[BIO] Sybil Zelm [WIP]

[Zhimii]

Name: Sybil Zelm

Age: 25 at death

Race: Undead Human

Gender: Female

Class: Cleric with Alchemic prowess


Languages: Common when alive, Gutterspeak, some Orcish

Faction: None currently

Personality: Timid, but assertive when necessary. She’s never the first one through the door. She never makes direct eye contact, instead preferring to focus on a stray lock of hair or interesting design on a brooch. When she sets a goal for herself, she achieves her goal no matter what; this causes many to think she is stubborn, but she considers herself determined.

Likes/Dislikes: Sybil enjoys nature in all its splendor and tragedy and likes to learn new things. She dislikes pain or discomfort of any sort and seeks to help those experiencing one or the other.

Appearance: Sybil stands at 5’7” with a very slight build. Her hair is an inky black and her human eyes were a dark grey. She was re-animated very soon after her death and so shows almost no signs of decay. Her lips retain the barest curve of a smile. Her skin, pale in life, has taken on the slightest blue tint in undeath. She has picked up some sewing skills and makes herself robes from time to time, though she hopes one day to be able to wear the black robes and hood of the Royal Apothecary Society

Strengths/Weaknesses: Sybil’s strengths lie in her determined nature and loyalty to those she cares for. She has a very broad knowledge of the healing powers of herbs, too. Her weaknesses lie in her timid nature which may cause her thoughts and ideas to be passed over or go completely unheard.

History: As a young girl, Sybil Zelm lived with her mother—Levita—and her father—Delaney—in a small cottage on the outskirts of Goldshire. Growing up, her father wasn’t around much. He was the adventurer type. He was always out helping to open portals and slaying minions of evil and sometimes just collecting relics. When he did return home, he’d bring Sybil small trinkets from his adventures. Once it was a robe from a previously wealthy elf’s abandoned wardrobe and another time it was a simple silver ring with a green gem as its only decoration. Mostly, though, the souvenirs were pretty rocks or an interesting herb from between the pages of her father’s journal. While Delaney traveled around Azeroth, Levita taught her daughter the arts of herbalism and potion making. The two would go herb picking in the mornings and study their properties in the evenings.

Sybil was quite naturally adept at the alchemic arts. She delightfully mixed potions that could restore a mage’s mana and heal small wounds. When she became old enough, she set up a little shop not far from her family’s property and sold her potions to passing travelers.
During a particularly harsh winter, Levita fell ill. No potion Sybil made seemed to help. To make matters worse, Delaney hadn’t returned home since last spring. Sybil reached out to everyone her father had spoken of while retelling his adventures. Many letters went unanswered, and those who replied hadn’t seen him for months, at least, and had no idea his whereabouts. Her heart sank lower and lower with each passing day. Her mother’s condition seemed to be worsening, and her father was likely lost in the Twisting Nether or worse.

On an exasperated whim, Sybil decided to visit the alchemists in Stormwind to see if their formal training could help her mother.
It couldn’t.

As she began her walk home, Sybil saw a scruffy mage advertising “free drinks at the Blue Recluse!” Sybil had never had a drink before, but today seemed like a good day to try one. She entered the dimly lit establishment and chose a seat at the bar. She looked around and saw two men speaking in hushed tones. Straining to hear them, she signaled the barkeep and ordered “Whatever you have on your day off.” Shifting her focus back to the two men at the end of the bar she could just barely make out some of their conversation.
“Tirisfal Glades… circle of… and sprite…”
“What… mushrooms?”
“Never seen…”
That was all Sybil needed to hear. She took a sip of her drink—some kind of dark ale—and decided that it was a taste she could acquire later. She left a tip for the barkeep and headed home. Upon arrival, Sybil was delighted to see that her mother was awake. She shared her good news, but left out the words “Tirisfal Glades” as not to worry her mother. Smiling, Sybil walked outside and called for the family’s gryphon. Alighting in the saddle, she told the bird, “We’re going North!”

The young girl had never been farther North than Ironforge the Dwarven capital, but she had seen a map or two of Azeroth and knew that Tirisfal was farther North than that. She flew over the Wetlands, wishing she had the time to stop and pick every herb. Flying over the Hillsbrad Foothills gave her the chills; she could see the strange green towers the Forsaken had constructed, and the crater left behind by Dalaran looked even bigger than she had imagined. Over the eerie Silverpine Forest, she lead the gryphon higher into the sky. She could see the Horde caravans below as well as some very suspicious looking bears. Beyond the treeline, she could see the Ruins of Lordaeron, a once proud human castle now overrun by Forsaken. She knew their banshee queen, Sylvanas, lurked deep under the city itself.

Steering the gyphon West, Sybil decided to take some refuge in a group of mountain tops hoping that the height and difficult terrain would give her some safety. She set the gryphon down next to a lake that had formed between some of the mountain’s peaks. “It’s so quiet here,” she noticed. “And peaceful.” Sybil began to cautiously explore her surroundings. She heard rustling in a nearby bush and held her breath. It was only a fawn. A diseased, half decayed fawn; he seemed harmless enough. She began to explore with less caution. She picked herbs where she found them and was even brave enough to try a bright, red berry. “Bitter. Good for headaches,” she thought, chewing.

And then she saw a clearing in the trees. She ftlt herself drawn to it. First, she noticed the sprite darters flitting about. She noticed a glow and her heart leapt to her throat. “The mushroom circle!” She had found it. Surely these would hold the answer to curing her mother. As she approached, the darters drew close to the circle and began to hum. The fungi began to glow more fiercely. The creatures in the area stopped to watch. The mountain forest grew intensely still except for the wings and songs of the darters. Sybil found that she was unable to move; though she was weeping. As suddenly as it began, the strange ritueal was over. The darters darted away, and the critters resumed their normal activities.

Sybil was suddenly alone with the circle of glowing mushrooms. Reaching out, she touched one fothe glowing fungi. She cried out softly in surprise as her fingers began to tingle. Looking at her hand, she saw it glow blue for an instant. Shaking her head, she pulled one of the mushrooms from the ground. Its stalk dripped a liquid that could have been blood if that notion weren’t so absurd. Was it that absurd, though? Sybil cried out in surprise, this time louder, as her hand began to tingle again. But this time, the tingling glow didn’t stop at her hand; this time it continued up her arm and spread from her shoulder to the rest of her body. She tried to take a step, but couldn’t. She felt her heart beat slow and weaken noticing it keeping time with the pulsing of the fungi in the circle. Sybil knelt, shedding a tear that seemed to be made of the same liquid that the stalk had leaked. Soon, her heart beat became too weak to sustain her.

For some hours, the forest was still.

Just as the sprite darters began to reappear, a Forsaken cleric flew into the clearing. He found meditation during the strange ritual to be much more enlightening. He noticed a kneeling figure and chuckled to himself thinking it must be some newly risen adventurer lost in the mountains—hey, it was easy to do! Getting lost was how he had found this clearing in the first place. As he approached the kneeling figure, he knew something was wrong. The figure—a girl, he thought—was too still. Deathly still. He shuffled around to the front of the supposed girl. He put a bony hand to her cheek and realized that she’d only been dead for a few hours. He knew he could never take her back to her family, but he could welcome her into a new one…
The cleric whistled for his bat and picked up the slightly blue human. I bet she falls all over the place with legs like this… he thought to himself while strapping her to the bat. “To the graves at Deathknell, animal,” he told the bat. “I will meet you there.” He cast a levitation spell on himself at the top of a peak and floated gently down towards Brill. Once there, he chartered a bat from the handler and flew to meet his own bat at the girl at Deathknell. Surely one of the necromancers there could raise the girl. They referred to him as The Undertaker and he was the man in charge of raising and recruiting the dead to the Forsaken cause. The cleric laid the human girl on a stone table and said “She’s simply too pretty to be dead forever.”
The Undertaker grinned. “It’s good you got her here so soon, then. She won’t show the usual signs of decay for many years.” He shooed the cleric away and set to work. “When she’s ready, she will find you.”

Later, Sybil opened her eyes once more. Her joints ached with cold from the stone table. She knew something was wrong. Her heart wasn’t beating. Her whole body was cold. Her once shiny hair had gone dull. Where even am I? She wondered. The last thing she could remember was pulling a mushroom from the ground. “And then I was here,” she rasped. Her voice, once clear and sweet, sounded like a rusting gate. Sybil sat up slowly, pulling her knees to her chest and wrapping her arms around them. She signed a sigh that sounded like the wind through autumn leaves and swung her legs over the side of the table. She took one shaky step, and then another, soon learning the shuffling walk familiar to so many Undead before her. Sybil shuffled out of the crypt and past a graveyard and up to the door of a small house. Hesitantly, she knocked thrice and waited.
“Yes?” a cleric said, opening the door.

“My name is…” she paused. Why don’t I know this? My name is... “Sybil.”
“You’re the girl from the circle on the mountain. I’ve been expecting you. Please, come in.”
Sybil looked behind her, to see if anyone would even know where she had gone or some from, and saw no one. She nodded and followed the cleric inside. The two sat at a table in front of a fire they couldn’t feel and she told him everything she could remember about herself and her life. Sybil spoke about her father and his adventures, about her mother, about her alchemic prowess, and finally about her mother’s sickness.
“So that’s what brought you all the way out here. So far from home,” the cleric said.
“Yes. I’d still like to see if I’m right. I have to go back home. Back to my mother.”
The cleric shook his head. “I’m afraid it’s not so simple, Sybil. You will be most unwelcome outside of this region. Your former neighbors would kill you before they recognized you.” He put his bony hand over hers in a gesture of comfort. “Don’t worry. Tomorrow we’ll go to the Undercity and I’ll introduce you to someone who can help hone your alchemical skills. Maybe you’ll even be able to join their Apothecary Society one day!”
Sybil sighed like a chilly breeze and tried to look happy. The two talked for a while longer. She learned his name was Clarence and he had been a schoolteacher in his human life. His family had been one of those to fall during the first plague outbreak, but he had never reconnected with them. Clarence now spent his days at the Bulwark or in Silverpine healing the wounds of the Forsaken troops.
As they retired to sleep, or “resting our bones” as Clarence called it, Sybil found herself feeling slightly better about her predicament. She knew she would go home one day. Maybe she’d even see her father again.

- - - Updated - - -

This is my first RP character. Ever. So be gentle, thanks. I have a little more of her history written down somewhere, but I figured I'd stop here in case there's something wrong.

[creedhunter]

Hello Zhimii and welcome to the RP forums!!

I think for a first time you have done well for your 1st RP Character, her history is very interesting, You have done a good job.