Mercy

Information

• Player: Sol

• Character Name: Merciara de la Varre

• Character In-Game Name: Mercy

• Nicknames: Goes by the name of Mercy Dellavere in polite society

• Associations: Herself

• Race: Human

• Class: Warlock

• Age: Thirty

• Sex: Female

• Hair: A dark shade of reddish-brown, falling just past her shoulders. It's usually brushed to one side of her head

• Eyes: Bright, pale hazel, almost yellow, framed with smudged lines of kohl.

• Weight: A hundred and sixty pounds or so, just on the well-fed side of average.

• Height: About 5'7”, often made a little taller by her choice of footwear.

Appearance

Usual garments/armour: Mercy typically dresses herself in a fairly expensive dress or gown, invariably in a summery cut without regard to the weather, in bright, extravagant colours. When travellng, she strives to be similarly well-dressed, albeit in more practical trousers, shirts and boots. She often has a broad-brimmed hat inclined to cast her face in shadow.

Other: Mercy has a stud in her nostril, a stud in her eyebrow and a pair of earrings. She's often seen wearing a changing variety of rings, bracelets and necklaces in social situations. She speaks with a refined, subtle Kul Tiras accent and typically carries a scent of fiery spice and sweet perfume, which is a tickling whiff at five paces and a heady aroma at one.

Personality

Mercy is a contradictory figure of smirking cynicism, grinning good humour and beaming cheer. She drifts around languidly, dripping easy confidence, and carrying herself with a flair of the theatrical in everything she does. She's quick to crack a joke and quicker to carry one on, yet engages in complex discussions of almost any sort just as readily, often preferring to combine the two. Her ideal conversation is a potent cocktail of equal parts moral debate, cultural discourse and lewd banter. Mercy's a real bon vivant, a woman about town, always eager for good food, good drink and good company, but at the same time, she comes across as an intellectual.

Mercy is made of lies. She's a carefully constructed ruse created to stand in the place of someone just as intelligent, as impulsive, as hedonistic, yet altogether more unpleasant. While expressing fragments of her true personality, this persona is designed to ingratiate herself with potential allies, intimidate or mislead potential enemies and earn the trust and loyalty of potential tools. She dreams of power and adoration, and obtaining these are what motivates her, yet shies from most responsibilities and meaningful connections. This desire to take everything and give nothing in return traces back to a simple sense of overwhelming entitlement, and this is precisely what makes her dangerous.

History

The backwater isle of Crestfall is one of the more boring places a young lady of means could grow up in. She was an unassuming child to most of those who knew her, but to her attendants, Ciara was a little tearaway who kicked up a mighty fuss when she didn't get her own way. She was kept barely at bay by a steady supply of books and tutors to captivate her budding mind.

At the age where most children grow wilder and more reckless, Ciara grew internalised her anger. At thirteen, as was the Tirasian custom, a Dalarani tutor was brought in to give her a few basic lessons to gauge for any arcane talent. Merciara could not be happier. Soon, further lessons were booked, and Merciara began to develop her magical arsenal piece by piece. She saw magic as rare meritotcracy in a stiffly hierarchical world. Her deceased paternal grandmother, Angelice de la Varre, thought the same. Her mastery of illusions, notorious manipulation of a court with it and her according lasting legacy in Tirasian politics made her a posthumous idol for young Merciara.

Her magical talents grew as her body and mind did, and her areas of expertise were her grandmother's. The child who'd been such a trouble for the servants became a young woman who barely made a peep but for the creaking of her study's floorboards late into the night. Over the years, and through their lessons and their letters, she developed a particularly close friendship with her tutor. Something which began on her end as a girlish infatuation with the man and a burning desire to prove herself able eventually cooled into a quiet admiration for the magus' capability and commitment. At eighteen, she was sent away from Kul Tiras to continue her studies at Dalaran.

A year into these studies, however, a scandal broke out at home. An enormous power struggle had erupted in her father's generation of the family and documents exposing the Baron de la Vante's supposed infidelity and crooked business dealings came to the surface, leading to him being deposed and his issue - Merciara and her two brothers, who she didn't care much for - being stricken from the line of succession on the allegation of being bastards.

Left feeling listless and betrayed, and moreover without funding to continue studying and living in Dalaran, she left for Southshore and utilised her limited expertise in illusion and divination to become a street magician. The attitude of a haughty young noblewoman did her no favours in the streets, and there was no point advertising herself as a noblewoman by name. Thus, Merciara de la Varre became Mercy Dellavere, and in time she consciously strove to become more charming and agreeable. Some might say she even succeeded.

Her being born in the year the Orcs came through the Dark Portal, we need not discuss in great detail what happened in Lordaeron. Suffice it to say, Mercy Dellavere emerged from her year of hardship and poverty, and from the fall of Lordaeron, a changed woman; harder, grimmer, much less responsive to human suffering. Being more knowledgeable in the ways of the world and with a second fresh start in her grasp, the young Mercy traveled to Stormwind and introduced herself to an informal circle of budding magi, casting herself as a reclusive merchant's daughter whose studies at Dalaran had been rudely interrupted.

Over the next few years, her standing in this group would change fluidly. One week, someone'd be her teacher – the next, he'd be her student. One month they'd be lovers and next year they'd be fierce rivals. While she was figuring out how magic works, she was also figuring out what made people tick. What she'd learnt from living rough in Lordaeron came in just as handy living as a prospective young magus in Stormwind. But this posse of aspiring wizards couldn't capture her appetite for power and entertainment. She became secretly involved in Stormwind's criminal underworld and was considering taking flight to Booty Bay, solely to introduce a little variation to her routine, when an unsigned note arrived through her door asking her to meet at a certain time and a certain place.

It was her old tutor from Crestfall, who she'd fallen out of contact with when moving to Dalaran, who she'd once been attracted to, the man who she'd come to idolise in her teenage years. Here she was, a young woman, and there he was, an old man – far older than she remembered him, perhaps unnaturally so. The years and the stresses they brought had not been kind to him, it seemed, but when she began to ask about his health, he began to speak to her in a hushed, urgent tone about a sort of business proposition. She would become his student again, he said. Not only a student, but an apprentice. But an apprentice, she asked, in what? She'd been further mastering her magic under a group of peers, what use would she have for a master at this point?

He told her, of course. Mercy was intrigued. More than intrigued – she was enthralled, spellbound by the knowledge he shared with her. She'd been educated to be wary of the fel, as everyone had, but her early disassociation with society had led her to be just as wary of the values it preached. The faith of the Holy Light found little purchase in her soul, and its doctrines even less purchase in her mind. Where a priest would preach obedience, her master preached power, but also the self-temperance and control required to obtain it. Suddenly, with the occasional lesson or discussion in a dimly lit room punctuating her routine, working with and speaking to the same old boring circle became much more tolerable.

Her master forbade her to commune with demons, but went ahead and did it himself in secret. This would eventually be his downfall, three years into Mercy's secret apprenticeship - tricked into an imbalanced pact by a wily succubus, her master was simply consumed by the Nether one day. Mercy was left drift once more, clueless how to further pursue warlockry but not particularly wanting to just let its promised power slip from her grasp. Meanwhile, she'd allowed herself to drift from the company of her circle as her focus on the ways of a mere arcanist dwindled, and so could not fall back on them for support or guidance.

And so for the past few years she's been working as something of a businesswoman, moving from place to place, developing many friends and many more contacts, moving from deal to deal. She's started with low qualities and small quantities of a wide variety of goods and is gradually working her way up, buying and selling whatever she can to make a profit and engaging in other work on the side. Her goals in this are both to upgrade her quality of living to the standard she was used to growing up and to further subsidise her path down the dark road she's walking, buying tomes, reagents and whatever she requires. Stripped of her title, stripped of her empathy and stripped of her reservations, Mercy Dellavere is determined to regain the wealth and power she sees as her birthright by whatever means necessary.