Casara

Character Name: Casara



Nickname(s): Cass



Race: Altmer



Sex: Female



Age: 37



Birthplace: Alinor, Summerset Isles











Height: 5'10"



Weight: 145 lbs



Eye Color: Green



Hair Color: Red/orange



Hair Style: Long and loose



Facial Hair: N/A



Skin Color: Very pale yellow



Build: Lean and athletic, heavier build than most altmer women



Distinguishing Features: Her peculiarly un-altmer appearance







Profession: Infiltrator for hire (Not assassin)



Skills: (From greatest to least) Illusion, subterfuge, alteration, sleight of hand, destruction, ranged weapons, one-handed weapons (Barely above simply proficient)



Magic:

--Illusion (Adept, is working on Invisibility and Rout)

--Alteration (Apprentice, approaching adept)

--Destruction (Apprentice)

--Highborn inborn ability



Training: Taught by Thalmor veteran mother and assorted mentors in both magical talents and infiltration, later further honed by Thalmor themselves. Also personal practice in magical pursuits and supportive combat skills. Knows recipes to a very simple slow poison and a short-term paralysis poison (not proficient in alchemy, just those two recipes).



Other Abilities: Speaks the Khajiit's native tongue



Apparel: Primary rogue outfit // Noble dress // Mage's robes // "Commoner's" clothes // Thalmor robes



Weaponry:

--Elven shortbow with ammo

--Combat dagger

--Hunting knife (not meant for fighting)

--Throwing knives

--Poisoned throwing needles

--Weak poisons



Other Equipment: Thieves' tools (lockpicks and such), bottles of grease, bedroll, 100 feet of rope, grappling hook, crowbar, hammer, backpack and other bags, food, caltrops, water skin



Companions: N/A







Affiliation: None, but is loosely associated with a few thieves' guilds.



Religious Belief: She believes in most Aedra and Daedra, including Talos interestingly, but does not worship.



Sexual Preference: Bisexual, leans heterosexual



Relationship Status: Single



Personality: Chances are good that if someone first meets Cass, she's putting on an act, which can be one of many potential personalities, almost all of which are trying to manipulate something out of someone and are quite good. If she is found out, however, she'll usually drop the facade fairly quickly and make a self-depreciating comment before acting like her usual self. In the wild, Casara is very abrasive and blunt, arrogant but more in a self-confident manner of simple pride rather than someone who thinks herself inherently superior. In fact, it's easy to discover that she in fact does not hold herself as superior in blood, rather that she has trained herself above others. When debating whether to rob someone, the only scruples she has besides inherent risk are whether the person is already struggling, and whether or not they are a priest(ess)--because she has no desire of pissing off a god. That said, she's remarkably squeamish when it comes to killing, preferring to engineer a situation that gets someone killed rather than get her hands directly dirty. She will not fight unless absolutely forced to, and has a strict flight over fight response. There is not a hint of factional loyalty to be found in this one, she finds the existence of all factions, be they political or the Thieves Guilds, absolutely idiotic and tends to look down on all of them. That said though, she won't say anything to these people and, with the exception of the Thalmor, will gladly take their money--and the Thalmor it's just because she doesn't want to get dragged back in. While she isn't the most sympathetic person beyond those who are on the bottom rung, she shows great empathy for orphans and those who have been abused by their spouse.







To quote Casara herself, "People keep saying that I should be angry at my mother for being used as a tool. Honestly, I'm just lucky my mother didn't throw me into the river." There was almost no chance at a normal life for this young woman, and this is something that she has come to accept. Her mother was a Thalmor agent by the name of Psylia, a talented wizard and once a well-respected member of the Thalmor, present throughout the bulk of the Great War and was even involved in the taking of the Imperial City. She had fame, respect, power, everything that a Thalmor could want--she was even getting to the point that she might have been able to start making bids for the upper echelon of power. But then, to quote her father (whom was actually a subordinate of hers, funnily enough), she became pregnant with "that filthy little half-breed." Cass never knew whether her conception was a willing affair or not, but regardless, right out of the womb her bright red hair and pale skin told of her mixed heritage, and what a disgrace she was to Psylia. However, for some reason, Psylia kept the babe. It's hard to say whether this was an act of love, as Casara never remembered ever hearing the words "I love you" leave her mother's mouth, but she certainly didn't hate her child either and made sure to care for her.



From day one, Cass' life was hard. While she lived in the lap of luxury, she was an enormous source of scorn for her mother, and growing up was probably the most bullied child in the neighborhood, even finding herself targeted by her own older half-brothers. Coming home from a day of playing with a black eye or bruised arms was a common occurrence for Casara. Psylia herself suffered more than a little bit, nearly losing her position and losing most of her political clout--she knew that she'd need to get creative in order to get back into the game. Fortunately, even at an early age Cass displayed remarkable physical prowess, and so her mother got onto the idea to attempt to train her ill-born daughter to become a Thalmor agent, or at least a half-way decent candidate. Surprisingly, the girl took well to magic, though not in the schools that one would have hoped. Casara was infatuated with the idea of changing how she looked and changing objects to better suit her, so she quickly took to Illusion and Alteration. Still, Psylia wasn't rigid, and soon began experimenting with a few of her contacts, training the girl in assorted methods of physical service. It didn't go well. She failed miserably in swordsmanship, hated longbows, couldn't grasp the idea of standing firm with a shield, and seemed to have issues telling certain plants apart. Just when all hope seemed lost, an old Khajiit ally, Zan'nir, offered to attempt to teach the girl how to be a thief. It was a resounding success, Casara took to the training like a fish to water and even got so good that she was able to start practicing on her brothers, taking their valuables and putting them somewhere else in the house. It was something that got her beat up on occasion, but she seemed to take impish delight in the work, because she kept doing it until she couldn't get caught or even found after the fact. She also was taught by her mother how to run businesses, showed history, and generally just manage noble affairs. The whole while she was immersed in the staples of Aldmeri and Thalmor teaching, brought up worshipping the Ten Divines of the Altmer pantheon and told how the Dominion was the future of Tamriel. Yet, one thing always stood out to Cass: she was told that the altmer were supposed to be the closest thing to perfection, meanwhile they'd been beaten in wars passed and her mother had either succumb to the wiles of or been overpowered by one of the 'lesser' beings. Furthermore, that meant that she was one of these lesser beings. It was something that was pounded into her by everyone around her, save for her mother, yet something that she wasn't certain whether to accept or defy.



When the word came that she would be examined by the Thalmor as a potential applicant, she was actually rather apathetic; she was sixteen after all. She went through with it, since both she and her mother needed something to redeem her in the eyes of the Aldmeri Dominion, and she went in with conviction, but it was conviction of the self rather than conviction of the cause. Her tests were a mixed bag, about what one would expect from her skill-set, but where she had talent she was a massive stand-out, besting all other applicants in her top two schools of magic and her skill at infiltration. Of course, she wasn't actually expecting to be let into the Thalmor, since her heritage basically flew in the face of their beliefs and without much skill in destruction magic she wouldn't make a good representative; she was just hoping that this would put her and her mother back on the map. Imagine her shock when she was accepted... kind of. She wasn't actually declared to have passed her tests, but after all was said and done a spymaster named Solinar wished to give her a closer, private examination. After careful consideration, the man decided to take her under his wing, perhaps in part thanks to her appearance, since she opened up a few unique opportunities thanks to her heritage and she had actually be an impressive applicant. After some private tutorship, she was sent off to a more formal school and train there.



The training was brutal, out of twenty acolytes, one died and ten more washed out. Both the teachers and students picked on Cass mercilessly, and while she weathered it well enough she began to loathe them all. The worst came when one of the teachers... forced himself on her under the threat that if she didn't obey then he would see her expelled. However, she endured, and in the end she not only passed all of her tests, but emerged near the top of her class. This success also helped catapult her mother back up a fair bit, not quite back up to her old heights, but at least able to hold her head up high. At the age of twenty-one, she was shipped out to begin her work, and while she didn't know this the case, she would never set foot on Summerset Isle again. For many years she was sent on missions all across Tamriel, from Black Marsh to Orsinium, but her main stomping ground was undoubtedly Skyrim, where her unique appearance and illusion magic allowed her to blend in with her nordic hosts. While in Skyrim, she met an intriguing man, a Nord by the name of Fenreld who had taken a liking to magic in spite of his family's disapproval and had begun studying it at the Winterhold College as well as abroad. While she wouldn't go so far as to say she took a romantic liking to him, he was probably the only person that she would have ever called a friend, and perhaps if things had gone further she could have seen him as more than a friend. As it was she spent most of her downtime around him, tutoring each other in magic and drinking fine wines and Black Briar mead when they could.



And then the Skyrim Civil War started. Prior to this, almost all of Casara's missions had been mostly information gathering and set-ups, nothing so overt as assassinations but occasionally setting someone up to fall to execution. That was about to change dramatically. Soon she found herself being given targets on a regular basis, and for the first time in her life she was actually forced to kill someone other than bandits, a Stormcloak officer at first, followed up with a mage who was assisting the rebels, then a man who had killed a Thalmor agent. These she could at least live with, her conscience troubled her a little, but she could manage it. She was catching more than a little flak from nords whom had known her for some time, so she could justify it with these people being xenophobic imbeciles who deserved it. But then she was told to kill Fenreld's father. She didn't outright refuse, but she basically made sure that her best friend and his family disappeared, and while they were thankful for her assistance, Fenreld seemed disgusted with her choice of loyalties. She didn't have the mindset to be upset at his feelings, but she definitely felt the loss and satisfied herself with a thought of "I was going to outlive him anyways. Easy come, easy go." However, then things started to get weird. She had been given a target of an Imperial Legate and was told to use a Stormcloak arrow and special poison in the deed. Literally, not two seconds before she was going to fire the arrow, a dragon came screeching by. To say she was shocked was an understatement, she quickly holstered her arrow, pulled down her hood, and approached the Imperials demanding to know when dragons existed in Skyrim!



Her life got rather complicated after that, constantly getting spent chasing after potential leads as to where the dragons might have came from. She was even sent on the trail of some Blades and would have been partially responsible for their capture if someone hadn't screwed the pooch on the actual deed itself. Soon after that she began hearing about someone who was apparently a 'dragonborn,' like the Septims or the other legendary figures of old. She was... skeptical to say the least--she didn't actually believe the original dragonborn existed to begin with. But then, one day she was investigating one of the supposed dragon burial sites when an enormous black dragon came screeching overhead, and at his heels was the dragonborn. Then, as she watched from the shadows, the buried dragon CAME BACK TO LIFE and began fighting the dragonborn, who promptly slew it and consumed its soul! A believer she most definitely was at that point. She began following the enigmatic figure after that, knowing that that was what the higher ups would want, since this fellow was the best lead that they'd likely ever have. Even if she was just someone who had figured out how to mimic the mythical dragonborn, she knew that this was someone who could do a lot to help the dragon menace, maybe even bring it to an end or at least help her people ease the pain while they brought order to this mad land called Skyrim. Then she received orders to kill the dragonborn.



So she's no longer in Skyrim and has been in hiding for a while now. Fortunately, her work as a spy had earned her a few contacts with various groups which she could reliably go to for work. From what she could gather, the Thalmor probably assumed she got murdered by the dragonborn for attempting to kill them, so it wasn't like she was too worried about being hunted. Still, she was cautious above all, hiding her face amongst contacts and making sure to never say her name, using a different name with each one so as to avoid giving herself away. She's settled into the job of thief and frame-job artist quite nicely, since it's mostly the same stuff, and she's been able to make her own profit rather than rely on the Thalmor to fund her. She also gets to travel wherever she likes and no longer has to take orders to kill people, which are both huge pluses in her book. She's enjoyed spending time in High Rock especially, since if there was anyone besides her kind that needed to be taken down a notch, it was the bretons. The whole while she's been honing her skills, but she's been taking it a little easier, enjoying the work and the people, traveling wherever she felt like and doing whatever she wanted. It's a much better life in her opinion, and above all she no longer has to worry about people constantly whining in her ear about doing her mama proud.