Lythe Nain

User: [Mister Saint]
Gender: Female
Race: Lost Soul / Wraith
Age: 71, 487 years (see history)
Rank: Thief, Guildmaster of her guild

Appearance: Always wrapped in a gray peasant's dress with a hood, most of Lythe's appearance is in question to those she meets. With the exception of her hands, face, part of her neck, a few wisps of silken black hair, and her feet, she is all but transparent. A slight reddish glow burns beneath those rags, given off by the palm-sized crystal shard that maintains her existence. Her skin is deathly pale, but her lips are red and vibrant, and her violet eyes are anything but serene. Her face is very expressive, almost always giving away her mood before her voice does. She's not very tall, around 5'6'' from boot to hood, has no weight save for that of the clothes, and her voice is the eery vibrato of the dead.

Abilities: Lythe scarcely exists within the physical world at all. That being said, she is more than capable of becoming intangible and passing through physical objects. Some small degree of psychic ability is at her command as well, a necessary evil that allows her to move and touch things in the living world. Thanks to these talents, she is an exceptional thief. 
She can float to a small extent, rising up to ten feet from the floor or ground if she so desires it, but cannot fly or levitate for long periods of time.
The only real weapon at Lythe's disposal, besides her influence with the mob of course, is the wraith's touch. Setting her icy cold fingers upon a victim's neck, Lythe's spirit slowly draws vital essence away until her enemy is too feeble to fight back. The effect is extremely temporary, lasting no more than ten minutes, and Lythe is unable to kill an enemy in this manner due to her nature as a wraith.

Despite all of these strong points, Lythe is all but worthless in a fight. Due to the somewhat insubstantial nature of her body, she is unable to lift objects of any significant weight; anything more than about five pounds is beyond her psychic ability, and even that requires concentration. That said, she cannot swing a sword or even a knife to any effect, and her only weapon, a six-round repeating dart gun attached to her right wrist, is beyond her ability to reload. She has trained herself over the centuries to carry and employ it well enough, however, and is a fair shot.

As a nether being, Lythe is quite susceptible to magical prisons, banishment spells, that sort of things. Direct attack magic, such as pyromancy and the like, have no effect upon her except to ruin her cloak. She also bears an aversion to religious objects, though whether this is a personal aversion or a physical one she will never tell.

History: More than seventy thousand years ago, a young woman, once divorced and great with child, moved from her city home to a more rural area where she hoped to raise her child away from the hubbub of markets and angry people. Life was fairly good for her, and she got along well there, but in time the gardens that she raised ceased to draw enough money to keep herself and her son fed. So, it was with a heavy heart that she signed on to serve as a nurse for a mining company, the nearest work that she could find and was properly trained to do. Her son, Ander, was entrusted to the care of the rural town's midwife, and she left with the company upon an expedition to a nearby mountain.

The caverns under the mountain were vast, but unbelievably plentiful. Gemstones of the purest sort simply hung from the walls, it was a treasure trove in every sense of the word. There were so many of them that she was even allowed to keep a share of one pound of crystals per day for herself... though it was paltry compared to what the men were getting, it would be enough to see her through ten lifetimes.

As the days wore into a week Lythe began to sense that something wasn't quite right with this tunnel. It wasn't terribly far from civilization, only a good two days' walk, and was rich beyond even the stories the miners told. Why hadn't it been looted already? What was keeping the other companies away?

On the eighth day she decided to search the surrounding area for clues as to why it hadn't been done... anything at all, hooftracks, old carriages, anything that might signify bandits or beasts. She was out all day, and when she returned empty handed it was to unfortunate news. The expedition was cancelled by the company after two miners reported sightings of a corpse inside the cavern, and sounds of wailing voices coming from within. It was immediately decided that the cavern was haunted, and so the company started packing its things away for the journey home.

She hadn't picked up her pound for the day when the company departed the cave, and went back to get her share while the others hitched the carts and got ready to leave. When she stepped inside the cavern that day, though, her skin started to crawl, and her heart beat faster and faster.

"A woman...?" asked a strange, disembodied voice. She hadn't the time to step back when a spectre streamed out from the blackness, it's translucent gray hands gripping her shoulders. "At last a woman, salvation delivered me, and I die in peace... thank you for taking my place..."

After that, all was darkness.

When she came to, slightly annoyed and more than certain it had been a dream, she sat up and started for the exit of the cave, wondering if the crew had already left.
"Arenmen!" She called to one of the men, who was standing at the mouth of the cave and staring inward. "Hey!" She cried again, smiling a little, "I'm not that exciting... what are you looking at?" The man pointed, and slowly she turned to look.

A corpse, lying on the floor next to a pile of jewels.

Her corpse.

She turned to Arenmen, but he was gone. When she made it outside the team was heading over the next hill, but it didn't matter any more. They wouldn't want to be with her now, dead as she was...

The next days were spent in mourning for herself, and for her son. After she had buried herself, not an easy task as weak as she found herself to be, she travelled back to the rural town only to find that the miners had kept her share of the jewels for themselves. Furious, she assaulted their homes, attacking them as best she could night after night, demanding that the jewels be passed to her son and his midwife. Her desperate cries could be heard even afterward for months, long after the child and his new mother moved away.

Since, she researched her condition as best she could, hoping for a way out... either to live again, or to be destroyed. She found a strange red stone throbbing inside of her space, and when she experiementally touched it one night, her mind was flooded with images, memories... an experiment gone wrong, a time sorcerer gone mad... an assistant caught in the disaster, her body shorn away, but her spirit caught in the river of time; bound between the living world and the dead. Seven times she saw the jewel being passed from woman to woman, the last to herself from the spectre in the cavern.

All that was left was to live. And so she has, as best she can, for seventy millenia.

Personality: Though she can be bitter, Lythe is generally a playful, energetic person. Her play is sometimes mean-spirited, and she has precious little regard for the embarassment of others, though. She is intense to an extent, but laid back in her way... never working too hard on any one idea at any given time, but always driven by her ambition. She likes children and mothers, cats, dogs, and trees, though not in any particular order. She is defiant to a fault, never allowing herself to be subjugated, and is absolutely fearless with the exception of religion.

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