Thread: Fire and Snowfall

Name Percan Mercius the Merciful, PercanMercius the Merciful. Age 38 years. Born 4E 162. Gender Female. Race Imperial. Appearance Percan Mercius is a short woman, standing at around 5'5, and not even a pound over 140 without all of her gear on. Her dark red hair is most often kept back in a ponytail just gracing the baseline of her neck, and pale skin is usually kept relatively free of dirt and grime when the situations allow. Her facial features are slimmer, almost tender, and almost make her look more like the daughter of an innkeeper than the proficient warrior monk that she well and truly is. Personality Percan is not a very aggressive soul -- depending on which side of her axes that a person meets her on. She is almost unnervingly reserved and distant to many, not wanting much to speak, keeping her opinions to herself, and generally avoiding verbal confrontation and disagreement amongst peers more than anything else. On the topic of religion she is -- opinionated, yet quiet. She keeps the amulet but does not follow the god, as she will tell any she trusts who ask after it. To earn her trust is something that at least a good few of the group can claim about the warrior monk, yet fewer can actually claim to have won her friendship. It is not that she is actively distant, but rather that she is just rather distant to many of the people that she knows. She honestly prefers to keep it that way. It stops people from being hurt. Do not ask what she thinks of the High Elves, or most mer. And especially not of bandits. It's just better that way. Skills Restoration Destruction One-handed primarily towards the axe Enchanting Alchemy Light armor Lock-picking Pickpocket Sneak Block Weapons, Armour and Other gear 2 steel axes. An iron dagger. Robes of the Vigil of Stendarr. Steel chest-plate worn under the robes. Nordic bracers. Steel cuffed boots. An amulet of Stendarr tied on her pack.. An amulet of Dibella kept stowed in her pack, mostly hidden. A leather pack containing many of her alchemy ingredients, spell scrolls, food, flint, bandages, a water skin, material for making torches, and a few other things. History i Birth Early ChildhoodiPercan was a child of rape. Her mother, a priest at a House of Dibella who was the victim of a local thief. Her father was slain by guards as he attempted to flee from the scene, leaving a battered and emotionally shell-shocked Viania Mercius behind. It wasn't until several months after the incident that her pregnancy was discovered. Percan was the result of that, raised in the House of Dibella for her younger years, and learning the ways of Dibellan practice. For most of her younger years, she pursued art, and music. Yet as the war had broken out -- the ten year old girl's life was about to change. The small village which she had called home was quick to fall to the advances of the elven armies. Her mother knew quickly that the guards protecting the village were a paltry force in comparison to the better equipped and more numerous attackers. She gathered up what few supplies she could carry, grabbed Percan, and did her best to make a run for it -- until a pair of arrows caught her in the back. In her dying breath, something that Percan still remembers vividly, her mother simply told her to run. Run and leave the village behind her. So she did running as fast and as far as she possibly could. Heading blindly out in to the country with tears in her eyes, Percan was desperate for some form of help. That was where things went horribly wrong. ---- I The Makings of a ThiefIShe had honestly and truly thought they were refugees, and in part they might have been. But any other band of refugees might have taken in the sobbing nine year old girl with warm embrace, the older women taking her under their care, those of the group that could aiding her if she was hurt or hungry, and making sure that the young child was okay. Yet the people she found were not such good souls as to do this. No, the bandits that she came across did not see a broken young girl desperately in need of help from somebody who cared. They saw only a supple, untouched, and cute young girl not yet to be a woman. That was all they wanted or needed from her, anyways, and the amulet of Dibella she wore only enticed some of their ranks further. So they decided that they would take her, with the confusion and chaos of the war ensuring that nobody would notice the absence of one young girl from any number of refugee groups fleeing the destruction of their homes. Not even some of her closest friends know what happened to Percan during those long weeks in the hold of the bandits she tries to keep it that way, mostly. If they knew what happened, things would be different. If they knew how she was passed about from tent to tent like a worn out doll, if they knew how bitterness and hate boiled within the depths of her soul with every passing night, if they knew how one night she secreted away the group leader's blade -- they might not look at their quiet and dependable healer the same way ever again. So it's better this way, if she just doesn't talk about it. The nightmares will stop eventually, she's absolutely sure of it. Suffice to say, it was a very bitter, dark young girl who left that camp close to a month after the war had ended. Stolen dagger in hand and no family she knew of to call her's, she had wondered almost aimlessly. Stealing was first a matter of survival septims when she needed them, food, once or twice she risked it for a pair of shoes, but as time went on she found herself gaining a taste for it. She was no prodigy, but she liked it. Liked it and did it enough that it wasn't long before one of the smaller thieves' guilds of the Imperium had recruited her in to their ranks. She was fourteen when she first joined them -- and she was sixteen when she left. Minor teachings in magic by her mother had made her somewhat useful to them both in their hideaway or out on jobs. She wasn't the best of the best, but she was good enough to get what she wanted and needed art, jewelry, and the like. Yet one day she made the mistake of attempting to pick the pocket of a priest of Stendarr. He caught her in the act and had her cornered before she even realized what was going on. More the fool she. He gave her a choice. A report to the guards having her hauled away, or she leave the guild she was in now for something more -- morally minded. ---- I A Vigil, a Family, and LossITo either be dragged off to the dungeons, or join a religious order. It wasn't hard to make the choice, really. She set down her blade, returned the septims she had pilfered from his pocket, and within the month she had cast aside her thief's attire for the robes of a follower of Stendarr. She further practiced what magic she knew, quickly finding that while she was no master thief, that she was certainly an incredibly adept healer. She took to it well, along with the training in weaponry, and martial practice. She took to it so well, in fact, that at the age of nineteen she was asked to go with a small group of fellow monks to the lands of Skyrim where they would aid the local Vigils of Stendarr. She gladly accepted and packed her belongings for the trip to a land that she had so far heard only stories and rumors of. To say that she was excited at the prospects of what might happen there would have been quite the understatement. She was simply ecstatic . Then comes the part of the story any adventurer knows too well. For the first year in the cold lands of Skyrim, she simply did her duty, and her low standing in the ranks of the Vigil meant little time to commune with locals outside of business. Yet it was in the second year she met a blacksmith in Dawnstar by the name of Brandr Iron-Arm. They didn't necessarily fall in love at first sight, so much as they fell in to a mutual admiration and respect for one another. One strong-willed, independent soul, with a past full of dark secrets they didn't prefer to discuss had met a kindred spirit. Friendship came soon, camaraderie not long after, and once that was done falling in love seemed to come like it had always been planned that way. It was hard, yes, for a relationship to thrive between a man who's job held him at home, and a woman who's job carried her across the holds -- but somehow against the odds they managed to make it work without damaging their careers. He was still the successful blacksmith he had been when she met him, and she was making her name known amongst the ranks of the Vigil of Stendarr. Unfortunately with that, she was also becoming known amongst Daedra. At the age of 29, Percan and her husband Brandr had a healthy and strong son that was six years old, and two talented and attractive four year old daughters living in their home in Dawnstar. While the call of the Vigil still meant she did not often get to see her loving family, Percan still did her best to be their for her children, and husband. Yet it was not only a lack of attention for her family that existed in her absence, but it was the absence of protection that would be her family's undoing. A minor Daedric entity struck while she was away from her loved ones aiding in the cleansing of a vampire coven far to the south of Dawnstar, she expected nothing of what she saw when she arrived at her home on the outskirts The body of her husband near the door with his axe still clutched in cold, dead hands chilled her to her bones. The blood upon the walls and floors made her shiver in a way that the cold winter breeze outside could never do. Descending downstairs, some of the steps broken, furniture overturned, and her house in a chaotic mess brought her nerves to near-fraying. But what struck her most was the children, her children. Their desecrated and barely recognizable bodies in a dark corner of the basement left there for her to find. It didn't take her long to realize who might have done this. She knew the names of many of her enemies, and of one Daedra that had been hounding her for the past year seemingly without rest. What followed is another event that Percan would rather never discuss. Every Vigil fears the day that they will finally give in expend everything they have to one goal, regardless of consequences, and with disregard to the cost to themselves. She didn't reach that point, but she certainly came close. She doesn't talk about how she simply left the Vigil without announcement, how she moved across the mountains and plains of Skyrim on a hunt for blood, how she searched for the next several years of her life seemingly without rest for that one foe that had somehow managed to take from her what nobody else had dared to. She doesn't talk about that miserably cold night in the swamps of Morthal when she tracked down the abomination's paltry following, how she slayed many of them before they even realized what was upon them, and confronted the beast. The recruiter for this group was more surprised than she was at her wanting to join. A skilled healer who knew how to handle herself with a blade or an axe was certainly something a group like this could need. So that was how she came to be the quiet, distant, but dependable healer who stiches all of the wounds that need attention, comforts the souls that need consoling, and ends the lives of those who need not live a moment longer. Fair warning, it's pretty long, so I sectioned it to avoid some tremendous wall of text that would make eyes bleed.