Goneril is a dark witch that resides deep in the sunless forest. As she is blind, Goneril's other senses are heightened. She covered her face with rags as she had no use for her eyes, she navigates her way around based on memory, using her hearing and strong sense of smell to guide her, as well as find ingredients for her rituals.

This witch does not move like others. Her movements are slow and calculated, she walks with a stiffness that sends chills down even the strongest of spines. With each step, the bones that she has used to decorate her body will rattle. Her presence is easily noticed, though some fail to run before her ability of decay reaches them.

Her voice is very sinister, sounding as if it were coming from deep within her throat. There is a dark, magical element to it, as if she were speaking through some sore of modulator. Her words are twisted, emotionless and threatening. She speaks from festered hatred, though her tone will suggest an eerie calmness.

Not much is known about this witch. Only stories linger of her decent to madness.

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PERSONALITY

Goneril has spent so long on her own, her mind had corrupted. Due to her past and reason for her isolation, Goneril has lost all emotion for anyone and anything. She is very wise and carries alot of knowlege within her words, though knowlege from a corrupt mind. Not many live to share their experience.

This witch is not to be trusted. She is like a bad spirit, and treated as such by the inhabitants of Anathema that know her by name or story.

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HISTORY

As a young elk, Goneril was cast out. Now, she lives in the sunless forest, picking off traveler’s that wander too far onto her territory.

Goneril grew up in a small village called Mead, north or Namarast. Before it was the tourist attraction it is now a century later, the village was small and primitive. She would often practice chemical experiments and collect strange objects that were often seen as morbid and ritualistic in the eyes of the other residents of the village. She was seen as different and weird, her interests did not align with everyone else’s and for that, the residents always turned a blind eye to her. It was when her magic started to show, that she was forced to leave her home. Random plants and rodents started showing up dead, a result in Goneril’s failed attempts to control her magic. The residents of Mead started to become suspicious of their strange neighbour and it was when larger wildlife started showing up dead on their doorsteps, that they decided it was time for her to go. Upom finding her in her home, they found that the plant life around Goneril’s little hut became ashy and dull, there were even small skeletal remains littered around the structure.

Oblivious to the destruction she was causing, Goneril was unable to understand why her village wanted her gone. Out of fear and desperation to get away from her angry neighbours, she tried to defend herself with chemicals that she had previously brewed. As a failed attempt to defend herself, she spilt the contents of the bowl over her own face, which burned her eyes and surrounding skin. Terrified and unable to see, she ran away, navigating her way deep into the sunless forest and not stopping until her lungs were heavy and her legs were shaking, her body bruised and stinging from colliding with trees and tripping on branches.

Adjusting herself to her blindness was not easy at first. She could still see faint shapes and light, but it made no difference. Over time she began to rely on her other senses, sound and smell. Goneril started to cover her face, to not let her poor eyesight get in the way of her other senses.

Years passed. Her previous life in Mead became nonexistent. The residents forgot about her. Though, over the years, she began to appear in the stories of traveler’s passing through the small town. Stories about a patch in the sunless forest that holds no life, and sightings of a ghostly elk-like creature dressed in bones, sporting the skull of a male elk that’s face was covered in rags. Those of the residents that were responsible for casting her out began to fear her once again, knowing that it was their ignorance all those years ago that created this monster. She has become known as ‘The witch in the woods’ and ‘The bone collector’ due to the strange bone structures and litters of remains that decorate her territory. Those that see these bones go no further, as the witch does not strike out of her own territory. Some have entered the forest and have not returned, oblivious to these rules.

As Goneril has no one to help her with her magic, she became very disruptive in her little patch in the forest. Everything around her has died. It took decades for her to be able to control her magic. Though even then, she had become so accustomed to the smell of death and decay, that she made no effort to fix the part of the forest that she had destroyed.

Nearly a century later, from when she was first cast out of her village, her presence is still strong within the sunless forest. The smell of death and the rot of the plants keep wanderers from getting too close, though every now and then, someone strays a little too far into the woods.

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MAGIC

• Goneril possesses the ability of Decay. This allows her to destroy anything that she comes into contact with, making it wilter, crumble to dust or wither to bone. If uses her ability on a living being, their flesh will rot away until they are nothing but bone. The disintegration time is not immediate, ranging in speed depending on the size of the target that she is decaying. The decay will eventually spread through her victims body, unless the infected limb is amputated before it spreads any further. Over the years in the forest, her ability has become more destructive and uncontrollable. She is found in the dead part of the sunless forest, where the smallest of trees and bushes are twisted, hollow husks, and where no new life sprouts from the ground.

COST

• (2)Magic slightly impairs the caster's memory, so that they may not remember using it, or be confused afterward. Alot of the time Gonerill uses her magic, more so powerful spells, she does not entirely remember why she has casted. This leads to alot of aimless wondering and not finishing tasks.