Lethe

Written by akta_kairon

Lethe Dubharadh (a.k.a. Shadowpaw, Dubhan)

Lethe was born, to the best of her knowledge, in the desert to the north of the Kraken's Tentacle mountain range. She was left at the door of an orphanage as a newborn. She was raised by the kind caretakers of the orphanage until the age of five, where she and all the other children of that age were put through the Placing, an event held every year that decides the job and fate of the children of the clan. Lethe’s testing placed her in the assassin’s guild, and she was assigned to Niall Ciogach, an angry, hateful man who was duty-bound to take her in. The first three years of her training could barely be called as such. She fought nearly constantly with her master and did nothing but cause trouble for him and her fellow trainees. At the age of eight, two major decisions were made by Lethe, triggered by the actions of another trainee, and she started to change her ways.
Lethe started taking her training seriously, following her master’s orders to the letter. She also began dressing and acting as a boy, a change her master insisted on if he was going to train her. She was still a girl, but to all who looked upon her and watched her, she was a boy. She slowly began to turn the views others had for her around, but the Elders and her master never forgot how she was in the beginning, and that kept her from climbing the ranks quickly. At the age of 22, a tragedy in Lethe’s life changed her again. For almost two full years, she was despondent. She continued her work, and made no major errors, but she had become a shell of who she was. It wasn’t until late in her 23rd year that she started to become herself again, and it was during this adjustment and self-reflection that she took the mission that lead to her exile. When she couldn’t bring herself to kill the child that had seen her, she started to doubt her choice in career and training. She left the clan to avoid punishment, but it was also to take the time for herself to think about whether she truly wanted to continue as an assassin.
Now 24 and living apart from the guild (she had been caught and formally exiled until such a time that the guild decided she was worthy of coming back), she has decided that she doesn’t want to be a part of a group that condones, even encourages, the killing of children. She doesn’t want to belong to a guild that warped the minds of its members so much that they felt they could not live without their rank or title. She left and made no attempts to get back in the guild. She is now searching for a new way of life, and a way to use her abilities that will allow her happiness.

Physical Description

General Physical Condition

Highly active and fit/very muscular, in a lean way

Body Features

• Multitude of scars all over the body
• Right ear is torn and ragged from an injury in her childhood

Facial Features

• Two-colored eyes
• Scar on the tip/top of her nose
• Facial coloring is unique – the right half is pitch black, the left half is ginger

Identifying Characteristics

The facial and eye coloration, as well as the torn ear and nose scar

Physical quirks

• Her ears are telling of her emotions
• She tends to tap at things when deep in thought; her leg, a table, a cup

Special abilities

A vessel for Geelsird the Wild, a goddess of the hunt, Lethe can transform enemies she has brought close to death into vines. After some training during her travels, she can now read lips. Her knowledge of humanoid anatomy from her training allows her to knock targets out with a pinch to the right spot on the neck.

Geelsird's Touch

Form a spiritual connection with Geelsird the Wild

You have taken on some of Geelsird's will. As a result she has granted you the ability to send bodies to her hunting grounds. When you make an attack roll and reduce an enemy creature to 5 hit points or less, you can use your bonus action to render them into vines, killing them immediately. This sends them to Geelsird's plane where they are hunted for eternity.

Apparel & Accessories

Usually wearing a simple shirt and breeches, dark boots, and leather armor. She wears a dark green scarf to cover the only white patch on her fur at her throat. A leather necklace is always around her neck, a fang from her first kill hanging from it (not her first assassination – there’s a story behind it)

Specialized Equipment

She is versed in swordplay, archery, hand-to- hand combat, and the use of daggers. A sword (scimitar), bow and arrows, claws, knuckle blades (specialized daggers, basically).

Mental characteristics

Personal history

Orphaned as a newborn, Lethe was raised first by an orphanage then by the assassin’s guild after her Placing. She was a troublemaker at first, acting out and never taking her lessons seriously. After an encounter with a well-known prodigy, she began to change, becoming more serious about training. Her master disliked her strongly, and only trained her because of his sense of duty to the guild.

Sexuality

Lethe is gay, preferring the company of women over men. Lethe also goes around dressed as and acting as a man. She isn’t really trying to hide her true gender, so much as it’s simply how she feels comfortable. When her master took her in, he told her outright that he would not train a girl. He made her dress and act like a boy if she was to get any training. Part of her acting out as a child was due to this, and it took three years for her to break down and comply. Once she did, however, she found that she much preferred life as a boy and fell into it easily. Her clan was old-fashioned, and so relationships between the same gender, while not banned outright, were heavily frowned upon. Lethe was taunted and teased, even bullied to the point of physical altercations, because of both her gender identity and her sexuality. Now out in the world, Lethe is coming to see that not everywhere is as old-fashioned as her clan, and that there are some who accept her as she is with no issues. She’s still trying to get used to this.

Education

Lethe was taught her numbers and reading in general educational courses in her youth. Lethe was given personalized training with an assassin master from the age of 5 on. Her training was never truly completed, as the guild believes there is always something to learn, but she earned her assassin title at the age of fifteen.

Failures & Embarrassments

Lethe is embarrassed by her early childhood actions, and doesn’t like to admit to being so poorly behaved as a cub. In the guild’s eyes, Lethe is a failure; She refused to kill a child that saw her after she completed an assassination contract, thus leaving an “open end” to the contract and opening the guild to potential danger. Lethe disagreed that the child, who was barely of speaking age, needed to die, and ultimately it was this that lead to her leaving the guild permanently.

Mental Trauma

In the guild, Lethe developed a romantic relationship with another assassin. She was obsessed with her and would do anything for her. That assassin went on a mission and failed it, to a degree that most others would have been executed by the guild for their failure. This assassin was of a long line of what almost equated to royalty among the guild, so instead she was stripped of rank and title. The assassin was so distraught and broken by this that she ended up killing herself, despite all of Lethe’s efforts to help her. Lethe is emotionally scarred, and it took nearly two years for her to recover herself. Her master was the one to tear her ear; in fact, a few of her scars were from him, as he believed that wounds should heal without the aid of magic, to truly ingrain the lesson they carried. He was terrible to her, and often ordered her to go days without food as punishment, both deserved and undeserved. She has an unhealthy obsession with making figures of authority like her, now that she’s older.

Intellectual Characteristics

Lethe can be quick-witted in some situations, but almost never in social ones. She’s not had much real contact with people outside of the guild and her clan, so her social skills are a bit stunted. When it comes to finding new solutions to problems, Lethe tries to find the least obvious route, first.

Morality & Philosophy

Despite her career path, Lethe is a fairly empathetic person, and likes to try helping people if she can do so. If a street urchin picks her pocket, she’s more likely to let them keep some coin and offer them a free meal than a swat on the head. She doesn’t mind wanton killing, but she has limits, as seen with the girl-child that got her exiled from the clan. She has a soft spot for young ones of any species. In the past 2 years, Lethe has relaxed into a more “live and let live” approach to life. She just wants to be left to her own devices as she can, and leaves others to the same. She knows that each race and people have their own customs, and she only holds curiosity for them.

Personality Characteristics

Motivation

Her original motivation in leaving the guild was to flee her punishment for leaving a contract open. Now that she has decided to leave the guild, Lethe just wants to find a new calling, and a place to belong.

Savvies & Ineptitudes

Lethe is a near master of stealth and can almost always rely on her ability to get by unseen. She is inclined toward nature and can recognize many plants on sight, especially those used for creating poisons. Lethe knows little to nothing about magic, but that doesn’t stop her from trying to learn about it when she can. She is, however, a bit leery of it, and will avoid it if she can manage to. Lethe’s perceptive abilities are… minimal, at best. She’s been working on it, but still has a tendency to miss the big picture for the details she can see. People skills are something she simply doesn’t have. She’s nearly useless in social situations, which makes her attempts to garner favor with those of authority a bit awkward.

Likes & Dislikes

Lethe loves milk and will drink it every chance she gets. She was teased for it back in the clan as a youth, though, and so she hides her preference and only drinks it if she can get away with it in the current situation. While she does enjoy the quiet of nature, she prefers the hubbub of a busy city. It a more natural environment to her, offering plenty of ways to sneak and lots of new places to discover and explore. She dislikes magic being used on her; she tends to get angry if she’s fooled by illusions, or if magic is used on her in any capacity, not just as a weapon. A part of this is healing magics, and the reason she has so many scars. Lethe avoids high places. She’s not afraid of them and is fine when she moves among roof tops and towers, but they bring about bad memories and she avoids them if she is alone. Lethe also avoids public bathing houses if she can. Both because she has issues every time she tries because of her going as a man, but because she had some bad experiences at the communal bath in her desert home that made her wary of being undressed around others.

Virtues & Personality perks

Lethe is willing to try anything almost once. It goes along with her curious nature. She is willing to get her hands dirty to learn new things and explore new places. Once a person is marked as a friend in Lethe’s mind, she is loyal to the bone. She has few true friends, but those that she does call such can have her at their back no matter the trouble. Lethe likes to help people any way she can. She’s likely to offer coin or food to a beggar, especially a child, if she can spare it.

Vices & Personality flaws

Lethe is curious to a fault. She doesn’t like leaving mysteries be and will always stick her nose where it doesn’t belong if there’s a chance at finding answers. She has paid for this curiosity many times. Lethe is too loose with coin. She tends to latch on to something and, instead of taking the time to make sure there isn’t something better out there, she grabs it up and often regrets it later. Lethe simply cannot haggle well. Her lack of social skills usually means she ends up paying full price for everything she buys.
DM's Note: Actually, it's usually more than full price.

Personality Quirks

When something takes Lethe out of her controlled state of mind, like alcohol, she loses her usual control over her accent. Normally she speaks a bit slowly and ensures her accent is minimal. If she’d impaired somehow, though, she gets nearly unintelligible in her speech. Lethe is a fan of self-deprecating humor, and actually has little self-confidence, which she makes evident by poking fun at herself frequently.

Hygiene

Lethe keeps herself well-groomed and clean, but she doesn’t take much time at all to keep up appearances.

Social

Contacts & Relations

Previously a member of the Duneclaw clan of the Assassin’s Guild. Lethe doesn’t know anything about her birth family. Her master’s name is Niall Ciogach. She has some loose connections to the Rag-Gheille panther clan. Her travelling companion is a Goliath named Och, a monk of the Wagamamana Ken (The Wayward Fist). Lethe has a very close companion living in Teontia. Bolet is a companion that she can rely on and go to if she needs a place to stay.

Religious Views

None; Lethe finds most religions to be a waste of time, but holds no grudge against those that believe in a higher power.

Hobbies & Pets

Lethe enjoys exploring small places and looking for new things to learn and see. She likes Teontia a lot because it’s so vast she feels like she could be there for years and not run out of things to discover. Lethe enjoys playing cards. She enjoys singing and music but avoids singing around people because she was once told with that she was the worst singer to ever open her mouth.

Speech

Lethe has a Scottish accent, picked up from her years in the orphanage and with her master in the desert. It’s normally not too bad, but if she gets inebriated she falls into using slang and gets almost unintelligible. Lethe has a habit of making up small sayings to make comparisons or prove a point. Things such as “She’s as likely to jump at the sight of a spider as a blacksmith is to the fall of their own hammer.” Or “If I ate that much, you’d find me napping in a patch of sunlight like a kit on holiday.”

Relationships

Adhi the Shadow

Employer (Trivial)

Towards Lethe

1

Dishonest

---

Lethe

Employee, Mentee (Important)

Towards Adhi the Shadow

3

Honest

---

Wealth & Financial state

Lethe doesn’t hold too much stock in having coin. She doesn’t seek it out any more than she has to. Unfortunately, she is bad with money, so she ends up having to find it more often than some others may. She has no keepsakes or heirlooms, nothing of value is tied to her name.

View Character Profile

Species

Caiten

Year of Birth

103434 24 Years old

Birthplace

Lethe doesn’t know where she was born, but she guesses it was somewhere in the desert or surrounding mountains where her clan hall was hidden. She was raised entirely in the desert.

Spouses

Siblings

Current Residence

Teontia (via an open invitation from Bolet)

Gender

Female

Eyes

Right side blue, left side green

Hair

Fur; Mottled Orange and Black

Height

5’7”

Weight

145 lbs

Known Languages

Common, Ta'agra, Thieves' Cant

Lethe Portrait by Kierstyn Steward