Compassion

A witch of the wild west, traveling in search of her stolen heart. 

Physique: Compassion is 5’6 with a lean but not weak build. She’s not bulky or especially strong, but has built up some muscle mass from long periods of travel and running a small farmstead around her hut. She has lavender purple skin, pupilless grey eyes, goat-like ears and spiraling, blunt horns that curl forward and then back on either side of her head. (Like this, but smaller.) Her hair is shoulder length, white, and wavy. (Person on the third panel.) She has a small tail-nub at the small of her back/tailbone area where her parents cut off her tail. Has scars around her neck.

Clothes: Somewhere between goth witch and grandma-chic, Compassion favours loose and draping clothes. She wears a cream-coloured, high-collared blouse with a colourful silk scarf or shawl that she uses to hide her neck scars. Her skirt is ankle-length and richly coloured, favouring colours on the cool spectrum (blues, purples, some pinks) with gold or brass accents. Under that she wears sensible walking boots. She almost always wears elbow-length leather gloves. Her hat is a big wizard hat with a wide and floppy brim, and sometimes she will wear a black lace mourning veil under it to obscure her face and horns. Has a sensible backpack and a few belt-pouches.

Weapons: Quarterstaff/walking stick, pretty simple and made from common wood.
Other important items: Small wooden carving of a crow worn on a simple cord necklace. Flying broomstick, rather old but well taken care of.

Personality: Has a big heart and will go out of her way to help others, especially young women. Is often scorned by society for being a tiefling, so she has gotten used to hiding her form and not letting people close. Is very touch starved, and has never been in a romantic relationship (though one may be brewing with another player character?!). Isn’t afraid to get her hands dirty to do what she believes is the greater good. Has studied medical arts as well as arcane magic, and has recently begun studying divine magic. Runs a medical practice from her hut on the edge of a town, where she has absolutely given some young women poison “medicine” for their abusive spouses. Voracious hunger for knowledge.

History: (CW for mentions of abuse, stalking, death by poison, mentions of abortion, death by hanging, mild descriptions of gore.)

Was born to two subsistence farmers who unknowingly made a deal with a devil for food. Her parents left her in a swamp, where she was found by the witch Victoria Matoya. Matoya adopted her, teaching her magic as she grew up. A powerful witch, Matoya quickly noticed the stranger poking around the woods near her isolated hut was a devil looking to collect his due. So began their life of moving ever west, always one step of the well-dressed stranger who claimed to be Compassion’s true father. Matoya protected Compassion from the knowledge of this devil, strictly enforcing a no-strangers rule. This lasted until Compassion met him while out collecting water on her own. Once again Matoya drove him off, and explained to Compassion why they had been so mobile all this time.

Matoya made ends meet as a healer, so Compassion grew up learning the medical arts as well as the arcane. She discovered a love for helping people, and took on the name Compassion over her birth name, as many tieflings will name themselves for a trait they wish to embody. Eventually Compassion grew old enough to move out, so Matoya sent her off to go travel on her own and learn for herself. Compassion became a wandering healer, learning quickly to hide her devilish heritage. She studied under a few of Matoya’s colleagues for a year or two, before eventually settling down in a hut a day’s travel away from a small village, where she traded medical services for food and sundries.
Sometimes, young women would come to her for help with evidence of abuse from a marriage they can’t escape. Compassion would give them “medicine” for their spouses, or give them abortions without too many questions, and gained a reputation for a person young women could seek for sensitive help. However, this treatment made her a deadly enemy - one of the men she “treated” was a close friend to the bandit lord Pride Newman. Incensed by the death of his friend, Newman dragged Compassion out of her hut and hung her. He carved out her heart as she suffocated, and threw her in a mass grave. A year later, Compassion would wake up along with six individuals who had also been killed by Pride Newman, with nothing but an ache in the direction of her missing heart as a clue to what had happened.