Twie
Stats
In-game: Twie (twee)
Race: Undead human, not part of the Forsaken
Class: Priest (Shadow)
Gender: female
Age: Roughly 23 (birthdate unknown)
Height: 5'4"
Weight: Unknown
Hair: Violet
Eyes: Black
Skin: Semi-translucent white
Professions: Mining, Herbalism
Appearance
Twie is petite and small-boned, standing perhaps five hands and four fingers tall. Her violet hair is neatly kept and hangs loose about her shoulders. Framed by the locks is a gentle-contoured face with large, solid black eyes, which contrast sharply with the exposed bone of her lower jaw. Her otherwise intact, pale skin radiates an odd health akin to that of regular, healthy flesh.
Her small frame is slumped yet stiffly held, as though she were tired or depressed and loath to display either in public. Her eyes bear the dark hollows of one recently spent too long awake. She has callouses on her right palm and her left forearm.
She wears the emblem of the Warsong on a long, slightly battered chain around her neck. On her left shoulder is an odd, glyph-like burn mark, the puckered skin a dull reddish-brown and unnaturally shiny where it is seared flat.
Personality
Twie is very sweet-tempered, honest, intelligent, gentle and sensitive to others. When she feels something, she feels it completely, whether it be love, hate, sympathy, disdain, worry, pain, etc., but can and has hidden her feelings successfully, especially when they are self-focused. She cares greatly for those around her, often expressing so through touch (eg. hugs), and freely gives of her time to those in need of an ear to vent to or a shoulder to cry on. Due to her desire not to be a burden to anyone, however, she will rarely, if ever, ask for help for herself.
History
Born in the Hinterlands near the Aerie Peak stronghold, Twie is the eldest of an ever-expanding brood of mixed-race, bastard children, which are the result of her human mother's self-imposed duty to make peace between the Horde and the Alliance the "old-fashioned way". As her mother was disinclined to parent any of the children and each father unknown with the following morning, Twie ended up raising her siblings herself -- at least, the ones she knew about. Despite these dubious roots, her desire to learn more about Azeroth and its people prompted her to seek out an education, which she received from various folk travelling through the area; her intelligence and earnest motivation to better herself won over even the most reticent of nobles.
As such, she was well-informed of the effects of the Scourge plague when reports about it filtered down to where she and her siblings lived, and she determined she would never live as one of the mindless minions. However, the plague has no care for such will: eventually, she took ill with it. Determination to protect her siblings and everyone else who might suffer drove her to a suicide jump from the Overlook Cliffs. The plague ate through the shattered remains, but since there were only pieces left, dead she was and dead she stayed.
Fate's twisted sense of humor then arose: not long afterward, two troll brothers, Zandru and Sendru Sunderaxe, happened across the scattered bits and decided in a fit of creativity to try reassembling them. Using what original material was left over and whatever they had to hand, they eventually created a mishmash of a person, though they lacked the means to sufficiently rebuild her face and throat, and used dirt as brain filler. Because of this, Twie has a unique lisp and some odd sentence patterns; while she can speak without the lisp, it causes her pain and eventually copious oral bleeding to do so. Zandru later discovered in his research on Un'Goro crystals that charging the green ones with healing energies temporarily gave Twie a "phantom" face of sorts, invisible lips and all, and allowed her to speak clearly without pain. She has since carried some on her person should a need arise, though she has resorted to deliberately going without by using the pain as a focus in situations where panic would otherwise overwhelm her.
After reanimating her via a voodoo-based spell, the brothers took Twie to Deathknell in Tirisfal to recover and adjust to her new state of being. She was surprised to discover herself alive (such as it was) and horrified by her monstrous appearance, though she didn't remember what had happened to her except that she had fallen "vewwy, vewwy fah". It wasn't until a chance encounter in the Undercity with Zanka'rin of the Tears of Draenor that her memory began to trickle back, with specific events often triggered by the places in which they occurred.
The other side effect of the plague was a definite, extremely strong affinity with Shadow magics; she awoke with them, though not the ability to control them. The priest trainers under Sylvanas Windrunner in the Undercity recognized her nature for what it was and taught her the necessary discipline to use it. When she saw what a terrible force it could be, she resolved to use it only to protect others.
Fate's cruel streak then came to the fore: Arthas, bent on twisting another Shadow priest named Tunak to his will, discovered Twie through her contact with the struggling Forsaken and was determined to bring her "back" to him, also. At first, she had nightmares of her loved ones dying horribly in different ways every night, with either Tunak being the instrument of their deaths or something in turn happening to him; Twie became very afraid to sleep and just as afraid to be awake, and effectively lived in terror the entire time this was happening. When the psychosomatic method was eventually stymied, Arthas instead sent sweet-talking demons to convince her those who professed to care for her in fact did not and were only humoring her as if she were a sort of pet. The intended effect was to isolate her from anyone who might be able to help, and it very nearly worked. When that too failed, he simply sent agents to kill anyone close to her, then take her forcibly. Thus far, this has been partly successful; while the agents still search for a way to get to her, Twie, for a long time unaware of any external influence, has since been left with the impression that she is cursed and will eventually bring doom to those around her. It wasn't until the recent Scourge invasion and the appearance of Naxxramas that she discovered she was meant to be one of Arthas's front-line lieutenants, which was why he had been putting forth such effort to turn her to his side. Thanks to the intervention of the Earthmother via the help of one Khadiz Stonehoof, Arthas's attempt at direct influence was rendered ineffective, although she can still very faintly hear him. Mostly, Twie finds him vastly annoying and is accustomed to tuning him out.
Almost since her emergence from Deathknell had she heard stories of Ruarc and the Tears of Draenor. She made an effort to foster contact with some of the Tears over a period of months, which stood her in good stead when one of their own, a warrior named Slyph, returned to his Scourge roots and made attempts on the lives of several Tears. Her willingness to put herself in harm's way -- albeit prompted by suicidal tendencies she experienced at the time -- did not go unnoticed. She was welcomed among the Tears last midsummer.
These days, in defiance of outward comportment, she still struggles with crushing self-doubts and the suicide ideation that results, though she keeps her internal battles well hidden. While the Earthmother's protection sees to it her soul is yanked back to her body on the rare occasions she tries to kill herself, Fate's scorn has fallen upon her once more, perhaps for the last time: unbeknownst to all but a very select few, the spell that was used to reanimate her is fading. The victim of increasingly-frequent "blackouts", Twie was at once relieved and distressed to know of their cause. She does not know whether there is an alternative solution to the soul repair suggested by clanmate Ogden, nor how much time is left to her. In the meantime, she has taken up the sword and shield in the hopes of being -- and feeling -- of more use to her clanmates.