- Original Race: Passive
- Current Vessel: Galdor
- Original Race: Ophus 11th, 2334
- Current Vessel: Hamis 16th, 2665
FC: Faye Wong
Place of Origin:
- Original Race: Naulanon
- Current Vessel: Xerxe, Hox
Occupation: Hexxos Elder
Relationships: Lreya is the mother of Ezre Vks and wife of Tuhir Vks. She is also almost 400 years old as a raen, and so her relationships span far back into Hexxos and Hoxian history through the different bodies she has inhabited.
Lreya Vks's current Vessel is a petite middle-aged Hoxian. She stands at barely five feet tall with rich, tawny skin and thick dark hair. Her features are youthful and delicate with a hint of freckles on her face, and her eyes are a deep black like volcanic obsidian. Wiry and spry, the raen wears her hair long, usually in traditional braids that sit high on the crown of her head in order to properly support a vipoxz—most of which are carved of whalebone and decorated rather simply for a married woman.
Like all Hexxos, Lreya's Vessel does have tattoos to mark her position and status, though the lines in dark ink that curl around the helix of her ears and trace down her spine are subtle and can mostly go unnoticed, as is the typical expectation for a body marked and prepared to be offered as a dwelling place for a raen. As an Elder, however, a thin, black line is etched from her forehead to between her eyebrows, ending where her nose begins, symbolizing her acceptance into her position among the Carriers of the Dead.
Her dress is not for fashion but for function, though that is not to say that Lreya does not own anything frivolous and nice. A bit of jewelry from other Kingdoms, a few foreign dresses, and some well-tailored but very traditional formalwear do exist in her armoire, but the layers of her Hexxos-style clothing are usually a mixture of bright saffrons, rich ochres, and a charcoal grey. Furs and another layer of dark wool keep her petite form warm in Hox's long, bitter winter.
She wears no make-up, and, for the most part, especially when not in private, the raen carries herself with all the inexpressive expressiveness that would be wrought so gracefully from a well-honed rhakor. When alone with family or close friends, Lreya's smile is bright and mischevious, but those that have seen such an expression are rare.
What no one can miss about Lreya has little to do with her appearance, however, and more about her very presence—for despite her existence as a raen, her field is hardly porven. It is a demanding thing with almost its own existence entirely, weighty and strange. The sensation of it is disconcerting to galdori who are not familiar with her not because of its powerful, entropic nature but because of the unusual sensation of monic particles that can only be described as entirely indescribable. Or, perhaps a better word would be yet-to-be-described. Otherworldly. Forgotten. Old.
It is difficult to pour almost 400 years of existence into a singular personality, especially when that existence is, by its very nature, continually coming unwound and frayed at the edges. That Lreya has managed to hold herself together, sane and cognizant, for such a stretch of time is both testimony to her determination as well as her tenacity. The old raen is a creature of conviction and belief, though in her current form, she is quiet, contemplative, and soft-spoken—traits she clearly passed onto her only child, Ezre. That is not to say she doesn't speak when something is on her mind, of course (something else she has shared with her child, should anyone truly get to know him), but like the Hoxian she has been for generations now, the Hexxos Elder is careful with her words, weighing each syllable's very value before speaking it into existence out loud.
She is mysterious. She can be imposing. She is a small figure who can dominate a room not by any physical force but simply with her composure and grace. Strangely enough, however, she is also very approachable. There is a warmth that can be irresistible, a knowing comfort that she has practiced over the decades as a Carrier of the Dead to make sure she is caring properly for those that she must, living or deceased.
The raen is an attentive listener, an active encourager, and someone who seems to move from one task to the next almost in anticipation of whatever was needed to be done in the first place. She is also burdened with vast knowledge, weighed down by a supernatural and worldly education that nearly four centuries of unlife have built upon a single misplaced soul the mona has attempted for nearly just as long to unravel and destroy.
Lreya Vks does not remember her first name, though she knows it is written somewhere and she has simply chosen to forget. Born centuries ago in the jungles of Naulanon far from the prying eyes of the Six Kingdoms and long after the War of the Book, whoever the raen had been before their last death had been tall, green-skinned and a passive. Was that a problem in the Lost Kingdom? Was her life a short one? Did she reach old age or was her life quickly snuffed out when her people realized she would not wield magic in the way that was expected of her kind?
If Lreya remembers those truths, she does not speak of them to many.
What Lreya does remember, clearly as if no decades had washed over the sandy shore of her mind, is her awakening. She remembers the hunger and the need. Truth be told, she does not remember every body her displaced soul, slipped so indelicately, so rudely, so uninvitedly from the Cycle as it'd been, has since inhabited. The first few are dark stains, flitting shadows, and pain—she cannot entirely remember where her first few decades were spent and she cannot entirely remember how she made her way to Hox.
Again, if she does, she's never told a living soul.
Lreya knows the bodies she's left behind over the centuries, and not all of them were as freely given as those Vessels she's inhabited since joining the Hexxos. Not all of them have been galdori or female. Not all of them have been Hoxian, but once the raen made their choice to stay in the northernmost Kingdom, to settle into the religious conclave of Carriers of the Dead, they chose the name Lreya and took up herbalism, poetry, and preparation of corpses for burial without complaint. She knew her way inside a body, after all, and so it was only her way of giving back for what she'd already stolen so many times over. In exchange for her historical knowledge and practical experiences as a raen as well as her willing service to the gods-guarded Cycle that had betrayed her, Lreya was given the opportunity to learn about herself, to reach out to the mona that seemed to hate her undying existence so much, and to find balance and peace among ancient texts and hardy people.
The body Lreya currently inhabits was born in Xerxe to a pair of Hexxos Guides. Their second daughter, the young girl knew from practically birth that her place was to become a Vessel. When she came of age, she was earmarked (literally) as such and her training began. She chose not to be sent to Frecksat and not to live a normal galdori life despite the offer, deciding instead to spend her years before her twentieth birthday among family and friends, pursuing spiritual, esoteric things in her own form of needful preparation.
Meanwhile, Lreya's galdor body began to fade, and when in its eightieth year, the time had come to make the exchange. Persistent in making the pilgrimage to Xerxe from Kzecka on foot, Lreya chose only a single assistant in the journey—a young Hexxos Hand named Tuhir. The man had returned from finishing his studies in Mugroba just a few years prior and had settled comfortably into his religious responsibilities, interring the dead. The journey was not an easy one through the Spondola Mountains, and, strangely enough, the pair formed a curious friendship in the frigid solitude.
That friendship lasted beyond the passing of one body to the next, and eventually Tuhir and Lreya were an unexpectedly inseparable pair. A relationship matured and was eventually celebrated without ceremony as a commitment.
The pair prayerfully requested permission of the Hexxos Elders to have children—a dangerous, difficult new journey as a raen inhabiting a female body. Years passed and unfruitful pregnancies ended too soon, and Lreya bore the grief of such loss with the same fortitude as she bore the losses of all the souls that had thus far so willingly sustained her singular existence. Looking inward, the raen ceased for a time chasing her body's fertility and sought to find more of her own balance with the mona, something she knew every shift into a new Vessel disrupted. More years passed, and finally on Spar Rhavat of 2700, Ezre Vks was born.
Master
PHYSICAL
Average
SOCIAL
Excellent