Dolora Abraxas
Acting Lady Dolora Abraxas (a.k.a. Dolly)
Dolora Abraxas was once without a second name, a mere unacknowledged bastard of the ever-hedonistic mage and apostle, Petyr Godswater. While her biological father's magic was linked to mental manipulation through his words, Dolora was gifted with with this magic's cousin; necromancy, the direct puppetry of subjects too mentally incapable to fight back (generally corpses). She would first demonstrate her abilities at her supposed father's funeral, Leonard of Godswater, her mother's husband.
Moments before Leonard's casket was moved into a pyre (as is Arkheran tradition), Dolora, a girl of eight, reached out to the man she thought was her father and to the present Harvester ascetics' horror, the casket began to to move. After they reopened the casket to check the body for signs of life, they reconfirmed its death and completed the burning, but Dolora knew she was responsible for the strange incident. Despite this, she wouldn't tell anyone, even her mother, as magic unrelated to the Gods, and in this case, antithetical to the Harvester specifically, were considered abominable under the rule of Petyr Godswater.
Life would continue, with Dolora feeling a persistent self-doubt regarding her abominable nature, internalising the masochistic, self-loathing message Petyr Godswater's interpretation of the Holy Hexacron advocated. As she grew, Dolora would realise her mother, Maria, was similarly self-loathing, reacting not to the passages about fell magic, but instead passages regarding pretty women being the mothers of all temptation. Whenever this passage was cited in Apostle Petyr's sermons, the woman would stare directly at the apostle, as though something was wrong.
Maria was an Elarondian human with olive skin and dusky eyes, while Leonard was brown-skinned with wide almond-shaped eyes, almost as though he had Malassaian heritage. Dolora, however, had the tell-tale folded eyes of someone with Jaranese heritage, something neither her mother or supposed father had. That's when, at the tender age of twelve, she realised that Leonard couldn't have been her father, and given the constant fearful glances at Petyr Godswater her mother gave, Dolora suspected Petyr Godswater himself was the culprit.
Dolora confronted her mother about it, only to be fiercely reprimanded and denied, accusing her of sinful slander and a perverse imagination. Realising she wouldn't get any answers from her mother, she instead decided to seek answers from the Moon Men, ascetics to the God of Secrets and the Cosmos. If anyone knew her secrets, it would be them, she thought. The priests instead offered vague nothings while asking her an abundance of questions; who her mother was, why she thought the things she thought, how pretty her mother was.
The following months were suspiciously quiet, but not long after she turned thirteen, Moon Men would burst into her home and kill Maria for her misguided loyalty to her rapist, and would have killed Dolora too, if not for the apparently nonsensical presence of Quira Abraxas, the young lady of the Shrine of the Dead, who claimed to be independently investigating Apostle Petyr Godswater, given King Silas Godspeak's apparent impotence in investigating him over the deaths of Lord Gill Gatley and Lady Mira Gatley.
With her were three bards who initially appeared to be lovely, before revealing monstrous tendrils that were used to slaughter every Moon Man that attempted to kill young Dolora. Quira was thankful for her fortunate timing, and took this assassination attempt as confirmation of Petyr Godswater's evil intent and apparent omnipotence within the city of Godswater. She took Dolora in as an adoptive sibling, partially out of sympathy, and partially, as she admitted, as a means of protecting the Shrine of the Dead should Petyr Godswater grow warlike; Dolora was living blackmail, after all.
The Lady of the Shrine would admit to Dolora that she was a necromancer too, by race and by magic, and while her powers were apparently laughably weak compared to Dolora's, she still offered her tutelage and a space to practice her abilities without fear of reprisal. Though grief-stricken and disillusioned with the trust she showed to the Pantheistic authorities, Dolora would come to love and trust Quira, treating her as indistinguishable from a blood sibling.
When King Landon Shearwater ascended to kingship, he would, in a historical move, appoint Quira Abraxas, granddaughter of a rebel, as royal advisor. Quira accepted this offer, and left the Shrine in the hands of a seventeen-year-old Dolora, along with her stalwart knight, Sir Yal'dan Boathis. Dolora was never particularly fond of Boathis, due to his stuffy, honour-obsessed nature and inability to take the hint that Quira no longer loved him, and not just because of his partial undeath. Despite this, she agreed to work with him to run the Shrine as best as she could while Quira served the King.
In the years since becoming Acting Lady of the Shrine, she would fall in love with one of the few humans in the Shrine of the Dead, a green-eyed, soft faced fellow named Waldon. His gentleness and patience with her understandable trust issues allowed her to, in her nineteenth year, accept his marriage proposal. Currently, she is pregnant with their first child and, as Quira has already decreed in writing, the heir to the Shrine of the Dead, officially ending the true, biological Abraxas line and starting it anew through an adoptive human line.
Physical Description
General Physical Condition
Dolora Abraxas is short, with light brown skin, folded brown eyes, and long, black hair. She's normally rather thin, however owing to her pregnancy she's naturally starting to grow outwards. She prefers to wear the blues and browns of the Abraxases despite not being remotely related by blood, preferring Galdusian-style kimonos, and wears a marriage pendant made of wood from the Abraxas Tree.
Social
Contacts & Relations
Royal Advisor Quira Abraxas (adoptive sister)
Sir Yal'dan Boathis (fellow caretaker of the Shrine of the Dead)
King Landon Shearwater (king and overlord)
Sir Yal'dan Boathis (fellow caretaker of the Shrine of the Dead)
King Landon Shearwater (king and overlord)
Family Ties
Religious Views
Dolora grew up believing in the six gods of the Hexacron, but after the ascetics she trusted attempted to kill her (and successfully killed her mother) she came to see the faith of the Hexacron as a shield for the truly evil of the world. She hasn't given any other faiths a chance, though she acknowledges her sister's bards, the Riversongs, as originating from a morally irrelevant god.
Relationships
Alignment
Neutral Good
Current Location
Species
Ethnicity
Honorary & Occupational Titles
Acting Lady of the Shrine of the Dead
Year of Birth
531 AGA
20 Years old
Circumstances of Birth
Illegitimate
Birthplace
Godswater
Spouses
Siblings
Children
Current Residence
Shrine of the Dead
Gender
Female
Eyes
Brown
Hair
Black
Skin Tone/Pigmentation
Dark Olive
Height
5'7''
Aligned Organization
Other Affiliations
Jaranese
Old Galdusian
Comments