Derynea

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**Derynea is a mysterious character, polite and evolved beyond her years with a gifted tongue and a mind for deep thought.**
A reluctantly freed slave, she has undergone trials and tribulations shaping her to the survivor she is today.

## Appearance

Derynea is first and foremost a Turanian. She has brown skin and facial features she shares with other Turanian/Iranistani or Afghuli characters and women, with strong cheekbones, piercing eyes and a serpentile grace to her smile and movements. Her physique, though slightly strengthened by the rigors of the exiled lands, is still that of a young servantgirl that was raised and held by the Turanian priests of Erlik.
She is of background a dancer and assistant to priests, and none of her physique shows evidence of hard, back-breaking work.
Treated with care and handled as a prized posession, she has lived a life spared of lashings and scars. Despite the violence of the Exiled lands, she has none of this still - much due to the care she tends herself with, as she believes beauty should always be a last resort and currency available to her as an option.

## Personality

Derynea was raised a servant to a particular priest, and her curious nature was always contained within the temple's halls and the gardens where she lived. Her outlet for curiosity and exploration took form in knowledge, and sought more than anything to understand and excel in the knowledge of the arcane. Since she was old enough to walk, Derynea took part in rituals along with other servantgirls, which could vary from prayer and reciting scriptures, to mass-summonings and taming of wild,summoned spirits (or demons, as anyone outside the temples would likely call them.) From this, she learnt a sober and careful, but unafraid approach to the arcane knowledge of spirits and demons.
She is not foolhardy, and knows perfectly well that without the mastery of necromancy and summoning that the Priests of Erlik are taught,
she stands no chance with any untamed creature from the void. But like a lionkeeper knows not to fear one when precautions are taken, Derynea likewise feels comfortable and to a certain extent at home with the arcane and demonic, as long as she is certain she is not beyond her depth.
All this summarizes to a young woman who is cautious, at times timid, and at times unafraid in a complex pattern that can confuse those who do not share her experience.

## Exile

Following a start in life as a servant to her priest, Zeki-Yavuz, her world was upturned when her priest succumbed to the corrupting and flesh-rotting cost of his mastery of Necromancy. He died when Derynea was age sixteen, and along with most of the Priest's belongings and estate, she was auctioned off and sent from her hometown of Ardashir. She was sold to a well-known trader, who did not keep her to himself, but brought her to another market in Aghrapur, where she was sold, and sold again. Through middlemen she eventually ended up being sold to the clergy of Khemi, a Stygian island with a strict priesthood of both Set and Derketo. There, she was passed into the service as an Acolyte of Derketo, and spent a year learning the vastly different ways of this foreign religion. In one instance while serving the pleasures of derketo to the priest of Set that had purchased her, she uttered in a lotus-dazed high and moment of intoxicated pleasure the name of her own god Erlik.
While the priest judged this to be utter blasphemy and herecy, he spared himself the embarrassment of having a disobedient acolyte of Derketo in his house by keeping the accusation quiet and secret, even from Derynea. When Derynea next awoke, she was informed that she would be sold to a General of the Tamarin Tigers, a famous legion of mercenaries based in Northern Vendhya. She was dressed in silks, given an Iconic green-jeweled bracelet, and sent along with many other slaves and criminals with a caravan on a long journey.
She never had time on a cross to realise the deception - a sandstorm decimated the caravan in the desert, and Derynea awoke on the wrong side of the border to the exiled lands, wandering in to her new existance as an exile, blissfully unaware of her curse - and for several months, her innocent goal was to find a way to Vendhya - until she learnt enough of the exiled lands and her bracelet to fear the Ghostfence.
The rest of her story as an exile, has become a rich and winding tale with many rumors and guesses surrounding the girl.
No doubt her time in the lands has changed her, and the void which she had both feared and hoped to have an advantage with, has clearly changed her too.