PLAYED BY: Kelly Timmons
CHARACTER NAME: Yrsa Gloomhorn
GENDER: Female
PREFERRED PRONOUN(S): She/Her
CLASS: Mage
AGE: 35
RACE: Ulven
HAIR: Bushy Brunette/Blonde, sometimes braided, but it is usually covered with a hood.
EYES: Green
OCCUPATION: Character lives as a Hermit with Nomadic tendencies because of her upbringing and past, but she spends her time collecting herbs and mushrooms for cooking, potions, tinctures, etc.
KNOWN SKILLS: Gathering skills, hunting, fishing, cooking, some stealth, identifying plants, mushrooms, and fauna, survival techniques, sorcery, some sword and dagger
BIRTHPLACE: Due to her upbringing, it is really unclear as to where she exactly originated, but it is speculated she either came from Clan Spiritclaw or Clan Goldenfield.
APPEARANCE: She is usually wearing a skull mask and robes, her face shrouded in mystery. She usually is adorned in natural colors to try and blend in with her surroundings. Sometimes she wears ornaments such as jewelry.
NOTABLE TRAITS: Her large skull mask is the most notable, as she seldom, if ever, takes it off. She also is eccentric and tends to have odd personality quirks, being socially awkward and blunt.
RELATIONSHIPS: She has mainly kept to herself with her “Mother”, Gudrun Gloomhorn, who was later slain by a band of Mordok. She is all on her own when she is found.
RUMORS: Many rumors, but mainly speculation of where she came from and what she looks like under her mask. Some joke that she wasn’t born at all but came straight out of the ground or sprouted from a dead log like a mushroom.
BIO / BACKGROUND HISTORY: As a child, Yrsa and her mother were banished from their clan when Yrsa was barely toddling. Her mother, Gudrun, could be attributed for Yrsa’s lack of socialization or even her lack of knowledge for her race or her clan. She was given a very sheltered life where they relied solely on the land and on simple farming out of prying eyes. Gudrun would occasionally leave Yrsa on her own, but generally speaking, Gudrun was a very invasive character who did not allow Yrsa to wander far.
As a child, Yrsa began to learn magic under her mother’s helpful hands, but she was not allowed to stray. It had to be practical and it had to help Gudrun in some particular way. Her childhood drifted more into the form of servanthood than childhood, stealing her precious early years from her. As she hit her teenage years, she and Gudrun finally settled between the forest and mountains near the Great Wolf Hackles. The home was practically underground amongst the roots deep in the forests. It could easily be mistaken for an old boulder or a clump of moss. This gave them a feeling of safety as they learned to stay quiet most nights and burn only when everything was clear.
Yrsa began to question things as she approached adulthood when she spied a traveling caravan moving through the pass and noted the families and how tight-knit they were. She found the behavior to be incredibly strange and inquired about it with her mother, who scorned her and told her to never approach people again. However, it left Yrsa pondering for many years to come about people and she would eventually make it a habit of sneaking out while her mother slept to spy on sleeping camps and caravans to watch in curiosity. Due to her ability to blend in with her surroundings, she was never caught. Until one fateful day where she spied a troop of Mordok and watched on with great intrigue. Her foot then slipped and revealed her hiding place, and she retreated back into the forest. The Mordok scrambled up the mountains to follow her. She pulled out every trick in the book for hiding, but she could not seem to throw off their pursuit. It ended poorly when she retreated into her home and roused Gudrun, warning her of the oncoming danger. Gudrun felt skeptical, but crept out to spy.
Unfortunately, this was Gudrun’s demise, as she was snatched up and brutally eliminated in front of Yrsa, who cowered in hiding. The Mordok then pillaged the house, wrenching Yrsa up from her hiding place and attacking her without mercy. After a harsh scramble, she managed to escape with a few lucky spells. However, she did have a few scars to prove it including one that was rumored to sprawl across her face.
Yrsa, broken and feeling divided, fled through the mountain pass completely alone and using her survival instincts. She traveled this way for many moons until she found herself in what she believed to be a safe haven. She carefully scoped out the area and waited for any traffic throughout the coming fortnight. Thankfully, the only thing to come ambling through the area were small game and birds. She proceeded to build another home quite similar to her’s and Gudrun’s that was very well hidden and allowed her to stay comfortable through all of the seasons. However, as the year progressed, she began to feel lonely. She began to talk to herself under her breath, and even made a scarecrow that she nicknamed “Mother” that she set up in the corner made of hay and rope.
As she stretched out her cave-like home, she happened upon many mushrooms, one of them was rumored to have attached to her and slowly chipped away at her sanity.
Just as she felt herself slipping into the realm of insanity, she was interrupted from her ramblings by a shroud of voices. The voices pulled her curiosity and she watched as her beloved “safe haven” was now being rudely interrupted by caravans that decided to make camp there. She contemplated scaring them, attacking them, stealing from them, but she remained silent in the shadows and watched on with curiosity, fear, anger, but then vast interest. A few of them sparked her interest and she began to copy their mannerisms in the shadows. She listened as a few bards sang around the campfire and felt unusually lulled. What was this peculiar sound?
When the caravan left in the morning, she felt herself thirsty for more. She decided to pack her most precious belongings and follow north in search of more people where she would observe from a distance. This would eventually lead her into the Guardians of the Wall.
—
She comes upon them when she once again hears the skillful sounds of an instrument ringing out from their camp. As she observes the group throughout the days, she is out of earshot and decides she must take it upon herself to nickname the members. She hurriedly rushed under her breath, “Remember what Mother Gudrun would say. She said ‘if you name them, you’ll get attached!'” But she decides to go against Gudrun’s judgement and gave affectionate nicknames for every single member. However, she may have gotten carried away when she created stories and conversations for each of them, even recreating hay dolls and communicating back and forth with them as though they were speaking back to her.
She watched over them for months, creating her own strange reality of what she believed the group was enduring, who was in a relationship with who, and carefully caring for her hay dolls. Finally, as she listened on from the shadows one night to the sound of the bards, she realized the group was melancholy. She realized that one of the members of their group, “Bubbles”, had suddenly disappeared and watched as they all lamented. She pondered where Bubbles may have gone and believed that Bubbles was jealous of a love triangle she had fabricated in her mind. As she observed the camp settling down for the night, the bard set down his lute and she found herself creeping from the shadows to take it. Once it was safely in her grasp, she slipped back into the darkness and what she believed was out of earshot. She began to pluck away at it, grumble to herself, and then pulled out the doll of the bard that she had named “Plucky”. She threw Plucky a disgruntled stare and said, “How do you make the sing-sing sound on this thing!?” The sound of her plucking roused the sleeping group, who sheepishly looked about for the missing lute. A few sent out to investigate and managed to sneak up on Yrsa, who was in the middle of plucking. When they called out a fearful, “hello?”, Yrsa froze and slowly turned her masked face toward them in horror.
She called out their nicknames, dropped the lute upon the ground, and scrambled away without much words. The group felt confused, but intrigued, as they returned feeling various emotions from concerned, threatened, to intrigued. Who was this terrifying stranger? And why did she call them such strange names?
From the shadows, Yrsa did not give up, but she did keep a good distance for some time. She realized that her new “friends” were on the lookout for her as well as for Bubbles, and she did not want to be found. At least, not yet. However, yet again, when the bards began to play, it lured her from her hiding place. This time the group sat upright at the campfire as the haggard figure with a skull mask came out of the forest. Some stood defensively, some sat there waiting for her to speak, and finally, she shrewdly growled, “Plucky stopped playing. Why did Plucky stop playing?” She then sat herself atop of a log and waited patiently. The group still sat in stunned silence, unsure of what to do with this new stranger.
Over the next few days, she did not seem to leave and did not meet direct conversations or questions very well. Anything asking what was her name, where she was from, or what her race could be was met with very simple replies. They managed to discover her name was Yrsa, that she would not take off her mask, and that she was very strange in her interactions. They could not pinpoint her race, nor did they quite understand where her nicknames for them came from, but they began to welcome her as a strange new member of their group regardless. However, she would disappear to supposedly rest before returning to the group once more. It would seem that the one thing that got her to speak was the sound of music. It would seem a great deal of trust would be needed to gain closeness with her, and the Guardians of the Wall seemed all too eager.