» Thu Dec 08, 2011 11:42 pm --
Sometime burglar, would-be Assassin, Stranger.
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She did not remember who her real parents were, only that she was brought up in Skyrim by foster parents who, up until the very day that she left, steadfastly refused to discuss either who her real parents were or how she came to be fostered.
Nor would anyone else tell her, either.
For the first 18 years of her life home for her was a small village near Windhelm, in North-eastern Skyrim not far from the Dunmeth Pass.
She was always a loner and to be fair would have been treated as such by the others in her village even had she herself been more gregarious.
They were wary of her, not least because of her looks; where Nords are traditionally hale and hearty folk, tall and fair-skinned and blonde, built very much for the rigours of their land she herself was thin and gangly - her skin pallid and wraith-like, her dark mysterious eyes sunken in deep sockets.
They shunned her because she preferred her own council, skulking in and spying from the shadows, watching and listening and always with the deep pools of her eyes gazing into and through them.
Her foster parents loved her in their way, they cared for her and protected her and because they were held in some degree of esteem by the other villagers - (her "father" was the Smith, as all his line had been) - she was given indirectly at least a measure of protection from the more objectionable members of her society, even when items - small things of no consequence mostly - began to go missing and rustlings and footsteps were heard after dark, but no matter how much the twitching of window-coverings, no one was ever seen.
She in her turn respected her foster parents, even if she did not love them, and would help them, more often than not, in tasks around the house and in the smithy.
Ultimately something had to give though, and come her 18th year an incident happened the consequences of which even the old Smith's standing could not protect her from. The daughter of the local Fur-Trader was found out behind the north storehouse - or at least most of her was.
It did not take long for Niamh to have fingers pointed at her and her inability, or unwillingness, to defend herself or indeed to make any sound or comment on the matter whatsoever - (she was in fact even more taciturn than usual) - only led those fingers to be sharper and more plentiful. It did not help that the Fur-Trader and his daughter were rich and well-connected in the nearby city and the source of much financial good fortune for the good people of the village - what with she being considered "quite the catch" and all whereas Niamh...
...well, what was she?
The truth of the matter was never really uncovered although some months later it did come to light that this particular girl and her friends had been bragging a few nights before the incident that they would "fix the wraith, one way or another." In truth no one had bothered looking too hard. The villagers for all their pretension were at heart lumpen and simple creatures who feared very much what they did not understand and Niamh by way of her differences would have been nailed to their cross regardless of truth or fairness or any form of justice even had she not been culpable - but culpable for reasons all of them would never, outwardly at least, accept.
Regardless of all of this by the time any evidence came out it was too late, Niamh had left in the night 2 or 3 months earlier and told neither her foster parents nor anyone else either that she was going, or where she was going.
Here for a while at least she drifts out of sight and record although a search of the Customs archives in Ebonheart reveals a note of a strange pale young woman who "said not one word, nor made a sound but stared at all and sundry to the point of their discomfort" being arrested as a stowaway on a boat from the mainland.
A sighting in Narsis and a series of mysterious thefts in Stormhold, perhaps Niamh and perhaps not, and our story would once again have grown cold and died, were it not for the fact that one night towards the end of the reign of Uriel Septim VII, her luck such as it was finally ran out and she was, at just 26 and for potentially the last time in her short life, placed at the mercy of the Emperor.
It was to prove not only to be a turning point in her fortunes but in the fortunes of every man, woman and child around her for it seemed that destiny was to have a hand in seeing to it that Niamh Esher - outcast, mysterious lurker-in-the-shadows - was perhaps, willingly or unwillingly, to achieve an ascendancy, of sorts...
