Scylla

Scylla and her commander, Ruthven

### Markings

Sooty gray ruff and back stripe, yellow-ochre flecked wings, blood-red war paint, very dark eyes

### Accessories

Plain Pure Ones armour and mask, battle claws

*"I am Scylla of the Pure Ones, Feral Owl. I want these young owls. Cooperate, and we´ll get along just fine."*

* Scylla to Isohar

Scylla is a character from a series of role-playing sessions set shortly after the Siege of the Great Tree in the *Guardians of Ga´Hoole* background.

## Description

Scylla is an unusually large and sleek Masked Owl with a narrow face and hard, obsidian-black eyes. She towers over Barn Owls, and even tops most Masked Owls by a few inches. Like in all owls of her species, her beak and talons are very strong.

Her facial disc is ringed by an ash-coloured ruff, and she has a long dark stripe running down her back. Her slender wings are dotted with ochre. Scylla is somewhat ashamed of her Masked Owl colouring and wears a helmet most of the time. When going out on missions, she marks her feathers with red blood stripes.

## Personality

Scylla is a very ambitious and ruthless owl. She knows that she has advanced to her rank of claw leader - which is higher than most Masked Owls will ever be able to aspire to - by nothing but excellent performance, no questions asked, and a conscience of glass.

She is extremely deferential towards superiors in the Pure Ones, but a terror to her underlings. Harsh, exacting and brutal, she expects and gets nothing but the utmost effort in any task. She detests failures and incompetence, and has been known to enact terrible punishments on those who fail her.

Scylla secretly hates all Barn Owls for being more "pure" than she is. She curses her low birth and hopes to overcome it with sterling service. But she cannot help but notice that amongst her superiors there are more than a few incompetent buffoons who have nothing to show but their pretty white Barn Owl feathers. This is why she is glad to have been assigned to Ruthven's command; finally a leader she can truly respect.

## History

### Fostered

Scylla, then named Priscilla, was lost to her family in a branching accident. She was adopted and raised by a family of humble Little Owls. Prideful and angry, she chafed at the modesty and humility that her foster parents espoused. When the Tytonic agitators approached her with the offer of joining the Union, she did not hesitate to kill her foster family. There was some doubt amongst the Pure Ones whether this counted as a true Tupsi, though, as the killed owls were not related to Scylla by blood.

### In the Tytonic Union

The Masked Owl's combat prowess and utter remorselessness saw her rising quickly through the ranks. She killed a lieutenant in a duel to prove she was the right owl for his position, and excelled in her missions, pushing her soldiers mercilessly to achieve her objectives.

After serving under several Barn Owl commanders who were all her inferiors in cunning and determination, she was glad to be transferred to Ruthven's division and placed in command of a kill-team, or "claw". Ruthven did not care that Scylla was a Masked; he wanted the best owl for the job, even if that meant offending Kellick and Klaive's (the claw's two Barn Owl members') sensibilities. Scylla had to contend with a lot of flak in her team but managed to put her talon down and cow the two Barn Owls into submission.

Scylla's kill-team, the Red Talons, consisted of herself, Kellick and his mate Klaive (a vicious Barn Owl warrior), a Greater Sooty called Rook employed as a flanker to cut off enemies' lines of retreat, and the Lesser Sooty tracker Dustscrape. They were an experienced team, and despite Pure One training not being on par with that of Guardians, very effective in their work. Scylla, Kellick and Klaive wore armour and were equipped with battle claws.

### Lost Books

When a slipgizzle revealed that Splinter and Teleria, two young owls from the Great Tree were on their way to retrieve a hidden cache of books on higher magnetics, Stryker gave Ruthven's division, the Ironclaw Lancers, the task of capturing the two and getting from them the location of the cache.

Ruthven sent his kill-teams scouring Ambala. The claw-leaders' ambitions worked against them, though, and the young'uns were able to escape because critical information was not shared - each leader wanted the glory for himself alone.

Scylla had stayed out of the political in-fighting  and was well positioned to pounce on the young owls as they slipped through Ruthven's net. They managed to evade her for a short time by crossing the border to Kuneer, but were intercepted by the Red Talons as they tried to hide in a cave.

### Scylla´s Death

The cave was occupied by a heavily scarred Feral Owl called Isohar. Scylla's instincts told her not to tangle with the Eagle Owl. She knew that the Feral Owls of Kuneer were callous loners with little regard for other birds; so she tried to cajole him into handing over the young'uns by promising him a rich reward. Isohar, though, had been deeply impressed by the tiny Saw-whet Splinter's courage. He chose to take the youngsters' side and denied her.

Scylla held her team back, preferring to ambush the Eagle Owl outside the cave where the Red Talons could bring their greater numbers and superior coordination to bear. But Isohar's insults threw Kellick and Klaive into a frenzied rage, and they rushed him without heeding their Masked Owl commander. Again, she was thwarted by Tyto alba pride: the resentment and prejudice of her Barn Owl soldiers made them ignore her commands, and their belief in Tyto superiority made them susceptible to the Horned Owl's taunts. The plan was in tatters, and it was every owl for itself now.

Scylla tried to disentangle herself from the fray, slashing the panicked Dustscrape with her battle claws and throwing him into Isohar's way to buy herself time to retreat, but she never made it to the cave's mouth. Isohar's deep rolling hoot, amplified a hundredfold by the cave's natural resonance into a terrible peal, caused the Pure Ones to go yeep. The Feral Owl's claws dispatched them where they had fallen to the cave's floor, just as they were trying to shake off the paralyzing effect. No owl of the five in the Red Talons survived.