Personality

Lasair appears, upon first glance, a soft and gentle darling - but if you see her acting that way, she's lying through her teeth.

She is poised, clever, beautiful, able the read the room in order to bring said room to heel, and she knows it. How could she not? As the pride and joy of the noble Andraste family, she has lived in the eternal spotlight, learning the rules of court to wield as weapons. She has perfected her behavior and mannerisms to the degree that all she hears are compliments, even whispered amongst her enemies. If you fail to hold her interest, nothing she does or says can be clearly faulted, but her displeasure is wrenchingly clear, brutal in its beauty. She is talented in everything her family demands of her, and oh, is she sick to death of it.

She will never admit it, but she burns with a need to be the exact opposite of everything high society has told her she is. What she really wants is to curse, be brutally honest and, dare I say it, be unpleasant to be around. It is a dream of hers to be uninhibited, but she finds that she has learned the lessons of society too well. She constantly binds herself by rules even when no one's watching, and has a deep fear that the only talents she has are those she scorns, and that her life will amount to nothing more than a long string of lies.

She deals with an alarming amount of self-hatred as a twisted defense against an unending outpour of gilded, sneering compliments. She does not believe compliments aimed at her any longer, and has come to take everyone around her for a liar. Lasair knows delving into criminalities will not help her desire to escape her own self criticisms and will probably make her self-hatred worse, but she chases the exhilaration nonetheless.

"If we want the rewards of being loved, we must submit to the mortifying ordeal of being known." Lasair, simply put, has spent her entire life running from this very idea. What would help her most is a confidant, but she refuses to trust someone with her damning secrets, and continues to spiral.

WC: 316

History

There was no time in her life she was left out of someone's gaze or earshot that she did not carve for herself. Tutors, relatives, guests, servants, all of them barely a thin wall away, if not sleeping at the foot of her bed to best anticipate her needs. She wanted for nothing, and she was lucky to escape the poisonous attitude of spoiled entitlement that the rest of her family shared. Lasair held herself apart, perfect even in her attentions to the house staff; neither cruel nor simpering in her manners. Everyone hailed her as the perfect child of the Andraste lineage, and she worked hard to keep it that way, and for the most part, she never questioned why.

One day when she was a child, Sibylla of the recently elevated Dupont family came over to play. The two girls did not get along, each bolstered by their family's antagonism, their age difference, and their difference in behavior. Lasair, even as a child, saw Sibylla's wildness as an example of everything not to be, and when Sibylla ran through the halls, Lasair chased after them at an even pace, determined to be well-mannered even in the simplest things. But the longer she followed, the more she found hidden doors left wide open, realizing completely that not only she'd lost Sibylla to her restrained pace, but that she herself was very much lost. She passed through servant's halls long out of use and covered in spiderwebs, ending up in a forgotten attic room with rugs and dust-covered furniture, including a chest with a broken lock. She debated for far too long over whether to linger, but after deciding to indulge her curiosity for the sheer fact that all of this would one day belong to her, Lasair pulled out an abused bear-fur cloak. It had some fur torn out, had gone unrepaired, what little fur it did have was crushed underfoot, and it smelled of decades of dust, but she loved this horribly macabre thing regardless, taking it to her rooms and hiding it away.

Over the next few years, she poured quiet affection, silent imaginings and whispered dreams into it, and one night, when she threw the cloak over her shoulders for some wish for bravery, she shifted. Under the watchful moonlight through her stained glass windows, she towered over her bed as a hideous bear, her hooves replaced by claws and her mouth shorter, her teeth all wrong, and she for the first time in her life she felt a rush of excitement and fear that she has craved ever since. She kept this one thing a secret from her family and told not a soul. Her parents were nonmages and didn't fully understand the pace at which magic arose, and were patiently awaiting when hers would arrive and become yet another accolade they could claim. With her burgeoning horn and fledgeling wings, it was only a matter of time, but something in her twisted at the thought of giving this secret to them.

She tried over the next portion of her life to recreate this magic without much success. If she was inconsistent with her focus over it, the spells woven into any new cloak would break. If she'd had a tutor, if she handed herself over to the Order, the answer would be readily available, but still she persisted. This belonged to her and her alone, though to use it at all was a dangerous endeavor.

When she was almost of age and on the way to visit Sibylla, her carriage was waylaid by thieves. The infamous Jericho robbed her of everything she had down to her golden slippers, and the back-and-forth conversation of wit and edged charm remained with her long after he rode off with nearly all her belongings. He had not a care in the world, was bound by no one, and cast aside morals if they suited him not, and that deeply appealed to Lasair. She became more devoted to creating her second enchanted cloak as a disguise to disappear as she wished it, and the resulting freedom was like standing at the edge of a cliff - breathtaking, terrifying, and addicting.

Her escapades into the city were like a dream, restrained though they were. She had all the freedom in the world in her nightly walks, and yet her taught restraint reined her in more harshly than any scrupulous gaze from a noble or a servant. But one moonlit night, a runaway came, begging for asylum. The Andrastes were obsessed with the title of charitable paragon, so they waved the care of Daxton to Lasair. They spoke in the night of risk and trust and Jericho's envied sin, sprinkling in hinting secrets and veiled truths amidst sharp-eyed wariness of each other, and Lasair came away from it with a burning desire for more. Her nightly walks grew more daring, shifting from a silent lurker to one who invited danger with a bold laugh. She dreamed during the night, her days a caged nightmare.

The fall of Marie-Victoire, however, brought her out of that dream and brought real consequences to her nightly walks. Marie-Victoire was as clever as they came at appealing to fickle social circles, and even that couldn't save her in the end, no matter what she tried. Lasair threw parties and luncheons as was acceptable to quietly offer a hand to her, but in the end could only watch alongside her scornful family as the once-loved darling of society was cast aside. The restraint of it all became a sickening knot in Lasair's stomach, and she did whatever she could to escape it, despite mounting expectations from her parents to show some hint of magic. She'd gone so long in hiding her magic that it had finally caught up with her. She had the classic features of the Andraste mages after all, and perhaps her being magicless could be construed as a possible failure on her part. But, no, of course not! Their darling, perfect Lasaire wasn't magicless! She was a late bloomer, nothing more.

When her parents announced to her that she was betrothed to Basileios, one of fallen repute matching or perhaps worse than that of Marie-Victoire, her despair and panic mounted. She hardly heard their pleasant mockery, the benefits of matching her family to his, likening the match to buying something on a cheap sale. He was in disgrace and the Andrastes would only benefit, appearing as social angels at the Veres' worst moments. And! they exclaimed happily, they needn't hand over a dowry! What more could they wish for! What did it matter that the rumors of his behavior were dark and unfit for marriage? That she had not met him prior to the announcement? That she was not asked.

To this day, her excursions have become more and more desperate as she chases forbidden thrills. She breaks all manner of rules under a false disguise that feels to her just as disingenuous as her real skin, craving something real. One day it will all come crashing down, and she, like all the rest, will be tossed aside as damaged goods, and she doesn't know whether she craves that day or fears it.

TLDR; She learned the rules of court too well, has an antagonistic friendship(?) with Sibylla, found an old cloak and found out she could use magic and hid it. She was robbed by Jericho and admired his freedoms, and meeting the runaway Daxton only cemented this, and yet was terrified by the fall of Marie-Victoire and Basileios, the latter she's now engaged to against her wishes. She wears a disguise and regularly sneaks out to commit crimes to try and find something to make her feel that her life isn't a complete lie, and it's really not working.

WC: 1301

Enchanted Cloaks