CHARACTER: "The Drowess"

Stats
Name: Nathandra Barriurd "The Doomed Lover born of the Spider's Kiss"
Race: Drow (Dark elf based in the Forgotten Realms setting, living in the Underdark)
Age: XXX
Class: Striker - Barbarian/Ranger ?
Job: Fashion Model, Monster Hunter

Weapons: Dual Bastard Swords (shotels, katanas, etc) or a Greatsword with Short Sword, always has 1 or 2 daggers on her at any given time. All weapons are adamantine.
Armor: Bikini Armor Type - Leather, Spidersilk, Adamantine Half-Plate, Cape with Pauldrons
Items: Mercenary Insignia, Keepsake Gem
Magic and Abilities: Orb of Darkness, Faeirie Fire, Minor Levitation, Fast Healing, Critical Heal
Attributes and Skills: Acute senses, Magic resistance, Psionic resistance, Grafted bones, Grafted muscles, Grafted tendons, Grafted Heart, Grafted Blood, Modified mind

Skin Color Disclaimer: She started off colored black like a typical drow character, but i have loved the purple look so much I keep using it. She's also been painted white and even blue. Her actual skin color is not the important part to keeping her in the drow theme.

Personality
     When she was modeling she had quiet and pleasant attitude for a drow commoner. She enjoyed being sultry and attractive, being lusted after and admired gave her that feeling of power and importance. As a drow she still distrusted those around her and had especial disdain for other "less handsome" races. She preferred to use the fear of being a wealthy looking drow female to cow and intimidate others rather than fighting or spells. When dealing with nobles or other drow females she prefered to be dismissive and haughty. Otherwise she was a mostly agreeable drow with a constant wry smile.

     Her encounter with the illithid broke her mind and was subsequently remade. Her current personality is still dismissive and haughty, naturally distrustful, has even greater disdain for others based on physical appearance. She smiles less and tends to be antsy for another kill. She still enjoys the same things she used to but her memories and heightened aggression are a constant distraction. She prefers to wear herself out with fighting, drinking, sex, drugs and alcohol so she can sleep as much as she can before her compulsion to kill monsters takes her into the tunnels again. She is enraged by monsters and offended by those with disfigurements or monstrous attributes. It is in slaying these creatures that she gets the most satisfaction.


Backstory
- Fashion Model
     She worked at an atelier in a drow city full of sulfur vents and hot springs. She would wear light and airy clothing and appear at bath houses and social events to advertise. The popularity of the designs among females, nobles and slavers made the atelier very successful. She was able to live a quiet and comfortable life with the clothier and his two other employees at the studio.

- Illithid Slave
     One night she was abducted at random by a drow slaver who specialized in selling thralls to a nearby mind flayer city. The illithid that bought her used her for experiments with grafts to make her a superior thrall. She was modified to become a powerful gladiator in the monster arena. The experiments and psionics broke her mind so it was remade into a more aggressive personality. She was allowed to keep more of her freedom of mind and movement than other thralls, making her more dangerous in the city but more entertaining to her master.

- Monster Hunter
     After a seismic event destroyed the illithid city and drowned much of the area she returned to her home and her previous life and job. She now does more work as a mercenary than a model, clearing tunnels and caves of monsters that were displaced by the flooding. She still lives at the atelier and models drow fashion, though now she is modeling more swimwear and armor.

Origin
     This character was created to encapsulate my love for the exotic beauty of drow, not so much their violence and malice, that comes later. She started as just a model, a body with big spikey hair and long pointy ears. That version of her was successful even inspiring others in creating drow babe characters.

     I became dissatisfied with her two dimensionality and asked for help in growing her as a character. My good friend WAGNER developed a set of images that would go on to define the character and her role as a warrior.

   
At the time his design sparked a visual connection to Gundam Sandrock Custom, which I had grown an affection for, so I used that look and feel to turn her into the exotic and flamboyant character she has become.

 
 Over the last year or so I have been collecting commissions from various skilled artists, cutting them lose to run their own designs for her appearance and the response was incredible and patterns have emerged. I am still undecided wether to continue to push her as a model, keep exploring different costumes, or to use all this to establish a concrete set of design parameters for her.

     But up until now, she had no back story, no history, no explanation beyond her initial inspiration, which was a description in a Forgotten Realms manual about under dark cities. The drowess was inspired by a description of a city full of geothermal heat, which encouraged the dwellers to wear skimpy and airy or no clothing at all. That concept itself went on to inspire a whole set of narrative creations over the years.
     When I created her name and backstory I just built the easiest and most efficient connection between  original pin-up model form and her current monster hunting (and hunted) form. I used some parameters from DnD 4e to guide her description but don't hold to it too strictly. It's not a back story I would have developed instinctively but I think it's an appropriate one. Her name as one of several options but the others I could easily found had been used, this one had not, that I could find anyway.

     As an erotic character she was always intended to appear with monsters. In researching for her back story I just kept finding more and more creatures and settings that blended themselves to the character and the entire theme.