User:Thelxeipeia/Thelxeipeia Jones

General Info
Name: Thelxeipeia Jones. "Thel" works just fine. Known to the Trade as the Finder of Lost Objects. If she has an elfin family name, no one knows it. Home Server: Sisters of Elune Race: Kaldorei/Quel'dorei Half-breed Age: She's in her fourth century. Class: Rogue Interests: Weaving, Leather, Pretty Sparkly Things, Sharp Pointy Things, Strong Drink and other Toxins, Comparative Anatomy. Guild: Boomstick Saints

Physical Description: Thelxeipeia's mixed heritage (she's the child of a night elf and a high elf) shows mostly in the bone structure of her face: she shares the rare, uncanny beauty of her mother's kind, but in her father's night elf colouring. Her eyes glow with the faint, blue-white light of a crescent moon. She's not quite six and a half feet tall, with the lean, flat muscles of a distance runner. Her hair is the rusty black of a raven's wing and looks like she cut it herself. With a knife. It's pulled back from her face in a short ponytail, though bits of it continuously slip free of the leather thong that binds them.

For someone who professes to be enamoured of shiny sparkly things, she doesn't dress very flamboyantly. Rather, she's covered throat-to-toe in dark gray leather. Straps and buckles keep it snugged close to her skin; dark iron reinforces it at toe and knee and across the backs of her hands. Both her upper arms and thighs have pockets and loops for carrying various small things. A separate harness has clips for several sheathed knives, a hanger for the ring-hilt rapier she wears at the small of her back, and a small haversack. Her cloak is sturdy gray wool, nothing more, with a deeply-cowled hood in case of rain.

Personality Description: Thelxeipeia presents herself as a hard-drinking, flexibly moral professional murdering sneakthief, and that's pretty much true. Like everyone else, though, she has hidden depths for those with the patience to gain that level of trust with her. The money that comes into her hands flows out again, just as quickly. If she asks for beer money, she probably genuinely doesn't have it.

Bio (Summary)
"Do you take this man to be your lawfully wedded husband?"

"I do."

A shadow moved across the rooftops of the city of Stormwind, visible only by the stars blotted out in its silhouette. The shadow called herself Thelxeipeia Jones, Finder of Lost Objects. (When asked if those objects had been lost before she found them, she generally just smiled and ordered another round of drinks.) An amateur would have dressed in black. Thelxeipeia, a professional, wore mottled gray and looked, in good light, as if she had acquired a thick coating of lichen.

Milo, fourteenth Baron Cahill, had been supporting the Defias Brotherhood with arms shipments from his family's extensive weapons manufactories. In return, they gave him first refusal on the cream of their plundering. SI:7 had put together enough evidence of this to be convinced of it, though none would ever see a court of law. Rather, an agent would be dispatched to give the man a warning.

Thelxeipeia was given that dispatch, and she grinned as she teased open a window latch with a length of stiff wire. She ghosted in through the no-longer-secured window, making less noise than the gentle breeze outside. Baron Cahill was fast asleep in his four-poster featherbed, his wife snoring quietly not two feet away.

The rogue drew a knife with a long, thin blade and carefully ran it through a small piece of parchment. Quietly, quietly, she crossed the room to the bed and laid the knife on his pillow. Mission accomplished – at least the official one.

There was plenty of time to look around the room some, and night elves were famed for being able to see well in the dark. Ah, there. An iron-bound casket lay on a vanity table – most likely Baroness Cahill's jewellery. The lock was rather good, probably dwarf-make, and resisted her ministrations for a good five minutes. Finally it opened with a soft click. It was the loudest sound made so far. Carefully, she raised its lid, offering a quick prayer to Elune that its hinges wouldn't squeak.

Thelxeipeia let out the breath she'd been holding in a soundless sigh. Oh, that's just lovely, she thought. She lifted a necklace out of the casket. A nearly invisibly-thin platinum chain supported a blood red pendant ruby the size of a pigeon's egg. There would be time to admire it later; the rogue dropped it into a small velvet sack brought along for just this purpose. Were there earrings to match it? A quick scan didn't turn anything up. She made a face behind her mask and closed the casket, leaving the lock open.

Back out the window and onto the roof, from there across the city to the headquarters of SI:7. The night watchman greeted her with a raised eyebrow. "Well?"

Thelxeipeia pulled her mask down and smiled beatifically. "No problems at all. The window wasn't even spelled for an alarm." The smile flashed into a quick grin, feral and predatory. "I think he'll get the message."

"Anything else we need to know about?"

"Nope."

The night watchman looked at her for a long moment, clearly suspicious. The elf woman just smiled, the very picture of innocence. "All right," he grumbled finally. "Go away. We'll be in touch."

In the morning, Baron Cahill did indeed get the message. "Playing both sides can be hazardous to one's health," read the parchment clutched in hands shaking from fear and rage both. "Choose one. Choose wisely."

The knife, of course, delivered its own message.

"Robbie?"

"Yes, love?"

"Do that again."

''Laughter. "Greedy thing."''

"Are you complaining?"

"Light, no. Just an observation."

Thelxeipeia Jones was perched on a rock in the Redridge hills, cleaning various gnoll bodily fluids from her knives. It would never do to put them away dirty – she'd have to take their sheathes apart to clean them. A dirty blade was dangerous to its wielder, though the gnolls seemed to favour them. There were more reliable poisons than spirits of disease, she was learning.

She looked across the water at the town of Lakeshire, her features carefully arranged into an expressionless mask, even here. The sounds of revelry from the inn there carried well across the lake. Even with her hearing, she couldn't make out words, but the music and merriment were quite clear.

Humans burned so brightly in their short lives. How could she not be attracted to that, her moth to the candle's flame?

The curse of a long – possibly immortal – life was that in the end, everyone left you. The longest-lived humans barely reached a hundred years. Gnomes might last longer if not for the chemical spills and explosions that shortened so many lives. Even the dwarves, strong as stone, died after a few hundred years.

Elves left too. They lost interest, or were too tempted by the Emerald Dream, faded away, or were killed by accident or violence.

Thelxeipeia's husband was two hundred years dead, and his loss still left a part of her soul missing. It hadn't got appreciably easier.

"Thel. What the hell are you doing here?"

"Where else would I be?"

"I told you. I don't want you to see me like this.  I don't want this to be the last memory you have of me."

"Damn it, Robbie. Don't take this away from me, please.  I want to be with you for as long as I can.  Please.  I love you.  That hasn't changed a bit."

''Silence. Coughing. A sigh. "You never did fight fair."''

''"You never seemed to mind much when I won." A pause. "I'm going to miss you, Robbie."''

"I know. I'm so sorry."

"I'm not."

"So. You want to be a murderer and a sneakthief." The man was small even for a human; Thelxeipeia towered over him. He wore a scraggly beard and a dirty bandanna tied around his neck, and smelled of days-old beer.

"Basically, yeah."

"How come?"

Thelxeipeia shrugged. "I like pretty things, and I'm not rich."

The man tilted his head to one side to look at her. "Let me see your hands." She held them out to him, and he examined them closely, feeling the thread-calluses on her fingertips. "You've got the hands for it. What did you do to get these?"

Another shrug from the elf. "I was a weaver."

"That'd do it. Clever work, I'd imagine."

"I was all right."

"Right. We'll start with the basics, and see how you do before we kick you out into the cold cold world.  We get three-quarters of your takings for the first year, half the next, and a quarter after that.  And don't go holding back on us.  It's not healthy."

Thelxeipeia's lip curled into a sneer. "For the rest of my life?"

The scruffy little man stared at her; his eyes looked like they'd better belong on a corpse. "You can discuss that with The Man."

Thel nodded; it made sense. "Got it. What's lesson one?"

"That was lesson one. You'll be tested on it later."

"Okay."

"Good bye, Robbie. Rest well.  Don't wait for me."

Gossip
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