Krysa
The Harrow Home has stood for hundreds of years in the remote northern lands of Winter. A school and orphanage, it has taken in children from all over the northern territories. No one knows by what criteria it chooses it's students, only that it's caretakers show up without warning, offering an opportunity to their young wards. Very few refuse.
Presided over by an ancient sect known as the Blood of Giltine, The Harrow Home has long worked in service of the House of Winter, cultivating children to serve Winter with very unique abilities. Over the course of their upbringing they are subjected to a series of brutal rituals. The Rite of Drowning. The Rite of Flame. The Rite of Blades. Killed and resurrected over and over, each rite imbued a resistance to death from that element. Each time, they revive less of this world, less prone to it's laws and fates. They become drained of the natural energies all thing in this world possess. Spells cast on them react strangely, frequently failing to have any effect. Witches often fail to notice their presence. They become something else, something other. And these qualities have their uses.
Along with an an in-depth traditional education, their curriculum involves espionage, sabotage, poison, and constant drilling of one of the world's deadliest combat forms, believed to have been honed and distilled down over thousands of years, along the most comprehensive training in the weaknesses of witches and other supernatural creatures. Those who survive to graduation rank among the world's most dangerous and efficient killers, although very few even know of their existence.
Krysa has no memory of her time before The Harrow Home. None of the adepts do. Her parents were likely killed early on by the war. She has no memory of her former name, and only knows the one she was given there. In certain regional dialects, Krysa means rat, and the name came from her being very small, and proving to be extremely hard to kill. She excelled in her time at Harrow Home, a model student, but there was a bit of rebelliousness that the caretakers could never seem to quite extinguish, and that often put her at odds with her fellow students. And while she willingly embraced every rite, succumbed to every brutal death, a part of her still maintained a sense of self most of the others lost along the way.
She was 14 when the Blight reached the doors of Harrow Home. As everyone was evacuated, plans had already been in place to continue the work at another location, far west of Winter's Capital. But in the chaos, Krysa found herself separated from the rest of the group, and for the first time, questioned returning. Her newfound freedom was intoxicating, and in it she found a voracious hunger for all the life experiences she had been missing out on. She made her way south, and by the time she reached Equinox, she was committed to making up for all the lost time she had spent at the school. Her path crossed with Delia's shortly after her arrival, and the two became fast friends, with Delia making her first introductions to the city's underworld. The skills she had honed at The Harrow Home proved highly valuable, violence a currency she had in endless supply. She lived with absolute abandon, her whole life a knife's edge of danger and overindulgence.
It's been 4 years since she arrived in Equinox. Delia is the first friend Krysa had ever made, and she is fiercely loyal to her, and by extension those close to her. She is technically Delia's roommate, although she is rarely there, occasionally crashing, and keeping a few things at the loft, but it's mostly an excuse just to help out on Delia's rent. She's well liked by their circle of friends, although each one of them can name more than one occasion where she's made them nervous by taking something too far. Lately, her lifestyle oh chaos and excess has been gaining her some unwanted attention. And The Harrow House hasn't forgotten about her, and they don't like losing what's theirs.
Presided over by an ancient sect known as the Blood of Giltine, The Harrow Home has long worked in service of the House of Winter, cultivating children to serve Winter with very unique abilities. Over the course of their upbringing they are subjected to a series of brutal rituals. The Rite of Drowning. The Rite of Flame. The Rite of Blades. Killed and resurrected over and over, each rite imbued a resistance to death from that element. Each time, they revive less of this world, less prone to it's laws and fates. They become drained of the natural energies all thing in this world possess. Spells cast on them react strangely, frequently failing to have any effect. Witches often fail to notice their presence. They become something else, something other. And these qualities have their uses.
Along with an an in-depth traditional education, their curriculum involves espionage, sabotage, poison, and constant drilling of one of the world's deadliest combat forms, believed to have been honed and distilled down over thousands of years, along the most comprehensive training in the weaknesses of witches and other supernatural creatures. Those who survive to graduation rank among the world's most dangerous and efficient killers, although very few even know of their existence.
Krysa has no memory of her time before The Harrow Home. None of the adepts do. Her parents were likely killed early on by the war. She has no memory of her former name, and only knows the one she was given there. In certain regional dialects, Krysa means rat, and the name came from her being very small, and proving to be extremely hard to kill. She excelled in her time at Harrow Home, a model student, but there was a bit of rebelliousness that the caretakers could never seem to quite extinguish, and that often put her at odds with her fellow students. And while she willingly embraced every rite, succumbed to every brutal death, a part of her still maintained a sense of self most of the others lost along the way.
She was 14 when the Blight reached the doors of Harrow Home. As everyone was evacuated, plans had already been in place to continue the work at another location, far west of Winter's Capital. But in the chaos, Krysa found herself separated from the rest of the group, and for the first time, questioned returning. Her newfound freedom was intoxicating, and in it she found a voracious hunger for all the life experiences she had been missing out on. She made her way south, and by the time she reached Equinox, she was committed to making up for all the lost time she had spent at the school. Her path crossed with Delia's shortly after her arrival, and the two became fast friends, with Delia making her first introductions to the city's underworld. The skills she had honed at The Harrow Home proved highly valuable, violence a currency she had in endless supply. She lived with absolute abandon, her whole life a knife's edge of danger and overindulgence.
It's been 4 years since she arrived in Equinox. Delia is the first friend Krysa had ever made, and she is fiercely loyal to her, and by extension those close to her. She is technically Delia's roommate, although she is rarely there, occasionally crashing, and keeping a few things at the loft, but it's mostly an excuse just to help out on Delia's rent. She's well liked by their circle of friends, although each one of them can name more than one occasion where she's made them nervous by taking something too far. Lately, her lifestyle oh chaos and excess has been gaining her some unwanted attention. And The Harrow House hasn't forgotten about her, and they don't like losing what's theirs.