Pale Claera

Pale Claera

Description: A tall lanky young woman, her pale rose color eyes make most people uncomfortable. Coupled with her chalk white skin and pale almost translucent white blond hair makes her a very unnerving presence. She wears her hair in tightly braided cornrows, secured at the ends with leather ties. Her slender form is clothed in dark grey form fitting leather, with a dappled grey hooded cloak. A pair of blackened bolos hang from her belt on her left hip, a coil of oiled and blacked rope from yet another loop beside a light crossbow. A wicked looking kukri and short sword hang from loops on the other side of her hip, a leather covered sap between the two. Tossed over one should is a pack, hanging from a pocket crafted into its side is a carefully folded net. The hilts of well-worn daggers peak out from the tops of her mid-calf height boots.

::History::

Despite the many physical and alchemical attempts to abort her as a child, Claera was born to a Skullport tavern scullery. She was the product of a gang rape that the human woman had suffered by a group of drow toughs who followed Vhaeraun. They had bet each other surface magic items that they could not perform with a low human female and she had been the target of said bet. None of the drow realized that the young woman had not only survived the assault, but had become pregnant by one of them. Born oddly silent to the world, the traumatized young mother recoiled from her child’s bizarre red eyes and pale elven features. Despite being hurt internally from the hard birth (thanks to the damage she had done by her numerous abortion attempts) she stumbled to the outer reaches of Skullport and left her child on the cold stone of an untraveled tunnel. Weakened by internal bleeding, the young woman never made it back to the “safety” of Skullport, dying not 100 yards from where she had left the child.

Despite the uncomfortable cold of the stone, the infant had not uttered a single sound, though it did wiggle and squirm as the cold penetrated the piece of rough sacking she had been wrapped in. Though unable to focus, her eyes held a faint glow as she blinked and squirmed. As fate would have it, that untraveled corridor would draw the presence of a rough and worn trader named Arkes Footworn, who had ducked down its length to avoid a Skullport “patrol”. He almost stumbled over the infant as he made his way further back down the passage. Snorting, he gathered the child up and with his shielded light examined her as he listened for the passage of the group he was avoiding. Arkes examined the child’s pinched features, starting a bit as he took in her pale pink eyes and delicately pointed ears. A buried empathy pushed aside his pragmatism and instead of leaving the child to its fate he took the child with him on his travels, adopting the infant as his own.

At the age of 13, Claera had returned to her father’s rooms at an boarding house in the Dockward after running an errand, only to find that the rooms had been ransacked and the trader lay beaten and barely alive in the bedroom. He was coughing and struggled to sit up as she rushed to his aid. She asked him to lay still, but he just shook his head and motioned for her to come closer. He told her of a hiding place beneath a board where his bed had been, telling her to take what was hidden there and leave. She shook her head, pleading with him to let her get the watch.

He only chuckled.. “The watch won’t do anything. These men have high protection, and they can’t spare the man power to deal with the assault of a simple trader. You avoid The Serpent’s men, you hear. If you see a human man with dark hair and pale grey eyes, with four ebony black inked tears tattooed under his left eye. You run, and don’t look back.” A fit of coughing shook Arkes, followed by a thin trickle of blood from his mouth and he passed on. Claera held his body to her for a long time, her face torn but not a single tear was shed. When she had shook herself free of her misery, she followed Arkes’ orders. She packed up what belongings she could salvage and then pried up that board.

Inside the small alcove beneath was a silk pouch. As she lifted it she felt something round within. She opened the pouch and found within a golden locket and a ring. The locket held a picture of a couple, a handsome young man dressed in robes and a beautiful elven woman. She recognized the man as a younger, carefree looking Arkes, but did not recognize the elegant golden haired elven woman. The ring was simple gold, but had a receded crest upon it of a blazing sword bisecting a wreath of laurel leaves. She frowned, wondering why Arkes was so adamant about protecting the jewelry, but she placed the small silken pouch into an inner pocket of her tunic and went to go get the watch.

True to Arkes’ words, the watch did little to investigate the death of the trader. A token effort was made, but the lack of eye witnesses or any sort of witness stalled the investigation. His remaining assets were sold, half was given to Claera, the rest was used to dispose of his body. And Claera vanished into the city, vowing to succeed in hunting down the men responsible for her father’s death.

She learned the back streets and underground tunnels and sewers as well as the back of her hand and slowly but surely developed the skills that would eventually allow her to avenge her father’s death, all the while that simple little black silk pouch remained almost forgotten with the rest of her belongings. During her dealings of the city, she stumbled upon a group of children in the sewers and joined them, biding her time.