Ahe'ssta

Ahe'ssta Jennestas
IC Information
Gender/Sexuality:	Female/Lesbian
Species:	Yuan-Ti
Place of Origin:	Tashalar, Faerun
Birthdate:	Uncertain, due to dimensional transfer, but believed to be approximately 26
Height:	5'6"
Hair Color:	Pale brown
Eye Color:	Dark claret red
Romantic Status:	Single, not looking
Occupation:	Lock, Glassblower and whitesmith, former mercenary
Theme Song:	Emily Jane White - "Wild Tigers I Have Known"
OOC Information
Source:	Original Character based on Forgotten Realms campaign setting for D&D

Ahe'ssta Jennestas is a Yuan-Ti mercenary and artisan who has lived on Yuriba since 2004. A rather intense woman, she spends nearly all of her time in isolation at her home, Wyvernspur Hearth, working on various forms of artisan crafts, tending to emerge only when she is driven to such restlessness that she can no longer bear her self-imposed confinement. When she ventures into public, it is often at the Dragon's Brew or The Labrys, where she favors sitting in the warmest spot possible.

Physical Description

Ahe'ssta is a very muscular, lean woman; always in good shape. Her skin has a golden-brown hue, deepened by a constant suntan; if it was not for her hair color, she could easily be perceived as Mediterranean or Middle Eastern. Nearly always kept in a multitude of tiny braids, Ahe'ssta's hair is a light brown shade with some lighter sun bleached streaks. Her heritage can be detected if she has on short sleeves or pants, betrayed by the very faint scaling that occurs on her major joints. Additionally, her teeth are all slightly too sharp, something she usually conceals by only smiling with her lips closed.

Due to her heritage, Ahe'ssta is particularly sensitive to cold temperatures. Once the temperature drops below 60 degrees Fahrenheit she only appears outdoors if bundled up. She has, in fact, even been heard to refer to temperatures in the low 90s as being "a bit cooler than ideal".

Psychological profile

General personality

Ahe'ssta is a fairly reserved woman. While she is generally polite in her conversation, she rarely seems to let anyone in close to her. Despite the rather civil, cultured manner of her speaking and etiquette, she often speaks of a time spent in the wilderness and of her work as an artisan. Generally, for her, this civilized veneer is the surface; what she dearly wants to be and struggles to obtain, but always against the rougher and dark facets of herself she keeps hidden. As such, she seems to be most comfortable with other people who are similarly polite and restrained, rather than the openly emotional or dramatic.

Ahe'ssta has an absolutely iron will and an almost as unshakable certainty in herself. She has, on rare occasions, shown evidence of a volcanic, violent temper that lurks under her surface but it is usually kept tightly in rein. Very dedicated and stubborn in general, she is impossible to sway once she makes her mind up. The Yuan-Ti woman tends towards being self-confident to the point of arrogance, however, she is relatively kind at heart under all the bluster and cool arrogance, often showing a widespread tolerance for others of more unusual backgrounds.

Romantic preferences

Ahe'ssta identifies as a stone butch, despite some feminine touches to her style. On the whole, her approach to relationships is brusque, cool, and only minimally based on touch. She is uncomfortable with sexual contact and is also not very physically affectionate with friends. It seems very unlikely that there is the making of an affectionate partner in her; she seems little inclined to make effort in the direction of romance anyway. While she presumably has a 'type', her extremely reserved nature makes it difficult to tell when she's interested.

In general, she vastly prefers friends to romantic partners, having been burned in that region before and currently feeling herself unreliable as a partner, not to mention the sort of person that no one stable and sane in their perceptions would choose to become involved with. While, generally speaking, she's unwilling to go into exact details on why, it seems to have something to do with her temper and a belief that being close to her is quite literally dangerous.

History

Ahe'ssta arrived in Yuriba through an event that she refers to as a combination of a teleportation mishap and deific intervention. She has often been reluctant to discuss her past before coming to the island, although as she's settled and come to embrace it as her permanent home, details have become more frequent. What fragments she has let slip so far indicates that she lived alone and supported herself for much of her youth, likely the source of her skill at survival techniques – Ahe' left home in early adolescence due to her culture's tradition of killing those who deviated from the norm, as she did in lacking a fundamentally "evil" nature. It seems she stayed in Faerun for several years, living as an itinerant and mercenary; she's let slip that she spent time in at least one other world that was far more dangerous, as she was the only survivor out of a fairly large party of explorers. Overall, it seems her past can be a sore point for her.

Upon arriving in Yuriba, she was originally relatively social since her race was unknown and unstigmatized on the island, spending some time with Merin and Rianna. However, this was somewhat marred by her struggles with trying to form a lasting romantic relationship for the first time. In the end, she was driven further from society than she was even before arrival due to an incident involving Genesis Magite; she appears to have taken over some burden or curse that had afflicted the doctor. Learning to live with this change, apparently a rather dramatic and violent one, led her to withdraw further for many years as she struggled to adapt and further develop her mental strength. It seems that only of late she's reached a point where she's willing to risk semi-regular departures from isolation.

Skills and employment

Ahe'ssta follows a wide variety of crafts. Her favorite and her main focus lies in glass blowing and the manufacture of glass beads. However, she is also a reasonably competent jeweler and blacksmith, having dabbled in other crafts to a far less degree of skill. Most of her home is given over to areas to work on these crafts and others. She is willing to do work for commission, but has not opened a formal store.

In other fields, Ahe'ssta is a psion. Contrary to the usual association, her abilities are primarily based on movement and teleportation, although in her time in Yuriba she's developed her more traditional telepathic skills further. She has also demonstrated a talent for picking up on psychic residue or seeing 'ghosts', apparently the psychic imprints of former residents of the island. Despite this, she considers her main survival skills to be physical. Ahe'ssta is an accomplished dervish (sword dancer). She always wears two scimitars although she refuses to wield them in public areas of the island.

Relationships

Ahe'ssta's closest (some might argue only) friend, historically, was Ceridwen Underwood. In the past she was friendly with the Tam woman Sauda as well, although she appears to have left Yuriba. She seems to have had a history with Genesis Magite, not one of a particularly friendly sort. She bears a deep grudge against the doctor because of something that happened between them; this distaste and disdain seems to spread to the doctor's close companions as well, most notably Kaslin and Kula. It's likely this enmity has less to do with the individuals in question than her role in taking over for some of the darker aspects of the doctor's life.

In more recent times, she's begun a cautious social acquaintance with Necahual, and Kallista, as well as finally developing what seems to be a genuine closeness with Whisper.

Ahe'ssta was at one point involved with a woman named Cassandra after her arrival to Yuriba. She seems not to carry positive memories of the relationship.