Ilyana

Information

Player: Yunnemaria

Character Full Name: Ilyana Nightdream

Character In-Game Name: Ilyana

Nickname(s): Ilya, “That Kal'dorei Witch”

Association(s): The Light of Nova, Knights of the Ebon Blade

Race: Night Elf

Class: Death Knight

Age: 1650 (She stopped aging long ago – back then when kal'dorei were immortal, she's stuck in a ‘young woman' stage.)

Sex: Female

Hair: Long, straight and dark blue until her bottom.

Eyes: Eerily cold, deep blue

Weight: 165 lbs.

Height: 6'0”

Alignment: Neutral Evil

Appearance

Ilyana usually wears very tight clothing that sticks to her body – but they are lax and usually made of cloths and leathers. Unlike many of her Death Knight compatriots, Ilyana is very laxly guarded because her role in battle is significantly different than the others. Her clothes usually consist of a tight leather top that covers the bare essentials, along with an extra sheet of chain underneath that and some cloth to make it look decent. She also wears a pair of chaps and a pair of black, high-heeled boots. Also, she usually wears a pair of goggles to keep from letting others see her eyes.

Ilyana's runeblade is, in fact, not a runeblade, but a staff named Gaithena. It is nicknamed Swallow, not only because she values the gracefulness of a bird, but also because even though it has been sated for a long time, Swallow just keeps taking and taking whenever Ilyana is available to strike at something.

Other: Ilyana is rather small for a kal'dorei. Not necessarily a midget in their standards, but generally rather petite for their kin. She is always very neat and tidy – an obsessive compulsion, if there ever was one. She also always smiles, and whenever she walks, her very long hair bounces with each springy step.

Personality:

Ilyana is a very strange and selfish person. First and foremost always looking out for herself, Ilyana never even looks at other people if they do not benefit her. Ilyana is cold, ruthless and efficient, with no love for nature like most of her kal'dorei brothers and sisters. The tinge of becoming a death knight has changed her psyche – rendering her cold and heartless to all except those who share in her goals. She is not disdainful of the fact that she was raised as a servant of the Lich King – but rather, she takes pride in the way he has honed her. Many often disdain her for her thoughts on this, but it is as plain as day to her that she is the way she is because her potential was tapped, and even though she was used for a singular purpose, at least she found her ‘calling.'

Even then, her primary objectives are to satisfy herself and only herself. If in that time someone else's objectives coincide with hers, then that is when Ilyana will perhaps be able to work with them. She dislikes authority of all kinds and would rather shrivel up under the heat of the Barrens than willingly follow anyone who commands her. Phrasing commands in sweet requests will often work, however, as Ilyana likes to feel ‘special.'

Aside from these things, Ilyana speaks very cryptically. Even though most of her knowledge is clearly based off observations, she has the habit of speaking as if she knows what it is one is talking about. Nevermind the fact that Ilyana may sometimes be wrong and may sometimes be presumptuous, she often tries to find a way to make someone's head reel from the strange things she says. All these held constant, she still likes meeting other people, if only to further her goals. Mainly she looks for ways to strengthen herself now that she has freed from the Lich King's grasp, so that if ever she would be taken again without her will, she had a fighting chance.

Not caring for society's conventions, Ilyana can be labeled by most society as treasonous because of how she can simply communicate with anyone. Working more in the underworld however, she does not simply walk around and start talking to random members of the Horde as if it were a common occurrence. She still understands the world for what it is – just that she believes she has transcended it, being an “intermediary between life and death,” as she puts it. However, in truth, she hates all conventions of society and would rather act on her own whims and means.

History:

Before her rebirth as a Death Knight, Ilyana was born in the Temple of Elune. Her mother was a priestess and her father was a Druid. At a tender, young age Ilyana and her parents relocated to the Winterspring. She grew up with the same latency of power as her Elune-worshipping mother and her nature-worshipping father. She used to call herself a ‘mage child' as a kid, because of the way her parents did not fight with mere strength, but with prowess borrowed from higher elements. She was trained, at a very young age, to channel these powers – heal those who were sick, give relief to the weary, and other things that a priestess would know, while her father tended to the Emerald Dream everyday.

Ilyana was a priestess for quite some time, being sent on missions with the sentinels into Ashenvale, and sometimes, into the Plaguelands. It was on one particular mission, back then, when Ilyana found herself at odds with some of the Scourge. The whole platoon had been decimated. They thought she had died when they struck her down and carried her off to perform the ritual to become a Death Knight. They needed her as a member of their ranks – someone with enough latent power within themselves to support them from the back, instead of attack with them. As the ritual process began, Ilyana began howling in pain and agony – it was a horrible process that took many hours. Her mind, like her father's and mother's, were very analytical, very in tune with the higher powers as they were in their professions.

It made it that much harder when the ritual was happening. It was a ritual for the dead, after all – and she was alive. The pain she felt was excruciating, before there was only nothingness. It was here, while her heart beat and they patched up her wounds, where she found herself among the members of the 'living' Scourge.

She was handed not a runeblade, but a staff, as she was familiar with. From the backlines, there was the ex-Priest – casting plague and undeath over fields of men as she went with the Scourge. The sheer massive number of people she killed without remorse under this state left an impression to most of the people she came into contact with as a Death Knight. When they (and she) finally awoke, they would remember bits and pieces of how she fought.

She awoke suddenly after the defeat of the Lich King at Light's Hope. There, she found herself conscious once more, a man laid dying in front of her. Her eyes had widened when she attempted to heal him – there, suddenly, from her hands the power of the plague overcame him. From her good intentions, she had actually murdered an innocent person. She was a priestess too, and suddenly from her very hands were corruption and undeath.

Something snapped inside her. Suddenly, her views on life began to shift drastically – she became a member of the group she had despised. Her whole psyche began to snap – it took her awhile to recover. And when she did, she was never the same kal'dorei ever again.

Now she acts of her own impulse. Apathy overcame her. Unlike most of the death knights who wanted their lives back, now she only wanted to make full use of what was given to her. So drastic was the change after she had snapped that anyone who would have met her would never know she was the same Ilyana they had met before.

It was a new Ilyana. Not necessarily better – but darker, less naïve, and somewhat, less kal'dorei.