Serah Sterling

The Black Widow

Serah in her Sterling Garb

## Description

A desperate and selfish lover who manipulates potential partners to fall deeply in love with her. When her romances seem to fail, she grows erratic and murders them before the relationship ends. Although twisted, Serah is a loyal companion and devotes her efforts tirelessly to benefit the Party.

## Biography

### Childhood

Serah was born into a noble family of Dark Elves who had acquired the peculiar talent for harvesting silk from Silk Spiders. During the time of the inception, Sterling Silk was a standout in the field of garments and fashion, catching the eyes of nobility across Tisserais. Due to their talents, the Sterling family acquired popularity and wealth very quickly, and grew to love their newfound place in society. Serah was no exception, adoring the attention she would get from upper-class nobles who cooed at the spoiled child.

As the years passed, competition in the fashion industry began to rise, and the Sterling's found their fortunes falling below their hopes and dreams. In order to maintain their way of life, Hunderr Sterling began making shady deals in order to sabotage their competition, from burning down rival silk farms to robbing their competitors' shipments of tools and materials. This sustained their wealth for the next coming years, but unfortunately it was due for an abrupt end.

After Alicent Brightwall noticed some curious coincidences in her recent shortcomings, the owner of Alicent Tailoring began her own shady dealings, which caused a conflict between the two companies until Alicent's thugs accidentally locked the Sterling's in their Spidersong Manor after setting their home alight, killing Hunderr and Elora Sterling. Serah, still a small child at the time, was able to escape the blaze unscathed and found the culprits. In the moment, something snapped within the child and before she knew it she had eviscerated the thugs who had murdered her family. Calming down after about 5 minutes of sitting in their blood, Serah cleaned herself up and attended to the blaze, recovering half of the Manor before finally putting the flame out with the help of some of her neighbours.

Following their deaths, Serah became the heir to their enormous fortune. With her infantile desires at the wheel, Serah grew into a spoiled, young woman who learned to pay her way in life, bribing guards and paying for whatever luxuries she desired. Her keen eye for fashion and her elegant physique helped her stand above the competition, and she continued in her parents' footsteps of sabotaging any competition that stood in her way, including Alicent's Tailoring (which mysteriously burned down overnight).

### True Love

When Serah hit the age of 23, she began growing restless of her engorged appetite for luxury and decided to travel to her parent's childhood home in Neigara, where she met a silver trader named Tobani. Tobani and Serah had sparked a budding friendship that blossomed effortlessly into what she described as "true love". No quicker than it started, Serah proposed to Tobani and the two wed in the Elderwoade the following Winter, surrounded by his friends and family.

Unfortunately, Tobani fell slowly into a deep sickness, the result of his time in the Silver Mines of Neigara. Serah, heartbroken, paid every apothecary, priest and mage in an effort to save her beloved, but the pair found no cure to the sickness.

A year passed and Tobani tragically fell to the Silver Sickness. Serah spent a month in mourning, hiding inside her decaying manor, hating the world that had taken so much from her. After the month had passed, Serah couldn't take the loneliness any longer and searched for a new partner, someone to fill the ever growing hole in her heart where Tobani used to sit. After meeting a potential match, she found herself feeling the same fluttering feelings she did for her lost love and she proposed within the week, much to the surprise of her new beau. Serah couldn't take the rejection and lashed out, killing her lover, and soon a swathe of bachelors found themselves forming budding romance with the twisted elf, rejecting her hasty advances and then winding up murdered in her rage.

She continues to search for someone to fill the void left in her heart, someone to call her own and someone she could continue to grow with.

## Skills & Abilities

### Swordsmanship

Serah grew into nobility and so had no real need to learn to defend herself as she always had guards who could defend her wherever she went, but she found herself bored during her parents' countless meetings and working nights, where she found enjoyment in sparring with the mannequins littered throughout the house.

### Spider Kinship

Through her isolation in Spidersong Manor, Serah found herself entertained with the spiders that her family harvested from, playing with the creepy-crawlies whilst they toiled away and created the silks for the Sterling's gowns. As their orders grew in size, the Sterling's would capture larger spiders to harvest more silk from, and each one grew to become accustomed to Serah's singing. Through this connection, the spiders had bonded with her, allowing her to enter their enclosures to harvest the silk without fear of being attacked or threatened.

### Magic

Being a Dark Elf, Serah has an acute affinity with mana and is able to wield magic. Although she prefers to use her blades, she is proficient in Gaia and Fire magic, granting her an affinity with the spiders that she called pets.