Antas'aere Teken'dar - The Night Lloth Face-Palmed

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Basics

Name: Antas’aere Teken’dar

Age: 110

Deity: Primarily Kiaransalee due to her profession, Antas’aere still worships Lloth as much as any “good” Drow.

Alignment: Chaotic Evil

Origin: Youngest daughter of the now-destroyed house of Teken’dar. House Teken’dar was a minor noble house of Ched Nasad.


Description:

Shorter and slimmer than the average Drow, she would almost be charming were it not for the stench of grave rot and the unsettling madness swimming in her eyes. She is dark skinned, even for a Drow with a pair of almost opaque eyes. Her face has been tattooed with a pair of bone horns and her hair is a pale gold.

Despite her size she is rather haughty, often looking down her nose at others. Only with other females, particularly those she believes to be of some standing will she be respectful, even overly polite. She speaks as if she is used to being obeyed unquestioningly and finds speaking to the lesser races unpleasant. She comes across as cold and slightly aloof.

This attitude changes around death, particularly the undead. When they are nearby she instantly warms to them, often fussing over them and making baby-talk to them. She could sit and stare at a simple skull for hours, making in-depth notes on all its intricacies. This infatuation can be rather off putting, with even other necromancers thinking it odd.


History:


The Obsession Begins

Born the youngest daughter to a Drow house blessed with an abundance of females, Antas’aere was generally left to her own devices. Her mother practised the ritual of killing her mate after coupling so Antas’aere never knew her father. At a young age she showed a great aptitude for the necromantic arts, but much to her mother’s displeasure she could summon about as much divine power as an atheist ooze. Despite her obvious gift, in a house where necromancy was routinely practised she was largely seen as irrelevant.

Thus the young Antas’aere was only instructed in how to act “proper” for one of her station, but ultimately was ignored and overlooked in almost all house politics. This was fine with her, as she quickly found herself obsessed with death and more specifically the undead. Due to her family’s lack of interest in her doings, she found the dead to be her only companions and quickly developed a strong attachment to them.

Unlike most Drow she had no living slaves, instead having undead constructs to do her bidding. Those rare times living slaves had been organised for her, she quickly found an excuse to have them killed so she could use them as replacement parts for her constructs. She made her home in the house crypts, where her family kept their various experiments in death and creation of unlife. When house Teken’dar eventually fell, it was here that Antas’aere could be found, completely oblivious to her family’s plight.


The Night of Twin Fates

House Teken’dar was never a particularly powerful house. It often found itself ignored both by those stronger and surprisingly, those weaker. Those stronger ignored it as it had a reputation for being rather aloof and unconcerned with the politics of other houses, instead focussed only on internal strife. To those weaker, it’s somewhat grisly reputation for being adepts in the necromantic arts forced their attention elsewhere for their power games.

Although outwardly and primarily worshiping Lloth like any “good” noble house, House Teken’dar also had more secret prayers for Kiaransalee. This was of course due to their studies into the undead; it makes sense to keep the Drow god of such happy. As a result of this devotion the noble members of the house had a tendency to overreact to any perceived slight, which usually had ghastly results. So it was that Teken'dar's downfall was caused merely by one of its own, rather clumsy occupants.

After Antas’aere’s mother died strangely of natural causes (strange only because what Drow does?), house Teken’dar was equally divided between two sisters. These were the two eldest twin sisters “Vasonia” and “Vasolin”, each claiming roughly half the family in support. For a time they were content to grudgingly tolerate each other, but such a peace cannot last amongst the Drow. What eventually sparked their fateful and apocalyptic confrontation was when Vasolin's favourite zombie “Nilqualyn” clumsily trod on Vasonia’s prize crystal wand, breaking it. She instantly flew into a rage and fired off a rather clichéd fireball. Nilqualyn burst into flame and promptly lumbered back to its creator, burning several tapestries and carpets on the way, before finally crumbling to ash.

As humorous to an outsider as this may seem, the results were far from funny. Each sister locked themselves away in their respective halves of the house, plotting the downfall of the other. They could not battle each other directly as they were both equally adept in the necromantic arts and like most twins, had a subconscious insight into the other’s intentions. Instead they outsourced their problems like most respectable Drow nobles, to an outpost of the Bregan D’aerthe.

While the Bregan D’aerthe would usually loathe sending its minions into conflict with themselves, due to the layout of house Teken’dar it was entirely possible for the mercenaries to fulfil each contract fully without this happening. Thus on that fateful night two war bands were dispatched to the Teken’dar compound. One entered from the East, the other from the West and both began the systematic slaughter of all inside. With a bit of cosmic luck the twin sisters both died at precisely the same time, each cursing the other's name with their final breath. Once they deemed their respective missions complete, the two war bands met and began to loot the compound of all its valuables. Neither bothered to check the crypts where the Teken’dar kept their undead experiments as it was deemed far too risky and unlikely to provide anything of worth.


Aftermath and Flight

It was not until several nights later that Antas’aere realised what had happened. She had run out of bonemeal and could not call on any living servants to buy some from the market. When she found the butchered remains of her house and family, she was not saddened but rather overjoyed. Her psyche having long ago been damaged through solitary hours with the dead, she saw the remains of her family as being more beautiful than ever before. She spent the next week meticulously detailing everything about how they lay, whether their eyes were open, how much blood had been lost and so forth.

Once this “research” was complete, she left the house, taking only what she needed. She had long ago heard tales of Sshamath’s college of Necromancy and figured now was the perfect opportunity to go there and study. She left her undead constructs with strict orders to maintain the house until her eventual return, although she doubted she ever would. Using what left over wealth she could find hidden amongst the remains of her house, she bought passage with a merchant caravan heading to the far off city.

And today she finally arrived.