Ria Baeni

Ria Baeni (Dark Elven: media:Ria Baeni Dark Elven.ogg; Etrandish: media:Ria Baeni Etrandish.ogg) was an Etrandish Vampire Necromancer best known for the murder of Hlaford Paratus and being killed by his apprentice Stephánus Tavilrond. It is said that Ria has terrorized the alleys of Grandfolk and the Etrandish countryside during her prime, and has built up a criminal network that fell apart after her death.

Early life
Ria Baeni was born on 742.36533558213, in Grandfolk as the child two Half-Elven - both half-Human, half Dark Elven - magicians, named Ngarna Baeni (the mother) and Karang Baeni (the father). As the only child of the family, she was expected to take on the profession of her parents and become a magician like them. And so she enrolled into the Mages Guild as soon as she was old enough to apply for membership. While she was relatively good at alchemy and destructive magic, her interests lied elsewhere - she was more interested in the creation and modification of life, a forbidden art. It is said that she also wanted to learn Healing Magic, but the Mages Guild did not allow users of Arcane Magic to attain such knowledge.

In her spare time, she would mainly make potions that were also discouraged from being made: poisons. It was also during her years at the Mages Guild where she discovered her "forbidden urges" - both magical and sexual. As the lax and tolerant rule of King Bryant I of Etrand gave way to the more fundamentalistic and moralistic rule of King Cairbré I of Etrand, one of Ria's close friends got kicked out of the Mages Guild in order to sweep under the rug a scandal caused by sodomitic behaviours by guild members in public. Ria herself also almost fell a victim to one of those purges against immoral guild members, but managed to hide her tracks well enough to make sure that neither her inappropriate relationships nor her darker secrets went out to the public - still, she began to grow a disgust of the Mages Guild, the Church of Titanius, and Etrand in general.

Embrace of Darkness
It was first in 748 that Ria first met a group of secret necromancers who conspired to kill King Cairbré I of Etrand and hunt down Titanist priests in secret. Ria reluctantly joined the group, as the group tolerated her eccentricities, including her unorthodox sexual orientation, and the group shared her beliefs in hating King Cairbré, his policies, the Church of Titanius, and distrusting the Mages Guild, as the guild has folded under the pressure from the Church. It was under that time that Ria gradually became corrupted under the influence of the more powerful necromancers - she gradually turned from a girl who was eccentric but still had a sense of morality to someone completely amoral.

In 751, she underwent a group ritual of drinking vampire blood, which started her Vampirism, however just one year later, a failed attempt to assassinate King Cairbré - in which Baeni did not take part, as she was too late to the meeting in which the planning took place - led to the dissolution of the group: several of the leaders were killed during the failed assault, while most of the lower-ranking members, either turned against each other in a struggle for power, became lone-wolves, travelled to Keldorn or - if they did not take part in the ritual of drinking vampire blood - tried to find the Light again.

Ria was among those who travelled to Keldorn, but she lived there only for two and a half decades, returning to Etrand in 776. During her stay in Keldorn, she became even more immersed in the art of Necromancy than before, and was finally learning what she wanted to learn, although in a twisted form: the restoration of life. During those twenty-five years, she also had to improve her combat magic, as that was her only way to prove her independence from those pesky clans she felt no belonging to. While she never formally joined the Necromancers Guild, nor any Vampire Clans, she worked for many of them as a freelancer until her return to Etrand.

Her return to Etrand was done in order to complete an assignment that involved strengthening a certain clan's presence in Etrand. However, even after completing the mission, she remained in Etrand.

Partnership with Héli Calbae
Baeni first met with Héli Calbae in 783, when she started watching her. By 785, she has managed to corner the knightess, defeat her in combat, but "be merciful" by turning her into a vampire and forcing her to become her apprentice, starting their years of partnership.