Sabryn - XERES LIVE!

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Basic Information

Full Name

Sabryn Maelthra

Nickname

"The Queen's Shadow"

Race (Grade)

Drow (E)

Class

Bodyguard

Height

5'11"

Birthday

Frostnight 28, 1157

Age

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Birthsign

The Twilight Phoenix

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Bloodline Ability

🔮 Unknown

This Bloodline ability has not yet been unveiled to you.

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Physical Description

Sabryn in Goodberry's colors, at the palace doors

Appearance

Sabryn is tall for a drow and built narrow, with a dancer's long lines and a dancer's posture, and she holds herself as if she might be asked to move at any moment. Her skin is a smooth charcoal grey, her eyes a pale lilac, and her white hair is worked into a single thick braid that falls over one shoulder nearly to her hip, with a few loose strands left to frame her face. Her features are fine and sharp: high cheekbones, a narrow jaw, long pointed ears, and a faint, closed-lipped smile that rarely gets any wider. She wears fitted dark leathers with a high collar, buckled close at the chest, waist, and thighs, and long bracers tooled with gold filigree. Goodberry's crest, the green dragon curled around three red berries beneath a golden star, is worked onto her breast and her left pauldron. Two long, curved knives with engraved silver hilts ride low on her hips, one on each side, and one of her hands is usually resting near one of them.

Unique Characteristics

Sabryn fights in the blade-dance, the old drow style of two curved knives that never stop moving, and she walks the same way she fights: quietly, evenly, and without a wasted step. When she does not want to be seen, she is very hard to see at all. She came to Goodberry in plain grey leathers with the house marks cut away, and the crest she wears now is stitched over the very places where they used to be. On long watches she eats apples, one slow bite at a time, and she is unfailingly polite to the servants, whose names she had learned by the end of her first week.

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Personality & Temperament

Positive Traits

Quiet, precise, and faintly amused by most things
Sees the threat in a room before she sees the people
Moves unseen when she chooses, and seen when it helps
Always polite to the servants, and knows them by name
Would put herself between the Queen and any blade

Challenging Traits

Treats every stranger as a threat until proven otherwise
Will not talk about the night her house fell
Sleeps little and lightly, and wakes with a blade in hand
Holds herself to a standard nobody else could meet
Her humor is so dry that most people miss it entirely

Your Majesty. I've guarded worse people for less reason. I'd like to guard a good one for once.

Sabryn, of no house. A house of one isn't a house, Majesty. It's only someone who remembers one.

Don't thank me for the knives you saw, Majesty. Thank me for the ones you didn't.

Likes

A room with one door and a wall at her back
Goodberry apples, eaten slowly on a long watch
Sunlight, which she is still getting used to
Servants who notice things and say so
The quiet hour before the household wakes

Dislikes

Crowds she cannot see the edges of
Gifts that arrive without a name on them
The undead, and the smell of grave dirt
Being thanked in public
Anyone who stands behind the Queen without a reason

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Background & History

House Maelthra

Sabryn was born on Frostnight 28, 1157, in the underdark, into House Maelthra, a small and very old drow house with a single trade. Its daughters were taught the blade-dance almost as soon as they could walk, and were hired out as guards and duelists to the greater houses, who paid well for blades that did not belong to them. Sabryn was the best of her generation, and before her first century was out she had guarded nobles who would not have trusted their own sons with the job.

The Scourge

When the undead scourge rose through the underdark, House Maelthra did what it had always done and stood in front of other people. Its blades fought in the rearguard of the long retreat, and one by one they did not come back. When it was over, Sabryn was the last of them. She came up out of the dark with the survivors who followed Melcrayte to the surface, and she has not been back down since.

Of No House

In Sillumi, Sabryn cut the house marks from her leathers, began signing her name as "Sabryn, of no house," and hired out her blades on the roads, guarding caravans and the occasional merchant who could afford the best. A house of one, she says, is not a house. For years she guarded whoever paid, and she was very good at it, and very few of them were people she would have chosen.

The Road South

Late in the summer of 1307, Sabryn came south to Goodberry guarding a merchant's wagons. The merchant went home. Sabryn stayed, curious, she says, to see what a city looks like when a drow sits on its throne. She was still there a few weeks later when word went round that Ghazmara, the Queen's bodyguard of many years, was looking for her own replacement.

Ghazmara's Trials

Ghazmara would not hand the Queen to just anyone. She put every candidate through the same three trials in the same order, combat, stealth, and threat recognition, and Sabryn came through all three as the strongest candidate in the yard. Before she decided, Queen Arties questioned her inside a Zone of Truth and came away trusting her. The post was Sabryn's.

The Queen's Shadow

Since Harvestide 1307, Sabryn has been at Arties's side in Goodberry's colors, close enough to touch and usually far enough that no one notices her. Within days of taking the post, it was Sabryn who discovered traces of tetra-slug slime, visible only by moonlight, that led the royal family to the marks on their children's doors. On the nights the Queen sits up late, Sabryn sits up with her.

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Goals & Aspirations

Keep the Queen Alive

It is the job, and Sabryn takes it more seriously than anything else in her life: nothing reaches Arties that has not gone through her first. In her first month she rearranged the estate's furniture twice and the guards' rotations once, and she is not finished.

A Post Worth Having

Sabryn spent a long time guarding people she did not respect, for money. She would like, for once, to guard someone who deserves it, and to be good enough at it that nobody ever has to know how close a thing came.

Remember Maelthra

She has no wish to rebuild House Maelthra; a house needs more than one blade. But she would like its name remembered, and now and then she says it aloud, quietly, so that somebody does.

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Development

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Current Status & Relationships

Residence

Goodberry

Role

Bodyguard

Professional

Arties Geodegazer-Shadowbane

Employer

Ghazmara Bloodtide

Predecessor

ATTENTION!

Sabryn is an E-grade drow blade-dancer, a little under 150 years old, and the Queen's bodyguard. She came out of Ghazmara's trials as the strongest candidate, and she fights with two curved knives in a style built never to stop moving. When she does not want to be seen, assume you will not see her, and assume she is somewhere near the Queen. Approach Arties openly, with your hands where Sabryn can see them, and do not reach for anything in the Queen's direction without saying what it is first. She is polite, patient, and courteous to everyone, and she will stay exactly that polite while she is stopping you.