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2015-04-24
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Olivia Bianca

Summary:

So this is just my character's backstory for an Eberron campaign I'm playing in!

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I was born in the city of Eldeen, and my dads say that they saw magic in the air when I was born. Now I don’t know if they meant that literally or if it was just part of how poetical my dads always are, but if it was literal, it was a sign of things to come. I was born during a storm on the fourteenth of Therendor, 1414 YK, the day before the Spring Solstice. The day I was born, a sheep was born with three heads, and a shepherd and his friends beat it mercilessly to death out of fear. I turned out to be something that honestly a lot of people probably should fear, but luckily no one’s tried to beat me to death because of it.
I came out of the womb, the womb of my surrogate mother, with skin as pure and white as the snow, and hair so blonde it seemed to glow in certain lights, and the mark of a dragon on my back, a mark I later learned to conceal for my own safety. People in Eberron don’t take kindly to those marked by the dragons, not after the end of the War.
My dads, ashamed of their lack of a family name, and not wanting me to grow up with that shame, gave me the name Olivia Bianca Winterfield.
When I was a little girl, everyone I met loved me and I could convince people to do things for me with a single word. This was the first sign of the powers I would later start to really develop, but no one thought much of it. They just called me the girl with the silver tongue.
When I was ten, I got lost in the forest and I blacked out and my dads came looking for me, and they said that when they found me I was floating four feet off the ground and light was shining out of my fingers and toes and the tips of my hair, and they said that it was a magical anomaly, something to do with the intersections of leylines and the blockage and build up of mana flows. It was something very very technical and scientific-sounding that I still don’t really understand, but with what happened later I don’t think it really matters.
I was thirteen years old and I was in the loft with my best friend Mary, the butcher’s daughter, and she told me that she’d walked in on her moms having sex, and that they didn’t know it but she watched them, and she’d seen them do a lot of things that she wanted to try with someone someday, someone she really cared about, and then she told me that she’d been feeling things she wasn’t used to, thinking thoughts she wasn’t used to thinking, and that they were about me. She kissed me and asked me if I wanted to try some of the things she’d seen and I said yes, and I told her that honestly I’d been thinking the same things lately too, about her, and about other girls we knew. We kissed and got undressed and then she made me cum using her mouth, and then things went really really wrong. Like, lightning bolts raining down and destroying the five houses around the barn and catching the bottom level of the barn on fire, and I didn’t even realize what was happening until Mary stopped and told me that I was glowing, that my arms were covered in magical sigils that were glowing with a blue-y purple-ish light and that she heard people shouting outside and that maybe we should stop, and then we looked out the window of the loft and saw the houses in ruins and then we felt the heat from the fire downstairs and we ran out onto the roof, naked and afraid, calling for help, but no one heard us, and I was crying and hoping that someone would come and help us and I remember thinking that I wished a great wind would come and carry us down from the roof so that we’d be safe, and then as soon as I thought it, a blast of wind came from nowhere behind us and I grabbed hold of Mary’s hand as the wind lifted us into the air and carried us away from the fire and safely down to the ground, and we ran to my house and hid and she held me while I cried and cried until I fell asleep.
Then the next morning I woke up laying in my own blood, and honestly that was the absolute worst timing their ever could have been for a person to start getting her period. Mary was gone, and I still couldn’t stop thinking about what had happened the next before, and I cried some more. My dads heard me crying and ran to my room to check on me. I told them about what had happened the night before, and taller dad told me about how he’d read about something like that in a book once - I had the powers of a sorceress, a power passed down by blood, innate magic that permeated my everything and reacted massively at times of high stress or strong emotion. He said that the book he read talked about a woman who had lived several hundred years ago who had been a great hero. She had learned to control her powers through mental discipline and practice, and eventually learned to manifest extremely powerful magical effects, without the formal magical training that wizards needed to practice magic.
They sent for the daughter of their friend who lived a few towns away who knew some form of magic, and had her come to our town to try to teach me a way to control my powers. The girl was a bard named Portia, barely a year older than me. She taught me what she could, but the way she knew magic didn’t help much with learning how to use magic the way it worked for me. She taught me how to play the violin, and how to draw, excercises that she said would help to build the sort of mental discipline I needed to not hurt people. She also taught me the sort of things you’d learn in a school, because there were no schools in Eldeen. I learned history and letters and she taught me how to talk to the forest. She couldn’t teach me to use my magic, but it all helped, at least a bit. I learned how to build up mental barriers to prevent the magic from spilling out of me.
Mostly we just fucked, and then eventually we started to fall for each other.
When I was almost sixteen, Portia’s family sent for her. They said they’d saved up enough money for her to go to a proper bardic school in Sharn, and three weeks later she had to leave on the Lightning Rail, taking the long journey across the Mournlands to the City of Towers.
I don’t know if Portia cried for me, but I know I cried for her.
I started stealing from dads’ wine cabinet and drank too much, and was too sad. I started talking to every traveling salesgirl who came to Eldeen, and I was their bed companion while they were in Eldeen. I wanted to be happy, which meant I wanted Portia back, more than I’d ever wanted anything. I had my dads buy me books, books brought in from Sharn, from Argonesson, all parts of the world, books about magic so that maybe I could learn something about how to use my magic, maybe I could find a way to bring her back to me.
I tried to learn powerful magicks to change my life, magicks to teleport her to my side, or to teleport me to hers, or to change the past so that she would have never left. It’s almost surprising that I didn’t kill myself or burn out my magic entirely with the powers far beyond my control that I was trying to harness.
I was seventeen years old and very sad when a girl named Electra came to town. She wore magical armor and carried a sword and an aura of power around her, an aura of her not-to-be-fucked-with-ness. I saw her when she came into town and from first sight I knew I had to have her. It was like time stopped and nothing mattered. The moment I saw her I realized that there was no point in trying to get Portia back, because this girl was the one I was meant to be with. I didn’t even want to drink any more. I went to the inn she was staying at and found her at the bar, cleaning her sword and drinking ale. She told me she was lonely, and I told her so was I. She told me she needed someone and ten minutes later, my clothes were on her floor, I was in her bed, and her fingers were in me.
The next morning Electra told me that she felt drawn to me, in some weird she couldn’t explain, like sex was more than sex, and like she wanted something more than a one-night stand, something she didn’t usually want. I told her that I would like that, but she said it wouldn’t be possible. She was an adventurer, a wandering knight who wove magic with swordplay, a collector of ancient artifact, and sometimes a mercenary, and that she had to leave in two days, that she had to find a certain artifact in the Reaches soon and get it back to the Lightning Rail station as soon as she could. I told her I was a sorceress, that I had magic in my blood, and that I could travel with her. I lied, but only sort of. I didn’t know anything about how to control my power. We left Eldeen the next night, and I didn’t say good-bye to anyone, as caught up as I was in falling for her.
We went to a tomb a day outside of Eldeen and fought skeletons. I opened a small hole in my barriers for the first time, letting raw power seep through. Magic was easier than I thought. I willed a bolt of lightning to shoot from my hand at the skeleton and it destroyed it, and for the first time in my life I felt like I actually had the power to make my destiny my own, the power to change the world, the power to hold my own, the power to stay with Electra, the power to be happy again. After we left the tomb, the first magical tattoo appeared on my body, the arcane markings that Mary had seen back in the barn, the arcane markings that as I got stronger would become commonplace to me.
Electra and I travelled around the Reaches, hunting for ancient artifacts and fighting monsters. My magic got stronger and we fell in love. We saved up money to ride the Lightning Rail to Argonesson where we planned to find more work. Mercenary business boomed in Argonesson, and Electra and I bought a house, and then got married. Then a few months later, right after my nineteenth birthday, the money started to dry up. We talked about going to Sharn, but Electra said she had enemies there, so we sold our house and took the Lightning Rail back to the Reaches, where business was supposed to be better. We went to Eldeen and visited my dads, and I got to properly introduce them to my wife for the first time. We were poor, but I was happy, and at least we could work in the Reaches.
Then Electra’s friend who helped us find jobs disappeared and the money ran out and weeks later we found out that she’d been killed, and we wanted to go back to Argonesson but we couldn’t afford tickets for the Lightning Rail so we had to travel across the Mournlands, the land of all of your sadnesses and all of your fears. We spent months crossing the Mournlands, braving the horrors and the dangers and the things from other worlds that roamed the endless expanse.
We were almost across the Mournlands, near the river when Electra’s enemies from Sharn found us and we fought and a rift opened during the fight and a sort of orange-y purple-ish turquoise light came spewing out of the portal and it hit Electra, who was fighting two of their swordsmen at once while I was throwing spells at their wizard, and one second I saw Electra fighting the swordsmen and then I looked again and she was falling, but there wasn’t any blood, there was just a sort of yellow misty haze rising out of her not moving body, and I was afraid, more afraid than I’d ever been in my entire life. I threw out my hand at the wizard and willed the lightning to arc towards the swordsmen who were standing over Electra, staring in awe at the light, and she still wasn’t moving. The bolt hit the wizard and looped around, hitting the other two, and I felt more power than I ever had before. I started to lose control as my fear pushed more and more power out of me and the men shook and burned and died. I probably would have blown myself up if I hadn’t still been unsure if Electra was alive, and I ran to her. She wasn’t moving and I couldn’t feel a pulse or her breath and then I felt endlessly empty, because she was my world, and she was dead and I was sobbing and laying across her until I cried myself to sleep.
When I woke up I buried her, and forced myself into the city limits of Sharn, where I ended up collapsing and passing out in a pile of garbage next to what looked like some sort of factory.
That was the day I turned twenty, and the worst day of my entire life.
I woke up to find a man pissing on a wall, not five feet from where I was sleeping. He looked at me.
“You alright, lass?” he asked, “You look like someone just shot your puppy and pissed in your soup, all in the same day.”
“She’s dead,” I said, not even really realizing that the man didn’t really have any idea what I was talking about, “She’s fucking dead.”
“Who?” the man asked.
“Electra,” I said, as if it was obvious.
“Electra fuckin’ who?” the man asked, “She got another name or is she like me?”
“Winterfield,” I said, “She didn’t have another name but then we got married and she got my name.”
“I’ve got a dead wife,” the man said, “A couple of dead husbands too. How’d your girl die?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Do you want me to help you up?” the man said, extending his hand to me, “The name is Old Bill.”
“I’m Olivia,” I said, taking his hand and standing up.
“You want to go drink away the sads?” he said, “I’ve got a few coppers on me. We could make a night of it.”
“I don’t drink anymore,” I said, “I used to but then I drank way too much and almost died and I decided I wouldn’t drink anymore.”
“Are you into the menfolk too or just the girlies?” Old Bill asked.
“Just girls,” I said.
“Well I’ve got a plan,” Old Bill said, “What do you say we go to the Plateau, go to one of the fancier clubs and pretend we’re petit-bourgeouis, find you a girl to fuck your troubles away, and Old Bill’ll find hisself one of each to fuck his own troubles away.”
“That sounds actually really good,” I said.
Old Bill and I walked to the Central Plateau and snuck into a nightclub called Obsidian that looked way too fancy to be in the Lower City, I met a girl who I think was named Elise who I went home with, and I never saw Old Bill again after that night. Elise took me back to her apartment near the top of the Plateau and we fucked until I couldn’t think, which was exactly what I wanted. I woke up the next morning and Elise was gone, along with my clothes and the little bit of money I’d had with me when I got to Sharn. I’d been robbed and I barely even cared. I walked out into the street, naked and alone, and ended up wandering around for a bit until I ended up in a sky coach to the Middle City.
I got off the sky coach in front of the huge building I later found out was called Morgrave University. I sat down in the grass and watched the people. I saw a girl walking across the courtyard with her girlfriend. They stopped near the Library, kissed, and went two different ways, and I was crying so hard that I couldn’t stop.
“Are you okay?” a girl’s voice said a while later. I looked up at her. She was tall and dark-haired and looked about my age.
“Are you okay?” she said again.
“No,” I said.
“Want to come back to my dorm and talk about it?” she asked.
I nodded and got up, walking after her to her dorm. I saw the way she was looking at me as we walked. I’d seen that look so many times, from Mary, from travelling salesgirls, from Electra, from countless women in Obsidian last night. She wanted me, she wanted me so badly she could barely think. We got to her dorm room and she slammed me up against a wall, kissing me. I was tearing her clothes off and we fell into her bed. Sex was the only thing that wasn’t shitty and awful and ruined, and I wanted to have as much of it as I could, because I was good at fucking, unlike nearly everything else, and when I’m fucking I don’t have to think about how shitty and broken everything else is.
After the sex, she bought me dinner and said she had to go to class, but that she wanted me back in her room that night. I wandered to the library and ended up fucking a girl behind the shelves, then wandering back to the dorm room of the girl whose name I still didn’t know. She brought me dinner and then we fucked some more and fell asleep. The next morning she told me I had to go because her girlfriend was coming back from a camping trip in the wastes the next day. She offered me clothes but I didn’t want them. If I was going to spend the rest of my life never thinking, it would be easier naked. When I walked across the campus, no one could keep their eyes off me. I stayed at the University for almost a year, never staying with the same girl for more than a few days, going to parties and having as much sex as possible, usually multiple times a day.
I wasn’t happy, but at least I usually wasn’t sad. I usually didn’t think at all, except for in short bursts. I ended up relocating to the lower parts of the Upper City after I fucked a girl who turned out to be a minor noble at a party, and then she asked me to come home with her and stay for a few days, while her wife was out of town on business.
The Upper City was more luxurious than I was used to, even having spent a year in the dormitories of Morgrave. Shortly after I got to the Upper City, I mentioned to one of the nobles who I fucked that I played the violin, and she bought me one, far nicer than any violin I’d played before. Money didn’t seem to be any object to her, she just wanted to hear me play.
I stayed with violin girl for a month and she had me perform at upper class parties she went to, and in Upper City nobility circles, I became sort of known for my performances, and even more known for having sex with basically every girl I met. They considered it a privilege to fuck me at parties, and there was a miles long waiting list for me to visit them and stay for a while. Several women told me they were in love with me, but love wasn’t part of my repertoire. I’d tried love twice before and it was disastrous and awful both times. It wasn’t going to happen again. I’m Olivia the Great and Desired, and Olivia the Great and Desired doesn’t get attached.
Everyone always got tired of me after a week or two, or some wife or husband came back into town, so I never got comfortable in a single house, until the night where I met Alessa Flintish, that is.
I had finished playing violin and had already gone to the back room of the lady’s house where various women came in to fuck me and be fucked by me, no more than twenty or thirty minutes each. She came into the room, and the first thing I saw was her mass of red hair and her freckles. She was wearing a low-cut black shirt, tight black pants. She was holding a pair of black heels in her hand.
“I’m Alessa,” she said, sitting down on the edge of the bed.
They didn’t usually talk. All of the other women I fucked at parties just came in, did what they’d come in to do, and left. I sat up next to her.
“I’m Olivia,” I said, “But I’m guessing you already know that.”
“Yeah,” Alessa said.
I felt kind of awkward. I wasn’t used to people actually wanting to talk to me.
“Are you having fun?” I asked, awkwardly.
“Lots of fun,” she said happily, laying her head on my shoulder, “You’re really pretty.”
“Thanks you,” I said, smiling. She nuzzled my shoulder.
“Do you want to fuck now?” I asked.
“Yeah,” she said, “I don’t know, I like talking. We can fuck if you want.”
I undressed her slowly, and she kissed me, and then we fucked, but this time it wasn’t just a really short time like usual. Sex with Alessa was really really good, in an I-actually-want-to-keep-fucking-her way. I’m not used to this. We ended up having sex for a few hours and falling asleep together, and when I woke up, she was gone.
“I have a message for you,” the girl who I was staying with said the next morning, “Alessa Flintish requested your presence at her apartment. She said she would make it worth my while if I sent you to her when I’m finished with you instead of sending you out on the street. So we’re going to do that.”
She gave me the address to Alessa’s apartment and now I’ve been staying with her for the past few months, and it’s weird. She actually wants to be friends and really treats me like something more than someone to just be fucked. I mean, yes, there’s a lot of fucking, but she actually cares. I don’t love her, I don’t really think I’ll ever be capable of that again, but Alessa is sort of my friend.
Which is new.
New and really nice.