Alethra Iltazyara - Book of Affliction, Miasma and Blight

[Xerah]

Name: Alethra Iltazyara Race: Half-elf Class: Druid Nationality: Chondathan (adopted Rashemi surname) Age: Mid to Late Twenties Alignment: Chaotic Neutral Deity: Talona (and various 'nature spirits') "This is the first I have seen a creature with this kind of affliction. We must get it back to shop to examine it. Don't worry, Skar, I won't be feeding it to you right away." ~Alethra, speaking in Sylvan to her pet rat, Skar~

Summary:
Alethra is from the village of Ghars. The locals know her as an herbalist with what they perceive as a morbid sense of curiosity of "icky things". As is the case with most common perceptions, she actually lays somewhere in the middle. She spends a great deal of time in the moors and swamp collecting herbs and samples of various diseases. The reality of the local gossip about her is that on occasion people have seen her feeding diseases to small animals to study its effects. Some have even suggested have seen her test these diseases on herself! (which, is true)

To most people, she would come across as rather eccentric and awkward due to her command of the common tongue, which is very rough and broken. While it is true that she prefers the company of her pet rat, Skar, those that have the patience for her will find that she is loyal, caring and very knowledgeable about topics referencing nature.

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Description:
Alethra has looks as though she spends the majority of her time in the wild. Somewhere under the dirt there could a pretty young woman, but it's hard to tell, as her hair is very long and unkempt with a few braids interwoven with planets. Her clothing is a little more than layered pieces of ragged leather. She is average height, lightly built, with blue eyes and dark brown hair. She speaks a somewhat broken common, with an unplaceable dialect, which makes it difficult to understand her. She often is seen carrying a small book in which she uses to take notes and drawing pictures.

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Background

Alethra was born in the small village of Ghars located near the northern edge of the Vast Swamp. The family was poor and only consisted of her mother. She was always told that her father was taken by the blight of the Vast (a collective term that the villagers give to numerous unexplained happenings), while the truth is that he was just a traveler who arrived one night and was never seen again.

Growing up poor in Ghars was not an easy task for Alethra. Her mother worked during the day as a housemaid for one of the mayor and whoever else would pay. Alethra was taken to the house to help with the chores but it quickly became very clear that she’d rather be playing in the dirt or just had a general disinterest in doing other people work. After a few ‘incidents’, Alethra was sent to the root cellar where she spent the day out of sight. She couldn’t be trusted to do simple tasks around the house nor could she be trusted to stay looking presentable, so her mother thought this the best option.

Spending day after day locked inside a root cellar does not make for an exciting childhood so she had to create her own excitement. The root cellar was a fairly common design; dirt floor, only one window near the ceiling, filled with a variety of vegetables and home to more than a few rats. In fact, the rats and other vermin quickly became Alethra’s only friends.

It was in that dark, damp cellar that Alethra first learned that she was able to communicate in some manner with the vermin. When her mother first saw Alethra playing with rats, she screamed and kicked one away. As punishment, Alethra was forced to sit in the washbasin the entire night. The next morning, she decided that she was going to have to be secretive about it. When she found the rat her mother had kicked, she noticed a cut across its eye. She carefully mended the wound but its eye was too damaged to function again. From that point on, she gave the rat the name of Skar; it was the first of many rats she had with that name.

Of course, not all the rats were friendly. One of them bit her and caused a rather nasty case of filth fever (it would not be the last time she had that disease). She didn’t blame the rat, as it was sick and was unsure what it was doing. The sickness nearly killed her as her mother couldn’t afford Doctor Braum’s treatment. That was when she first met Katrina.

Katrina was known to the locals as a Rashemi woman who was the local herbalist and owned a shop stall in the market. She saw a sick Alethra and her mother passing the stall and tried to sell her a remedy but was rebuked as it was too expensive. Not one to give up on a potentially dying child, Katrina gave Alethra the remedy free of charge. That was the start of a long bond between the two.

As Alethra entered her teens, she began to spend more time with Katrina and the mentor was more than happy to share her knowledge. Alethra did not go to a traditional school, instead Katrina taught her about the local geography, animals, plants and the various nature spirits that Alethra began to revere.

Not too long after Alethra began spending a lot of time with Katrina, her mother took ill of some sort of blight. Katrina was not able to help and within a few days, Alethra lost her mother. After the passing, Alethra became even more involved with Katrina and was unofficially adopted.

Helping Katrina was much more palatable to Alethra than performing other’s chores. The two would often disappear for days on end with trips into moors to gather herbs and sometimes even as far as into the Vast. Many years later, during one such trip, the two had become distracted and ended up further into Vast than they had planned. By the time they had realized, they walked into an otyugh’s den.

The fight between the creature and the two women did not last long. Alethra missed the majority of the fight after she was bit and contacted filth fever yet again. When she came too, the otyugh was dead and found Katrina beside her, barely alive. Alethra tried everything she could but with the wounds and the disease also afflicting Katrina, yet another victim was claimed by the blight.

After Katrina’s passing, Alethra had no choice but to leave her there. The likelihood of a Purple Dragon patrol or anyone else coming across her was very slim and she was unable to carry the body back. She did drag Katrina to the river to leave for the nature spirit Mangemavk in hopes that he would guide her through the void. When she returned to the town, she took over the herbalist stall.

As the years began to pass, Alethra became more enthralled by the blight of Vast as it has taken everyone who was important to her. Despite the risks involved, she continued to venture into the outskits of Vast collecting afflicted samples of flora and fauna.

Throughout the years since Katrina’s passing, Alethra has developed a rather morbid curiosity about all kinds of diseases. She always tests it on Skar first (my, have there been a lot of Skars) until she finds a remedy that will help the rat. From that point, she tends to test it on herself, either through indigestion or an open wound exposure. Unfortunately, not all of the remedies for the rats had the same effect on humans, so there has been more than a few that left a nasty mark. Despite the dangers, she continues her work continues to this day.

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Examples of Nature Spirits:

Mangemavk
Mangemavk is nature spirit who is generally friendly but may sometimes capsize canoes, tear fishing nets, or cause other mischief. He has a narrow face, which some stories describe as being so thin they cannot be seen except in profile. When clay or silt deposits along the riverbank resemble people or animals, they are said to be sculptures made by Mangemavk, and bring good luck to the person who finds them. Rocks by the side of a river with geometric markings on them are considered to mark the home of Mangemavk and are best left undisturbed.

Badokiav
Badokaiv is one of the powerful storm spirits. According to some legends, he is one of seven brothers; according to others, there is an entire tribe of them. He is a fierce warrior and thunder is caused by the sound of his battles, while lightning flashes from his eyes. Like other weather spirits, the Badokaiv is associated with birds, but usually appears in human form (generally a man with bird's wings, sometimes with long golden hair).

Praskoviya
Praskoviya is a flower spirit that attracts bees and is lesser form of dryad. It inhabits groves of flowers as a spirit, then gains control of those who smell their blossoms (akin to a magic jar). She is very fickle, hating those who would kill their blooms in order to please a lover, seeing it as a grave insult. After making love to the picker of the blooms, she inevitably kills them for the offense and come back to the grove to give birth. One can tell a field protected by these spirits by the tiny red and white pedaled wild flowers that grow interspersed there. However, the honey produced from these groves is unusually rich and prized in the making of mead, so many try to succor these spirits.

Podzemni
Podzemni is an Earth Spirit who deals with renewal and reincarnation. Unlike most of the Nature Spirits, Podzemni is a creature of gigantic proportions. When something that was once living dies and is sent to the earth, Podzemni is the one who consumes the dead, empty vessel in order to fuel those that are still living. When the earth begins to shake, it is a message from Podzemni telling us that there has been too much nonliving material given to the earth (i.e. garbage) or not enough vessels given to him in tribute. Usually one can get Podzemni's attention with a bribe of berries of holly.

Maasawi
Maasawi is a Nature Spirit of Death and controls a realm of the Underworld. His image is that of a brownie skeleton and was killed by his sister Mladena when she found him feasting on a decomposing white stag. As the sprite was laying there dead, the hate the goodly creature Mladena had for her brother caused Underworld beetles emerge from the ground and feasted on the body, leaving nothing but bones. The beetles then carried the bones into the ground and to the Underworld.
In order to keep Maasawi at bay, clear stones such as quartz or any kind of photoluminescence lichen/plants are placed around a body that may have died unnaturally or violently.
The symbol of Maasawi is the presence of carrion beetles or that of the black side of the Ying-Yang symbol

Mladena
Mladena is a Nature Spirit of Life. She is seen as pure while naked nymph often seen associating with white rabbits or stags (even winter wolves in in the appropriate season). After she killed her brother and watched his rebirth into an evil skeleton, Mladena was wrought with sorrow. She was always seen a good and pure and could not live with herself after what her actions led to. To punish herself, she climbed the tallest mountain she could find and jumped off the top. To her surprise, it was actually the Earth Spirit Podzemni. The creature caught Mladena and asked what she was doing. She retold the story and Podzemni offered her his aid. When she agreed, Podzemni crushed the female brownie in his gigantic hands. Mladena awoke some time later in a new body; that of a white nymph with an even greater affinity for light than she had before.