Name: Elise Veicht
Age: 448
Sex: Female
Description:
By the standards of a Hollow, Elise is perhaps unremarkable. In general shape, she is humanoid, but with such grotesquely distorted proportions that none could ever mistake her for a member of the mortal race. She is tall, taller than any human by several handspans, and so gaunt that, were she still a human, she would surely be considered terminally emaciated. Her skin is pale as the bleached bone of her stark, featureless mask, but continually weeps a foul, blackened ichor, while her fingers have twisted and warped into vicious talons. Tattered feathery wings, like those of some foul carrion bird but ragged and wasted, sprout from her back, and yet despite their strange nature, or the striking nature of her terrible claws, it is the eyes of her mask that ever draw the gaze, for these bleak cracks in the otherwise flawless porcelain weep the same foul ichor as Elise's skin whilst they speak their tale of hatred, guilt and betrayal.
History:
Long ago, before the nations of the earth were sundered by the actions of a rogue shinigami, a girl was born in the town of Colorado Springs to parents of German descent. She was, in the grand scheme of the cosmos, a relatively unimpressive thing; the apple of her parents' eyes, assuredly, but not a creature upon whose shoulders a great destiny rested. Her early days were simple enough, she laughed, she played, she grew from a baby into a child. She went to school, where she showed herself to be no great genius but, equally, no fool, and developed something of an interest in athletics. From school, the girl elected not to follow the paths of her peers, but instead, driven by her interests in the more physical aspects of life and, tragically, a love for her country, she enlisted with the army.
The years that followed went the way they always do in such tales. Elise worked hard to prove herself in her male-dominated surroundings, pushing herself twice as hard as any of her comrades each and every day. It was a hard life; there were days were she considered abandoning her path. But she never did. Each insult, every put down, they were the fuel in the engine of her ambition, and they ever pushed her on, forcing her to work harder and harder, to become better than anything she might otherwise have been. And, eventually, it paid off. She was noticed, her skills and dedication recognised, and the life of a grunt was left behind in favour of the shrouded existence of a special forces operative. In the months, and then years, that followed, Elise was involved in a number of operations across the globe, ranging from mere reconnaissance to abduction and even assassination. But these operations, important as they might have seemed, were truthfully little more than the opening gambits in one creature's game.
That fact became apparent in the year of Elise's twenty sixth birthday, the year 2090 by the Christian calendar. That was the year the United States turned on itself, its government collapsing and its citizens waging war upon one another as the subtle touches of a puppeteer's strings set them to dance. Other counties, seeing the opportunities presented by the self destruction of the dominant superpower, were quick to intervene, offering aid to one faction or another, and soon the world found itself drawn back into the bloody theatre of world war. Elise spent much of the next three years on active operations, fighting on behalf of the self-declared loyalist forces of the United States government. The work was bloody and brutal, but she never backed down from it. She told herself that she couldn't, that her country needed her, but sometimes, in her darkest hours, Elise couldn't help but suspect that was a just an excuse.
In 2093, Elise was dispatched to Mexico to eliminate a prominent leader of the rebellious citizens who had apparently fled across the border. It was supposed to be a simple operation, an assassination just like any other. And perhaps it might have been, if not for the SPX-15. It was a weapon of unquestionable power, a weapon many believed capable of ending the war in a stroke. More importantly, it was a weapon some elements of the government had been waiting for an excuse to use. They cared nothing for Elise or her comrades. They were expendable. Collateral damage. The fact that, when the SPX-15 detonated, a squad of loyal soldiers was engulfed in a searing firestorm that blasted the flesh from their bones and then rendered their bones to dust meant nothing to them. And why would it? What were the lives of seven men and one woman compared to a chance to display your might to the entire world?
Absolutely nothing.
Yet the storm of hellfire was not the end for Elise. As the fires ebbed, leaving behind blackened soil that had been seared into glass by their passage, awareness returned. She found herself standing, utterly alone, in the heart of a newly forged wasteland. Yet while the sight of her surroundings shocked Elise, it was the slow realisation of the cause that truly had the most profound impact upon her mind; as she came to accept that there was only one force which had both the capability and the inclination to so utterly annihilate a country, she found herself collapsing into numbed despair, her awareness falling deep into the darkest depths of the soul. Elise didn't even notice when the chains that bound her to the mortal realm began to consume themselves. At least, not until the final stage of the transformation, the stage at which agony laced through every fragment of her ghostly form. And even then she almost welcomed the pain, welcomed the way it drew her mind away from the betrayal that had destroyed her both literally and figuratively. When the change came, when the shrouds of the painfully departed coiled themselves about her, masking her form and binding her beneath their weaves, she welcomed them too, feeding them her sense of betrayal as they twisted her body into the form of a Hollow.
In the months that followed, the creature that had once been Elise stalked the desolate wastelands that had once been Central America, feeding upon the few souls so tightly bound to the lands that they hadn't yet transformed or passed on. Yet such an existence could scarcely support a creature such as she for long, and soon enough the hunger for the energy of human souls began to push her beyond the wastelands, to the lands untouched by the SPX-15. There, souls enough for any Hollow awaited. But, as Elise was to find out, so too did destiny.
Destiny, in this case, took the form of a man, a man with an aspect to his features that was simultaneously familiar and maddeningly elusive to Elise's mind. He appeared abruptly as she stalked toward a nearby town, stepping lightly from the shadows of a crevasse, ebon robes sweeping about his booted feet and a slender blade held almost tenderly in one hand. He spoke softly, his cool raze resting upon her twisted form as he named the aberration she had become and promised a swift end to her suffering.
And then he was upon her. His blade little more than a gleam of silver in the morning air, he struck in a blur of motion. The instincts of Elise's old life saved her; she stumbled back, raising a hand in a futile warding gesture, only to find the blade scraping against the wicked talons that had once been her fingers. As one, the shinigami and the Hollow stared at the sight of blade locking against talons, before the black clad man spun away, his blade whipping around in a gleaming arc that came within inches of ending Elise's cursed existence. Then he was on her again, blade moving so quickly that Elise couldn't even hope of blocking it. She didn't try, instead backing away, hoping to put some distance between herself and the shinigami, but knowing deep inside that she hadn't a hope of doing so.
It was then that destiny intervened once again. As the shinigami darted forward, a monstrous creature erupted from the ground beneath it, spewing shattered rocks across the earth and forcing the shinigami to cartwheel aside. The creature, black as night with the exception of the chipped white mask upon its leering face, cast not a glance at Elise, preferring instead to launch itself after the shinigami that had so recently been assaulting her. Elise cared not; its intervention had saved her, and she would make the most of her reprieve. Leaving the site of her ignominious defeat, and the battle that now raged there, far behind, she travelled further into the world that had turned its back on her. Soon, her hunger grew anew, and Elise was forced to feed once more on the souls of the recently departed. And with each soul she devoured, she found herself growing stronger, more powerful, and less human than she ever had been. Eventually, the power she gained was enough for her to step across the veil into the eternal desert, that land of silvery sand which she would discovered to be named Hueco Mundo. There, in the wilderness born of twisted souls, she spent the next years learning of the world in the shadows, of the lands beyond the veil of death and of the creatures, creatures such as herself and the shinigami, which dwelt therein.
The years that followed passed by in a blur of timelessness. Alone amidst the eternal sands, Elise spent the years feeding upon those souls unfortunate enough to be drawn into Hueco Mundo, and occasionally venturing beyond the hallowed sands to tread once more upon the soil of earth. And as the years passed, the Hollow that had once been Elise grew steadily more powerful and knowledgeable of the dark undercurrents that laced through Hueco Mundo and the world of the living, binding them together as dark reflections. And with every year that passed, every fragment of power she gained, Elise forgot more of her former life. Forgot more of what she had once been, and what she had once fought for.
In the end, all that remained was hatred, betrayal, and hunger.
Age: 448
Sex: Female
Description:
By the standards of a Hollow, Elise is perhaps unremarkable. In general shape, she is humanoid, but with such grotesquely distorted proportions that none could ever mistake her for a member of the mortal race. She is tall, taller than any human by several handspans, and so gaunt that, were she still a human, she would surely be considered terminally emaciated. Her skin is pale as the bleached bone of her stark, featureless mask, but continually weeps a foul, blackened ichor, while her fingers have twisted and warped into vicious talons. Tattered feathery wings, like those of some foul carrion bird but ragged and wasted, sprout from her back, and yet despite their strange nature, or the striking nature of her terrible claws, it is the eyes of her mask that ever draw the gaze, for these bleak cracks in the otherwise flawless porcelain weep the same foul ichor as Elise's skin whilst they speak their tale of hatred, guilt and betrayal.
History:
Long ago, before the nations of the earth were sundered by the actions of a rogue shinigami, a girl was born in the town of Colorado Springs to parents of German descent. She was, in the grand scheme of the cosmos, a relatively unimpressive thing; the apple of her parents' eyes, assuredly, but not a creature upon whose shoulders a great destiny rested. Her early days were simple enough, she laughed, she played, she grew from a baby into a child. She went to school, where she showed herself to be no great genius but, equally, no fool, and developed something of an interest in athletics. From school, the girl elected not to follow the paths of her peers, but instead, driven by her interests in the more physical aspects of life and, tragically, a love for her country, she enlisted with the army.
The years that followed went the way they always do in such tales. Elise worked hard to prove herself in her male-dominated surroundings, pushing herself twice as hard as any of her comrades each and every day. It was a hard life; there were days were she considered abandoning her path. But she never did. Each insult, every put down, they were the fuel in the engine of her ambition, and they ever pushed her on, forcing her to work harder and harder, to become better than anything she might otherwise have been. And, eventually, it paid off. She was noticed, her skills and dedication recognised, and the life of a grunt was left behind in favour of the shrouded existence of a special forces operative. In the months, and then years, that followed, Elise was involved in a number of operations across the globe, ranging from mere reconnaissance to abduction and even assassination. But these operations, important as they might have seemed, were truthfully little more than the opening gambits in one creature's game.
That fact became apparent in the year of Elise's twenty sixth birthday, the year 2090 by the Christian calendar. That was the year the United States turned on itself, its government collapsing and its citizens waging war upon one another as the subtle touches of a puppeteer's strings set them to dance. Other counties, seeing the opportunities presented by the self destruction of the dominant superpower, were quick to intervene, offering aid to one faction or another, and soon the world found itself drawn back into the bloody theatre of world war. Elise spent much of the next three years on active operations, fighting on behalf of the self-declared loyalist forces of the United States government. The work was bloody and brutal, but she never backed down from it. She told herself that she couldn't, that her country needed her, but sometimes, in her darkest hours, Elise couldn't help but suspect that was a just an excuse.
In 2093, Elise was dispatched to Mexico to eliminate a prominent leader of the rebellious citizens who had apparently fled across the border. It was supposed to be a simple operation, an assassination just like any other. And perhaps it might have been, if not for the SPX-15. It was a weapon of unquestionable power, a weapon many believed capable of ending the war in a stroke. More importantly, it was a weapon some elements of the government had been waiting for an excuse to use. They cared nothing for Elise or her comrades. They were expendable. Collateral damage. The fact that, when the SPX-15 detonated, a squad of loyal soldiers was engulfed in a searing firestorm that blasted the flesh from their bones and then rendered their bones to dust meant nothing to them. And why would it? What were the lives of seven men and one woman compared to a chance to display your might to the entire world?
Absolutely nothing.
Yet the storm of hellfire was not the end for Elise. As the fires ebbed, leaving behind blackened soil that had been seared into glass by their passage, awareness returned. She found herself standing, utterly alone, in the heart of a newly forged wasteland. Yet while the sight of her surroundings shocked Elise, it was the slow realisation of the cause that truly had the most profound impact upon her mind; as she came to accept that there was only one force which had both the capability and the inclination to so utterly annihilate a country, she found herself collapsing into numbed despair, her awareness falling deep into the darkest depths of the soul. Elise didn't even notice when the chains that bound her to the mortal realm began to consume themselves. At least, not until the final stage of the transformation, the stage at which agony laced through every fragment of her ghostly form. And even then she almost welcomed the pain, welcomed the way it drew her mind away from the betrayal that had destroyed her both literally and figuratively. When the change came, when the shrouds of the painfully departed coiled themselves about her, masking her form and binding her beneath their weaves, she welcomed them too, feeding them her sense of betrayal as they twisted her body into the form of a Hollow.
In the months that followed, the creature that had once been Elise stalked the desolate wastelands that had once been Central America, feeding upon the few souls so tightly bound to the lands that they hadn't yet transformed or passed on. Yet such an existence could scarcely support a creature such as she for long, and soon enough the hunger for the energy of human souls began to push her beyond the wastelands, to the lands untouched by the SPX-15. There, souls enough for any Hollow awaited. But, as Elise was to find out, so too did destiny.
Destiny, in this case, took the form of a man, a man with an aspect to his features that was simultaneously familiar and maddeningly elusive to Elise's mind. He appeared abruptly as she stalked toward a nearby town, stepping lightly from the shadows of a crevasse, ebon robes sweeping about his booted feet and a slender blade held almost tenderly in one hand. He spoke softly, his cool raze resting upon her twisted form as he named the aberration she had become and promised a swift end to her suffering.
And then he was upon her. His blade little more than a gleam of silver in the morning air, he struck in a blur of motion. The instincts of Elise's old life saved her; she stumbled back, raising a hand in a futile warding gesture, only to find the blade scraping against the wicked talons that had once been her fingers. As one, the shinigami and the Hollow stared at the sight of blade locking against talons, before the black clad man spun away, his blade whipping around in a gleaming arc that came within inches of ending Elise's cursed existence. Then he was on her again, blade moving so quickly that Elise couldn't even hope of blocking it. She didn't try, instead backing away, hoping to put some distance between herself and the shinigami, but knowing deep inside that she hadn't a hope of doing so.
It was then that destiny intervened once again. As the shinigami darted forward, a monstrous creature erupted from the ground beneath it, spewing shattered rocks across the earth and forcing the shinigami to cartwheel aside. The creature, black as night with the exception of the chipped white mask upon its leering face, cast not a glance at Elise, preferring instead to launch itself after the shinigami that had so recently been assaulting her. Elise cared not; its intervention had saved her, and she would make the most of her reprieve. Leaving the site of her ignominious defeat, and the battle that now raged there, far behind, she travelled further into the world that had turned its back on her. Soon, her hunger grew anew, and Elise was forced to feed once more on the souls of the recently departed. And with each soul she devoured, she found herself growing stronger, more powerful, and less human than she ever had been. Eventually, the power she gained was enough for her to step across the veil into the eternal desert, that land of silvery sand which she would discovered to be named Hueco Mundo. There, in the wilderness born of twisted souls, she spent the next years learning of the world in the shadows, of the lands beyond the veil of death and of the creatures, creatures such as herself and the shinigami, which dwelt therein.
The years that followed passed by in a blur of timelessness. Alone amidst the eternal sands, Elise spent the years feeding upon those souls unfortunate enough to be drawn into Hueco Mundo, and occasionally venturing beyond the hallowed sands to tread once more upon the soil of earth. And as the years passed, the Hollow that had once been Elise grew steadily more powerful and knowledgeable of the dark undercurrents that laced through Hueco Mundo and the world of the living, binding them together as dark reflections. And with every year that passed, every fragment of power she gained, Elise forgot more of her former life. Forgot more of what she had once been, and what she had once fought for.
In the end, all that remained was hatred, betrayal, and hunger.
