I've made my decision...
Name: Elspeth Adrastia
Age: 55
Race: Human
Gender: Female
Height/weight: 5'9" 130 lbs
Class: Shadowbane Inquisitor
Preferred dialogue colour:
gold
Appearance
Hair: Brown in a pixie cut. The pic below shows her hair and eyes only. Nothing else looks like her.
Eye colour: Brown
Skin colour: Pale
Build: Tall and strong, the perfect proportion of fat and muscle for a woman her age and height.
Usual clothes:
A full suit of ebony power armour with a long black cape and a tall small brimmed hat. Also has a two piece pair of white long underwear underneath to keep her warm (basically long johns).
Personality: Extremely calm and tranquil. Extremely disciplined, strict and has a routine she never deviates from. She is most comfortable around those of like mind and habit but welcomes those of any walk of life in order to keep her perspective balanced. She is often hard and judgmental but only because her code demands it of her. She is warm and kind-hearted when she can afford to be, such as in private with people that have proven their trustworthiness or when caring for children.
Positive traits: Strong, focused, honorable, unshakably loyal to those she fights alongside, honest, almost impossible to distract or frustrate, near perfect discipline, selfless, kills without mercy, remorse or reflection.
Negative traits: Strict, rigid, very conservative, predictable, can have her own code used against her, has difficulty relaxing, sees much of the world in black and white with no room for interpretation or compromise, kills without mercy, remorse or reflection, follows her code regardless of moral, legal or social conflict.
Likes: The order her code brings to her life, watching people, making up stories about them based on what she can observe, being warm, a soft bed, red wine, hot well prepared food, meditating, gazing into the night sky, the warmth and peace a fire brings.
Loves: Her daughters, children, cats, shepherds pie, boiled cabbage, Stendarr.
Dislikes: demons, daemons, undead, drunks, killing innocents, retreating, thieves, assassins, those she deems without honor, laziness, those that put pleasure over work.
Fears: Losing her daughters, having to kill her daughters, being imprisoned, failure.
Aspirations: To wander the world for as long as she is able, serving the code, removing evil and meeting out justice. If she dies in battle it would be a good death but if she dies an old woman warm in bed then she will know without a doubt that her life had meaning. She would be able to die in peace.
Weapons: A silver longsword as shown above except it glows white instead of the bluish colour. It is enchanted with restoration magic to produce a white hot flame that can cleave through armor, flesh and bone. That isn't to say it can cut through anything in one stroke but it will break any substance with enough force and repetition. Flesh wounds become cauterized and armor becomes cracked and weakened when struck if it is not cut through outright. With enough time, the sword can breach tanks and bunkers though this would take minutes of precise strikes. Too long to be effective in battle.
A device that is made like a hand crossbow but uses microfusion generators to produce a constant stream of flame or a wider cone. Elspeth calls it a flametongue wand. It works just like a flamethrower except it's smaller and has a more limited range. She can press and activation rune on the top to produce the licking flames at the muzzle and pull the trigger to produce the cone of flame. Looks like the picture above.
Elspeth also has a heavy ebony crossbow she carries across her back. Not shown but it looks just like the one in Skyrim. It can fire a variety of bolts including solid steel ones effective against body armor, explosive bolts used against soft or massed targets or special witchbane bolts that burn the magika in spellcasters or Exceeds. Others include soft cap tranquilizer bolts, radio transponder bolts, bolts attached to a long wire and hollow point bolts to tear through large fleshy creatures.
Fighting style: Elspeth is a front line melee fighter. When with a group, she is always at the front. When alone she charges without fear or hesitation. She activates her flametounge wand as soon as she gets close enough, then engages her foes in melee combat. The flametounge wand is hand enough to be used as a close combat weapon and is deadly at point blank range but she must be mindful of what she shoots at to avoid burning an ally. She strikes quickly, making the sting of her blade felt through small quick cuts, then pouncing on any foe who stumbles. She executes said foe with as much flair as possible to demoralize his fellows and to make sure he's dead. If taking on a winged foe or an exceptionally large one, Elspeth will use her crossbow to kill or weaken it, engaging in melee combat if necessary to finish them off. Her power armour augments her strength and speed significantly while extensive cybernetics, genetic remodeling and constant physical training make sure she is a deadly foe without it.
Skills: A master of one handed combat, heavy armor, crossbows, restoration magic, alteration magic, fire based destruction magic and smite magic, essentially weaponized restoration magic. Its use against the undead and daemons is obvious but it is also potent against the living. Elspeth can create a flash of light that blinds and disorients enemies, create bolts of golden magic or beams of light similar in effect to fire spells, or pressing her hand against a foe's exposed skin to summon a burning brand of The Inquisirion. The brand causes incredible pain for its bearer and gives them an overwhelming compulsion to fall to their knees and confess their sins. If placed on armor, the brand has a less severe but more widespread effect, slowly heating the wearer until he starts to cook inside his own armor. Most either fall to the ground from heat exhaustion or madly try and rip their armor off. Both easy prey for Elspeth and her holy blade. She is also well trained in most firearms and energy weapons and is an effective rifleman, though it is not where she excels.
Family: One deceased husband and three daughters, all vampires.
Reputation: Elspeth is a member of the Inquisition, a monastic religious order created in response to the increasingly violent methods of The Hunters. It exists to protect humanity from undead, demons and other extraordinary threats before they can cause harm but also to protect humanity from itself. Many psychic and magical abilities were awakened in humanity when the Exceeds made themselves known and many humans used these powers irresponsibly. Everything from children using magic to start fires to psychics going insane and being possessed by daemons to opening portals directly to hell accompanied the emergence of the Exceeds and the Hunters explained this away as "Humanity's ascension to a greater plane." This caused almost as much damage as the Third World War and many Exceeds were blamed and killed for "twisting humans into monsters."
The number of Psykers, as these humans came to be known, grew even as the Exceeds shrank and suspicion ran rampant. People became fearful of their neighbors, superstition started to prevail over science, the term witch went back into public use. These people were becoming a very real and very serious threat. A new order was needed to hunt these mortal enemies while the Hunters fought the immortal ones. Thus The Inquisition was created.
It is an order that permeates borders, cultures and religions. Inquisitors can go anywhere and with any means and there is not a human that would dare disobey them. Humanity's best and brightest, including the most powerful and disciplined Psykers, form the order's ranks and they are funded by the most powerful of the world's churches and governments. Inquisitors have unlimited power in their hunts and will kill Hunters without remorse or hesitation, for they have failed in their task and must be purged. Many former Hunters are in the Inquisition as their monster hunting experience is invaluable but those from all walks of life may join, provided they prove themselves worthy during initiation, a long and brutal time of training, fasting, scripture education and prayer that ends with taking the Code of the Inquisition. Even Exceds may join if they prove themselves worthy. The standards are the same for all species, there is no special treatment.
The Code of the Inquisition, often referred to as simply The Code, is a long and detailed tome that covers almost any situation but at its heart it is relatively simple. Protect the weak when you can, strike at evil when you encounter it, give the enemies of mortals no quarter or mercy and let nothing stand in your way. Destroy evil by any means necessary.
This last part of the code is what The Inquisition is best known for and is the strongest reason why they are viewed with as much fear as awe. An Inquisitor will do anything and everything, even kill innocents, to complete her mission. If a vampire and his teenage victim must die to save five others, so be it. If a house must be burnt to the ground with its family still inside in order to prevent a werewolf's escape, so be it. If an entire village must be burnt to the ground with its people locked inside their homes to ensure a vampire coven's destruction or its people crucified along the main road to destroy a coven of witches, so be it.
Backstory: Elspeth spent her youth as part of a mercenary band, joining at 16. For a relatively normal farm girl from central Virginia, it was the most exciting and freeing thing she could have imagined. She spent her days killing, making love to men, doing everything to excess and experiencing all life has to offer. By the time she was 24 however, her choices caught up with her. The band was ordered by a very wealthy client to storm a small town and take everything in the town center. They were expecting weapons, money and other riches but what they found was the town's children. Half the band, including Elspeth, realized their client was a slaver and objected. The other half, including the leader, wanted to continue the job anyway. What resulted was a full on melee in which most of the band slaughtered each other. Elspeth used the distraction to free the children and lead them to safety. She and the band she was with were well known throughout the United States and had caused much destruction during the chaos the Third World War still left. but she was granted a full pardon by the president on the condition that she end her life as a mercenary and help bring her employer to justice. Considering what she had just been through, Elspeth had no trouble accepting and decided to settle near Washington D.C and rekindle her love of God. The creator she had been taught to revere as a girl and had selfishly cast side during her maiden years. She found a husband, a god hearted Pastor, and soon they settled into a life together.
Elspeth bore three beautiful daughters and was looking forward to sitting back and enjoying her matronly years with her family. For years she did but on her oldest daughter Lassa's 20th birthday, disaster struck. Lassa had taken a shine to a boy named Istvan several months back. There was no boy more handsome, more charismatic or more polite in the D.C area. He showered Lassa with gifts and was enamored by even her most mundane qualities. She was deeply in love with him and for her 20th birthday he promised her the grandest birthday party a girl could ask for. Preparations began weeks in advance, the entire neighborhood was abuzz, an entire luxury hotel in downtown D.C was rented out just for the party. There were even rumors that Istvan was going to ask Lassa to marry him. Everyone in the neighborhood wanted them to marry and everyone was excited for a wedding before the party even began. The party came and everyone was invited and it was just as wonderful as everyone expected and more. Lassa was the happiest girl on Earth and her sisters, far from being jealous, looked forward to their own birthdays, for Istvan had many friends. All just as handsome and wealthy as he and there were many who were interested in Elspeth's girls.
That night, as everyone slept peacefully, Istvan and his friends revealed their true nature. They were vampires from a nearby coven, the same that had gained America's trust by rebuilding the nation's capital. Lassa and her sisters Yvette and Ria were raped and fed upon by the vampires. The screams from the hotel were all the warning Elspeth and her husband got. She rushed to it as fast as she could, donning armor and weapons she hadn't used in years, but she was too slow. It was too late. All three of her daughters were carried off by these monsters and taken to their coven in the wilderness. Over the next few hours Police units, National Guardsmen, armed volunteers and a few brave Exceeds arrived and Elspeth led them into the vampire lair with the fury only a mother could feel. Casualties were heavy and her husband was lost in the assault but Elspeth's blade pierced Istvaan's black heart. Even so he had the last laugh. Elspeth's daughters were infected with vampirism and were slowly turning. She could not bear to kill her daughters and could provide precious little comfort over the next three days. The diseases worked its way into each of them and drove them mad with pain. They all wished for death and their mother wasn't strong enough to give it to them. When the finally turned and tasted their first feeding in the form of a cow, Elspeth felt as if her daughters were already dead. As a priestess she could not keep them with her and she could not kill her own daughters so she looked for another option. Any other option.
The Exceeds heard of her situation and and a loose confederation of angels, fallen angels and kinder vampires summoned the lot of them. Elspeth was shocked to find that these blood enemy creatures were working together but was beyond relief when they offered to take her daughters in. They would live here, isolated but safe and comfortable, where all their needs were met. After a long discussion and many tears Yvette and Ria accepted but Lassa did not. She proclaimed that she was free at last from rules and her mother's strict ways and ran off to explore her new powers. Elspeth's heart was broken but she knew exactly where path her daughter was headed down. The next day she traveled to a recruiting station in D.C and became an Inquisitor. That was five years ago and mother and daughter have grown as apart as could be possible. Elspeth a paragon of discipline and pitiless justice, determined to rid the world of evil at any cost. Lassa a hedonist and murderer, traveling all over the world in search of vice, pleasure and victims to ensnare and then kill in the most ecstatic of ways. Elspeth has not seen her other daughters since then and has given up everything except what she needs to complete her mission. She owns nothing but her armor, weapons and purpose. She has completely embraced the role of an Inquisitor. She has become a holy warrior immune to all vice and fear. Her life has real meaning for the first time ever and she can never truly repay God for such a gift. But Lassa is still out there somewhere and Elspeth knows that the killing will never stop until her own daughter is dead and buried.