xolisani ngema

Xolisani is... A deeply troubled creature. In their youth they'd shot up far past their fellows in height and muscle, unusually large for their race. Worse than that, as a teen and young adult they'd been outright and ferociously queer; loud in a way that put a target on their back and the backs of those around them. They survived like that for a time, but the Underdark had been far more vicious than they could manage. The horror of their surroundings was a part of their every day life. Walking past the temple of Lolth, walking faster and ducking their head away from priestesses and nobility, minding their own business when a slave would be beaten and knowing that if they were not careful, that - or worse - could be them.

Gods forbid any of them discovered that they had been touched by Corellon. To be transmasculine and autistic, so out of the Drow norm, was one thing - those were afflictions that could be fixed. Not that they wanted to be. But that curse? If they were lucky, they'd be tortured and sacrificed to the Spider Queen. If they weren't?

Because of their assigned gender, they got off light. Many of their friends didn't. Thoroughly cowed, Xoli transitioned quickly from a roguish punk trying to survive in an environment that wanted them dead to a far more quiet young "woman." It was survival, but at what cost.

This all, of course, before they met their husband.

His name was Torrellan. He was in service to the noble family that held their little hamlet in their grasp. He was a servant, barely. A slave, mostly, a spy for the cult of Vhaeraun. He looked at them, and he saw them, and he understood.

They'd never been understood before.

The romance was sweet, as sweet as it could be. Secretive, at first, until Xoli realized that with the privilege that came of their assigned gender they could simply marry him. And they did.

Things were perfect, before Torrellan got caught up in a plot surrounding the local nobility, Sabbal Argith, and one Nymir T'Saran. In that kind of danger, there was no choice but to flee the Underdark entirely. And so, together, they did.

They found a place to stay. They had a daughter, Imdril, their perfect Imdril. They were, finally, safe.

It was not to last. The vampire attack had come from nowhere, and their distance from the nearest town made it impossible to find safety. Torrellan had been dead for hours when the charm wore off. His last words had been begging them for help.

Xolisani had thought they'd finally found safety. Comfort. A life. Though their daughter yet lived, they could no longer care for her as they were. The loss of their husband broke them. They were radicalized, to say the least.

That night, they'd been found by one Rudolph van Richten, the notorious cryptobiologist. With his guidance, they left Imdril safe with two family friends to join the blood hunter Order of the Ghostslayers. If they had their way, no one else would know the horror they had experienced. No one else would need fear the night again, because they would destroy anything that got in the way of cleansing it. Nothing would stop them, and their daughter would never know the terror that has been hanging over their head since the day they were born. They did all of it for her. For her sake, her safety, and her happiness. She would not know the same fate as her father.

Of course, becoming a hunter of the undead was not without its own risks. A handful of decades into their joining of the Order they themself would be turned by a former compatriot, and transferred to the Order of the Exsanguinated.

The Exsanguinated are a secretive sub-order of Ghostslayers. Almost cult-like in their hatred of vampirism and all its forms, they follow a regimented set of guidelines built to break their initiates down to nothing in order to make them the perfect vampire hunters. Xoli was tortured. Extensively. And they welcomed it, for how could they ever return home now as they are? When they tried, they nearly killed Imdril, and swore to never return for her sake.

They remained among the Exsanguinated for a handful of years, and then trained alongside Rudolph van Richten II, notorious for the shared hatred of vampires that his father lacked. That apprenticeship was cut short when their mentor disappeared alongside his son, Escher, for whom Xoli had been considered something of a sibling. Xoli finally tracked them both down to a place called Barovia.

And now, they're stuck there, stranded alone in a den of vampires with a group of people all but strangers. And nothing here is as it seems.

This is not their first time in Barovia.