and has few other skills that are at all helpful to her. Other than acting as a sex object, she is useless.
Fear of dogs - Zaskia is terrified of anything canine or appearing as such due to several bad experiences with werewolves.
Illiteracy - She can't read or write.
Disease - Stella is a carrier of several kinds of sexually transmitted diseases and infections.
Mental Instability - If Zaskia was a mentally sound individual, she would probably have a far better chance of escaping her situation and living a life that would satisfy her hunger for adventure and love. She has been through too much and has seen too much darkness to have much hope of that, however. She is prone to depression and often seeks drugs of any kind of help her deal with daily life, though it is rare she actually can get a hold of any. She is also a very angry individual, and often lands herself in a lot of trouble running her mouth when she knows better. She tends to ignore basic self-preservation instincts and has attacked people physically that she was unable to handle. She is suicidal, and often spins her thoughts around too much and makes herself even more miserable than she should be. She longs for an escape, an exit of some kind. At times she seems hopeless that such a thing will ever come to be, and other times she is intent on forming a plan to make it happen. There are times when she seems perfectly sane, and other times when she is borderline batshit.
History: Zaskia was born to Tala and Drukus Eturnus, a young family already in a pile of debt and favors for many people. They were very poor, on the low end of society and forced to share their home with several other families as a communal effort to survive. While Tala attended to the womanly duties of caring for their new child, cooking, housekeeping, and helping with the other children of families that lived with them, Drukus pretended to be sweeping bars while instead he was gambling away what little money they had. Drukus was a heavy drinker, and never stayed true to his wife. Lost in despair and depression that is so often seen in his bloodline, Drukus was consumed further by terrible guilt when Tala came down with a disease that spelled her doom. Cured easily by magic, the Puradyne family could only watch as the young mother was consumed by an illness-caused insanity and shortly after, death. Zaskia was four.
The death of her mother began the truly dark beginnings of a childhood stolen by corruption. Because of her father's inability to care for her, Zaskia relied on the four other women sharing their quarters for food, and never learned how to cook. This was the only time in her life when she was ever required to do any form of cleaning, and was so young that she wasn't of much help anyway. When her father began sexually abusing her in the home, Zaskia took as much time away from the house as she possibly could, and began begging on the streets for food and money.
When Zaskia turned six, her father married a girl of fifteen called Dalieu and had a child in hopes of breeding a son. Instead, as so often happens, the child turned out to be a daughter. They named her Ella. She was ignored by her own family, as Dalieu looked for an escape from the husband who beat her in her daily chores. Instead she became absorbed into the lives and families of others, and sought refuge by playing with the other children. Ella, unlike Zaskia, learned to cook and clean early in life.
Meanwhile, Zaskia spent as much time away from her home as possible, seeking the gentle sounds of birds and the streams in the forest beside their home. Often she would pretend that she was a princess or a warrioress, and have her own adventures in the wood using a stick as her sword and piece of wood as her makeshift shield. This was the only way she could attain any sort of happiness in her life, as the moment that she returned home she would often receive punishments. The abuse from her father continued, even after Ella discovered it and told Dalieu. The family ignored the abuse due to Drukus's many death threats and beatings.
At twelve, Zaskia met a boy a year or so older than herself who lived on farmland that overlapped her frequent play area. The two immediately became good friends, sharing stories and games with one another as children so often do. Their relationship as friends slowly developed into Zaskia's first tale of love, a cliche childhood romance that was always doomed to fail from the beginning. But, it was a chance at happiness for the girl. Her hopes were suddenly set high for a better life. She hid her discovery of love and sex from the rest of her family, and made frequent visits to the boy's farm.
Ella's mother, Dalieu, finally had enough. She had been stealing and saving small amounts of money and hiding them in various places in the home, planning to escape and take her daughter with her. In the middle of the night one summer, Dalieu gathered her belongings, woke her daughter, and slipped out of the home. They were not undetected. Drukus soon barged out of the door after them, carrying a large combat knife. After cutting Dalieu, she ran for her life and he did not pursue her, instead holding back Ella to prevent her escape. The mother was lucky to get away. Her daughter would not have such a fate.
Drukus continued on his violent pathway after keeping Ella from joining her mother when he followed Zaskia one evening to the farm boy. He discovered them there, naked and passionate together, and was suddenly thrown into a rage. She could only watch, horrified, as her drunken father began to beat on her lover. His fist was thrown down over and over until one could barely recognize the face of the young boy. Zaskia was unable to pry her father's harsh grip from the boy's body, and was forced to watch him beaten to death mercilessly.
As Zaskia entered adulthood and Ella moved closer to entering her teen years, their father was killed by a group of people he owed money to. This left the two girls to fend for themselves, as the families in the commune had long since abandoned them and moved on to a better life. Unable to make payments for their living space, the girls took to the streets, trying to earn money by begging. When begging didn't work and Zaskia discovered that sex could be used to pay for necessities, she began to whore herself out while Ella continued simple begging.
Her relationship with Ella finally bloomed into something deep and rich, and it was the only thing that kept the pair going. Ella desperately wanted to help her sister, who made far more money from foul sex than she made from shaking cans. Despite Zaskia's refusal to allow her young sister to help with such repulsive business, Ella ignored the warnings and started bringing in more money than begging ever had brought them. Barely a year after the pair began their two-whore business, the young sister died of hepatitus. Zaskia fell into a deep despair after the death of her closest friend and relative, and it was both good and bad luck that she was found by a woman named Jehda and taken into a brothel.
Jehda was a cold, middle-aged, experienced woman who knew how to run a business. Her face had a grooved, foul look to it, and she only smiled when working, convincing clients to give up their money to screw one of her various whores. So moody had Zaskia become after the death of her sister that she often misbehaved and back-talked too often than what was good for her. Jehda often beat her to scare her into behaving, and was such a woman that she would harm her whores without permanently disrupting their beauty; Zaskia has no scars, other than the mental blows she received while under the supervision of the evil woman. As clients began to ask more and more often for Zaskia, she adopted the name Stella in honor of her sister, and slowly killed the person of the old name by doing so. A downward spiral continued, and Stella often fought with the other whores when they dared to "fuck with her". Provocation of Stella was easy to do; one meaningless look could land a girl with a knife threatened across her throat.
It was really only a matter of time before the thin, fraying threads of Stella's sanity snapped. The victim of this breakage was a newly arrived whore with an attitude that didn't sit well with Stella. One night a shouting match between the women ended with a knife to the chest. With hardly a flinch, Stella spilled the woman's blood and innards onto the wooden floor. Realizing that Stella was now an extreme issue with liability, Jehda sold her to another brothel, much to the relief of the other women.
In the new brothel, Stella realized late with horror what she was capable of. Killing another person does something to the soul, and to the mind, that she was not immune to. She was sickened by her own actions and had extreme difficult in adjusting to her new situation, which thankfully was run by a kinder, albeit stupider woman called Middy. Middy, unlike Jehda, was working under the rule of the man who owned the whorehouse. While the man was rarely seen, it was his say that went into every decision made. Other than the foul work, Stella had a decent life then, mostly because she somehow managed to gain a friend in one of the whores despite her social ineptitude and ugly temper.
Her name was Sylvia, and she had been through hell and back again just as Stella had. Her stories and tales were nightmarish. The friendship that transpired between them did not take long to become something else. Both held a deep-seated desire to be loved and appreciated as real women, and not as tools and objects. Their romance did not go unnoticed, despite their attempts to keep it secret for fear of how the others would react. But, as these things so often do, the information leaked. Middy informed her superior, who decided immediately that lesbianism was bad for business (the irony of which needn't be explained). Without warning, Sylvia was sold to another brothel, thus severing all ties with Stella. Not surprisingly, Stella abandoned her brightening demeanor and became problematic for the brothel. The man in charge, however, knew that they would earn more money keeping her for her uses than they would spend cleaning up after her violent attacks. Despite the rumors of Stella keeping a knife on her at all times, men tended to prefer her company over others.
One man in particular continuously came to the whorehouse for weeks, simply to see Stella. So often was he present that Stella rarely ever had any other clients during that time period. The man was rash, but insanely rich. The nobleman, convinced of his love for Stella (or rather his love for her private parts), bought her for an obscene amount of bishani and took her to live in his obscenely large house with his obscene amount of expensive things. For a time, being spoiled by such things was a nice change. Sleeping with one man was also decent, although the nobleman was neither attractive nor age appropriate.
Mr. Jones, the man who had bought her to keep her as his personal pet, seemed kind at first although he had a quiet, creepy way about him. He would often comment on things that most did not comment on, such as the texture of her eyebrows or the scent of her sweat. His presence was unnerving, to say the least. Two months in, he began to treat her so poorly that she tried to escape, to no avail. He would beat her, cut her, and sexually abuse her in ways that even a whore is not accustomed to. She tried, various times, to kill him. After he broke both of her arms, she stopped trying. Instead her anguish festered like a putrid wound, and she became suicidal. She tried twice to kill herself, once by hanging (the ceiling broke), the other by cutting her own throat (she was caught by a servant). Still the abuse continued.
Once more, a stroke of both good and bad luck plagued Stella when a group of werewolves broke into the mansion to steal the expensive goods in the home. They immediately slaughtered the nobleman, who had pissed them off at a tavern the other night. They ravaged the home, taking anything of value that could be carried, and found Stella hiding in a closet upstairs. That was the first time in years that she has ever been raped, and she preys to Theogios that it is the last.
They took Stella with them and traveled to distant lands, whoring her out to earn extra money while abusing her. They traveled with her until they reached Semerkhet, and sold her for dirt cheap when they grew tired of her. Her life has never looked promising, and now she is likely doomed to sexual slavery for the rest of her life, which she hopes desperately is cut short.