Veras Snydon
The people of the Sword Coast have many occupations, Butcher, Baker, Adventurous Rope-Maker but few are as ill understood as the Druid - the mysterious and huffy tree-huggers that seek to negoatite balance. But balance is a two-bladed sword, balance in all things - for all that generosity freely given, for all those good deeds that go unrewarded there comes a Veras. This is the tale of a true to life man-eater, a vampire-ess of the woodlands - a Witch in every sense of the word.
Deep down in the twisted depths, down in the bowels of the darker side of the Cloakwood where the rocks did rise tall and rabid bands of adventurers didn't dare to tread a predator most lethal began to stir from her sunny perch upon a rather large and mossy rapid in a sluggish bend in the stream where the water did gurgle and churn. She would smile and hum, calm and composed and then for no apparent reason break down into a wailing mess of tears and thrashing limbs, shredding and maiming anything that moved with the fury of one possessed as lightning rippled hot from her palms. Today had not been a pleasant day. Woe to the few who would dare cross her as the slow trickle of ravaged carcasses, both great and small began to waft downriver and the forest song grew ever silent.
Her name was Veras, a freakishly attractive female built to break vows of celibacy with long brown hair wreathed in fresh cut leaves, emerald eyes, full rose lips and a voluptuous figure prepared to work to her advantage on occasion. Her personality however was somewhat damaged. Super cheery and endearing one moment, cold merciless killer the next. Her upbringing had been far from stable and her ever increasingly solo ventures across the Southern Coast had only further soured her dispossession. She was in essence a Forest Witch, a Witch without cause or remorse, a Druid that cared not for law or tradition but only for the simple mantra of her divine patron Malar, the Beastlord, the Grand Hunter. As did he, so did she live for the thrill of the hunt - but even now her senses began to dull. It had been over a moon since her last grand kill and now she began to idle, to take stock. It was not a pleasant process.
She had a last name once in a life long ago lost. She was of the house Snydon, she had loved and lost many until their blood ran thin and it was her divinely arrogant, ever blessed self-rightious cock of a half-brother Tyranus and her left. They had set out unlikely companions from the smouldering ruins of the ravaged family estate in search of new fortunes to rebuild the shattered old. He the ever proud Knight of Hoar's Vengeance and she ironically, little else than a roadside (germbag) much to his eternal disgust. Trained as a warrior in the families exhausted traditions, she never had been very good with a sword, struggled with a bow and required excessive training to even stand in her armour. In almost every capacity she was a failure as a warrior the family so desperately needed. When she and Tyranus were paired it was a dire sign indeed of just how low the family had fallen, a fact he constantly reminded her of. It did not take long for her to give up struggling and simply bait herself out on the roadside.
Things had not gone smoothly but now that he was lost to her it cut deeper than blade ever could. She was finally alone and she really didn't like it. It made her re-consider the darker things within, the beast that did ever hunger and would not sleep.
She had thought little enough of her dark pact at the time - power at any price for the wailing woman of the woods, beaten and broken. She had been left to rot on the roadside after a rather brutal bandit raid had taken her caravan to pieces, carrying her off as just another prize, leaving her once spent where she fell like the husk of a nut. As the darkness swallowed her she welcomed its warm embrace. Her eyes flickered like the dying moth as her heavy heart faltered, but die it did not. No... A white hot lance of pain surged behind her eyes, screaming, bringing her back through second birth, now a true woman fully grown.
The thick embrace of the darkness did not part, no it opened up to her - a million glowing eyes of random nature unified by a single ringing, hideous laugh of the Great Beast soaking through her from all directions as she swirled in an abyssal embrace. The Beast Lord, a petty creature of pride offered her pact - a quick path to power if she would play the willing hostess in his name. She had only to keep holy his word, to bring balance back to the forest lands and to do that she would become the great predator all those other meddling apathetic do-gooders would fear. It was not a hard sell - he had her at power for the wailing woman of the woods.
The ceremony was a vivid thing mostly lost in red a wash of horror and pain of rebirth. One of the smaller eyes opened and rushed into her, flooding her every orofice, flooding the limbs, smothering her until all she could feel was the slow chundering thud of fire blood slurping through her veins. With a roar the darkness receded and she was returned a wooded green just outside a clearing where the bandits had made camp.
With a wicked smile and a gutteral chant a freak bolt of lightning did rain down upon them, frying several to a smouldering crisp. She let the remainder run and scream as she slowly stalked them down, one at a time over a week, gutting the slowest piece-by-piece so that his fellows would mark her pursuit drawing ever closer. The angered Veras was a creature most malicious.
Since returning to her brothers side, she played it very careful to allure his suspicions as to her true nature, he assumed her to have evolved some kind of sense in a godly calling even as he blatantly sassed her choice of tree-huggery as he called it. Yet even he could not deny the fruits of her religious hunt, strengthening her day by day as she led him to stalk the land and find ever more dire sights, the greatest threats the forests could throw upon, absolute peril she would drive them to the point where brother frequently began to doubt, to question her sanity as little sister went head to head with giants more then twice her size with little more than farm implements and a cheeky smile. Yet every night she would return like a red mist soaked in the mess of what once was prey.
It was not trophies nor plunder she sought, no only the absolute blood screaming thrill of battle, as she systematically peeled back layers of herself. Reaching ever deeper into her dark core as her arms rippled with the energies of the divine and her flesh twitched as she sucked the life of beast after great beast, man after man, feeding her, nourishing her in ways that shocked, awed and increasingly frightened the casual outsider. Veras became the boon of adventurous raiders and war parties everywhere - her only stipulation, she must be challenged or her attentions would subtly turn on her would-be companions. This lust for battle, while refreshing at first lead many a careless man to death as they tried to keep pace with the emerald-eyed predator in their midst, masked in only in a seductive smile.