Nótt

## Personality

Nótt is one who works by herself, for herself. She rarely asks favours of anyone and does as she pleases with little to no regard of who or what is in her way. Focused solely on the goal of being freed from the Vessel and finding Hrímfaxi, she will stop at nothing to further her research into the Knights and the Pactum that was forced upon her. She is extremely callous towards other humans and magicians, and while she may not explicitly state that she is an Entity upon first meeting, she will act as though her millennia of existence is already implied in the interaction. Though she is instructed to keep her status as an Entity trapped in a vessel a secret, she will likely reveal it upon being asked just to spite whoever may be keeping tabs on her. Emotions like hate, sadness and rage are new to her, after being trapped in the Vessel, so she doesn’t control it well. Very often she will lash out at someone that makes her angry, or end up sulking about if something gets her down. There is no middle ground for her emotions, so she can act extremely at times.

## History

There once was a band of magicians that wished to subdue the Night.

Calling themselves the “Knights of Dagr,” they were fanatics that worshipped the personification of daylight, Dagr, and held contempt for his mother, Nótt.

Nótt was the personification of night in Norse mythology. Originally ordained by Odin to spread the stars in the night sky with the help of her horse, Hrímfaxi, she slowly disappeared into obscurity as more religions popped up, with more and more deities populating the night. Her role as an Old God became obsolete; with the fall of paganism came the end of her rule of the Night, and she was delegated to the level of a regular, deity-like Entity. She lived her eternal life for millennia in Human form, constantly changing her appearance as Human society grew. Traveling the world with Hrímfaxi, she grew to not only be bearer of the Night, but able to preside over other aspects of the world in a small part thanks to the remnants of Paganism coming up with new roles for her.

One of those roles, she learned, was that she eventually became not only the personification of Night itself, but the bringer of Death and the power of Rebirth. The reasoning was that through the Night, she brings about the “death” of the light, and that she is the key to “rebirth” through the birth of the next Day. It is a flimsy reasoning, but through this understanding she was able to not only hold on to her own existence over several centuries, but managed to help the New Gods with the passage of souls to the afterlife.

Another of those roles was the “Consumer.” An Entity that would feast upon the living with an insatiable appetite for blood. That was a dark time.

But that is another story for another time.

Nótt had been living as a hermit for centuries, skipping from town to town, until the Knights of Dagr found her. They, being followers of the way of the Old Gods, had been part of the reason that she had obtained her new powers. It was borne from a misinterpretation of the Edda, but they had stuck to it nonetheless – of course, this comes as no surprise to her, seeing as fanatics are the reason that certain gods hold so much power in the New World. What did come as a surprise was their absolute hatred for her powers that were born from their own misunderstandings in the first place. They were imbeciles that hated Death. They wanted to live forever and escape the fear that Death brings.

If they were true followers, they would understand that Death was not to be feared. But they were not true followers.

They found her in a city in Bulgaria, posing as the owner of a bakery for her current lifetime. She had been travelling to her “home” (which at the time was a small alcove under a bridge in which she could relax in her true form and rest in the shadows) when they ambushed her from the alleyways. She tried to fight back, but the Knights were unbelievably prepared. They used bizarre equipment enchanted with a magic made to restrain Entities of her level, pushing her back using what they called “the blessing of Dagr” (which was, ironically, a dagger) to drive her into a corner. They captured Hrímfaxi and held him hostage while she lay there, defeated by Dagr’s blessing. They struck her a deal: they would spare her life as long as they could control her. They wanted to be able to choose who was allowed to die, because they believed that without her in control, no one would die. What they did not know is that, due to her status as an Old God who has faded into obscurity and given many names over the course of a millennia, she no longer had control over Death; she has not actually presided over a Human’s death in a long time, and she has lost a great deal of her power. Because of that, she was driven into a corner and would have been killed if she did not accept. She felt as though she had no choice.

They brought her back to their headquarters in Scandinavia, still restrained by the strange equipment that managed to hold her in a corporeal form the entire time. Hrímfaxi was nowhere to be found, and it made her anxious. She knew he was not dead either, for she could sense her connection with him, but to this day she still hasn’t found out where they're hiding him.

They took her to a poorly lit room and presented her with a girl. A human girl… Young, with a composed posture. Long blonde hair tied into a thick braid, her eyes a blanche white, devoid of any soul or purpose for living. Nótt stared at the girl, and the girl stared back with her emotionless visage. The Knights instructed the girl to sit in a magic circle, and they brandished their daggers as they released Nótt from her restraints. She shifted back into her true form and writhed on the ground in futility, as the daggers held by the Knights were able to suppress her still. The girl remained silent and unmoving, watching the scene unfold as Nótt struggled against the Knights’ magic. Nótt looked up at the girl from the ground through the frenzied eyes of her true form. She knew what was going to happen. They were going to have her stuffed into this girl’s body. Tales told of Magicians using humans for just this reason; to have powerful Entities like Nótt sealed inside humans who were groomed for this forbidden task, only to be discarded once the Entity had no more use for the body. What a pitiful outcome for one who used to be the embodiment of the Night. And what a pitiful outcome for the girl, who probably wasn’t even fully aware of what was happening. Perhaps she lived a full life before the Knights got to her, or maybe she knew from the day she was born that this was going to eventually happen.

But that is another story for another time.

Nótt woke up in a daze. Her body felt heavy, and she felt…small. Insignificant. Dumbed down to a level she has never felt, like millennia worth of cosmic wisdom has been compressed into the size of a pea. Her head hurt. She was riding in the back of an old Hummer with a man she hadn’t seen before, presumably a Knight, but with a much softer face than the ones she vaguely remembered from that night. She stared at the man, and he smiled back. A shocking expression. Did he know who she was? If not for these restraints, she could have-

That’s right…the restraints. It seems that on top of being forced into this pitiful body, she had been also been forced to wear a collar around her neck. The collar was small, thankfully, but it was irritating. Whenever she thought about escaping the body, or trying to revert to her true form, or using her powers to break out of the Hummer, she would receive a slight shock and the collar would glow. Odd. There were also several invisible restraints set on her, bound by an enchantment from some bizarre magic. They, too, would hold her back if she tried to do anything unnecessary. It was like the body was a walking prison.

They came to the entrance to a dock where a small ferry was anchored. The sign above the dock read “CONCORDIA COLLEGE.” The nice man told her that she was to live at that Academy now, and that they would not have to do anything “messy” as long as she didn’t act out of place. Entities attending the school alongside Humans were common, but she was to pose as a Magician contracted to an Entity so she wouldn't raise too many questions about her origin. She would not be explicitly forced to maintain her cover, but he warned her that they could not be held accountable for what happens if she blows it. A series of threats, it seems, lumped on her before she was given the uniform and told to change on the ferry. Like she cared. It was not her responsibility to worry about the well-being of anyone else while in this current state. Going to school was a fruitless endeavour. It was clearly just a place for the Knights to keep tabs on her while she lived out her imprisonment in this shell of a Human. All she cared about was finding Hrímfaxi and freeing herself of this prison. Perhaps she can find out how to do this at the Academy; they likely have books that can tell her about these restraints and how they work. This should be quick.

She changes in the ferry, and sees her Pactum mark reflected in the glass on her chest.

Oh. This complicates things.

## Miscellaneous

* The pin granted by the uniform further diminishes her power- as though the restraints weren't enough...With the restraints, she is a Tier 4, and with the added bottleneck of the pin, she is a Tier 2. Subduing the Night, indeed...
* Her pactum mark signifies the transition from life to death, protection and might. She is able to draw power through fear with this.
* She is always floating because her true form is "taller" than the Vessel's body. She does not need the legs to move, since she feels more comfortable at that height.
* Her pactum mark also holds a different meaning for her: "Protection." It means that she is meant to take care of the Vessel as though she is actually a human being. If the Vessel starves or dies while she is in control of it, so will she. However, she isn't so connected to the Vessel that she feels hunger, so she needs to be careful to maintain it properly with three square meals a day. At least she can still use the Vessel to taste things.
* On that note, **she loves the taste of charcoal.** That isn't very good for the Vessel, though. She read somewhere that it can actually kill human beings. A bother, since it provides such a unique flavour and texture. She is able to substitute that taste by eating graphite meant for mechanical pencils. It doesn't harm the Vessel much, but it can never truly replace the powdery goodness that chewing on charcoal gives.
* She is still able to feel any pain inflicted on the Vessel thanks to what she thinks is the collar. It gives her a shock if she does something that is too dangerous in order deter her from fatally wounding the Vessel.
* The colour of the Vessel's eyes suggest that the girl was either blind or became blind after Nótt possessed her. Nótt does not need the Vessel's eyes to see, though, so it's fine.
* **She often talks to herself, thinking that she can hear the Vessel's residual soul sometimes. Impossible, she thinks, because the Vessel's soul was almost completely extinguished.**