Trista Gale

Name: Trista Gale

Age: 33

Sex: Female

Appearance: Trista is a tall, striking woman, standing 6' 1" with long dark hair and piercing green eyes. Her build is naturally athletic, and due to her rigorous exercising, she is extremely fit and well-muscled. As she is of White Court descent, she is supernaturally beautiful, but her beauty is somewhat marred by the multitude of scars covering her body. On her face she has four thin horizontal scars running from the edge of her right eye (and above and below that point) along the side of her head, stopping just short of her ear, as well as a wider one running diagonally down her left cheek from the bridge of her nose to her jaw. Additionally, her arms, legs, torso, and back all have their fair share of scars. In her day to day life, she tends to wear clothing that minimally restricts her movement while still covering up the majority of her scars, and when she plans for battle she wears a leather cuirass and dueling gloves.

Skills: Sword fighting. Trista has been fighting against supernatural foes for five years using a sword specifically designed to make use of the weaknesses of most creatures that possess one (and many years before that without). Additionally, she can do perform other athletic or acrobatic acts, and her discipline and conviction are truly impressive to behold.

Powers: Trista was born into the White Court of vampires, but she was fortunate enough to fall truly in love before she had sex (and when she did have sex, it was with her true love). As a result, she is now an ordinary mortal (if a remarkably attractive one).

Personality: Trista is a hard woman. She does what she is driven to do, and she doesn't care much about the morality of her actions. When she is calm and relaxed (a rare occurrence), a part of her once cheerful and bright personality shows through, but for the most part she is cold and harsh.

History: Trista was born into a part of House Raith of the White Court located in Ireland, where she lived for seventeen years, oblivious of her supernatural nature. Growing up she had a fairly idyllic life, being a member of a very well-off family, she was allowed almost everything she wanted. Her family put a lot of emphasis on being and appearing good, and so, in order to train her body she took up dancing, at which she was quite talented. From a young age, Trista was enraptured by fiction, especially fantasy, and as a young girl she often dreamed of being a part of a magical world. No small part of her love of fiction came from her strong desire to be elsewhere, for while she had a good life, and her family took care of her, ever since she was small, Trista wanted to get away and see the world. A few weeks before her eighteenth birthday, she was told by her father that some relatives living in Vancouver were looking to have a member of her family visit, and if she was interested, they'd pay for her plane ticket, food, and lodgings in Canada. While the circumstances seemed a little odd, the opportunity was too good to pass up, and Trista accepted and moved to Vancouver to see her Canadian relatives. What she was unaware of was that her Canadian relatives were White Court vampires who wanted her to entrap a man that was causing them problems.

     In Vancouver there was a young upstart of a wizard (~22 years of age) by the name of Esyllt Gale who had made it his mission to take out the White Court presence in the city. Obviously, the White Court didn't much care for this, and wished to see him taken down, but he was surprisingly well-informed about the identities of the members of the court already in the city, so they instead brought in Trista from Ireland in the hopes that by engineering a meeting between the two, they might bring about Esyllt's end. Of course, they didn't just allow them to bump into one another and then let things lie, instead the members of the Court did everything they could from the shadows to encourage a relationship between the two, and their plan was successful. From the moment the two of them met, their relationship played out almost exactly as the White Court wanted. After several 'coincidental' encounters, the two of them started going out, and everything seemed wonderful. As time passed, though, Trista started to notice some things were a little odd. Although her family encouraged her to see Esyllt, none of them were ever able to meet him, and all of her relatives occasionally looked a little odd (silver eyes, extremely pale skin... the usual White Court stuff). Esyllt also seemed slightly off, as he would frequently be busy doing something, but he never told Trista what he was up to. She caught glimpses of what seemed to be occult items in and around his apartment, but whenever she asked him about them, he changed the subject. They went out for a year and a half without ever engaging in sexual intercourse (Trista was too nervous and uncertain to push for it, while Esyllt was understandably hesitant, given his enmity with the White Court), a fact that caused the White Court much irritation, but they couldn't act too overtly, as Esyllt knew too much for that to work. Meeting Esyllt is her fifth fondest memory

     One evening, while Trista was visiting her cousins at their home, ghouls broke in and attacked. In order to survive, all of Trista's relatives needed to use their vampiric abilities, which freaked Trista out tremendously. Once the fighting was over, a couple of her cousins explained to her what she was, and what she'd become. Terrified, she ran away, and went to Esyllt's home. She went in without knocking and encountered him performing some minor thaumaturgy. By this point she was already nearing a breakdown, but she managed to keep herself together enough to all but demand Esyllt tell her what he was doing. He explained what he could, and she shared what she knew, and once she had all of the information available to her (a good four or five hours later), she resolved to leave her family behind, and leave Esyllt so his life wouldn't be in danger from her. Naturally, they had sex. When Esyllt survived, she was elated, and her mood only improved when she realised that his survival meant that she also no longer had to be concerned about becoming a vampire. All things told, the worst day of her life turned into her best evening ever. That night is her fourth fondest memory.

     Now that she knew more about what was happening, and she became determined to stick by Esyllt and help him however she could. Although she was kept in the dark about the supernatural aspects of her family, she did have some information that was extremely useful in Esyllt’s war against the white council. While the two of them worked to bring down Trista’s family, they grew ever closer and closer. In order to try and help Trista stay safe from her former family, he encouraged her to take up martial arts for self-defence, something at which she excelled. Once Trista separated from her family, she moved in with Esyllt, and the two of them continued their relationship, made all the more intense by the fact that they both now knew for absolutely certain that what they felt between them was true love. Shortly after she turned 22, she and Esyllt were married, and she took his last name as her own. Their wedding is Trista’s third fondest memory.

     For years Trista and Esyllt continued their fight against the White Court. Between Esyllt’s potent magics, Trista’s ever-improving swordplay, and their mutual love, they did a remarkable job of hounding and damaging the White Court. Together they defeated and killed several members of notable rank, including the head of the Vancouver division of the Court, causing Trista’s older cousin, Sherri, to take control.
While they were fighting the White Court, Trista and Esyllt managed to find time to start a family together. Trista gave birth to their first child, Caron Gale, when she was 24, and the second child, Ewan Gale, when she was 27. The first time she held each of her children remains her two fondest memories.

     When Trista was 28, disaster struck. While out investigating reports of supernatural activity in the middle of ghoul territory, Trista and Esyllt were ambushed by a collection of white court vampires as well as the ghouls that they thought they were hunting. Although the two of them fought valiantly, it was obvious that they were outgunned and would go down if they stayed where they were. Esyllt’s magic was instrumental in getting away, and with a great deal of effort, the two of them managed to successfully get away from and evade their foes, but in doing so they were both wounded greatly, Esyllt fatally so. All but dragging her husband, Trista managed to get the two of them to a nearby safe-house Esyllt knew of from other members of the White Council. While Trista administered medical aid to the best of her abilities, Esyllt eventually fell unconscious from loss of blood, and died.

     Distraught at the death of her husband, Trista swore vengeance. Immediately following Esyllt’s death, she returned to her children, and looked after her husband’s affairs. She held a small wake for him, inviting only Esyllt’s family and friends (which had become her only family after she separated from house Raith), and had his body cremated. Once she had his ashes, rather than just putting them in an urn and sticking them somewhere, she took them to the swordsmith that made her weapons for her and asked him if it would be possible to forge a new sword using Esyllt’s cremated body as a source for a small portion of the carbon in the blade. She (the swordsmith) said that this would indeed be possible, if a little unorthodox, and so the blade was made to be the bane of all evils (in addition to the ashes, she also put in a small amount of inherited silver and had it quenched in holy water, among other things).

     Once she was armed with her new, deadly sword, she left her children with Esyllt’s parents to take care of them, and she moved out to take her revenge on the white court and the ghouls of Vancouver. For four year she hunted them, and did no small amount of damage as she did. While she specifically sought the death of the White Court and ghouls that orchestrated Esyllt’s death, in order to keep her skills sharp, she fought against any foe she deemed dangerous, supernatural or otherwise. During these years, she saw little of her children, spending perhaps only a month out of every year with them. Fortunately, Esyllt left her with a bit of money, and she was able to extort no small sum from white court members that she deemed not necessary to kill, and so she managed to do financially quite well for herself.

Additional Information: Trista's sword is a Jian (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jian) that was specifically made after her husband's death to be the bane of any foe she could imagine. A small part of the carbon for the steel comes from the ashes of her deceased husband (her true love), the metal is alloyed with a small amount of inherited silver, the blade was quenched in holy water, etc. (If anyone thinks of a weakness I've missed, please post a comment detailing what it is).

(Sorry guys, my next character will be shorter, I promise.)