Shadiyah

Information

Character Full Name: Sister Shadiyah Ansari al'Rashid

Character In-Game Name: Shadiyah

Nickname(s): Sari, Sister.

Association(s): Wastelanders, Formerly of the Church of the Holy Light and Abbey of the Pious Sacrifice.

Race: Human

Class: Warrior

Age: 37

Sex: Female

Hair: Black

Eyes: Dark Brown

Weight: Shadiyah is muscular in a wiry way, and almost gaunt from a life of asceticism.

Height: Taller than average, about 5' 9"

Appearance

Usual Garments/Armor: Shadiyah rarely wears more than dull brown clothing and a face-covering to protect from sand and the harsh desert sun. Her outfits are heavily worn but of strong, cheap material. They often are hand-made or at least patched on the go. She owns one pair of unusually intricate decorative robes, a small memento of what she chose not to be.

Other: Shadiyah has a thin golden chain that hangs between a piercing on her nose and one in her eyebrow.

Personality

Shadiyah is a driven woman, through and through. She has a deep-seated need to be perfect, and a hatred for imperfections in herself. Having found faith as a means of fulfillment, Shadiyah chose to forgo worldly pleasures and has been devoted to her ascetic lifestyle for a number of years. Though her faith inspires some good deeds, it also gives her (By her reckoning) license to do any number of unspeakable things in pursuit of what she believes is justice. Her morals are somewhat perverse, and generally evolve to suit her situation, even if she believes that she's done the Light's justice all along.

As a wandered, Shadiyah has come to be a teller of stories. She enjoys spinning a history or recounting a poem or song over a fire in the cold desert wind. She also uses her talents to persuade others into trusting her with gossip and new tales, or to get alms should she ever be lacking a day's meal.

Alignment: Lawful Evil

History

Shadiyah's father was a wealthy merchant, eager to have an heir to the family's trade. When Shadiyah was born, a girl, she became an object of her father's hate. Shadiyah's father got his son with a second wife, but that early denial of an heir forever rested on the shoulders of a tan-skinned little girl. It was a debt she could never repay, no matter how much its punishments were forced upon her.

In her father's anger over her supposed uselessness, he neglected her at times, and when he didn't neglect her it was to discipline her. She would have broken before she came of age had it not been for the intervention of an unnamed monk. She stumbled upon the man kneeling in prayer on the roadside one day, and was entranced by the perfection she saw in him. He was the opposite to what her father had drilled into her that she was, he was an extension of the Light where she was a failure, and she craved the bliss in his eyes. Days later, a young Shadiyah stole away from her father's house, taking only a set of clothes and what food she could gather.

The monastery was unassuming, but built by her imagination it became a haven for her. She reveled in the teachings of the Light, and took an even greater joy in the martial styles the monks and nuns used to attain spiritual oneness. She excelled in unarmed and armed arts to a degree at which she could work the forms by rote, balanced and meditative in her movements. When a group of bandits threatened the monastery, Shadiyah was the first to volunteer in its defense.

The bandits were neither trained nor particularly threatening, being more bluster than force in the end. They surrendered to the monks of the abbey after little fighting, and asked pardon for their crimes, seeing as they had taken nothing. Shadiyah was unrelenting in the slaughter that followed. She killed them to a man in a show of brutality that disgusted her fellows. How could one thought to be so in tune with the Light have done such a deed? Well, they took little prompting in sending her away. She became a renegade, and was labeled a blasphemer of the church. Should she return to a large Light-worshiping city the priests would have her killed.

The wanderer's life proved well suited for Shadiyah's talents. She traveled extensively, picking up the storyteller's pursuits to gather alms in smaller villages. A long period of wandering culminated in the finding of those who would be known as the Wastelanders, a small group of three exiles. She stalked them from afar for days, knowing the back roads and beggar's haunts of the roadways well enough to keep a good sight of their fire. When she approached them in earnest, she provided her aid in the form of a small amount of herbal knowledge, mainly as a simple medic. Her ways of life were odd, no doubt, but no one questions another exile. There are many things no one wants to know or share.