ANSTASS THE HARMONIOUS






Personality

---

By Day

Anstass is a very gentle soul and a pious follow of Sanctus. She would go out of her way to help anyone because she considers herself gifted with gentleness and empathy. Despite the tragedy in her past and the loss of everyone she'd known and loved, she bears no hatred, only sadness. In truth, Anstass went from a kindly priestess to a husk of a person, drifting here and there and having no real substance to hold onto. She fears joining other worshipers of Sanctus because, frankly, Bashar isn't her home land.

By Night

The woman who emerges by night is a far cry from the woman who rules by day, and, in her opinion, she is far less bland. She sings racy songs in taverns and bestows upon the listeners moods of generosity toward herself. She is not above prostitution, even enjoying the torment it gives her daylight parasite, as she calls that half of herself. Her greatest desire is to overcome that side of herself and be the ruler of her body both day and the night. She would lie if it helped her reach her ends, feign tears or whatever she needs to. Often, she enjoys playing the pious virgin that her other half truly is, if only to mess with followers of Sanctus. She far prefers Pathica.


History

---

Anstass was born to Ana Quinn, a young girl who had the unfortunate story of a suitor who abandoned her rather than wed her when he found out about the baby. Ana hid her pregnancy by traveling to the towers of the southern Songweavers. The priests and priestesses there took her in and kept her for several months. When the baby was born, the mother gave her over to the pious servants who dedicated her life to Sanctus. Ana and Anstass would never meet, with her mother going on and trying to reintegrate into something like normalcy in her daily life.

As a long child, Anstass was eager to please her overseers. She was one of a few children who was able to infuse magic into her humming and singing, so she and the others were segregated from the usual classes. By age 10, Anstass was proficient at working calm and soothing emotions into her songs, so that all who heard felt themselves becoming peaceful.

Anstass continued her studies under the followers of Sanctus, and she grew adept at both singing and magic. Her first real trial came at age 16, when a Dracon – overwhelmed with the powerful urges from his first change – attacked the towers. Anstass and other younger Songweavers were fleeing when they were cut off by the dragon. Anstass started singing peaceful and calm emotions to him, and soon the other youngling Songweavers were doing the same. They put the beast to sleep, who shrank down into his Dracon form. They were able to see him off back to his clan without the loss of life. From that moment on, Anstass was referred to as Anstass the Harmonious.

The rest of her days were filled with study, training, and prayer. At age 20, Anstass took her vows: chastity, gentleness, and to uphold the ideals of Sanctus so long as she lived. By this time, she could infuse any emotion she wanted into music, preferring those of joy and peace. Anstass the Harmonious was inducted into the choirs of Songweavers, where she lived peacefully and piously until age 24.

It should be said that none of the Songweavers knew why they were being attacked, but nonetheless found themselves facing the King of Bashar's battlemages. The priests were capable of hitting high notes that made them bleed from the ears, even killing some of them. Anstass had never felt anything like it.

Anstass fled, as many Songweavers did. The ground was heaving under them, fire had filled the sky, and Songweavers were being slaughtered left and right. By the time Anstass made it deeper into Lo-Debar, to the fields of the lions, she was a dazed refugee with no one by her side. She found a merchant heading toward Bashar and begged him for passage. He took pity on her and allowed her to ride in his cart. News came in the next few weeks that all the Songweavers of the south had been killed off and the area had become a no man's land. Those in Bashar were far removed from the Songweavers, so it was just a bit of gossip to pass along. To Anstass, it was the destruction of everything she'd ever known.

She heard a man playing the lute in a tavern one day, causing the people to dance. She noticed something else, too---he was infusing his music with generosity, and in doing so, getting substantial tips. She sang with him, then, and he played in amazement. She was able to infuse joy and happiness into the songs, and the two of them together did very well. His name was Ticheros, and he was a bard who'd never had formal training. She never told him of her past as a Songweaver and he never asked, perhaps assuming she'd escaped a bad husband or something of the sort. He flirted with her, but gave up the pursuit. The two of them played and sang together for 3 more years until they had a brief falling out because of Ticheros' gambling problems. He was an extremely luck gambler and a skilled card player, but Anstass was tired of having to flee.

Over time, Anstass started having blackouts. It always came on in the evening and she'd wake without memory. Anstass hadn't known it, but her proximity to the magic that destroyed her people had also poisoned her. She was becoming one of the Divided, cursed to become someone else at night from dusk til dawn. At present, she understands that she becomes someone else at night, and tends to try to lock herself away until daybreak.


Roleplay Sample

---

The gravelly sound of the large male's voice reached her, though muffled a bit by the ringing in her ears. She wasn't concerned with the contents of the speak so much as she was the damage to her body. Once restored, she could worry about escape later. She had to take this, like so many things, moment to moment. Anstass instinctively drew into a sitting position with her legs folded, bowing her head forward to touch her forehead to her knees. She sang a tune in whispers, closing her eyes and mending her broken body.

The severed stringy muscle within her wounds reached for each other like snakes curiously slithering out of their holes. The process was far from pleasurable in the sensation. It was a pain like insects were crawling within the wounds, but when the flesh grew over it, only the imagination of pain remained. She didn't flinch, only focused her mind on the words:

”My health be restored
Tho my blood was poured
Whole be my bone
Strong like stone”

Her breath caught when she felt one of her ribs shifting inside of her, finding its proper place and smoothly healing the break.

”Heal my veins
Torn in twain
The wounds I feel
Be now healed”


The already black and purple bruises on her arms and back started to drain of color, the blood seeping back into the broken capillaries and the veins themselves sealing back together. Her eyes watered from the stinging, but she continued her whispered song until it was over. She felt the crate shift, saw the side sliding away, and before she could react, she was rolled onto the floor. Her cloak and hood had been left on her, and so the blood and punctures in the fabric were visible. It lay over her like a shroud, and she struggled to push herself up into a seated position.

She was healed well enough, gaping wounds now gone or reduced to scabbed scratches, her bruises drained back into her body.

She dared peek upward and saw the most horrifying man she could have imagined. He was big and lumbering with thick cords of muscle visible in his neck. She was truly frightened by him, so much so that she couldn't take her eyes away from him—as if he might take her very soul. It was a small comfort that her spirit would be commended to the skies if he did kill her, but she was far from hoping that today would be that day.