Achielle

a clothier and tailor living in the reach's great stone capital, with a terrible secret. when the sun sets on markarth, achielle joins a handful of others in the terrible and illicit worship of namira. this includes the regular consumption of human flesh... good thing he's gotten so good at getting stains out.

achielle is anxious and soft-spoken to the extreme, almost physically incapable of raising his voice above a murmur. he never makes eye contact if he can help it, and tries to avoid direct interaction with others as much as possible. he's easily startled, high-strung, and for the most part just wants to be left alone. it's not that he dislikes people, he just finds being around them to be more stressful than it's worth. he suffers from psychosis as well, and hallucinates frequently.

those who look into the reach's dark history will surely be familiar with the tale of the ghyslain massacre. a father of three barricaded his family inside their home just outside the city walls and committed a triple murder-suicide, sparing only his youngest son but leaving him trapped in the house with the carnage he'd left behind. the guards who came to the scene still whisper of how mangled the bodies appeared, and how they could have sworn parts of the corpses appeared to have been... eaten.

achielle has long since blocked out the memories of his childhood, believing that the monstrous being "ghyslain" that appears to him is named after the massacre, instead of holding a last name he no longer remembers. 

he had a talent for magic from a very young age, and even spoke with a mage from the college of winterhold for possible admission to study conjuration... but the mage must have sensed something off about him, for he left him in markarth with a rejection letter and a suggestion that he "get help elsewhere".

since then, he lives quietly above his shop, paying others to run the front of the store for him so he can sit in the back with his needlework and the occasional atronach to keep him company.