Mhairi Ankaa

Once Upon A Time...

...there was a Family.

A Family of nomads and wanders, who's ancient roots were steeped with wonder and mysticism. A branch sprung upon this tree, held face to scattered traditions, while ensuring their path in the ever modernizing world.

Mother to daughter, father to son, wives taken and husbands wed, each were named after a star in the sky. Including Cassiopeia, daughter to Ankaa, niece to Orion. A natural thief and determined protect to her family. Like her mother before her, and her mother before her none believed in the words spoken, traditions overseen, and tokens handed down to the generation next.

Mother to daughter, a old worn deck of handmade Tarot cards.

For laughs, Cassie took the cards, and just like all the women before her, snuck out that night and tried to tell her friends their fortunes, unlike all the women before her, when Cassie tried to read the cards, she saw nothing but horror and tragedy awaiting them. A sickening feeling grew and she tried to make it not so. Of course it was her actions that set her friends down their disastrous paths.

It wasn't Cassie's talent for misfortune that caught the Gentry's attention, it was the attention another payed to her name. The Sickle's Sun had his eye on Cassiopeia for a long time. Long enough that his wife wondered why he had not simply taken his new fascination and display it for all to see. The argument between The Sickle's Sun and his wife grew turbulent, violent, shaking their very Realm, until. They parted. The Wife, his ex, and his Ruination.

Time did not heal the ex wife's wounds. She let her hate fester, for she was a women scorned. The Ruination of the Sickle's Sun, in her plans for vengeance, took the star named girl her ex-husband had a eye on and forged her anew in the heart of a dying star. Making her like and so very unalike what the Sickle's Sun envisioned for Cassiopeia.

What followed after was a grueling regiment to teach the newborn star to be seductive but deadly, hiding coy smiles behind deceptive paper fans. Once she was satisfied, the Ruination sent her to her ex-husband's court to sow discord among his gleaming throng.

The denizen of the Sickle's Sun's gleaming court discovered that it was the gift his ex-wife gave to him that was the cause of the troubles they'd been facing. In deference to their Lord they did not kill the star, but sent her away.

She wasn't stupid enough to go back to the Ruination, announcing her failure, instead she walked the paths using the stars as her guide. Her kin, now both in name and nature lead her out of Faerie.

When she found her way home she realized that twenty years had passed. Her Fetch was married, and a mother. She had a cat and a dog that got along and it was all wrapped up in a white picket fence. With a rage born of the fires she was forged in, Cassie plotted her Fetch's death. She succeeds, but the elation that she envisioned upon seeing the imposer dead was drowned by the thought that there was two kids without a mom, and a husband without a wife because of her.

It was a wound that would never heal, needed to be away from the grief she caused she sought out her Uncle. He knew how to get her papers and there was twenty years gone from her face, if she wore a wig and glasses he wouldn't recognize her.

Expect he did.

Made of quicksilver and shadows, her Uncle Orion was a Mirrorskin Whisperwisp with snow on his shoulders. If that wasn't a punch in the gut his words after the realization that her Uncle was Lost, were. Her mother is missing. He told her. Missing like they used to be. Her coffin is filled with buttons, pine cones, and other bits and bobs. He checked, paranoid he admitted, he always saw something 'off' about Ankaa, since his return. He even knew someone, who knew someone who could get her a new identity. As she promised to herself, to save her mother, she decided to take her mother's first name as her new last name. Her uncle told her to go to Sacramento, there was a Freehold, maybe the people there could help her.

Once she got to the River City Mhairi knew that nothing would be simple, and with the new friends she'd gain and how quickly the Freehold became home she knew she couldn't, wouldn't hunt for her mom when the Freehold needed her!

Appearance

Mask

A slim girl, with raven black hair and grey-blue eyes. She likes wearing silver nail polish.

Mien

Wyrd ● - ●● Her skin is like captured moonlight. Her eyes are lit with a fell green fire. Her hair is as black as a starless sky. Her nails have a quicksilver coating, but they always seem to drip, burning up before they can spatter on the ground.
Wyrd ●●● - ? The Wyrd evolves, and so does she, her skin still like moonlight captured, and quicksilver still spatters upon the ground from a finger twitch, but now motes of fell fire escape her eyes. Her once starless locks, now contain a galaxy, tinkling lights forming constellations which mimic the sky, changing as the Seasons turn.

Mantle

Mantle ● Her mantle surrounds her like a brisk autumn breeze, contrasting sharply with her ever burning self.
Mantle ●● As her mantle grew her gentle, if brisk breeze sharpens until all traces of its once gentle presence are replaced by the sharp and slightly menacing currents central to Autumn's depths.
Mantle ●●● The winds have died down. Leaving only the scent of decaying leaves to curl around Autumn's Queen, as rain tries valiantly to drench the Wisp and fails against the might of her inner fire, leaving it to spatter the ground around her.
Mantle ●●●● As the winds died down so has the rains. The leaves are real now, smelling as they ever had, though they are not the leaves of Autumn's bounty, but of wilting mirror sharp lead hanging, like a stole around her shoulders.
Mantle ●●●●● Fear made manifest, Autumn's Regalia embraces the Wisp, as if she is Dread's most blessed daughter.

Dread Queen Ascendant

A diadem of carved ash wood appears, the slim branches delicately encircle her head, spider-spun threads loop and twist from one branch to the next. Hanging from these threads are wilting leaves of lead, forever suspended in the moment of their fall. Curling into themselves, the wilting edges are tarnished, but their center is polished mirror bright. Whenever they find someone's refection, they reflect not the image presented to them, but the observers deepest fears, though thankfully only visible to them. Dancing betwixt it all, are motes of Mhairi's own fell-fire, flickering into forgotten runes and ancient sigils whenever the wisp's windblown mantle rustles her hair, or the threads themselves. As time crawls ever onward, sacrifices are made and rituals are observed. During one such Ritual Ash covered Leaves of Bronze have been added. Artfully scattered along the looping lines of spun spider-thread, among the Wilted Mirror-Bright Leaves of Lead.

Hedgespun

• War Fans
  • Mask: A typical handheld fan, which collapses for easy storage. It's mostly black but decorated by a scattering of Autumn leaves. Tough puzzlingly when the edge of the fans catch the light it looks like you might cut yourself upon it if you're not careful.
  • Mien: The war fans keep their mundane shape only the material is exchanged with the fantastical. Created from the Leaves who's death came with Autumn's first frost and woven together by the light of the Sickle Moon's Cheshire grin. When one first glimpses these delicate looking frosted leaves and moon-woven ribs they might miss the wickedly sharp ice hardened edge.

• Necklace
  • Mask: A tight fitting choker, resting against her throat is a ribbon, expertly dyed to look like flame. Embroidered upon that ribbon are small silver flames.
  • Mien: A circle of flame, woven together from motes of fell-flame tears, and flickering never dying embers.

Tokens

• Bronze Leaf Keychain
  • Mien: The leaf’s edges curl like ancient parchment with gossamer fine words of power scrawled across its surface in dark blood that flows with haste.

Scenes

Bibliography