NAME Semele Mehrina {sem-uh-lee meh-rine-uh} | Birth name: Bianca Lourhai {bee-ahn-kuh low-her-ey}
GENDER Female.
AGE 22
SIGN Antikythera, the Clockwork.
RACE Human
HOMETOWN Aschere
OCCUPATION Guild member. Was/is a thief.
APPEARANCE
To look at Semele, one would have a hard time believing that she is a thief. She is a petite (however, athletic) build, and stands at only about 5'5". Semele is visually attractive, but not really anything special. There is no factor that sets her apart from other girls. Yet, her eyes are particularly appealing, being brown, but more of a bright, amber brown than the dark standard. Her skin is lightly tanned from her outdoors activities.
+ Long shoulder-length hair, with a waviness to it. Jet black hair. [ Style Ref ]
+ Facial reference (New as of 7/14, due to my extreme unluckiness. These will work, but the nose should be just slightly slimmer, adding to the mild sharpness of her face. Oh, and these three references are more for facial structure, rather than make-up or hair. I've got a hair reference right above here. <3 To see the picture really well, just enlarge it. Oh, and the page takes a moment to load. <3 ) [ Ref ] [ Ref ] [ Ref ]
+ Unless stealing something, Semele wears very expensive-looking and pretty outfits and dresses, though sometimes winds up lazing about in her 'thieving clothes'.
+ Skin tone - VERY lightly tanned. More of a gold/peachy-tone than anything else. [ Ref ]
+ Always wears the first thing she ever stole, a long necklace with an opal pendant. [ Ref ]
PERSONALITY
The same girl who can rob someone blind is also a girl who can instantly charm someone with her words, if need be. Semele is a fantastic liar, and can make people trust her instantly. Carrying herself as though she was still high-class, this allows many to presume she is. If she needs to befriend someone, get something from someone or is planning on pick-pocketing that person, then Semele usually will do anything she needs to in her charming nature; flirt, compliment, admire. It's all really the same anyhow. She will take advantage of people, most of the time without them even knowing it.
However, her noble upbringing grants Semele several flaws. If anyone looks as though they could be below her socially, she considers them beneath her, and will do one of two things. Either completely ignore them, or be cold and cruel, while attempting to make their life hell. Unless she is just feigning her true personality for another person (which she usually does in the instances stated above), Semele is incredibly difficult to get along with, unless she takes to someone immediately, which rarely occurs. She is impatient and argumentative, which is a major turn-off for most people who wish to make friends with others.
Semele is also very materialistic and greedy. She believes she should always get what she wants, when she wants. Since she was a spoiled brat in her childhood, this trait never really died off when she reached adulthood. The few times that she was travelling with people, whenever they were looking for resources, Semele got the reputation of being useless in that department. She could just never find anything for the group. Truth is, whenever she would find anything, she would keep it to herself and lie about having found anything. If she was ever found out that she did find something, then she would, in turn, lie about how much she found, and only share a fraction with the party.
Being extremely secretive can also off-balance people. Semele is secretive about everything, from how she really got her belongings down to stupid, trivial things like the last thing she ate. Anything could be used against her, and she was paranoid that with any small detail, anyone could figure her out. She trusts no one, making it hard for others to trust her. However, she is as good at finding out secrets as she is keeping them. If she suspects anything knowing any valuable information, Semele will figure it out. If she suspects anyone knows anything about her, or has been talking about her, Semele will figure it out. Her sheer tenacity alone usually makes people tell her what she wants to hear, however there have been a few occasions in the past where Semele has had to use... alternate methods to get information from someone.
Due to her 'job', Semele is very intelligent and quick-witted. She thinks on her toes, and can quickly come up with solutions to problems. Her impatience probably stems from this as well, seeing as how since she can do and think of things so quickly, she expects others to be able to do the same. Her cunning and sly nature allows for her to think of the alternate way to do any task or job she needs to, whether it be getting someone to do something for her, or thinking or a better, faster way to do it herself.
Also deeply snarky, Semele usually uses sarcasm to offend those that she dislikes. Or, in some instances, to tease those that she does like. Her sarcasm can sometimes be used if she doesn't wish to speak to someone, or reply to a question, statement or proposition. Often times, her humor can be so dry that one might not even realize that she's being sarcastic. Once her fairly short temper and sarcasm are combined, it can be a particularly scathing experience, but a witty one at that. It could even be considered as quite humorous, as long as you're not the one on that is being cut down to size with Semele's words.
Of course, there are times when absolutely nothing goes Semele's way. She can charm, and she can steal, but she is far from perfect, and can (more often than not when trying to beguile someone) fail miserably at what she is trying to do. Nearly reverting back to her childhood habits, Semele gets extremely frustrated in cases like these, only not to the degree of throwing fits and screaming at the top of her lungs. If one is disgusted or immune to her sweet-talking, she tends to treat that person very poorly, as if they had done something to offend her deeply. That leads to her believing that she dislikes the person in question, and treating them as though she had never liked them in the first place, all while attempting to think of another way to get what she wants. In the case that she should fail at stealing something, it's a completely different case all together. Most of the time when she doesn't wind up stealing something, it isn't because she was caught, but simply because she was afraid. If the stakes are too high, or there is a very high chance of her being heard or seen, Semele usually winds up fleeing the scene before she completes her mission. After the fact, Semele will hide out somewhere discreet before attempting to rob someone again, or even before she will go out in public again, sometimes disappearing for days at a time depending on how risky her last job was. To her, being caught is a sign of extreme stupidity and weakness, and Semele sees herself as miles above that.
HISTORY
A trouble child from birth. Born into a wealthy family, Semele always got what she wanted. When she didn't, she threw a fit. She would lock herself in rooms. She would break plates and other artifacts in her home. Nearly every single time that her family would hire a caretaker for Semele, they would quit only weeks later. No one could put up with the spoiled, bratty child. It didn't help at all that she was an only child, and was completely and totally used to all attention being given to her. There was one nanny, who seemed as though she was making headway on Semele's behavior. Problem was, with one thing or another, the nanny decided that Semele was a lost cause, and quit only days later.
As Semele became an older teenager, she seemed to calm down. Granted, she was still arrogant, and expected to get everything that she wanted, but she no longer threw temper-tantrums. Her parents had even stepped in, and restricted Semele's unruly behavior. They no longer spoiled her. They only rarely gave her the things that she wanted. After the first week of Semele throwing a fit over not getting her way, and then getting severely punished for it, she no longer demanded her parents to give her things. They were proud of them, blaming their daughter's new found respect and discipline on their tough-love parenting. In reality, Semele just found a new way to get what she wanted. Stealing.
It was a method that she had never really thought of before. It's not something that she had ever needed to think about before, given her family's wealth. However, as soon as her parents stopped supplying her with what she wanted, she had to get it in other ways. It all started with a necklace in a jewelry store. A beautiful necklace, with a long gold chain and an opal pendant. As soon as she laid eyes on it, she could envision herself wearing it with everything. She could envision herself wearing it to any fancy event she went to, and she could imagine people fawning over it, and Semele. They would all become jealous of her and her necklace, and Semele would revel in the attention. As soon as she laid eyes on it, she knew she had to have it. Earlier that week, Semele had heard a story about bandits who had come to the next town over; she heard about their pillaging. Your average person would think of how terrible the story was, and yet, Semele did just the opposite. Now forming a new type of rebellion in her life, she believed that she could do just the same as the bandits and could benefit it. So, next time she was in the shop with her friends, she just took the necklace. Slipping it in her pocket carefully, she kept her cool, and remained in the shop for several minutes, looking around at all of the baubles with her friends. As soon as she left the shop and was in the safety of her own home, she put the necklace on, and spent quite a while staring at her reflection in a mirror in her room. When asked where she got it, she just told everyone that it was a gift from a boy.
The necklace worked like a charm. Everyone admired it, and Semele didn't even give a second thought to the fact that the owner of the shop would realize that something was missing. The necklace being as unique as it is, it was recognized, and rather than give it back, Semele came up with an elaborate lie. There was no way in hell she was giving the necklace back. People admired her for it, and giving it back, giving away all of the attention, all of the yearning for something that she had was simply not an option. Rather, when eventually asked by the old shopkeeper, Semele explained that a boy she had met gave it to her, and how it certainly wasn't the only necklace ever made in that fashion. It wasn't a very convincing lie, but the old man took pity on the girl for giving her trouble, and attributed thinking that something was stolen to his senility. After all, some times in the past, he had forgotten to document sales, so possibly he just did it again.
That was the exact moment that the thrill of it all hit Semele. The thrill of possibly being caught in the act. The thrill of doing something that she wasn't supposed to. From then on, whenever Semele needed or wanted something (the latter much more than the former), Semele stole it, each time coming up with a more elaborate plan. Another baffling point of Semele's character and past is, why, if she had access to so much money, did she keep stealing, or better yet, why didn't she just steal the money from her parents? Truth was, because that didn't give her the rush that actually stealing, or breaking into a store or a house to take their belongings gave her. It was an adrenaline rush, something that Semele preferred not to give up.
Stealing every thing and anything she could think of, Semele eventually came up with a plan bigger and grander than any that she had done before. A friend of hers had a beautiful, one-of-a-kind silken dress. Semele's friend had been holding this over Semele's head for days, taunting her with how beautiful and expensive it was, blissfully unaware of Semel's new talent. Stealing the dress seemed like the smartest thing to do at the time, not only to stop her friend from having a dress that would rival anything in Semele's closet, but also so for the fact that if Semele stole it, then the dress would be hers. And it that was the case, then she would look infinitely glamorous, especially is all the things that her friend had told her about the dress' quality and uniqueness of it was true. A break-in at night was something that she was actually uneasy about doing, but she figured that if she could break in without being detected, then it would be an easy job.
It never once occurred to Semele how her friend would feel about her dress being stolen. All that mattered to Semele was her advancement in class and social standing. Deciding that it would probably be much easier to sneak about in tighter clothing than dresses or any of her other 'proper' clothes, Semele dressed in her horse-riding gear, and left with nothing else to use in the break-in other than a lock-pick. The lock was no problem to open. It was actually getting the dress undetected that would be the problem. Slowly making her way up to her friend's room, Semele opened the door slowly, and snuck in. After locating the dress, she took it, easy as that. Problem was, she was seen.
Seen, but not caught. Not even identified. There was just talk of a riding-gear-clad thief leaving the estate, dress in hand. The bit about the riding gear was what caught Semele's parents' attention. After all, they had remembered their daughter coming back late one night, wearing the clothing she wore when she rode horses, only Semele hadn't seen the horse in weeks. So, they did the most logical thing. They searched all of Semele's belongings. They discovered items that people in town had talked about missing, they discovered vast quantities of items and garments they had never seen, and most certainly hadn't bought for her, and then they discovered the dress. Just as it had been described by its previous owner. Furious with their daughter, they confronted her. Problem was, they were as concerned about their social standing as Semele. They weren't as mad about the thieving as they were about what would happen if other found out about the thieving. That would certainly cast a negative light on the family, and they certainly weren't going to stand idly by as that happened. So, they presented her with an ultimatum: either get out of their home, and change her name or be turned in. Realizing what she had to do, Semele gathered her things, left town and changed her name from Bianca Lourhai to Semele Mehrina. Thing is, though, out of all the money she could've taken, out of all of her clothes and belongings, all Semele took was what she had stolen. She left behind the family horse, she left behind all of the jewelry, the family heirlooms. It was as though none of it mattered anymore.
And to Semele, it didn't. She was a new person. She was Semele Mehrina.
So, for the years after that, she spent her time moving from town to town, stealing now not only to get things that she desired, but now to survive. With her expensive clothing and jewelry, along with her attitude and knowledge of how the upper class lives, people assumed that Semele was of nobility. Thusly, she was invited into people's homes, or the homes of other nobles, where Semele would take advantage of her charm and their hospitality (and naivety), and rob them of precious belongings, then skipping to the next town to see what it would do for her. It was a continuous cycle that Semele wouldn't quit, which gained her more and more possessions, as well as a reputation. There were usually always reports of someone stealing large quantities of items from a town, but never any sight of said thief. That was a large part of the thrill for Semele. Not getting caught. Nearly all of the reports given of this robber were completely made up, everything from a frail old woman to a burly young man. There was, however, one report. One lone report of a mysterious girl in riding clothes; a girl that authorities are still on the look-out for.
Joining the League was something that she never thought she would do. Semele took it up on a whim, wondering where it could take her and, more importantly, what it could give her. Or what she would take, depending on how one looks at the situation. Plus, with the experience she could gain from the place, how could she lose if she disguised herself well enough and kept a low profile? With this mind set, she decided to use everything she gained in the League to become a well-known, not to mention mysterious and uncaught, thief.
COMMON KNOWLEDGE
Not much. For the most part, Semele has kept to herself, just in case some sort of description of her has surfaced over the years. Granted, her hair and attire has changed, but that wouldn't really help change a description of her facial structure.
While Semele might've had a conversation here-or-there, she is usually just a woman that could've flashed someone a small smile (or a scowl) in the halls. Any conversation that she does strike up usually tends to end with a first impression of Semele being a stuck-up, arrogant woman. And, really, that's true. The only times that a first meeting ends with a good impression of Semele is when she either likes the person in question for some reason, or is being charming because she has an ulterior motive for being on good terms with someone.
