Biography
Abilities/Strengths: As a Gray-Jeweled witch who began as birthright Sapphire, Karla possesses an impressive store of magical ability. Along with her Jewel strength, she also belongs to a rare trinity of castes, being a Queen, a Healer and a Black Widow. She can engage in psychic communication with other Jeweled Blood using psychic 'threads', and is able to send and receive on any such thread her own Jewel Rank or lighter. She can also pick up surface thoughts and emotions from those around her, and can pick up strong psychic impressions imprinted on an object or area. She can shield herself against physical or psychic attacks by those with equal or lesser ability, and can with more effort shield an area around her. She can also use her shields to block passage, for example through a door. She can also use her raw psychic power offensively, doing devastating damage to beings or objects. More advanced Craft grants her a form of telekinesis, allowing her to float objects; she's even been taught to float herself, allowing her to "walk on air", which is useful in reaching high places or passing through an area without leaving footprints. She can conjure witchfire, useful for providing heat or for burning something (not always intentionally; Karla should never be allowed to cook), and can conjure witchlight to provide illumination. She can pass one object through another, or pass herself through an obstacle that isn't warded against such action. Like most Blood, she has a personal pocket of extradimensional space into which she can "vanish" personal possessions, allowing her to carry more with her than general encumbrance (or convenience) would suggest. As a Queen, she has a connection with the earth that allows her to heal land that has been damaged and encourage plant life to grow. She also has the ability to form a peculiar sort of psychic bond with male Blood, part of an ingrained symbiotic relationship that is half mystical and half social. As a Healer, she can diagnose and heal many forms of injury or illness using a combination of magic and herb-lore (often literally, in the form of potions), and can weave healing webs to deal with more extensive damage than raw power would allow for. As a Black Widow, she has a natural talent with poisons, including the potential ability to neutralize toxins that make their way into her own body provided she is familiar with them. She has learned to identify and neutralize a number of toxins, or to create the same. She also has a store of personal venom that she can inject via a snake tooth sheathed beneath the nail of her right-hand ring finger. Additionally, she is skilled in illusions, and has learned to weave them to fool others' senses, and detect, though not nearly faultlessly, those woven to fool her. Finally, she is able to weave a tangled web to gain a limited form of prophetic vision.
In addition to her magical skills, Karla has been well-trained as a fighter. She's skilled in hand-to-hand combat, as well as with staves, knives, and the bladed sticks favored by Eyrien warriors, thanks to her over-zealous tutor.
Weaknesses: Karla's mouth sometimes gets her in trouble. She'll often speak before she stops to think, and runs the risk of offending and hurting others when she has no intention of doing so. This has earned her some ill-will more than once, and will almost certainly continue to do so well into the future.
Because she's loyal to those she cares about or those she's responsible for, she expects the same in return. She has trouble seeing treachery from this quarter, something that has already nearly gotten her killed once.
As with all Blood witches, Karla is vulnerable for several days a month, during her moontime. She's unable to use anything but basic Craft without causing herself severe pain, and must drain most of her psychic energy into her Jewels for storage. Being a darker-Jeweled witch, the discomfort for her is extremely severe, and likely to leave her holed up for the first day or two.
Her venom, if not used, must be milked from the sac beneath her snake tooth once every few weeks. When she does so, she suffers a strong craving for poison, needed so that the venom sac can refill. Like most Black Widows, she prefers to use her own venom and milk the tooth just before her moontime, allowing the venom to regenerate during a period of time at which she must by necessity be at rest.
While she is mostly healthy, Karla is still recovering from a debilitating poison that nearly killed her none too long ago. The healing she went through left her legs badly weakened, and though she is regaining her strength she can still be badly exhausted if she over-exerts herself. Which, being prone to stubbornness, she has an unfortunate tendency to do.
History: Karla was born to the ruling Territory Queen of Glacia. Though heredity did not determine rulership under the Blood's laws, her strength of personality, combined with her rare trio of castes and the Sapphire Jewel she was granted at her Birthright Ceremony, put her on the short list to become her mother's successor. The responsibilities of the Blood to the land, of the Queens to the Blood, and of a ruler to her people were all made clear to her from as young as she could remember. Life was not all lessons, however; she had friends as well, the closest being her cousin, Morton. Until Jaenelle came. Though she saw Jaenelle only rarely, the two Queens became fast friends.
That friendship, along with her closeness to Morton, helped anchor Karla when at the age of nine she lost her parents to a freak "accident". In the wake of the accident, Karla was given into the keeping of Hobart, a distant relative of her father's. Society around her began to change, slowly and insidiously. A male council formed to try and take the place traditionally held by the Queens. The Province Queens resisted, refusing to accept the puppet Queen the council tried to bring to power, and refusing equally to have any of their rank ascend to Territory Queen. She was perplexed by this acceptance of a stalemate until one of the Black Widows with whom she trained explained, if obliquely, that the Territory was waiting for her to come of age, that her strength, and moreover the strength she would wield once she made the Offering to the Darkness, would be able to preserve the Territory. In the meanwhile, however, the changes progressed, with young aristos being brought up to believe that females should yield to the males, that Queens and Black Widows were damaged, and this was why they sought dominance. This was contrary to the beliefs the Blood had held for generations, and terrified Karla.
She would have gone to Jaenelle for advice, but her friend had effectively vanished by that point, having been taken into the care of Saetan. Not knowing the circumstances behind the other witch's disappearance, Karla feared the worst. It was Morton who advised her to send a letter, with him, enquiring after Jaenelle's health and asking to see her. She was, perhaps, just a little more blunt in her phrasing than he'd anticipated. The answer she received was disheartening: her friend had been gravely injured, and had spent the two years of her absence utterly disconnected from the world. The offer of sanctuary that came with the answer was less so, though Karla did not take it. She felt a responsibility to her Territory, and would not flee it. She did, however, take to spending summers at the Hall once Jaenelle had recovered and was willing to take company. And thus she was there for her friend's first great warning, blacking out the sun until the Dark Council of Kaeleer agreed to allow her to continue on as Saetan's ward. The summers served to cement bonds of friendship between disparate groups initially tied together only by Jaenelle, including the Kindred and people of other closed Territories.
The peace didn't last. The first hint of all-out war was a slaughter of the unicorns of Sceval. The coven, of which Karla was a part, and the male circle that had also formed around Jaenelle went to aid the Kindred. It was too late for many, however, and the Dark Council refused to intercede, claiming the Queen whose men perpetrated the slaughter had the right to subdue the 'dangerous animals'.
In the wake of that ruling, Karla, along with the rest of the coven, made her Offering to the Darkness. She walked away with the Gray. She was also named Glacia's Territory Queen. She promptly yielded her Territory to Jaenelle, who had made her Offering and become the Queen of Ebon Askavi. The rest of the coven, Territory Queens in their own right, did the same. It served to keep peace in Kaeleer for several years.
The next breach, however, was more extreme. The armies of the Realm of Terreille, lead by two corrupt Priestesses, Dorothea and Heketah, were poised to invade. Glacia, still recovering from civil strife in the wake of the exile of Hobart and his followers, was an early target. Karla herself was poisoned by one of her courtiers, and nearly died. The healing that followed left her badly weakened, and she was taken to the Keep to recover. Her cousin, Morton, was killed at the same time as she was poisoned, the emotional blow hurting as badly as the physical one.
Jaenelle summoned her coven and the male circle to the Keep, forbidding them to wage war against Terreille. Most of them rebelled. Karla knew her friend well enough to trust, though she had no more information than anyone else, save for a vision that made her believe, unlike the rest, that Daemon Sadi, Jaenelle's consort, was not influencing her against taking action. It was only after Saetan and another member of Jaenelle's family were kidnapped that the Queen revealed to Karla and Gabrielle, another member of the coven, that while Kaeleer could not go to war with Terreille, Jaenelle - as Witch - would. It was only then that Karla was allowed to see just what Witch was. She trusted.
Though the coven and the males had been sequestered in the Keep to keep them from joining the fight, it served another purpose. While Jaenelle prepared her strike, the Kindred prepared their own efforts, so that they could keep Witch from being destroyed. For this they needed blood and memories from those closest to Jaenelle, most of whom were conveniently in one place.
Jaenelle's strike against Terreille was devastating, and the backlash was equally so. Weeks passed with no word regarding her state, save that there was still hope. Karla found herself once again waiting for her friend to return, and praying it would not take so long this time.