₀₀₈. Sylviana (Sheet)

Sylviana was born only a year after her brother was born. Their parents were both strict, yet her father was more loving than her mother. Cerridwen expected Sylviana to be a perfect young lady with manners as poised as a Queen. She was to hold herself to the highest of standards. Despite being raised to be a perfect noblewoman, she found herself more interested in magic than anything else her mother had to teach her. While that was fine with her father in some regard, her mother was not happy with that.

Meanwhile, her brother was being trained by her father to take his place. Sylviana was interested in her father’s work as well and began to spend more time with her father rather than her mother. She found that magic was more helpful than the others gave credit for and had a desire for it to be freely used. In secret, she wrote down and practiced higher level spells and studied different schools of magic, yet the one that interested her the most was necromancy. It was a school she felt that many people couldn’t understand. Necromancy was a grey area, depending on how it was used and she was more than happy to explore that.

Soon after, her ambitions grew, Magic was too useful to have been restricted so heavily. She wanted to make sure that the common folk could use magic too and not just the higher echelon of the Claymondian League. She wanted to take her father’s place. She’d do better than her brother anyway. She begged her father to let her learn the intricacies of his job, at least a little bit in case her brother got sick and couldn’t attend a gathering. Her father found this to be more than reasonable and let her in on a few things. Her brother was suspicious and downright upset that she got to learn the same things as he did.

A lot of their training was done and soon, they were out traveling to different cities in the Claymondian League, introducing themselves to the noble families and higher ups of the kingdom. It was a battle to see who was more well-liked, who was more versed in people. While Sylviana had training with social intrigue because of her mother, Aramil could only see the surface of the nobility. She was more well received than her brother and he became jealous. That was her goal. Slowly make him more obsolete and destroy him when given the chance.

During her time traveling, she had gotten involved with a drow Arcane Trickster by the name of Imbros. He was passionate about the usage of magic for the common folk and met Sylviana while attempting to rob her. Realizing she could use necromancy, he backed off and started getting more curious. The two kept seeing each other for a time and Imbros only ended it because her plans were getting too ambitious for his liking. It was something he knew couldn’t be done with just the small amount of power he had and the following that she had.

His leaving only fueled her more. She knew she had to be top dog in the Claymondian League and the only person in her way was her brother. Sylviana decided to come up with a plan to get rid of him, make her seem innocent and to get the job done. She hired an assassin to kill her brother in the night and to maim her. She made a story up easily: something was hunting the two down, she woke up first to see the perpetrator, yelled for her brother, to which she would briefly fight the assassin only to let him kill her brother and then blame it on another noble family. It worked just well enough and she had to return home with deep wounds. When she returned to her family’s estate, she gave the best show she could give, falling off her horse, looking disheveled and fainting, though the faint wasn’t exactly a show. The servants and especially her parents were mortified and wanted to know what happened immediately, so when she woke up, she explained it the best she could without letting her parents know that she was the one who hired the assassin. She blamed it on a rival family instead, trying to reason with her father that they’ve always wanted the de Vera’s gone. She was all that was left to take her father’s place and she would see her ambitions through.

She’d found that the tasks given to her by her father would take her out of the Claymondian League, a task to slowly diminish the use of magic in some areas. Little does her father know she’d be slowly convincing them to allow it.