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Name:Layla Zaisis
Alias: None
Origin: Skuld, Mulhorand
Birthdate: Born 11 Nightal, 1326 DR. Year of Striking Hawk
Age: 30's
Race: Aasimar, Isis bloodline
Sex: Female
Deity: Isis
Alignment: Neutral Good
Class: Spirit Shaman, Sorcerer, Blood Magus, Mystic Theurge
Height: 5'6
Weight: 123lb
Hair Color: Dark Black
Eye Color: Golden
Organisations: Temple of Bountiful Joy (Priestess)
Profession: Healer, Priestess, Wanderer, Adventurer
Leitmotif: Saladin The Pursuit of Knowledge
Home: Vesper Manse, Western Heartlands |
Languages:
Primary Language:
Mulhorandi (Native): The language of Layla's mother and homeland. Used as her main form of communication throughout her childhood and family life.
Secondary Languages
Common (Fluent): The trade tongue of the realms and the language Layla learned alongside her birth tongue.
Celestial (Native): Taught to her throughout her childhood and as a neophyte within the Mystic Cornucopia. Layla's tongue for prayer, worship, and spellcasting; shows a particular affinity for this language thanks to her plane-touched nature.
Chessentan (Fluent): Taught to her by her Father and Chessentan aunties in the years she spent abroad in Cimbar, as such an essential language for her and her siblings, representing their connection to their father and his ancestry.
Elven (Poor, Written basic): Self-taught through what few and rare elven tomes and translations could be acquired in the Old empire. A language of fancy and romance learned more for its connection and association with times long gone than a practical need; as such, her fluency suffers.
Gur (Basic): Learned during her time traveling with Gurs on the plains that would come to be known as Yaimmunahar.
Tuigan (Basic): As with Gur, Layla learned the Tuigan language from her mentor while traveling with Gurs on the plains that would come to be known as Yaimmunahar.
Animal Empathy (Proficient): While not strictly a language, Layla's spirit guide allows her to communicate to a degree with animals
Physical Description:
An Aasimar woman with pleasant features hinting at a mixed Chessentan-Mulani parentage, typically wearing light cosmetics or illusionary magics to enhance her features. Her eyes gleam with a soft golden hue, sometimes occluded by an illusionary dark brown when there is a need to obscure her heritage. A tattoo of three blue circles anoints her brow, indicating her place among the priesthood of Mulhorand.
Not the most physically fit example of her kind Layla is just robust enough to handle the trials of life on the road. Being of average physical strength and a touch more resilient and limber than a typical human Layla's physical presence lands her firmly somewhere in the realms of the road scholar and traveling academic. She takes great pains to present a clean and polished appearance wherever she goes, especially outside of her homeland, understanding that the impressions she leaves may not only reflect upon her but on her goddess and nation.
Psychological description:
She is an open-minded and tolerant individual, preferring to treat people and situations based on individual experience rather than expected traits. Trusting to a degree, she often tries to see and encourage the good in the people she meets, though age has tempered what once might have been called youthful naivety. Compassion and its ugly mirror, Wrath, rule her emotional states. Layla's temperament balances more among sanguine than the other humours, her early life as one of the elder children ensuring she was always in a position to encourage and socialize. She holds no great disdain or love of rules beyond their usefulness to accomplish the betterment of the people they affect.
As a member of the priestly caste, Layla views the afterlife much as her kin in the homeland. One's afterlife is merely a continuation of the life one lived; this motivates her to be the best she can and act as close as possible to her goddess' teachings.
She has a weakness for comforts and luxury, partly due to her upper-middle-class upbringing and the self-denial inherent in traveling from place to place. While not specifically greedy or motivated to seek wealth, the comforts, security, and freedom offered by its abundance imparts a healthy respect for what wealth she manages to accrue.
Religious Views:
A devoted follower of Isis and her various aspects, Layla's connection with her faith manifests in a guardian spirit or spirit guide. An ancestor spirit named
Naunet Zaisis, whose current task is to guide Layla in what it means to be an aasimar and how best to live up to her purpose, whatever that may be.
Layla's internalization of the faith focuses on the importance of love and family, trying to reinforce those values among those she encounters, from the most embittered to the most receptive. Magic, in her eyes, is a gift from Isis to mortals and a tool for the betterment of all. As such, she readily spends her spells and resources to aid others she travels with so long as they don't seek to abuse that gifted magic.
Ancestor:
Layla's ancestral line is one that distantly connects with the gods of Mulhorand. A distant descendant of Isis' incarnation from the first days of the empire. As such, her plane touched heritage, and traits echo that of Isis and her mortal incarnation.
Family:
Father: Pharaxes Hero of Wavecrest Gap
Layla's father is a Lawful Neutral mercenary leader from Cimbar whose distinguished conduct in a naval skirmish with north coast vessels saw to the capture of an enemy command ship and two accompanying vessels.
He is an 8th-level fighter and is around 57 years of age, whose patron deity is Assuran. Though he also honors Lathander as a god of athletics and heroes, along with Tchazzar, the father of Chessenta.
Presently retired from mercenary life, his primary day-to-day concerns are managing the books of his estate and staying ahead of taxes and schemes that might cost them their estate. His heroic emblem is a boar rampant holding a key, while his motto reads in common as: "If I cannot find a way, I shall make one."
Mother: Eshe Zaisis
Layla's mother is a reasonably potent but politically unaccomplished priestess of the temple of Bountiful Joy. She was stationed and working within the city of Skuld and, as with all daughters of the Mulhorandi upper class, was left to fend for herself when it came to wealth and inheritance.
Seeing an opportunity to secure her future, Eshe took charge of tending to a rising Chessentan mercenary known as Pharaxes after a wrestling bout resulted in a torn muscle and broken limb.
Eshe is a 4th-level wizard and 6th-level Skyweaver (Isis specialty priest) and is around 55 years of age.
Thanks to the wealth of Pharaxes and her station, the pair have managed to maintain a small estate within Skuld, along with a small tract of freehold land worked by slaves rented from the temple of Isis. Their main crop is grain; however, a portion of land is devoted to flax, from which linen cloth is spun and resold for the household's profit.
Eldest sister: Iona Zaisis
The eldest child Iona is dutiful, diligent, hard-working, and well-spoken. She takes predominantly after her father, though she has a strong sense of justice and fair play. Iona is a Lawful good wizard of 3rd level Cleric of 6th Level and around 35 years old. She entered training as a priestess of Isis a few years ahead of Layla and encountered frustration with the corruption present in the priesthood of Mulhorand.
Youngest Sister: Lapis Zaisis
The youngest of seven daughters, Lapis shows little interest in faith or priesthood beyond the status it might confer. Around 19 years of age, she is a Neutral rogue of 1st-level
Younger Brother: Thadeius Zaisis
The sole male heir to the family and set to inherit the estate. Doted upon by Eshe and existing largely in the shadow of his father's reputation. Around 16 years of age, he dreams of adventure and glory after his father's fashion. Thadeius is a Neutral Good commoner of 1st-level
Eldest Aunt (blood relation): Desponia Perriade
Married off to a transmuter wizard in Cimbar, Desponia has played hostess to many of her brother's children and manages his property within Cimbar while he is in Mulhorand. Deponia is a Chaotic Good commoner of 3rd-level
Youngest Aunt (blood relation): Eugenia Xenide
Eugenia is unmarried and aging. She is abrupt, quick-tempered, and has little patience for anything that gets in the way of her studies. She works as an assistant in one of the many libraries in the sceptanar. Eugenia is a Lawful Neutral expert of 5th-level.
History:
Childhood and Early life:
Layla grew up in a loving household surrounded by the trappings of upper-middle-class life. Her mother saw that fine foods, clean clothes, and almost every comfort were afforded to her daughters, especially her aasimar children. Spoiled to a degree and afforded a little reverence for her heritage, Layla grew used to being treated as different from a young age. Layla spent her youth as a neophyte of various priestesses of the Bountiful Lady. She learned the basics of medicine and which herbs to give what aliments, how to stitch a wound and splint a broken bone. The priestesses imparted practical skills along with a rigorous regime of religious doctrine. Unfortunately, she never stayed with one particular tutor for long as Layla's mother passed around the status of being seen to train an aasimar child like a piece of political currency.
Layla, for her part, showed frustratingly little ability to retain prayers and rites demonstrated, often scolded for lax attentiveness and talking to things unseen.
Saddled with great expectations and a poor reputation for living up to them, Layla was prone to bouts of melancholy and imposter syndrome throughout her early education. Iona's, not her mother's, companionship and encouragement was what, in the end, helped stave off Layla's feelings of isolation. Her elder sister lived what their mother and temple preached, and this example kept Layla from growing embittered and disillusioned.
While her clerical studies advanced poorly, her arcane tutilage showed great promise, developing her sorcerous talent under watchful tutelage to work cantrips like rinse and light by age eight, growing at that pace for the eight years. Layla's spirit guide Naunet made herself known to the youth on her sixteenth birthday, and with her revelation came a significant leap in ability. Taking in earnest to her teachings from her fellow priestess and all the more through her spiritual guide
Her relationship with her father materialized around age ten, with Pharaxes' retirement from mercenary life. Her father's work as a mercenary meant she saw him for brief periods for much of those earlier years, and it wasn't until her father's more permanent presence that stability and certainty settled in their household.
Entering adulthood, Layla's relationship with her mother grew increasingly antagonistic. Youthful arrogance, ideological zeal, and frustration born of political weakness lead Layla, Iona, and several sisters to leave Skuld and Mulhorand behind them, traveling to Chessenta at her father's suggestion.
While the Old Empires offer little power or status for women, and in this, Chessenta is no different from Mulhorand. What Chessenta as a nation failed to show, however, Cimbar and her Aunts provided. Cimbar and their love of art, philosophy, and education found an eager and willing student in Layla. A city of learning, magic, and discourse that Layla spent many months chasing down tales of the arcane, holding animated discussions and debates with anyone willing to listen.
Her early twenties were spent traveling and adventuring under the sponsorship of a Cimbarian Priest of Azuth in exchange for scraps of knowledge and instruction on walking the path of a mystic theurge. Those travels and wanderings took her through Chessenta, Unther, Mulhorand, Murghom, Semphar, and the Dry steppes. Her traveling companions and fellow adventurers included a wide range of Merchants, fighters, clerics, and on occasion, thieves.
While each place offered significant opportunity and chance for growth, her later travels with the Gur through the Dry Steppes proved most influential. It was among this tribe that Layla met another spirit shaman, a woman known as Uuriintuya, who would come to be her mentor. Uuriintuya proved to be a great mentor who, while harsh, was also practical. Challenging idealism with the realities of life upon a vast and infertile steppe, it was through Uuriintuya that Layla learned of blood magic and its many lures and temptations.
Over the years since the Dry Steppes, Layla has retraced her steps to Cimbar and from there, followed the call of adventure through to Chondath, and the Shining plains, then north and west along the trader's road until arriving at Berdusk in time for the godswar to begin.
Future:
Layla's future is an uncertain one. While her blood calls her to do good and better the lives of those around her, fear of failure leads her to run from roles of responsibility and commitments that would better enable her to achieve these goals.
Plot Hooks:
Layla feels a great need to justify her lineage and faith in herself. Those feelings of imposter syndrome often lead her to meddle in affairs she should not in hopes of stumbling into a great purpose.
Layla has spent much time traveling and has not attended to her duties as a priestess nor checked in with her family. Someone may eventually be sent to find out what became of her.
Having spent the godswar on the sword coast, Layla has grown to despise Amn and its reactionary approach to magic. As such, she would jump at the chance to help runaway mages or punish mage hunters if given the opportunity.
As a Mystic Theurge, Layla has a deep fascination with all kinds of magic, an opportunity to explore ancient ruins and rediscover lost forms of Art truly excites her and provides a significant lure.
