Lady Ianthe Carmichael

She/Her

A Creature Hunter by trade, Ianthe is also a Maiden of Anäya, the Goddess of Dawn & Twilight, a minor deity and considered the patron saintess of the Carmichael family.

The Carmichaels were particularly devout when Ianthe was a child and she was baptized as a Maiden to Anäya's temple when it was discovered that she had some blessing of divine magic. Rather than continue training for a priestess of the temple or continue life as a noble woman to be married off - destined to a life in chains either way - Ianthe spun a tale of a calling for a 'holy crusade' and ran off to become a Hunter just before she came of age.

Thanks to her holy magic, Ianthe specializes primarily in the defeat of undead enemies: vampires, necromancers, skeletons, ghouls, and the occasional minor demon. She's been in the business for nearly a decade now and despite the noble upbringing and late start into the business, has managed to climb to the ranks of a mid-tier Hunter.

ArtBreeder + aesthetics

5 FT 9 IN

With an active life when young, through dancing, horseback riding, and fencing (when she could get away with it), Ianthe's body is the product of the blessings of a noble life of corsets and figure training. Gracing her with curves and well-endowed tits and ass. Her life as a Hunter has added tone and muscle for powerful legs and arms leaving her physically fit and able to hold her own against the level of enemies she fights.

Hazel green

Vibrant red, considered to be another blessing of the Goddess Anäya

Down to the bottom of her shoulders, Ianthe often keeps it braided in one neat braid or pinned up in a bun on the back of her head in order to keep it out of her way.

She has a tattoo of a sun and moon on her upper right arm which is the same sigil gilded onto her armor chest piece. Both are representations of Anäya. [See Gallery for image]

One piercing in each ear, she wears studs of red quartz because she either left or sold most of the jewelry she took with her from home.

You won't catch Ianthe much in the dresses of finery and lace of her youth these days. She's much more comfortable in the outfit she has pieced together over the years more suitable to the rugged hunter's life - and conveniently more manly, to blend in better. Trousers, knee-high boots with space for hidden blades, long sleeves under a belted vest covered in practical pockets and space for weapons and tools.

The collared jacket that she ordinarily wears over it, as well as the bracers, greaves, and chest plate she can pull on as actual armor if needed for a fight, are pilfered from the paladin armor of Anäya's temple that she took with her when she left. They are a brilliant white and red-gold as those are the colors of the Goddess and her temple and (despite attempts to dull the colors) have made her somewhat of a statement piece. So she generally also wears a cloak while she's hunting, to help to hide better in the shadows.

Ianthe has many small nicks and scars across her body from her adventures, primarily on her arms and legs from glancing blows, and one jagged mark across her left hip from an unlucky dagger swipe.

Ianthe has a weakness for the finer things in life she gave up as a noblewoman when she became a Hunter.

The expensive wines, meads, and other booze from her youth are her favorites... but she'll drink the swill of beer and ale if she has to.

BIG on riches. Gold and jewels, treasures, etc. She does like loot.

Ianthe isn't a virgin, but that doesn't mean she's experienced in bed. Chastity isn't a major component of the Temple of Anäya, no matter what is claimed, but Ianthe grew up in that 'purity is a virtue' both from her noble upbringing and that of the church. She had a few suitors not long after she came of age, already on the road as a Monster Hunter, but their skills left much to be desired and Ianthe frankly found herself bored with the whole idea.

Afterwards, while on the road, the only real options available to her to pursue sex or romance were in brothels or with unsavory characters, neither of which Ianthe bothered to deal with. She's been perfectly content with the scant handful of experiences she's had and doesn't need love or sex to be fulfilled.

Ianthe is, as we know, from a place outside of the Drakwald, and what I've been thinking is that this is some kind of kingdom that actually shares a border with it -- so a place where paladins, adventurers, and the like are relatively commonplace and also close enough to the Drakwald they've had to deal with its oppressive darkness/taint of evil/creatures that may wander out past the borders and therefore holy powers like Ianthe's are sought out and trained for. I never gave this kingdom a name so we're gonna roll the name generator wheel and call itttttt........ Eveleon. Evelion? idk good enough. 😂

Ianthe is from a noble family, and in my mind we're talking like... Duke/Duchess level of nobility, powerful and important over the territory they control within the kingdom. But on a map they're like, the other side of the kingdom from the Drakwald borders. Like if Eveleon shares their southeastern border with the Drakwald, the Carmichael duchy is in the northwest, just for example.

There is a pantheon of gods that the kingdom as a whole worships (or maybe just, 'there is a pantheon generally worshipped by the world at large') and Anäya is part of a trinity -- I s2g that I wrote this information down somewhere but I can't for the life of me find it, so I guess I'm making it up again:

Anäya - Goddess of Dawn & Twilight, is the most minor of the 3 because she is considered the "bridge" between the sun/moon, day/night, etc

(Honestly I hadn't decided whether they were actually goddesses or not, so that might actually tie in perfect with your idea of Anäya having 2 male warrior consorts -- those could be the other 2 gods and of course the modern day church would be like "Hell no" to that lol)
I was going with an alliteration theme and had all A names picked out:
Aizel/Alenia for the God/dess of the Sun/Day, and Alwyn/Acrima for the God/dess of the Moon/Night

It's already been established that the Carmichaels have Anäya as their family's patron goddess and that they are pious/devout. Ianthe is their eldest daughter also.

She is the pampered daughter of a powerful noble family who are devout to Anäya's church/temple. Her family was strictly adherent to the church's teachings, being devout, and strictly adherent to traditional gender roles of 'a woman's job is to get married and have kids', but Ianthe as we know has real "fuck the police" energy so while she likely served as a uh... whatever the equivalent to an altar boy for young girls in this church would be, she definitely got away with more than other people would.

Her powers awaken when she hits puberty, like 11/12/13 ish, and hoo boy is her holy magic immense. (I like her to view herself as one of the most powerful Eveleon has produced in living memory, because it makes it that much worse that Ambrus can crush her so easily lol. plus it ties into the whole potential "reincarnation of the lady from the Drakwald" idea) She is immediately baptized as a Maiden of Anäya and taken into the church (as we know) but again Ianthe gets the "Main Character" flag card pulled.

I think ordinarily if someone like Ianthe is born/discovered, the church claims immediate ownership and you get locked into ChurchLyfe as either a nun or a priestess. Like "orphan from the street born with a blessing from the goddess" doesn't get a say to their life lol and they would be restricted to all that kind of life would entail. But Ianthe is a titled noble, and the Carmichaels are the devout patrons of the church basically funneling them money and land and everything else. Ianthe a.) cannot just be yoinked away from her title, and b.) if you're found to be mistreating her, she could tattle to her family and suddenly the leadership of the Church have a problem on their hands.

So Ianthe is not immediately sold to the church. She gets to live a sort of "best of both worlds" life -- Maiden on one side, Lady on the other.

Ianthe is essentially presented with 2 choices as she ages from this point on -- you can either become a full time nun/priestess/healer for the Church, very much Septa of the Seven style, or you can claim your birthright as a Duchess and marry into another noble family and pump out his babies. And Ianthe, who, as we know, has "fuck your needlework I want to do fencing and horseback riding" energy, is very much Not Down ™️ for that plan.

So while I think Ianthe is religious (I mean... clearly, lol, Anäya literally said "this is my anointed one" and Ianthe would be like "hell yeah I am") that leads me to think from about teenager up she was already distancing herself from the Church and their teachings. I mean we know she's stubborn as hell and also all of her coin flips fail on wisdom checks, so why would she stop if the Church is like "bitch you can't do that" and Ianthe's like "has Anäya smited me yet? do I still have my powers? must still have her blessing then /shrug". if beatings are a thing (which they totally can be) Ianthe would've gotten a lot of them 😂

Also, notably absent from that list of choices is "become a paladin monster hunter" lol. so here's what I think happened:

we've talked before about how one of Ianthe's temptations/weaknesses is of the finer things in life, like what she's used to from growing up. Did she WANT to give up her wealth and cushy life to go be a monster hunter? to sleep rough and have to fight for her next meal if work is slow? No. but I think she saw it as the only option to being able to control her own life. I think the theme of power/control is a big one for her, particularly with how easily Ambrus can rip it away from her and only fuel her rage to get it back, lol.

So like her character sheet says -- "Rather than continue training for the Church or continue life as a noble woman to be married off - destined to a life in chains either way - Ianthe spun a tale of a calling for a 'holy crusade' and ran off to become a Hunter just before she came of age."

Like I think the night she ran off, she straight up stole some of the paladin gear from the temple (the chest plate and bracers she uses while fighting, for example, and maybe her sword although she could've picked a different one up later), took some of her personal jewels to sell for coin, and left without permission from anyone. 😂

SHOULD this have gotten her excommunicated from the church? Totally. SHOULD this have gotten her in major trouble with her family? Absolutely. But I think Ianthe pulled the "Main Character" card again. Both the Church and the duchy were in between a rock and a hard place where either side would look like weak fools for letting this happen, so it was easier to agree to Ianthe's story like "oh yeah..... she received a holy message...... she's been called to service as a Monster Hunter, to rid the world of evil in Anäya's name......" while privately to her being like "you won't get any funding from us, just wait for the moment you have to come crawling back"

Which Ianthe, being who we know she is, would be like "cool story bro but not happening" and she supports herself.

This means she has been totally cut off and disowned by the duchy side and has been entirely supporting herself through her work and what balance she can maintain with the Church. Socially and politically her life as a noble ended when she ran off. I don't think she's getting anything from them, funding or otherwise. It'd be easy to say because everyone back then knew her status as a maiden in the temple "oh she chose the Church and was called on a mission" and that's that.

She's been doing this job for about 10 years before she follows the smuggling ring deep into the Drakwald, and it was definitely rough for a pampered, sheltered noblewoman/maiden-in-training starting out, but she put in the time and the work and I feel like now, at least her hometown Church has given up on attempting to wrangle her. Because she really has been hunting monsters and doing work in Anäya's name all these years, and has managed to claw her way up to the rank of a mid-tier Hunter, so I think there's an unhappy alliance/partnership going on between them now.

(Unless... we want to say that the Abbess who gave her the command to look into the smuggling ring, was actually trying to get rid of her like "anointed or no, she is too far corrupted and needs gotten rid of" so they sent her into the Drakwald expecting her to die. that'd be fun, lol.)

While I wouldn't say her life up until now was particularly easy, I think she did experience a real case of "Main Character" syndrome, luck and privilege that wouldn't normally be afforded to anyone else, that would lead her into having this brazen, "fuck you I won't do what you tell me" attitude all the time. Things do generally tend to go her way! And when they don't, she can brute force her way through until it does!

Then she goes hunting into the Drakwald. The horrific cautionary tale of evil that has haunted her entire childhood thanks to the border her kingdom shares with it. It's not her first time hunting there -- she's been into parts of it before -- but she's never been in this deep or this far from any source of support.

And then things start to go wrong.

Ianthe was born with the ability for divine magic, a gift that the Carmichael family believe came as a blessing from their patron goddess, Anäya, Goddess of Dawn & Twilight. She was baptized as a Maiden of Anäya's temple as a child and was trained in the use of her magic. Her noble status meant she had a choice of actually entering the temple, and Ianthe chose a different path, instead. But she still considers herself a Maiden of Anäya and uses her divine abilities now to fight the dark and evil creatures that roam the world.

Blessing - Through prayer, Ianthe can bestow various minor blessings on both people and objects, though they are not powerful and can exhaust her.

Cure Wounds - Ianthe can heal herself and others of most serious injuries via a divine spell, though the worse they are the harder it is and the longer it takes.

Purify Food & Drink - Ianthe can purify water sources and food stores, though generally she is limited to just what she can use to get by in the wilderness. Purifying for other people requires both a prayer ritual and a good deal of energy.

Detect Evil, Magic, Poisons, Disease - Ianthe can cast an aura of influence no more than 30 feet in diameter around her that allows her to detect many unnatural things, as well as locate their source within the aura; but inversely, the aura can be detected by others as traces are left behind.

Orb of Dawning & Orb of Twilight - Ianthe can summon an orb of different light levels - the Twilight orb is a smaller, shadowed light and allows for low light vision of herself and any targets without necessarily giving itself away as a light source, while the Dawning Orb is a brilliant source of light that can be used to blind, stun, and/or burn certain enemies. (The Dawning Orb's power diminishes the stronger the creature is.)

While trained with a staff at the temple, Ianthe is most comfortable with a short sword as a hand-to-hand weapon. Her weapon is enchanted and allows her divine magic to flow through the blade as an extension of herself, rather than wielding the magic without a focus or via the use of ritual and prayer.

Shield of Faith - Ianthe can summon a shimmering field of light that can act as a shield for up to 10 minutes in a stretch.

Branding Smite - Ianthe can channel divine energy through the blade, causing it to glow white, and deliver more grievous injury to an undead opponent by blasting the divine magic directly into the wound. Lasts for 1 minute stretches.