Eirene Hep-To-Set

[Eirene]

Name: Eirene Hep-To-Set
Age: 33
Race: Snake Shifter

Physical Description
When in human form Eirene is a lean, muscular woman with bronze skin and raven black hair. She has wild eyes, a quick smile that often unnerves those who don’t know her and a fluid grace when she walks. For clothes she prefers light weight, loose fitting clothes that allows her freedom of movement and the ability to feel the sun’s warmth on her body. She also has a pair of Gnomish goggles, which aren’t magic but do keep the dust out of her eyes, and a pair of soft soled slippers.

As a serpent she is a 2.5 meter hooded cobra. Her scales are black and dark red.

Possessions
Weapons and Armor
Khopesh: A single edged short slashing sword, 60 centimeters in length, with a hooked shape. This kind of sword is almost unheard of outside of Semerkhet.
Kinjal: Long, curved dagger whose previous owner was one of the caravan’s attackers.
Shifting Scale Armor: Armor made of overlapping steel scales that protects the torso, upper arms, thighs and groin. Of Dwarvin manufacture it is durable and light weight. When worn by a shifter it will shrink or grow in size to accommodate hybrid form. If the shifter takes a form that cannot accommodate armor, including most animal forms, it merges with the shifter, becoming a distinctive coloration on the fur or skin which provides no protection.
Pistol: A heavy flintlock pistol. It is well cared for, but has clearly seen heavy use.

Wealth
Approximately 50 Bishani in savings

Other possessions
Eirene rents a small room in a crumbling ruin in the historic district. It isn’t much but its home.

Powers

Shape Shifting
As a snake shifter Eirene can take the form of a 2.5 meter venomous cobra. Additionally she can partially transform, taking both human and snake physical traits. Perhaps, most drastically, she can shift into the form of a snake, with a body as thick as a human’s and arms, allowing her to combine the strengths of both a snake and human for combat.

By manipulating her shape shifting she can heal wounds on herself. Additionally, Eirene’s metabolism makes her highly resistant to the venom of snakes and other poisonous animals. Other toxins affect Eirene as they would other shape shifters.

Skills & Strengths

Combat and Weapons
Eirene has grown up with light blades, with which she excels, and has a little experience with firearms and crossbows. She supplements her combat prowess with knowledge of dirty street fighting tricks and her natural abilities as a snake shifter.

Street Smarts
Eirene has traveled from one side of the continent to the other, and seen every major trade city and port along the way. If there is one thing she has learned is that, at their hearts, the cities are all the same. She knows how to negotiate the street level culture, survive in an urban environs and even how to perform the day-to-day petty skullduggery that is necessary on the streets. She has also learned most of the major trade languages well enough to conduct simple business transactions.

Instincts
Eirene has survived this long by trusting her animal side. She has a knack for spotting when things are about to go sideways, and reading the baser instincts of men.

Weaknesses & Flaws

Snake Blood
Eirene is cold blooded making her sluggish and lethargic in cold weather. She begins to feel this effect with an air temperature of 40F, but it becomes a true hindrance close at temperatures around 32F. In addition her low cold tolerance makes her more susceptible to cold based magic even in human form.

Aggressive Stance
The only form of combat Eirene knows is hard and fast. She sees this as an advantage, but it isn't always. A more calm and collected opponent can force her to make errors, or let her fatigue herself out and go on the offensive.

No Book Smarts
Eirene has no formal education, and is only minimally literate.

Outsider
While she has lived in the city a year and has begun to make contacts most of Marn’s citizens still view her as an outsider. Her looks are obviously foreign, and while some people find that fascinating, most look down on her. The fact that she is a snake shifter also leaves her open to bigotry, and on the wrong end of religious zealotry.

Inhuman
Eirene is more in touch with her animal side then her human one. She is unable to distinguish between Man’s nobler and baser emotions (love and lust for instance). Also, while she understands the underlying animalistic nature of human society and she knows what etiquette is without grasping many of the rules.

History

Deep below the sand swept streets of Semerkhet there is a nest where a clan of snake shifters live, hiding among Humanity. It was in this hive that Eirene Hep-To-Set was hatched, a member of the matriarch’s brood. As with all members of the hive she was raised communally, distant from her mother and not knowing her father.

As a child Eirene spent her days sleeping in the hive, and her nights running the streets with her brood mates. They soon formed a gang, with older members of her nest, and fought for the streets of Semerkhet. In the process they dodged the city guard, and committed all manner of criminal mischief. Eirene was not their leader. She was neither the most charming nor the strongest, but she gained a renowned for her cunning and speed. That was probably why the hive’s matriarch, her mother, selected Eirene as her successor as leader of their nest.

To prepare Eirene for her role she was inducted into a serpent worshipping mystery cult, which taught the righteousness of the snake changers during the war. Most would welcome the prestige, but Eirene soon missed her freedom and decided to take it back.

She fled the city, stowing on an outbound freighter to the Eyropan main land. The crew found her, and convinced the captain not to throw her overboard. She was a scrawny sixteen-year old and they took her on as a mascot but when they were boarded by pirates she proved her worth with a knife. One of the other passengers was a caravan master, who invited her to sign up as a guard when they reached the port of Keltaris.

Thus she traveled the empire guarding caravans from monsters and bandits. With her abilities as a shape shifter, and a keen nose for danger, she was an asset to any caravan she joined. For a decade she made her across the four ends of the empire, and bummed around every trade up and port town along the way. Then, down and out, having blown her pay gambling in Keltaris, she signed on with a merchant company doing the across continent circuit, traveling the great southern trade route, and returning by the north. It was the single hardest journey of her life, and she almost died a half dozen times. She was in love. On returning she signed a permanent contract and did it three more times.

On the third trip, it all ended. Making the return leg, across Thar Shaddin, they came under attack. Bandits, along with degenerate cannibal humanoid ghuls, attacked the caravan. The guards proved unable to hold off the attackers and it was a slaughter. The caravan was smashed and ransacked. The only person not killed or carried off was Eirene. Left for dead, she was barely able to crawl from the wreckage and use her healing abilities to survive.

A Marn guard patrol found the attack site, and Eirene lying unconscious. They took her back to town in chains. For two days the guard questioned her before deciding that she was, as she claimed, a caravan guard and knew nothing about the attackers. They let her have what little they salvaged from the caravan, and sent her on her way. Her first thought was to sign up with the next caravan coming through, but trade is almost non-existent in Marn.
She has spent the last year trying to establish a life, and doing what she can to survive.
Willing to get her hands dirty, she often finds herself taking jobs as a mercenary or hired duelist. She has also done some investigation into the attack on her caravan, but has come up with nothing so far.

[Saruna]

Hiya, and welcome to Thar! I really like the concept you have going here.

First off, the map is a bit out of date. It's mid updates at the moment, so in the meantime the mods have been having to point out the errors in the map to new players. Athena is a ruined city that is currently uninhabited by living people.

You have a choice of a fishing town by the name of Pascequa on the south-western coast of Apthoni (the Italian peninsula), Keltaris, or Morua which is a small city on the eastern coast of Corezo (Spain).

I would like you to add an additional combat weakness to offset her skills with multiple weapons.

Thanks for your patience! If you have any questions please feel free to ask them here, in chat, or in a pm to myself, Niabi or Frug. Please leave a reply in this thread when you have updated your app so I know to check it out.

[Eirene]

There, made the changes.

Replaced Athena with Keltaris, and added a specifically combat disadvantage: Aggressive Stance

[Saruna]

Ahh, one last thing I forgot to clarify -- what constitutes 'cold' for Eirene? 30F 40F? 50F? Colder? Warmer?

[Eirene]

Fixed.

She begins to feel this effect with an air temperature of 40F, but it becomes a true hindrance close at temperatures around 32F.

[Saruna]

Approved.

You can find plots to consider joining here.

As well as other characters in need of a thread here.

We highly recommend pming users to get a thread going or to join an established one, as it is typically the fastest way to get into a thread. If you post your character in the available thread and do nothing else it is likely your character will not be asked to join a thread for months, if not until you lose interest in Thar.

Have fun!