Legends Zahnnie

They say your first LARP character is basically yourself. Zahnnie was my first, and well, she was a lot like me. :) A little more naive and good natured, but just as stubborn and hardheaded. I played her as a PC for three years, and as an NPC for a year after that. She's currently... not exactly dead, but lost? Hard to say. Long story.

Her strength and her weakness was always her heart. When love compelled her, she soared and she fell.

She grew up in Tor Loch Maben (think Scotland) in a big family- Morrigu played my big brother Weylyn, and Kit my big sister Wynne. She had basically the perfect childhood, protected and nurtured and let to run free. She took up the sword and learned to heal, and read voraciously. She renamed herself out of a book- not telling you her real name!- and at the age of seventeen decided to see the world. She spent a year in Okia (think feudal Japan) and then from there headed to New Galen, which is where I entered the game.

There was a lot that shaped her in those few years. She had always been devoted to Odelara, the Greater Spirit of the Moon. And when the Fey of Areth returned, she swore herself as a Fey Knight in service of the Queen, the Gold Court. She also began to train as an Acolyte of the Imbrium- an order of female huntresses sworn to Odelara. With her was her best friend Luna and her teacher Mara. It was the happiest time in Zahnnie's life, really. And then everything began to fall away, one piece at a time.

First was the Gold Court. Bryn, the Queen's Champion, was killed by a vile ploy, and the Queen pined for him until she too was killed. The Court dissolved, and Zahnnie drifted away from it, too hurt by her Queen's abandoning her to walk in that part of the light again. Then her brother, Haley, was senselessly murdered by someone she knew and liked, under the influence of a wraith spirit. His last thought was to pass a boon on to Zahnnie; and when she heard that, she broke, inside. Utterly shattered from grief and guilt and shame. That night she cried her eyes out in Weylyn's arms, then walked into the night... in more ways than one.

You see, all over Areth, these rifts were opening up- backlash of a major magical explosion that had recently occurred. Different realities were meshing together, and different versions of people were wandering from one reality to another. One such was Zahnnie's dear friend Elijah, who in this alternate realm, was a vampire, with Zahnnie as his thrall. And in this reality, he assumed the same; and when Zahnnie realized what he was asking of her, she said yes. She was hurting so badly from her brother's death- less than an hour had passed- that she didn't care about dying. She just wanted to do something. So he took her aside, tenderly drained her into death, and then had her restored to life.

She was pretty much instantly addicted.

There's a point, she found, between life and death, where everything is cold. You're not happy, you're not sad, you really just don't care. And since Zahnnie's life at the moment was pain, all pain, all the time, feeding Elijah was a step up from that. She gave bits of her life just to know a little bit of peace.

She knew who her brother's murderer was, but because of an agreement she had made to protect the rest of her family, her hand were tied and she could not harm him. So she just sank farther and farther into that cold place where nothing hurt, closer towards joining Elijah as a vampire.

And right in the middle of it all, just 'cause she hadn't lost enough people, she watched Mitsu and Calamarth, two more people she loved, executed in front of her by the government's orders. Before he died, Calamarth told her to find his sword and a certain man, and bring him back. He also said the words that would drive her to madness; "If my life had been my own, I would have been happy to spend it with you."

Her heart compelled her. She found the sword. She found the man. She gave her blood to a ritual to resurrect someone she thought was Calamarth.

It was the wraith whose influence had killed Haley. And now it was in her.

But Odelara remained. Even when all else fell away: the Court, Haley, Bryn, Mitsu; Odelara, and Luna and Mara, remained. And when the moonlight fell on Zahnnie, she was herself again. Luna had been traveling for a season while all of this was going on, but Mara knew. Finally, it came time for Zahnnie's final test; the last rite which would make her either a full member of the Imbrium, or cast her out. Zahnnie drew up a ritual, opened a gate, and walked through into another realm. Elijah was there, and another member of the Imbrium. He knocked her down and crouched over her to feed; to give Zahnnie her last lesson. The choice was right before her; her loyalty to the Imbrium, or to the vampire. It sounds like an easy choice, but it wasn't. The vampire didn't make her happy, but he made her not hurt. He had promised to be with her forever; he wouldn't die and leave her like it seemed all that she loved was. And so Zahnnie knelt on the cold stone floor with the body of her sister Imbrium member in her arms, tears running down her cheek as she refused to let him touch her.

Everyone you love will die, and you will be left alone again.

I know.

But she couldn't betray her sisters. Her heart chose as it broke.

Illusion, stop!

And then She was there, Odelara herself kissing the tears from Zahnnie's face and naming her as her daughter. She drew the full moon on her wrist; a mark no one could take. More eternal than unlife, and far less cold.

She emerged a full Sister of the Imbrium, marked by the Lady's hand. That night, she threw the Dream-Assassin, Azamuki, through the Onyx Gate. That night, she gave her blood to the wraith.

She went a little bit mad. She murdered a man, weeping, to appease the wraith, and it took her body for a little while. Rage gave him power, fed him; and despair, too. There were so many voices in her head; she got lost.

But after a long winter, Luna returned to her, with the man Sergei- a paladin of Odelara, sworn to her light. And in the moonlight, Zahnnie was herself.

But the vampire was enraged that she would betray him so, and demanded she return to him. He killed Luna, right in front of her while she lay immobilized. Zahnnie knew she had to do something, but again, her heart got in the way. She tried to turn the vampire from the darkness, lead him back to the light.

If you will not join me as an equal, you will join me as a minion. He drove a dagger into her, and dragged her away.

She would have died then, as the vampire performed a dark ritual on her to turn her into a banshee. But Odelara- and Zahnnie's friends- came to the rescue. Just that night, Luna had passed her final test, confronting an image of Zahnnie as a vampire, and taken from that image a flower containing in it Zahnnie's dark side, her dark half. Bearing that flower, Luna, Weylyn, and many of her friends kicked in the door, stopped the ritual, and saved Zahnnie. Then they killed the vampire; Zahnnie fought and struggled, mad with grief, to stop them. Luna and Mara sat on her until it was over.

That night, Luna and a few others purged Zahnnie's dark side, returned her to herself, but pure once more. The scar faded, the moon remained. The vampire was dead, she had her sisters, and she once more walked in the moonlight.

It was another of the best times in Zahnnie's life, though her happiness was bittersweet. The vampire Elijah was dead, but the true one was still alive. And she had loved them both. So she asked him to marry her, and they began to court. But Elijah was a seer, and he had seen in his dreams that things were soon to end. He tried to push her away, tried to keep her from getting hurt; but finally, he sacrificed himself to ascend as the embodiments of Dream and Nightmare. Zahnnie came looking for him, and Luna had to tell her that her love was gone, forever. Or perhaps changed. Luna had to hold her as she wept.

Zahnnie was no seer, and could not exist in the Dream Realm. For her to step in without a Dream Cord would make her lost forever. Nonetheless, she walked into it that night, looking for him.

And that is where it stands. By all accounts, she should be dead. But perhaps Dream remembers her, and perhaps he will find her. Or, perhaps Nightmare will.