Name: Nadja Saa'iqa Maharat
Age: 32
Race: Human
Height: 5'4"
Weight: 120 lbs.
Physical Description: She's built for her occupation, lithe and supple where she needs to be, but since withdrawing from her role as an assassin and more into the lucrative trade of the mercenary, she's built more muscle, but it doesn't stave off the skills she's acquired as an assassin. Her hair is kept long, just past mid-back, and she never changes its color from its natural black. However, her eyes are the shade of honey.
Posessions:
A pair of short swords, the locations change places on her body with the weather, but usually they are kept in sidedraw sheaths on the small of her back.
Her Friesian, Azshara, is her usual mode of transportation.
See the next listing for what she normally carries in her travels.
Powers or Strengths:
- Sometimes, these weapons are worn openly. Most of the time, they are covertly hidden on various parts of her body. The sheaths blend with her black assassin's attire making them impossible to spot unless you're in close proximity and giving her a pat down (good luck with that one).
Two scimitars hanging from a leather-hide belt adorned with cowry shells. These are almost always concealed within the folds of her tunic. One scimitar was her brother's, before he committed suicide, the other was crafted by Anathe (it's decorated in runes she can't decipher, but apparently it makes them bound to her will). She also has a pair of 'soul-sucking' scimitars from Anathe. The blades have been retrieved. She'll be using those instead of the plain scimitars.
Her throwing knives in a black case strapped to her inner right thigh.
Twin sai which are covertly sheathed in her boots.
A 'chakram' with a serrated edge and smaller than normal and engraved with Arabian calligraphic scrollwork which also hang from her belt.
Vambraces that are edged with retractable blades carved from dragon's teeth (made by a character in Calracia named Anathe, a bronze dragon).
A small pouch of poison for dire circumstances, and for bloodless contracts.
Weaknesses: She's not partial to sea travel, and she's got a mild case of acrophobia, that, and being human is a bi of a liability as well.
History:
From birth to adolescence Saa’iqa had always been shunned, scorned, and mocked for her lineage. Not only was she conceived and born out of wedlock to a courtesan, her sire was a foreigner and in their eyes, a mar on what might have been a ‘beautiful’ girl-child. She had the lineage of her Persian father stamped upon her flesh as blatantly as any brand, with her dusky, nut-brown skin, and wavy black hair which tumbled unchecked down the length of her back, to the slanted windows of her eyes whose irises resembled honey when the sunlight touched it. Yet her body was too androgynous to harbor any promise of real beauty. They wanted nothing to do with her. So her mother put her to work in the fields. Her elder brother, Rashid, who had been the result of a tryst before her mother met her father, took pity and decided to teach her to wield a scimitar before he was called off to war. Saa’iqa’s interest in blades grew as swiftly as she did and when the time came to collect the blood-debt accounted for well before her birth, she knew that her time of persecution was reaching its end. Or mayhap, she was moving onto a different form of it. He approached her at the well, and she stood stock-still, startled as a wounded dove. This man was obviously not from this land at all, with his flamboyant silks and leathers and his deceptively delicate, pianist fingers, and his face…as if it were carved from ivory. Yet all of this did not hold her attention. It was his eyes, depthless and soulless as the Abyss, which ensnared her. They were black, but upon closer inspection it was obvious that the Abyss she had seen was no abyss at all…it was the cosmos.
He was not only a foreigner; he was….not human either. Just as quickly his eyes faded to a steely gray, leaving her to wonder if what she had seen was illusion or real.
He never gave his name, and only smiled and Saa’iqa knew the warmth of embarrassment in her cheeks. Holding out a slender, delicate hand, palm-up, he spoke, his voice resonating with a power that even the continent's natural magics were wary of.
“Are you ready for this road, Nadja?” He had addressed her by her first name then, and Nadja felt his voice carol across her skin like the tips of knives circling the soft skin of her belly, stirring within her a desire to be at his side. Without thinking she took his hand and the deal was struck. He collected her the next morning to begin her training. Things progressed and for a decade she honed her skills to a killer’s edge, and when it came time for the final test, he touched her forehead and Saa’iqa knew power, if only a small bit of it.
Thus, she was god-cursed.
He said nothing about it, though, leaving her to fend for herself against her first target. Saa’iqa set out in silence, and all went well until she was betrayed and captured. Whipped for her pending crime, the target, the leader of the guerilla troop who sought to invade and rampage her beloved Meroë, approached her and with surprising gentleness, nursed her back to health. Saa’iqa, while thankful, was still spiteful. She challenged him at every turn, sniping at him with a sharp tongue and merciless mien, and he took it all in stride, with an arrogant calm, awaiting the viper to spend her venom so that he may continue to play the bed-nurse. Then, one night, something went wrong; the two stared at each other for long moments. Saa’iqa’s venom had become less potent, Lucius’ touches had become more intimate, and awkward silences became frequent between them. She ventured a touch, over his jaw line, cheekbone, mouth, and collar bone. Till this day, she could not recall what happened. Only the way they were upon each other like ravenous predators.
Hours later, both entangled and thoroughly slaked, Nadja realized she had come to love her Roman captor. An unprecedented night of passion had sheathed her fangs and for nigh a year after that, she stayed by his side, as affectionate and understanding as any lovesick girl twice her junior. Lucius returned the affection, finding the assassin to be the most adept scholar he'd ever met. She was curious about his world, and he just as curious about the woman herself. One night, after a bout of arguing over various philosophies and war strategies, he dealt her a name that has stuck ever since as her codename: Adder. A native serpent of the desert, whose bite was as lethal as the residue of the eto plant. They laughed over it, and like any pair of lovers, made up. Yet it was short-lived, as reality set in. Nadja, while as playful and loving to a fault, was still a conditioned killer.
Yet, as Fate’s cruel irony would have it, she was innocent in this. It was Lucius’ jealous fried Decius who saw how the commander’s eyes glazed with lust and affection when Nadja was about, noted how he always took her advice when he himself was never sure, noticed how she was becoming a distraction to the work of Rome. Thus, he opted to slay the serpent, slipping a puff adder into their shard bed, knowing the bitch would plan some sort of lurid surprise for the Roman commander. Yet it was not Nadja who lay to bed first, but Lucius himself, knowing Nadja had been out riding his horse for the evening. The serpent, startled, struck him thrice, its final bite lodging to his throat. Within minutes he was dead. Nadja returned that day to find the Roman soldiers in uproar, crying for justice and vengeance. Seeing his opportunity, Decius placed the Nubian as the culprit. Nadja fled West as if to chase the very sun to is setting point. She rode until she knew herself to be well-past Egypt’s dusky borders. When she was certain they had not followed, she rode on in search of the deities who had cursed her with this Fate.
She wandered the Sahara hitching to a caravan who found her stumbling weeks later sans a horse. Soon after being nursed to health, she was on the move again, taking odd jobs, becoming infamous in some regions, hated in others. In one part of the land she was even hailed as a hero. She was a ruthless, pragmatic mercenary who did not question who fell at the edge of her blade and why she was hired to be the one wielding them. She continued on like this for another decade, and reaching her prime, had decided to relax and soothe the unseen wounds, and let herself become humane again. Occasionally, the Adder would surface and Nadja would be forced into isolation, until the curse subsided. She understood the extent of her curse was purely emotional and that there was no rune, spell, or magic that could free her of the persona that she had immersed herself in for nearly a decade.
She'd met many on her journeys, some became companions, others rivals, and few even became her lovers. While visiting a desert region in another realm, she became temporarily apart of a ragtag band of assassins. One of them helped her hone her skills to a deadly efficiency. Despite their mutual hatred for one another in the beginning, he’d crossed her heart in such a way as to leave her wanting for none but him. He was thought to be one of the most unfeeling and hardened of a guild of assassins she ran with. Yet, alone, her touch made him hesitant, her voice softened his scowl into what might have been a smile, and her teasing quips drew out of the nameless monster something not many had been able to see. Yet, in an environment so harsh as the one they worked in, love – even tainted – was victim to war. A final mission took him on a path she could not follow, yet she promised to wait, and he promised to find her upon his return. He left, and soon after, Nadja vanished as well. She never forgot him, and she still waits in some part of herself for his long-anticipated return. Yet the avidly passionate creature would not be anchored to one place to wait. He would find her, but she would not languish.
Now, as her travels took her farther than she herself could imagine, she retired her blades. Soon, impossibly soon, she reached a place where none knew her name, where none thought with fearful reverence of the twin scimitars that hung from her hips like ceremonial ornaments. She would not have had it any other way, so she went under the guise of a vagabond, an eidolon of some sort, known for her gentle smile and exotic features, her sharp wit and the way she was quick to be prone to feminine laughter and charm; yet always the name was different. But none would deny the air of secrecy that hovered about her like an ague. Something about her, for all her normalcy and coy ways, drunken stupors, and bawdy episodes in various taverns, something about her was different. Yet none questioned it, none questioned the way she showed madness in beauty, nor the way she watched with a predator’s keen sight from behind her laughing eyes, or the mysterious chest within her possession, its contents under prodigious lock and key.
