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CHARACTER SHEET
General
Name Jys'yl Barrival (does char get a surname if not attached to a noble house?)
Age 125
Race Drow
Sex Female
Profession Assistant Perfumer [Poisoner]
Where does she live? House Hun'Afin, Ulorbbath


Appearance
Complexion Black
Hair Color Ivory
Style Curly, unless ironed flat with heated metal
Eyes Amber
Glasses? No
Height 5'6"
Weight 138 lbs
Build Curvy
Distinguishing Features Many tiny scars on her arms, which she hides with long sleeves.
Health? Vibrant
Disabilities? Inexperience
Clothing Occasionally in bizarre, cutting-edge fashions. If minding the store, in soft black robes edged with green and purple.

Prized Possessions
Her human slave maid, Lily, and her alembics.

Background and Family Relationships

Jys'yl's multitalented mother, I'lm'nolu, a younger daughter of a younger daughter of a top-ranked noble, is resigned to the fact that Lady Lolth is indifferent to her attempts to climb up the social scale, and has settled down in the business district of her city. I'lm'nolu's mate Zekaghar is a powerful drow wizard involved in surface world trade, and as the relationship has been mutually beneficial, they have stayed together and produced eight children, six female (one dead) and two male. Jys'yl is their fifth child. I'lm'nolu and Zekaghar also created several businesses together. The businesses include a pharmaceutical supply shop. a training school for slave care (which trains the owners, not the slaves) and a perfumerie, which sells luxury perfumes to the nobles and odor-masking scent to the military.

Jys'yl and one of her older sisters run the perfume shop, a multistoried affair which features a discreet staircase for non-levitating drow. Each room showcases a different array of scents, as well as other luxury goods such as scarves, jewelry and small weapons to be scented. Jys'yl's twin sister Briz'yl and another elder sister run the training school, and the eldest sister, a minor priestess, takes care of the pharmacy. The two youngest children, the males, are often used as messengers.

The mother, weary of seeing her and her own mother's generations destroy each other for a status that never was, discourages infighting among her children. Thus none are likely to kill each other, and Jys'yl and her twin are close. Hostilities are reserved for other merchant families. They hate the vinters and clothiers who are above them, despise the tanners and parchment-makers below them, and pretend to get along with the slavers and weaponsmakers. Even more hated are those who never pay their bills. Goods and services are willingly surrendered to those who demand them in the name of the goddess, but if compensation is not soon forthcoming, the nonpayers later find themselves with inexplicable rashes or nausea. One noble young lady who haughtily demanded the hair ornament off humble Jys'yl's head later suffered uncontrollable flatulence during a religious ceremony, and was appropriately demoted.

Jys'yl and her siblings live for the day when, during one of their parents' screaming arguments, either the mother will punch out the father, or the father will immolate the mother in a fireball. To this end they all gather to watch whenever their father returns from a surface trip. Sadly. no significant violence has ever been offered to this date.

Environment:
Jys'yl's perfume shop lies in the more upscale part of the shopping district. It contains several rooms on the ground floor, and a central open courtyard from which one can view the entrances to the upper rooms, accessible by levitation or by a concealed staircase. The lower rooms are for perfumes, and the upper for drugs, toxins and such. These rooms are also used as secret meeting places by those who slip the shopkeepers extra for the inconvenience.


Equipment, Abilities, and Spells:

Uses seven rings, which may be filled with potions for sleeping, death, or numbness-inducers, irritants, emetics, algesics, stimulants, antidotes, antiseptics, or bacteria.
Can imbue any of the scent-holding items in the shop with one of the above.

Extensive knowledge of herbs, salves and potions, and anatomy and physiology of most races. Can stitch up minor wounds, poison, cure and heal as much as a non-cleric can. Can also create signature scents or brew odors to mimic any of the races' smell, and deodorizers to suppress same. Can slip someone poison in a number of ways, including in their drinks, on their clothing, or in any jewelry which touches the skin. Her favorite concoctions are 20-year poisons, which take that long to go into effect.

High resistance to magic. In tandem with this, she is also unable to learn much magic, although she can repeat a spell that someone else speaks. The sole exception is the Fire Spell her father taught her.
High resistance to the materials she uses, as she has tested many things on herself and developed tolerance. Deadly poisons would still kill her, but milder ones have less of an effect.

As a descendant of nobles, she can float, conjure darkness and produce flickering lights.

Weapons:
Lvl. 1 with whip. Simple leather with steel spikes, used only on slaves.
Lvl. 1 with knife.
Lvl. 5 with pikestaff. The parents demand their daughters practice with at least one weapon and
surprisingly, this was the one for Jys'yl. Perhaps in another life, she was a baton twirler.

Spells:
Has mastered only one spell, of creating intense heat in a 4" square block. She uses this to melt ingredients.

Personality: Eager to please, quick to take offense but hides it. Snake in the grass after offense is committed. Responds well to flattery from those she respects. Generosity and placidity balanced by cowardice and hypocrisy.

Greatest Fear/Phobia Being alone
Pet Peeves? Hates to be bossed around by intellectual inferiors. This includes all non-paying persons and all non-drow.
Most at ease when... Everyone around her is happy and harmonious. Everyone that matters, that is.
Most uncomfortable when... Caught chatting with slaves about the surface world, or otherwise treating them humanely.
Most embarrassing moment(s): Accidentally whipped a valuable slave in the eye, blinding it, and had to give up substantial savings in order to get a priestess to secretly heal it. Mother would have been most displeased at the property damage.
Darkest Secrets Thinks males should have more rights and that Lolth is a bit of a cow for not promoting her mother.
Greatest Strength Very patient.
Greatest Weakness Lazy. Why bother doing something if someone else can do it? A closet perfectionist.
Good/Bad habits Under stress or boredom, may gnaw on whatever she's holding, such as a ring or a knife. Can get interesting if she accidentally drugs herself.
Biggest accomplishment : Demoting a noble in a well-executed plot
Biggest regret : Not stripping the noble of rank, name and city. Evidently more effort needed to be made.
Mental Disturbance? White-hot rages so enflame her mind that she can forget why she is angry, but not the anger, and will rage around mindlessly. Hence she tries to control her temper and maintain tranquility.

Interpersonal Skills
Relation to others? A cog in her family's machinery, but not a tool. Accepts leadership from her elders and betters. Most effective working as a deadly duo with her twin.
Perceived by others? A properly deferential shopgirl, or that nasty little vixen. Slave rumor has it that she and her twin perform horrible experiments on the slaves. She scorns this as lies, all lies and besides, the experiments weren't fatal, the big babies!
What do others like? Has sense of humor and is predictable - trustworthy until she is offended.
What do others dislike? Materialistic, lack of focus. Other races may dislike her contempt of them.
Goals : To gain more wealth and live undisturbed to enjoy it.

Her family has also been known to shelter drow strays and help them get back on their feet - for a price. Usually this involves them working off the debt to the family as guards or servants.
Her twin Briz'yl owns a male human slave, Tsik, Lily's husband.

In terms of RP? I'm literate. I can string sentences together. smile
My experience is more in fanfiction than RP, if that's any indication.

Also, that's alot of children for her young age... just a thought. Maybe advance age to about 150 or so, or decrease number of children?

Yeah, I understand what you mean about infravision. It's been a much argued hot topic among gamer nerds and Salvatore fans.

The current canon (and what Bob follows now if he wants to stay on WotC's good side) is that infravision is now divided between "darkvision" and "lowlight vision." Drow have the former, and surface elves have the latter.

Lowlight Vision doesn't see in complete darkness (no light source at all), only Darkvision does. Darkvision doesn't use infrared light anymore, it's been relegated to a supernatural ability to see shades of gray in complete darkness (kinda' like infrared goggles only not green). Confused you yet? It gets worse. Darkvision for drow is useless after 120 feet distance.

So the canon is now, drow actually prefer at least a little light (but not too much). They can see much better than humans in low light settings, but only to 120 feet in complete blackout. Glowing eyes are no longer referenced in any canon sources.

The original sources (before Bob Salvatore) were by Gygax and others and never gave drow glowing eyes either. Bob strayed from the standard to make drow appear as he conceived of them. He also didn't properly understand infravision as Gygax originally set it up, so, in short Bob kind of "winged it." His stories were great, but they veered off course in some of these minor ways. Current canon attempts to put drow back on course (though I think they're still miffing it, lol, but i won't derail here).

Basically to imagine seeing in darkvision, remember the last time you were in heavy fog where you couldn't hardly see five feet in front of your face. Especially wierd when driving in this. All you can see are vague light sources at any distance, like light poles on the street and what not. Anyhting near light sources to darkvision will appear in normal color to an extant, but anything not near light sources will appear in grey tones, and out to 120 feet, the detail will be muted.... like looking through fog basically. Up close, if no light is present, you'll see perfect detail, but you just won't see color.

I hope i've explained it better, though i probably didn't sorry i can't do a better job communicating it. sweatdrop

Dad said something about them fixing darkvision up a bit. It sounded better, and something about them finally being able to see in color if they have advanced enough darkvision. I'll ask him when I catch him again. I don't recall where he GOT it from though, so it might be the evil that is 4th ed... I don't think it was out of the 3.5 books...

I personally like infra better than dark, but that's just artistic license.

on another note: YAY SOMEONE USED ONE OF MY PROFILE FORMATS! And the BIG one! *luff*

A single candle usually hurts a Drow's eyes, it's like staring at a dark room then suddenly having a Mag-light flash right into your eyes.

They usually use a small amount of faerie fires that lights the room up VERY little but is plenty enough for them to see.

Never thought about that, it is a possibility

Thanks, Aglo. And kos sapen to kerembeyit!