Mara Secordin

**Name:** Mara Secordin

**Gender, Age (Y927):** Female, age unknown

**Physical Description:** A mountain of flesh with blood red tresses and the cold, dead eyes of her favoured marine predator form.

**Birthplace, Race:**

**Social Status:** Blood rank unknown but likely to be pureblood or three-quarter, Mercenary Mage

**Family Background:** Unknown, even by her employer, Gurvon Gyle

**Personality:** Due to her prolonged use of her shark form her humanity is almost lost behind its predatory instincts. She combines her savagery with human intelligence and skill. She is often rewarded with “clean up” duties, getting rid of bodies by consuming them.

**Mage Affinities/Physical abilities:** A high-blooded mage, her affinities are:

• Intellectual: Hermetic

• Elemental: Water

Making her strongest at Animagery, Shaping and Healing.

Mara is a true juggernaut of destruction, her gnostic strength, savagery and her affinities making her near unstoppable in direct combat. Her body is supernaturally resilient, soaking up vast amounts of punishment, from powerful physical and gnostic, inviolate to any real injury. Her healing ability is so far advanced that wounds are healed as soon as they appear on her body, even those rare few that are mortal disappear within seconds.

Her senses are incredibly sensitive, comparable to those of her favoured form of the shark, making her acutely aware of her surroundings and what is going on in it. This is combined with her gnostic sensitivity, able to feel the use of others gnosis, and see the auras of living creatures and spirit beings.

As well as taking on the attributes and forms of other creatures she combines this with an evolved use of shaping, increasing her speed and strength to the extent that she can rip large numbers of armed men apart with her bare hands and slapping masses of arrows out of the air. She moulds her body to suit the situation, forming claws, fangs and even toothed tentacles that can inject a gnostic venom so potent it would kill a non mage instantly and most mages within seconds.

In her (mostly) human form Mara has trained herself, against her natural affinities, to pick out illusions skilfully. She is able to communicate with and control animals, using them as spies, servants and guards, but has never learnt to create constructs, lacking patience when working with “food”.

Mara possesses immense gnostic endurance and power, even for one of her blood ranking, thanks to her single-minded nature. This has come at a cost in terms of her humanity: the beast-within is very close to the surface, and she is very difficult to work with and manage. Her ability to survive punishment and endure the unendurable is linked (ironically) to her healing skill, something that she has turned so inward that she is incapable of healing another. It can make her seem capable of any gnostic study, but in fact is more of an ability to endure almost any assault.

Mara is also an experienced combatant and is very skilled in gnostic basics such as; gnostic bolts, kinesis, and shielding. Unusually Mara’s shields are so powerful they can at times warp the weapons that come into contact with them.

**History prior to Y927:** It is unclear where Gurvon Gyle unearthed Mara, who he has employed since the Second Crusade (916). That would seem to imply she is of an age with him (i.e. in her late thirties or early forties). Her flat voice and fleshy countenance may imply that she is originally Hollenian or Argundian.

**Notes:**