Goddess Taint

[Seya.]

Character: Taint
Faction: Goddess/Spirit
Gender: Female
Age: The spirit of Taint is roughly 2500 years old; Lark hosted her for 813 years. This embodiment, Lark's original age plus hosting, makes Taint 830. However, her general "assumed" age (appearance) is that of 20-21.
Element: The embodiment of Fire and Air, Taint controls all of the Summer/Autumn elements.
Summon:

Taint controls a massive gray wolf that goes by the name of Larketh. At standing height, his shoulders are a little over 6', giving him an overall height of about 8'. He is about 13' long. Although he weighs in at a whopping 670 lbs., he is able to step lightly.

His coloring is very unnatural compared to normal wolves. As prior mentioned, his base is a dark gray. His belly and snout are slightly lighter, and he has an equine-like white mane down his spine to his shoulderblades. Obsidian-colored stripes mark his back, and also form socks around his legs. Larketh's eyes, like Taint's own, are a luminescent green.

When they were first paired due to the abrupt release of the spirit of Taint into Elarkashaye, the ex-Empress and Larketh did not get along very well at all. She ignored his wisdom and knowledge of past occurrences, choosing instead to live how she decided. When this was shown to be a near-fatal pattern, Taint began respecting and considering her wolf companion, and since they had been nearly inseparable. Though the common secret was hidden from Larketh, Taint became rather open about her thoughts to the grand canine.

Now that Taint has trapped herself in the Spirit Realm, she has left Larketh and his "collar" (in fact, just a small black stone) to her closest sin friend and lover, Pride. Though Pride has no real control over Larketh, the wolf obediently carries messages from the Living Realm to the Spirit Realm and vice versa, allowing the two to communicate.

Power:

Prior to being locked in the Spirit Realm, Taint was known as the "Lady of Autumn", for her preference over the three elements of the season: Healing, Air, and Thunder. Not only was she the Realm's most powerful healer, but she could call forth tempest winds in a matter of seconds. The elements respected her, and she used them the highest of her abilities. Unlike her eternal foe, Purity, Taint prefers magics over combat. Attacking without the reassuring cover of spirit-play (as she refers to the act) reminds her too much of her painful human past.

Taint also reigns control over all of the other elements. When her favoured and trained gift of air is combined with angry flames, a devastating attack known as the Flame-Gale has possibility of being created. Taint fears the Gale; in her early years as Empress, it had once gotten out of hand and set the entire human village of Halodale (in Desarith) up in unmanageable flames that resisted all forms of magic. The village was destroyed, ending the lives of many innocents- Taint continues to blame herself to this day.

Taint isn't just immortal, she's practically untouchable damage-wise. Like Purity, her body will reconstruct and mend itself unconsciously.

Before entering the Spirit Realm, Taint passed on her two most powerful seasonal groups of elements to her two successors: the Summer elements to Emperor Deception and the Autumn elements to Empress Vengeance.

Weapon:

For over eight hundred years, the grand dual-scythe Talithiss could be admired at Taint's side. With a pole of carved black crystal, it is nearly impossible for anyone other than Taint to hold due to its magical weight. This is accompanied by the fact that it can attract different kinds of power, and release it upon foes when needed.

The pole material, as stated above, is obsidian magicked crystal, fit with jewels for concentrating power, and communication. Among these jewels was once the skull-sized black stone known as Talithiss itself. This stone allowed Taint to scry upon sins not yet introduced to the Empire -known as 'unawares'- but was given to Pride upon her banishment to the Spirit Realm. Talithiss' blades are of a constantly shifting substance, which though appears liquid-like, is in fact a metal so hot that its edges are constantly reshaping themselves. The blades can therefore take on a variety of forms, sizes, and designs- all of which are resistant to breakage and piercing.

Though all the power Talithiss held disappeared when Taint rematerialized it in the Spirit Realm, she continues to hold it with her as a keepsake, and a way to communicate with Pride in the living realms.

Appearance:

Taint reigned the sins for two hundred years standing at an incredibly short 5'3". She takes insult at her size easily, which was a trait passed down from her mother. Due to having a mix between backgrounds of an islander and a city man, her skin color resulted in an appealing tan, to which her hair stands out against brightly.

Her hair itself is the color of pure moonlight; a shocking shade of silvery-white, and cropped to her shoulders.

The most immediate and demanding features of the former Empress are her eyes. Always long and thin rather round, giving her a more mature appearance, they glow a luminescent lime green-- shocking to anyone who meets her gaze suddenly. She has extremely long lashes and a dainty nose, full-lipped though hardly ever smiling.

Taint weighs approximately 75lbs, severely underweight.

Note: It's a rare thing, but Taint has the ability to release into what is called her 'Prophecy State', where her humanity fades completely away and the angry elements of volcano and hurricane inside her pull away from dormancy. It's presumed that a rampage would be followed by extreme damage to the land and sea, but as this hasn't been seen since the day the elements were sealed, true reactions can't be known.

Upon her cheeks are two simple markings that separate her as ethereal from all other beings. A small black triangle on each side of her face symbolizes her as one of the two indestructible beings- a name she is not proud of.

Taint also has black air-like markings across her shoulders, wrists, and ankles. Beneath her glove on her left palm is her former gang's design, the eye of a wolf attached to a wing.

Whatever she can imagine is what she can wear within the Spirit Realm. Taint's not picky for clothes, at one time known to swing from garments you'd see on a hooker to heavy sweaters and jeans in the span of a day.

Her most famous outfit consists of a black, sleeveless, neck-high top that exposes the midriff, with a cutout square on her chest below the collar. This square was filled with mesh, which also wrapped twice around her stomach, bordered in black material.

Varied at times between a short skirt accompanied by mesh leggings, or long black low-waisted pants that covered from her hips to her toes, Taint's outfit had a variety of bottoms. When wearing the skirt, she also had flaring black material from her knees to her ankles.

Her shoes were whatever she felt like that day.

History:

Even before immortality, Taint had soon discovered the hardships in life.

She was born as Elarkashaye Kerryl on the Kham'hur Islands - where her unknown mother was originally from. She was sent overseas to Halodale in the east to live with her father- her mother was never heard from again.

Born into the cruel world and raised solely by the hands of her father Jewlitt, Elarkashaye had started off with no hope of a proper future, and hadn't had the will to find one.

Without proper care and supervision, she had grown up alongside gangs and the streetlife in the market of Halodale. But at the age of fifteen her father pulled her away from the gangs into a new home, giving her a glimmer of hope to a brighter future.

Two years later, when her father died of a sudden illness, Lark was left with favors she could not uphold, and one place left to go: back to where she had grown up, the gangs. The seventeen year old girl with burgundy hair was mistreated upon her return, and left to die in a dark street. She wished her soul goodbye, and closed her eyes.

Lark was rescued by a girl with black hair who claimed there was a fine line between good and evil- Nitchu Mikata stated that there was no 'in between'. Nitchu gave Lark a life again, and the two befriended- though their perspectives and ideas differed greatly.

Lark believed strongly in fate, the prospect of how the world chooses what your end will be- no say about it. Nitchu believed in destiny, the prospect of you'll end good or bad, and it's up to your actions.

The night in which Lark and Nitchu accidentally burned the Prophecies was the night the spirits of the Tainted and the Pure, the two beings of conflicting element, descended back to the Realm into sacrificed bodies. As she died, Lark claimed it was her fate after all. As the spirit 'Taint' emerged from the ashes and darkness claimed her, Lark grasped the only bit of pureness of soul she had left- her memories of Nitchu Mikata.

Taint changed Elarkashaye completely. Her hair whitened, her skin became smooth, and her eyes became catlike and green. The spirit scarred her face with two dark triangles on her cheeks. Her hand had closed around a giant black scythe, Talithiss, which felt of magic. At her side appeared a gray wolf with an unusual appearance: it stole her original name and named itself Larketh.

For eight hundred and ten years Elarkashaye then stood, weapon to weapon against her former best friend. Refusing to fight the girl she knew and remembered, she constantly ran away, until one day she realized that nothing would be solved by averting her own death.

Knowing she had created a strong group of followers, Empress Taint left her legacy in the hands of three of her closest companions; Vengeance and Deception, who became Empress and Emperor, and Pride- who she left the only form of communication. Stripping herself of her powers, she banished her own soul into the depths of the Spirit Realm, hoping that over time she would forget her fond memories of Nitchu and be able to put an end to Purity once and for all.

But almost as soon as she left the realm of the living, war erupted- at the Empire she had taken care of for centuries. Its shield had fallen with her absence, and was quickly discovered by violent humans. Though the sins as well as the virtues tried to avoid the unimaginable, all hope was lost, and Taint's glorious Empire was scorched to the ground.

She continues to watch from above, in the misty Realm of dreams, as havoc and hell erupts in reality far below.

Behaviour:

Despite three years of complete loneliness, tormented by her own memories until she finally was able to force them away, only few of Taint's former traits have changed.

Not even she could have predicted that the flow of elemental power would have unbalanced with her disappearance. The sacrifice she made to trap herself has now become her curse; the human side of her she continues to hold onto through Lark pains to see those she cares for tripping over themselves in hysteria, not sure what to do. She suffers in realizing that the Nitchu she knew no longer exists. Oh, what she'd do for a big mug of rum right now.

This being said, she has matured greatly, although many of her smaller traits have remained with her: stubbornness, doubt, distrust, vengeance and trickery. She took Nitchu's death hard, and is slowly coming around, watching the world from a god's view as she tries to figure out how to bring herself back to those she belongs with. Her communication with Pride is failing more and more; Larketh is having problems getting to her. What little she can is to take control of Elarkashaye for moments at a time.

Other:

There is a big difference between Elarkashaye-Taint and the spirit/deity of Taint (also known as 'the Tainted'). See 'the Lowdown' for more information.

Journal: '-{t.a.i.n.t.e.d}-'