Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'

We are not now that strength which in old days

Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;

One equal temper of heroic hearts,

Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

Alfred Lord Tennyson - Ulysses

In the beginning, she hadn't needed God.

In the beginning she was the daughter of Gods.

She had lounged on a throne, a nation at her feet. The Divine Monarchy.

Then... it had been a God who had come to her.

Not in some false shape like a swan or a bull. Zeus had come to her as he was, naked, wanting, needing. And she had given in. How could she not? He made her tremble in his presence, he delighted in the sheer struggle of her will to play at him, to be different from the others. She knew it was a dangerous game, but in his arms nothing was taboo.

And when she gave him a son, he wept. The tears of a God were so precious, that she was pleased to give him another. Then. They were the joy in her life. She was fully content. The lover of a God, a Mother, a Queen. She held her throne by divine right, and her place in his bed by the right of being the one woman in the world who, for the time being, was so utterly irresistible, even a God couldn't deny her. Life was.. beyond good.

And then.. she came. Lamia had known of Hera, but.. she ruled Libya, she had no place in Greece with its fae gods and monsters. So when the Jealous witch came for her, she was.. surprised. Surprised moreso when Hera took control of her mind and drove her hands into the bodies of her children, drove the hearts of her sons down her own throat. Horrified...by what she had been made to do..she was made a horror in her grief, and committed greater horrors in her madness.

Zeus had returned. He had kissed her eyes, weeping for his children. And she saw...she saw far and ahead. But ever that image of the eviscerated bodies of her sons, the taste of the blood in her mouth, the pulse of their tiny hearts in her throat drove sleep from her.

She tore at her eyes, anything to pull that image from her vision.

She retreated to the caves, to scream and wail her grief, to hate unfaithful men, to devour them when they sought her wisdom and far sight.

And still, monstrous and grief devoured, Zeus came to her.

It was an age later, from the darkest depths of her caves that she heard it.. the word, a thunderclap that split the sky, "Bismillah".

He had made it sound so easy... and had promised her peace...Had said that she wasn't lost.. didn't call her hellbound. He had called her Djinn, had said she too could be freed from her grief, and destruction.

It wasn't easy. She would find herself turning again to what she had known. After so long, such torments were her comforts. And Now even more cruel as she still clung to hope... that there could be a way out.

The Vision had come to her in a wash, a stark sensation...they always were, it was how she distinguished them from the dark twisting turns of her mind. Visions were full sensory experiences, and this one was a full sensory deprivation.. But she had seen, it was ripe for pickings, no one else was there but those fruits..delicate, corruptible, who would listen to her whispers and collapse under the weight.

But every buffet gets crowded at happy hour. And she no longer cared forthe competition. She sheltered, took in those the society would outcast, and with them.. they would find a way out of the extra dimensional space..and into Erie.

Strengths: Lamia is subject to prophetic visions that can be frighteningly specific, or disturbingly vague depending on the images. This power had been stifled shortly before arriving in Erie, and she is getting it back, slowly. She'll remark sometimes about a sense of something about to happen. Or sometimes indicate something happening to a specific person. She can, with someone she's intimately close with, read their thoughts, though hers become quite readable as well, so she does it rarely at best. She hides extremely well, but is usually lightning fast witted, with a sharp smart tongue and keen memories. She has very good control of her voice, and it conveys her thoughts as well as her articulation.

Weaknesses: She can't stand pregnant women, mothers and small children. She's extremely easy to read, though she knows this, and will often simply be really easy to read the other way. She gets agitated without projects to do, and especially has a need to be on a throne, no matter how small. Her eyes can and do come out of her head because no matter what, at any given moment, she can and does see the murdered corpses of her children. She does not sleep. She nurses some torturous tiny hope for redemption, that is shot down regularly and well. But she likes and often tries to maintain an image of normalcy. As if she could hide the monster she really is.

The In-Depth Story is here. (This is OOC Knowledge unless you get the book that's in world)

Page last updated Dec-03-2009 12:00 AM by Syngen Sohmers