Carmine Vesta

Title: Crown Princess of Vesta Sacras, Deep Hold of the Dark Elves

Race: Dark Elf/Drider

Class: Necromancer

Character

History

Vesta was second in line for the throne of Vesta Sacras, a massive fortress-city of dark elves located deep in the Earth, its upper spire rising as a fort amid the craggy mountain peaks on the surface. Her elder sister, Salia, was a warrior and the crown sibling, though ignored the family's training and preparations for her taking the throne to wage war against the Loslung dwarves in the volcanic caverns beneath their home. Vesta had little chance of inheriting the crown for the martially-favoured Court, so contented herself with her arcane, scholarly studies, pursuing the art of necromancy to bolster the undead hordes and plumbing the depths of the city's arcane archives for ancient elven magics.

Her sister's ascent to glory was cut short, however, when she led a disasterous assault on the Loslung's subterranean fortress, Gultenveldt. Fighting through waves upon waves of golems and carving her way through the winding tunnels, Salia perished under the rain of magical flame and rocks hurled from the gleaming fortress gate. Her army of elite archers and knights were eradicated, crippling the dark elves' military and stymieing their planned operations.

The scandal rocked Vesta Sacras, and suddenly their second daughter's life wasn't so certain. There were immediate proposals for her younger siblings to be considered for rulership, but the sheer outcry among the nobility and the commoners alike dashed the aspirations of the more martial siblings. Salia's body had not been recovered, meaning that her more rabid supporters refused to accept her death. Carmine herself had little patience for the politicking, which dragged her from her studies and put her under the gaze of potential assassins and suitors.

Carmine Vesta's solution was simple. Retiring to her tower with her sister's more prized belongings. including her ceremonial armour, she ignored all summons for nearly a week, until her parents sent in a full armed escort with orders to breach the sanctum should she refuse. She came without resistance, though she did not enter the silver-lined halls alone - standing with her, intense white gleaming from within the adamant plate's joints, was Salia's ghost, her features still distinct enough even as a distorted spirit. Carmine quickly demonstrated that this was truly her sister, in mind and soul if not body, bound to her battleplate through necromantic ritual and completely aware, plucked from her rocky tomb. This decided the problem of Salia's fate soundly, and Carmine's, though not in the way she may have hoped.

The nobles almost immediately declared Salia unfit to rule - bound as an undead, she was considered subject to Carmine's magic, enthralled or as good as so. It was decided that, as Carmine would hold power over the crown regardless, she would be named Monarch, and was given the silver diadem denoting the Crown Princess. Carmine made no indication of her reaction, though Salia was clearly incensed by the development, though she kept much of her ire hidden at the time.

The elder sister's shame was compounded over the next month. Her body was never found, even though the tunnels were scouted shortly after the Loslung restored them - undoubtedly taken by the dwarves, along with her family swords and first suit of armour. Their loss further brought shame to her order of knights, who abandoned her for other nobles, leaving her without forces or support. Carmine, on the other hand, was granted great favour - the mage circles, already inclined her her, rallied with her, and received great prestige and support from both nobles and the very soldiers that once held supreme. Magic waxed in Vesta Sacras once again, with old vaults opened and ancient scrolls revisited, beginning something of a thaumaturgical renaissance. Carmine proposed that magic and the crafting arts could combat the Loslung and their armies of constructs and arcane devices, preventing future losses. Carmine rose to true power, while the city turned its back on its former hero Salia, now a literal shell of her former self, with only her hate and bitterness left.

It's unclear how the city's fall came so quickly. One day shortly after, a series of breaches occurred in the subterranean walls, many within the outer boundaries. Whether the golem armies had found a way to break the sealed gates, or whether they were opened by treachery, is something that vanished in the march of metallic feet and the roar of alchemical flame. The great city burned within its massive caverns as the mages gathered hastily, bringing great magic to bear and slowing the mighty onslaught, while the remains of the still-recovering military scrambled to mount a defense that was shattered almost as quickly as it took shape. The magi, unused to front-line warfare, were devastated by the golems - many of their enchantments and illusions were inherently useless against constructs with bound spirits, and only choice phyisical magics could harm them.

Carmine, from within her tower, nearly was in a panic. Necromancy allowed her to raise the dead soldiers as undead to defend her, but they would be outnumbered. Her sister's spirit was nowhere to be found, nor were her royal guards, the latter summoned to the palace to guard the current Monarchs. She could not flee the tower into the cavern ceiling and to the surface before the golems collapsed it; her only way out lay in her wealth of magical knowledge. Gathering the rarest of her books and her notes, she drew out a wrapped coccoon of gleaming black spidersilk, pulled out her attuned focal dagger, and cut it open, uttering words in an ancient, hissing language.

When the ring-adorned beards of the dwarves passed through her tower's shattered doors, they found it empty, coated in centuries of cobwebs, and were welcomed by a swarm of demonic spiders, which took down a few golems before the crafted warriors crushed them.

Carmine ritual sent her into the Web Chaotic, a twisted realm of spider-webs and bizarre demons. The old magic created a Drider's Strand, a pathway far above the wild, tangled world, transforming her body into a half-spirit of the realm to allow her to navigate and cling to her road to safety. She emerged in another place, a dense forest lit dimly by the sun - and, to her horror, her body remained transformed, rendered into a Drider by the Web's mutating essence. She only had her spellbooks and a few choice tomes, her dagger, and the remains of her robe.

Appearance

Carmine retains much of her elven features, though her lower body is heavily transformed by the ritual used to save her from her fate. Her upper body bears the slender, pale skin and blue eyes of the dark elves, long ears poking amid her red hair, which would have grown past her knees before - now it drapes along her bulbous, arachinid lower half in a full mane. Her body emeges above the waist from a giant spider half, as large as a horse and wider due to the legs - its carapace made of obsidian and abdomen adorned in whorling blue patterns, it can hardly be taken as a living spider. Black lines of glass run along her hairline near the jaw, and up part of her midriff, and her long fingers are tipped with obsidian like her body. She wears a tattered drape around her waste like a loincloth over the body, the top section a black robe befitting royalty. She still wears her diadem for the magical protections, and her focal dagger in her waist-drape.