OOC - Letha's Backstory
Nov. 26th, 2017 11:52 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
burntbridgesLetha's world is a fictional country equivalent to England (called Myrce), where magic is widely available and accepted. The one type of magic that is rarely accepted is, unsurprisingly, necromancy. Thus, the Regis clan of necromancers isolated themselves in the town of Thornwell, where they had very little contact with the outside world. For hundreds of years they have avoiding nearly all other humans, only sending traders to major cities for supplies and otherwise being left alone. It has instilled a fear of the unknown in the Regis clan members, as well as a strong sense of superiority over the outside world. The Regis's dress and live like royalty, but only because no one wants to bother disputing with them. Their land is infertile and lacking any profitable features, rendering it an expensive and pointless endeavor to try and reclaim it from the Regis clan. And, as every Regis family member is trained to some extent in necromancy, a war with them would be unwise.
While necromancy is a learned magic, the Regis family believes that their line is especially adept at learning it. This, among other reasons that have been forgotten over time has led to an obsession with blood purity that leads them to only accept members who are born of two married cousins. Anyone born with blood outside of the family recieves the surname of Thornwell as a punishment, both to them and any Regis they might marry in an attempt to appease the family.
Letha was born in a respected part of the family, the youngest of four and only daughter to a baker named Attius Regis and his wife Vincentia. She was very close with her brothers, especially her middle brother Nathaniel who she considered her best friend in the world. When she wasn't following him around like a shadow she would play with another girl her age named Mary, or lay down in the shallow cemeteries and chatter with long-dead folks.
While he was a baker by trade, Letha's father had the heart of an artist and devoted much of his time and money to painting. He loved birds and would often let Letha sit on his lap while he sketched using bird skeletons as references. Artistry, however, was deeply frowned upon by the family as it was seen to have no intrinsic value. Her mother especially detested it, and in a fit of manic rage one day she set the room ablaze and nearly destroyed the house along with it. The room was rebuilt as a drawing room, and Letha never saw art supplies in their home again.
After this, Letha's mother seemed to put all of her effort into controlling Letha and breaking up the bond she had with her father. Her father reacted by spoiling Letha openly and vengefully. This led Letha to manipulate her mother at a young age by demanding things loudly so as to cause a scene, or claim that her father would get it for her, and therefore her mother might not really like her. Already strained by the work of shepherding four children and her declining mental health, her mother became openly resentful of her.
At age twelve, Letha attempted to follow her brother Nathaniel's footsteps and serve in the army of warriors that protected Thornwell from the dangers in the woods that surrounded the town. However, when the time came to prove herself, she didn't make the cut. While her skill with necromancy was exquisite, she was cocky and entitled even to the point of pitching a fit when she was turned away. Instead of learning to be a swordswoman, Letha was pushed into tutoring to become a housewife so as to improve her manners.
Over the next four years, Letha went through nineteen tutors, one of whom only lasted for forty minutes. Seeing as the tutors were hired from outside of Thornwell and carefully screened before entry, Letha had become a very unique liability for the family as a whole - particularly when she started threatening tutors with violence. Her schooling was cut short prematurely and she would instead be locked in her room with books, but this proved to be her preferred method of learning and her mother had trouble getting her to leave her room after the sessions ended.
When she was sixteen, Nathaniel died in service to the warrior army. Officially he was killed in battle, but as no one had had any good reason to go up against the army Letha didn't see how this was possible. After questioning and examining evidence failed, she resorted to grave-robbing in order to check the body for marks and was discovered by the Elder Council. Her investigations were ruled as entirely unladylike, and as punishment for snooping she was married off to her cousin so that they would both be pushed to the side by the rest of the family. This cousin happened to be the family pariah, a banker's son named Aristeo.
While they had grown up in close enough quarters, Letha and Aristeo hated each other. They took every opportunity to bicker and fight, and would stay in the same room only if they could avoid eye contact and stay at least a foot away from each other. But as fate would have it, this started to ebb. Slowly they began trusting each other, and after a year they realized that they trusted each other more than anyone else they knew. Enough to conceive a child together, who Letha fretted over the health and safety of constantly. When she wasn't fretting over her unborn child, she was preening with pride, refusing to leave the house in case anything happened and only communicating with the outside world through the Netherworld.
One of these such visits proved to be a fatal blunder; while communing with the dead for pregnancy tips, Letha left a candle unattended next to her comatose body, and the candle fell over. Within minutes the house was in flames, and she didn't know what had happened until her husband found her later in the afterlife and explained the situation. She wasn't dead, but she had no body to return to, and she was doomed to rot in a purgatory state along with her unborn daughter. For the next five months she struggled to remain in existence, slowly losing parts of herself each day as she and her husband could do nothing but lament and watch her deteriorate.
While necromancy is a learned magic, the Regis family believes that their line is especially adept at learning it. This, among other reasons that have been forgotten over time has led to an obsession with blood purity that leads them to only accept members who are born of two married cousins. Anyone born with blood outside of the family recieves the surname of Thornwell as a punishment, both to them and any Regis they might marry in an attempt to appease the family.
Letha was born in a respected part of the family, the youngest of four and only daughter to a baker named Attius Regis and his wife Vincentia. She was very close with her brothers, especially her middle brother Nathaniel who she considered her best friend in the world. When she wasn't following him around like a shadow she would play with another girl her age named Mary, or lay down in the shallow cemeteries and chatter with long-dead folks.
While he was a baker by trade, Letha's father had the heart of an artist and devoted much of his time and money to painting. He loved birds and would often let Letha sit on his lap while he sketched using bird skeletons as references. Artistry, however, was deeply frowned upon by the family as it was seen to have no intrinsic value. Her mother especially detested it, and in a fit of manic rage one day she set the room ablaze and nearly destroyed the house along with it. The room was rebuilt as a drawing room, and Letha never saw art supplies in their home again.
After this, Letha's mother seemed to put all of her effort into controlling Letha and breaking up the bond she had with her father. Her father reacted by spoiling Letha openly and vengefully. This led Letha to manipulate her mother at a young age by demanding things loudly so as to cause a scene, or claim that her father would get it for her, and therefore her mother might not really like her. Already strained by the work of shepherding four children and her declining mental health, her mother became openly resentful of her.
At age twelve, Letha attempted to follow her brother Nathaniel's footsteps and serve in the army of warriors that protected Thornwell from the dangers in the woods that surrounded the town. However, when the time came to prove herself, she didn't make the cut. While her skill with necromancy was exquisite, she was cocky and entitled even to the point of pitching a fit when she was turned away. Instead of learning to be a swordswoman, Letha was pushed into tutoring to become a housewife so as to improve her manners.
Over the next four years, Letha went through nineteen tutors, one of whom only lasted for forty minutes. Seeing as the tutors were hired from outside of Thornwell and carefully screened before entry, Letha had become a very unique liability for the family as a whole - particularly when she started threatening tutors with violence. Her schooling was cut short prematurely and she would instead be locked in her room with books, but this proved to be her preferred method of learning and her mother had trouble getting her to leave her room after the sessions ended.
When she was sixteen, Nathaniel died in service to the warrior army. Officially he was killed in battle, but as no one had had any good reason to go up against the army Letha didn't see how this was possible. After questioning and examining evidence failed, she resorted to grave-robbing in order to check the body for marks and was discovered by the Elder Council. Her investigations were ruled as entirely unladylike, and as punishment for snooping she was married off to her cousin so that they would both be pushed to the side by the rest of the family. This cousin happened to be the family pariah, a banker's son named Aristeo.
While they had grown up in close enough quarters, Letha and Aristeo hated each other. They took every opportunity to bicker and fight, and would stay in the same room only if they could avoid eye contact and stay at least a foot away from each other. But as fate would have it, this started to ebb. Slowly they began trusting each other, and after a year they realized that they trusted each other more than anyone else they knew. Enough to conceive a child together, who Letha fretted over the health and safety of constantly. When she wasn't fretting over her unborn child, she was preening with pride, refusing to leave the house in case anything happened and only communicating with the outside world through the Netherworld.
One of these such visits proved to be a fatal blunder; while communing with the dead for pregnancy tips, Letha left a candle unattended next to her comatose body, and the candle fell over. Within minutes the house was in flames, and she didn't know what had happened until her husband found her later in the afterlife and explained the situation. She wasn't dead, but she had no body to return to, and she was doomed to rot in a purgatory state along with her unborn daughter. For the next five months she struggled to remain in existence, slowly losing parts of herself each day as she and her husband could do nothing but lament and watch her deteriorate.
