Xerxia

Sarah Winston, also known as 'Xerxia' or just 'X' among Changeling-only crowds, is a Dancer/Soldier whose durance trained her into what basically amounts to a Rogue from Dungeons & Dragons who was forced to be the party "face".

Biography

Pre-Arcadia

Sarah was mostly just a D&D nerd because her father loves playing the game too and is also a game designer. She was heading back to her dorm from studying at college one night when she was abducted by her Keeper.

Durance

Sarah’s Keeper was also a fan of D&D, and happened to be a DM for his Arcadian LARP... Except, it wasn’t so much of a LARP as just a Live-Action adventure, where Sarah was trained to be the party face and rogue, Xerxia, which also was the name and class of her favorite character to play as. Of course, this effectively now being real life, she didn’t exactly enjoy it all too well anymore.

Over the four Earth years of her captivity, her Keeper kept setting up situations where the only way to “advance the plot” was for her to seduce some guy to get more information, or get some key, or to get her party past the guards. There were similar things with the other party members, so he was “fair” in that each party member got something thrown at them that they were good at that the others weren’t as good, but by the time Xerxia actually escaped, she was infuriated that she was forced into being infamous in her Keeper’s D&D realm as the “slutty rogue”.

Escape

While Xerxia was on watch-duty at night, she saw a gleam of light for a second. She stalked her way over to where she thought she saw the source, in order to catch whoever was there unawares, but instead she finds a glowing cave that wasn’t there before. Deciding to scout it out, she makes her way through the cave, oddly finding no random encounters. She keeps going forward, realizing that the rocks were beginning to look straighter and more refined.

At the end of the tunnel, she cracks open a door attached to a brick wall, then slips through satisfied that there was nobody there. After winding her way through the labyrinth, she finds her way to the surface level of the building, only to realize that she’s inside one of her old university’s buildings. She made it! She made it away from her crazy DM Keeper!

Life after

Sarah/Xerxia eventually found her way back to her home in Sacramento. Once there, she reunited with her father, who obviously had a few comments about her daughter’s current state of dress of wearing leather armor. He seemed to attribute her daughter’s different look to having not seen her for four years, but he also didn’t seem too worried that she’d been missing. Apparently, while she was in Arcadia, he was sent mail “from Sarah” that said that she’d be staying the summers and winters to ensure that she got done in four years with little debt. This inwardly increased Sarah/Xerxia’s anger at her Keeper, so much so that she stormed out of her old home with what she could find to identify herself as Sarah, just so she could make a living.

Sarah/Xerxia moved into her own apartment and started trying to live life the best she could, which is where she enters TwiVal.