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Old 08-21-2003, 02:20 AM   #152
piosenniel
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Elora's character - Naiore

NAME: Naiore

AGE: 6,450 (at the commencement of the 4th Age)

RACE: Noldor

GENDER: Female

WEAPONS:
Naiore possess a range of weapons. She carries a curved long sword of Noldorin make and numerous daggers. She is at all times in possession of a long silken cord she uses as her garrote. She owns a range of torture devices, some made for her and some she invented herself over the years. Most dangerous of all is her ability to sense and manipulate the emotional states of others. She is expert in breaking apart the spirit and souls of others, inflicting pain to an infinite degree.

Naiore has adapted the typical amour of her people to suit her needs. She blends a light, finely wrought chain mail with leather. Her amour is as black as the unlit night.

APPEARANCE: Naiore is fair by Noldorin standards. She is said to be reminiscent of Galadriel in he beauty. Her hair is golden and hangs to her waist. Her eyes are a starlit silvery grey, wide, clear and large. She is slender and deceptively strong for all of her fragile beauty. Her voice is velvety and her skin is without flaw. Naiore usually wears a serene expression that belies the intensity of what passes through her mind.

Naiore favors opulent clothing, silks, velvets and brocades. She often wears jewelry, and was an incongruous figure as she passed through the halls of Barad Dur in her finery. She has exquisite taste and prefers luxuriant indulgences. Even her amour and leather are impeccable. Despite her work, Naiore is fastidious and has not great like of blood and gore. When not in amour, Naiore resembles the highly born Elven noble woman she is.

However, her inky amour is known throughout the southern lands and is etched on the minds of survivors. It is that, combined with her serene expression and emerald eyes that most remember no matter how much they crave to forget.

PERSONALITY/STRENGTHS/WEAKNESSES:
Naiore is a complex blend of some of the strongest abilities and worst flaws in her kindred. She is a self-possessed and highly disciplined character. Ambitious and driven, she has contempt for weakness such as she sees it. She is manipulative and exploits her appearance whenever possible. Naiore has a formidable intellect, and is calculating. Her curiosity and need for knowledge are what rules her. She has a fascination for the baser darker and wilder aspect of life.

Naiore has no time for crudeness or other indecency. Indeed, she can be the soul of decorum and sophisticated grace until such time as she is murdering you. Naiore is a loner, rarely forming any lasting relationships. She avoids openly lying where ever possible, but uses deception readily. Naiore is tenacious. She refuses to admit defeat.

She has considerable contempt for rulers and nobles, and an implacable hatred of Numenorian and Eldar alike. A sensualist, Naiore’s weakness is for finer things in life and beauty. She believes herself superior to most around her. Any compassion or capacity to love is hidden deeply. Naiore is an Elf who believes all is lost and henceforth she has nothing to loose. The only limits she observes are those she sets herself.

HISTORY:
Naiore was born 12 S.A in Belfalas during the time where her people started to rise to dominance. Elven cities were being founded across the land and it was a time of great hope. She was born into a noble family, her father and mother both holding a place at Gil-Galad’s court. Naiore was also born with the ability to sense the emotions of those around her. This ability grew as she did. A serious child, often lost in her own world, she was doted upon by both parents. Naiore was both fascinated and slightly repulsed by other people. She sought few friends and had little regard for the opinions of others.

As she grew older, her mother began to wonder about her daughter. They tried to induce Naiore to participate in the society in which she had been born. Whilst she was not openly rebellious, she found ingenious ways to avoid or discourage such ventures. As her gift grew, Naiore noticed a discrepancy between the façade of civilization and the inner emotions of those within it. She became fascinated with impulses that many refused to acknowledge existed within themselves. The forbidden nature of her inquiry seduced her further. When her forays became too confronting, Naiore was prohibited from further investigation.

It was then that Naiore realized that she was somehow wayward and different. She became more isolated, and developed contempt for the apparent foolishness of her parents and kin. Meanwhile, she continued to explore the more fundamental aspects of personality such as fear, anger, pain, greed and lust. Her pride grew, and she discovered she had a certain power from this knowledge. In particular, pain attracted her. It was so prevalent in those who had survived the First Age.

During this time of secret forbidden knowledge, Naiore met and became betrothed to Menecin, another who was different. War was brewing over the sea, and Naiore could sense a power growing. It tempted her. Proud and contemptuous of her own kindred, Naiore sensed that many of her forbidden questions could be asked and mayhap answered by this new power. Then she would have new knowledge and with that so much more. The alternative was a stultifying life as wife to a wandering, itinerant bard whose insights into the emotional jungle were limited to songs and poems. Or perhaps she could beg leave to serve as Galadriel’s hand maiden. It was not enough.

She waited as war loomed larger and larger. She became distant, for she had already left. Her ambitions always traveled far ahead of her. On a stormy night, Naiore abandoned Belfalas in the year 3429. When Sauron returns to Middle-earth, Naiore is waiting for him. As Menecin and her people sought her, Naiore found herself in a new place. She was both welcomed and mistrusted. It amused Sauron greatly to have an Elf in service with orcs. She was tested, time and again, and grew in stature within Mordor.

Her special talents were encouraged and grown. She became adept at interrogation and torture. She was able to plan and execute terror campaigns that could not be left to orcs nor even entrusted to Wraiths. Naiore sought one answer in particular. She would often ask victims in the throes of their last moments, “From where does fear spawn?” The answer never came, but her hunger for it did not abate. Sauron used her throughout Khand and Harad, to inspire obedience and terror in the lands under his yoke. She worked alone, and proved gifted. Her discipline, ability and determination made her a horrific weapon and she ranged widely.

Naiore entered Rohan for the first time in the year 3430 S.A and there began to bring Mordor’s insidious terror to the north. She preyed for long years upon the Men of that land. Rumor of her spread, but it was not until the Battle of Dagorlad that Naiore openly emerged. She fought with Sauron’s hosts against the Last Alliance, Elven fair with foul shadow at her back. She slew Elf and Man alike, in the grip of terrible desperation. Her kindred saw her and recoiled in horror at what she had become.

At the defeat of Sauron, Naiore fled south with those that survived. Barad-dur was under siege. She plunged into Khand and Harad, where her terror still kept the Men there compliant, and waited. She could sense Sauron still and she had nowhere else to go. Naiore slipped into Dol Guldur over the long years, and once again aided Sauron in her addictive search for power and knowledge. She made one detour that was not at Sauron’s bidding, and it is rumored that she did this more than once.

Naiore encountered Menecin. She all but destroyed him through deception, cruelty, manipulation and suffering. She thought him dead when she left him again in the year 2091 T.A. When she discovered she was pregnant, she believed it was Menecin’s revenge from beyond the grave. She kept all knowledge of her pregnancy to herself. Her competitors in Mordor would use it against her. Elven fundamental beliefs prevented her from ridding herself of the child. Naiore went back to Harad, much to the wrath and chagrin of Sauron, and bore Vanwe. She sensed her child’s gifts could perhaps rival her own. Naiore made an arrangement with the remote village. They were to keep Vanwe there, in perpetuity, or suffer her full ferocity. That arranged, Naiore returned to Mordor and Sauron. Vanwe’s existence was secret.

The fall of Sauron brought Naiore’s career to a sudden end. Gone was her stature and position. Gone was the protection Mordor offered her. Gone also was the reason she lived. She had no answers still, and the prospects of ever finding them seemed remote. Naiore again went to ground, this time utterly alone. Her people were leaving, yet she had no place with them. Her foes were hunting for her, and her usual safe haunts were no longer safe. Bereft of ambition, and having sacrificed everything for knowledge she did not have, Naiore is faced with a crisis. She had been waiting for the day when Sauron would have dominion over the lands. Revenge on those who had taken her future from her galvanized her into action. As she set about, Naiore learnt of a land called the Shire, citizens of which had engineered this ignominious defeat. Once again, she sets herself a northward course, choosing that over accepting defeat. The Shire would be made to suffer more than Khand, Harad and Rohan ever had.

_____________________________________________


SEE REWORKED POST FOR NAIORE - PAGE 2

Elora's post for Naiore

The morning shadows proved stubborn despite the rising of the sun in her summer glory. Naiore made the most of what little providence seemed availabled in their existance. She remained still and at relative ease in the embrace of a shadow cast by the ancient bole of a fig tree. It loomed massive over her, surrounded by the adjoining woods that carpeted the land around the inn she was watching.

Some may account it a pleasant place. For Naiore, it was a land of failure and frustration, a wretched place and she had little love for the tree or anything else that lived within it's bounds. She was difficult to see, folded as she was in morning darkness. Her inky leathers bore the stains of hard travel. Mud daubed her boots, all but obscuring the delicate silver tracing a vine up her boots. Her state and presence gave rise to a great many questions, the answers to which Naiore did not greatly care to entertain as she cast a simmering glance towards the Forsaken Inn.

Rangers, cursed scions of Numenor, had pushed her hard through the wilderness. She had managed to elude them, her skills tested as they had not been in the past 12 years. Still, although she was for the moment safe, she was far from pleased. It grated to be sitting beneath a shedding tree encrusted with mud. She should, right at this moment, be running in free abandon further to the north. She should, as she sat in darkness gathering her wits and thoughts, be bringing a new tide and era to a land that had escaped the harsher ravanges of war.

Naiore flicked a braid back over her shoulder, it's golden weight added to the other seven that hung down her back. Instead, she had been cheated of even the small prize of the Shire. Rangers and her own people conspired to hem her in and bring her down like an animal. They would take, bound hand and foot, to face justice as the ignorant liked to call it. There was no justice. Those who sought it were fools, nothing more. If anything, two ages spent in the turmoil of Middle-earth had taught her that.

She who had held such power in countless lands, mastered terror and was mistress of the hounds of war and hell, sat in a cold wood. Even had she tried for the Havens, she could not penetrate the bristling ring set in place by Elessar around the Shire. His name curdled in her mouth. Twelve years spent running for this!

Naiore raised starlit grey eyes to consider the Inn once more. Her face was impassive, as often it was, carved elven beauty remarkable even amongst her own kin. Her face had beheld horror untold, she had wrought it with her own hands, for reasons few could understand. Now she sat waiting for an incipient snare to spring, dirty and desperate but not without her pride. She wore that like armour. It had gotten her through before this day.

The Inn was quiet in the early morning. Her gaze shifted to the stables, where it was said her daughter was. Naiore could see no sign of Vanwe just yet, but her sources were adamant. They well knew the price their lies would earn them. It was a difficult death at the hands of a Ravenner, merciless at the pinnicle of Sauron's Order of terror and suffering.

Somewhere was a Ranger too, one she knew. She had expected to find Kaldir skulking in the forest. Such acts were not beneath him as they were her. The presence of both Kaldir and Vanwe was not a coincidence that could be ignored. She should have killed the whelp when she was born, unwanted by-blow that Vanwe was. The idea that some long buried maternal instinct prevented her was laughable should the consequences of her restraint not be so perilous.

Vanwe should be well south, in the desolate Haradwaithe, kept with the goats and the barbarians she had left her with. The fact that she was not, had left and survived the journey north and eluded capture told Naiore much. The fact that Vanwe was known to be tracing her told her more. She would be a woman now, mature and no longer a helpless babe. Perhaps she could use Kaldir to put an end to her and her threat. She could see to Kaldir after that.

But the fallen Ranger would need to be pushed, if only to see past his immediate mercenary loss in Vanwe's death. It remained to be seen if she could achieve that. He had proved difficult to break, those years ago. Kaldir was a rare challenge, one she had enjoyed then as she hoped to soon now.

Naiore waited out the morning. Soon they would rise and begin their days. Vanwe would appear. She worked in the stables, assisting a man who was no real threat for the likes of Naiore. Kill Vanwe and Kaldir, attempt again to push north without a tail, and see if bloodshed could not find the Shire afterall. She was without any other purpose, and she would pursue this with a breathtakingly singular will that proved stronger than steel.

The Free Peoples could not hope to contend with her. Sauron himself had never truly conquered all of her heart and soul. Menecin neither. In the face of all she had endured and perpetrated throughout the wars of the Second and Third Age, rising time and again, ceaselessly vigilant in her quest for knowledge that had consumed her life, achieving the death of her daughter and Kaldir was nothing but a light aside.

Perhaps, Naiore mollified herself, one of them held what she looked for. Perhaps they could tell her from where fear spawned. It was unlikely, but possible. She held to that, for it made the ignomy of her failure in recent months to reach the Shire, her fugitive life since Sauron's fall lesser. How they would have laughed to see her reduced to such a state, provided they escaped her with the facility to laugh intact within their bodies and souls. She could endure a rough night and hard travel if it meant the achievement of all she had endured and suffered for.

Whilst her riddle of fear circled in her head, Naiore watched from the trees still garbed in morning shadow. She needed but the slightest opportunity to begin, and she had tired of idle waiting and ceasless flight.

[ September 03, 2003: Message edited by: piosenniel ]
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