Sysquemalyn

Sysquemalyn  was an apprentice arcanist and later the chamberlain of Lady Polaris of Delia in the Netherese Empire during the Age of Discovery and the Shadowed Age.

Description
The red-haired woman was tall, slender, and beautiful. She wore her hair in outlandish hairdos (possibly maintained by magic), pouted a lot, and preserved her life and good looks by magic as was custom at the time.

In her disguise as Ruellana, she looked similar, with "curves like a walrus tusk" according to her chief victim Sunbright Steelshanks. She wore traveling leathers to complement her disguise.

After her imprisonment in the Hells she looked like an abomination, as a lopsided man-sized thing with staring lidless eyes, a flinty, ebony-colored skin, and diamond-sharp claws.

Personality
Sysquemalyn was a cruel, selfish person who cared exclusively about herself and eradicating boredom by placing high-risk wagers and torturing people. She was initially subservient to Lady Polaris, but as this servitude grated on her she became progressively more unhinged.

After her hellish sojourn, she lost all reason, desiring only revenge and sharing the pains she had endured. This blinded her to the fact that a wizard of her skill could have restored her beauty in an instant.

Possessions
Sysquemalyn dressed in a fish-scaled green tunic with leather breeches and red boots. As decoration, the wizard had a gargoyle pendant that changed its face to reflect her mood. As Ruellana, she possessed a magical rapier whose flimsy appearance was belied by its edge.

Relationships
The wizard fought with Delia's high steward Candlemas for the attention of Lady Polaris.

History
Circa, Candlemas and Sysquemalyn gambled on whether or not Sunbright Steelshanks would survive dangerous tasks. As Sunbright survived each ordeal, Sysquemalyn would up the ante with a double-or-nothing escalation. She had no qualms about removing one of Candlemas's arms when she thought she'd won the bet, but refused to reimburse him or undergo it herself when Sunbright turned out to be alive.

She slowly grew to be more abusive of Lady Polaris when she wasn't around, calling her all sorts of names.

Eventually, after acquiring a rare tome from the One King's hoard and having traveled with Sunbright and Greenwillow, she enacted a ruse to draw them into her own stolen/recreated portion of the Nine Hells to prevent losing her bet. Candlemas was also drawn in, but things did not go as planned. The owner of the stolen portion dragged them all to his hellish abode and battled them. It took Lady Polaris's intervention to rescue them, though Greenwillow died. Sysquemalyn was then sentenced by Polaris, not just for the inconvenience, but also for the innumerable insults and such, to spend a year, flayed, in her personal hell.

Around, Sysquemalyn, who had been forgotten for three years, finally managed to claw her way back out of the Hells to enact her revenge. Horribly transformed into a misshapen creature with an obsidian skin and full of the Hells' magic, she slew many innocent creatures out of sheer frustration. She killed Candlemas and his apprentices shortly after they had finished a spell to counter the rust-blight that had been destroying the empire's crops. She then set her sights on Sunbright and Knucklebone, but was slain by him, though he lost an eye to her claws.

Appearances

 * Novels
 * Sword Play • Mortal Consequences