Foreward: The story BEHIND the story of Cipriana and the Sword-Cultists of Staal-Ysta.

OR
Jesus Hussein Christ the tapdancing superstar on a bicycle, I can't believe I'm actually writing this down,
why am I doing this, I had to sift through so much free writing I've done, please help, there was a LOT.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This document and character is dedicated to Steven Lazarus, the Wheelers but in particular
Jeremy Jurica (RIP), Zachary Hueser, Knaishia the copper dragon and my Sir, who due to the privacy
issues involved in my life most of you are familiar with I really only ever refer too as Jon or Sir. It may
seem a bit pretentious to give an RPG character a dedication but 1. I've always been very open about
RPGs being my art and 2. This is definitely a bit of a shock for me to be typing out and I'm kind of stalling
so... *deep breath.* Okay. This one is going to require some explanation. This may seem unsurprising,
since most of my ideas for characters in RPGs do, but in this case the explanation requires explanation.
Or at least a forward so I can explain how much really went into this because it has the potential to blow
your minds right out of your skulls.

There have been occasions when I've referred to an idea for a specific character or game as a
"Dream Idea" or a "Concept I've always wanted to try". Cipriana isn't either of things. I've mentioned her
being a dream idea but in reality she's almost the opposite. Ideas inspired by the Sword-Dancer series
tend to be dream ideas for me, but Cipriana is... different. She's not an antimetagamer or any of the
other bonkers ideas I like to pitch around, honestly she's not even that unique, at least not in the sence
of having characters who could immediately be considered peers and challengers to her position. But
she is very special to me, maybe more than any other character I've made. I think at this point it's pretty
common knowledge that my characters aren't at their best until they have a few redrafts under them.
The character who is now my obnoxious irish ghost-roommate went through about four different re-
writes and multiple inspirations over the course of a year before she really started to come together. If
it's true that tinkering makes a character better, than Cipriana is probably the best character I've ever
written. She's certainly the most in depth, both in terms of the lore that surrounds her and in the depth
of character that exist in her.

The character who would become Cipriana has gone through recreation after recreation as a
therapy exercise basically since I first found a therapist who I was actually capable of holding onto for
longer than a few months. I saw regularly, on a weekly to bi-weekly basis from about fifth grade until not
long after the end of high school, and I'm still friends with him to this day. In fact, that was basically the
only reason I stopped seeing him, at some point we ceased to become therapist and client and became
actual friends, and tragically, from that point on, his usefulness as a therapist was limited to me. It can be
much easier to talk to someone who isn't really a friend. Maybe this was a a good thing, it actually hurts
to think about him having to deal with the mess that I eventually became and all the shit that has
happened since I first got involved with what I do for a living and some of the shit that surrounded it.
Regardless, this little project was initially HIS idea, and the character that eventually became Cipriana
was originally pitched to me as a way to get around a particularly nasty habit that continues to dog me to
this day, an inability to manage reality as well as I do fantasy. Eventually I found other ways to manage it,
through faith and through writing and through having a very unusual life, but I used to really struggle
with my ability to exist, not in a suicidal way although that was certainly part of it, more in a level of
extreme apathy and disinterest in myself.

When I first attempted this writing project, I was in 6th grade and had been seeing my therapist
for about a year. My Therapists name, by the way, was Steven Lazarus. Outside of being the best
therapist I ever had, Steve was a massive gaming enthusiast like myself, he played Skaven (Clan Pestilins),
Imperial Guard, and later on Arcanists, thanks to yours truly. His favorite class in 3.0 and 3.5 was Paladin,
his favorite class today is ALSO paladin, and he is damn good at both his job and his hobbies. One thing
he found out very early on helped me was journalling, however, we also found out I was really BAD at
doing it regularly. I've tried many times throughout the years to begin journalling in a more traditional
way but I always give up on it pretty quickly because no matter how hard I try it eventually slides off my
brain. He then had the idea for me to start writing for a character based on myself, and after a bit of
planning, I had a name, Cypress, a race, Human, and a class, Cleric. That was it. I decided on human
because I am one (allegedly) and I think it's common knowledge that Cleric is my favorite class, but It
took a while for something this important to even find real footing.

As a small but useful side note, giving a fictional character the name of a real life place, assuming
it isn't something too culturally familiar, tends to work pretty well, things like Cypress, Naicia, Akkad,
Larsa... you know what I mean. I got that one from Steve, too, and I'm mentioning this because for a
while "Cypress, human cleric" was all I really had. Other than that at this early stage, the character varied
wildly and was basically just a vector for an angry 6th grader who was really starting to hit the angsty
phase to bitch about all the things that hurt him, whether relevant today or not. A lot of shit happens in
middle school, but outside of some general negative connotations, very little of it stuck around. Maybe,
in hindsight, cleric was a mistake; I wasn't a particularly religious kid in any way, and finding ways to
make this concept for ME made my brain run into several rodeblocks. For a while this project wasn't
working the way I had really hoped, because despite it giving Steve an easy way to talk about my issues, I
couldn't keep too many things coherent because

That all changed when In seventh grade I found a book on my science teacher's book shelf called
"Sword Dancer" by Jennifer Roberson. From there, I had my strong, guiding idea. From there, I built a
whole mythology, a whole cast of supporting characters and a mechanically unique class that I have
redeveloped at this point about six times in my life as new editions, and additions, to Dungeons and
Dragons kept coming out. Though she has changed, and her story has changed, the mythology hasn't.
But she has changed. She has grown up with me, she's suffered with me, she's laughed with me, she's
been angry with me, and she has changed as I've matured. Eventually ideas of rebellion became a driving
need for structure, ritual and meaning, a love for the tropes of D&D became a jaded deconstruction of
them and eventually Cypress became Cipriana as my own expressions with my identity as a bisexual,
then pansexual, then demisexual, changed as such experiences brought me closer to my, shalll we say,
pragmatic genderfluidity. Not everything was so enlightening, unfortunately. The nine an-ishtoya of Stall-
Ysta became eight after a good friend of mine died in a car accident. Themes of the cruel nature of the
mind, my own belief in absurdism, reflections of the hard choices you're unable to make on your own,
being alienated from part of your family, of self-imposed pain and sadness, of the bizarre things I've seen
people do and be, me eventually finding some kind of faith and everything that was involved in a quest...
even when I loved someone very deeply, and then she destroyed me, and then found a way to give me
closure even though it's had fallout of its own... all of these things found their way into Cipriana
eventually.

Throughout all of my shit in my community positive and negative, as well as all of the shit that came
before it, and all the shit that has come AFTER, and even all the shit that happened last year, this
character has been around, becoming a reflection of my existence through the medium of fantasy.
Through every shift in my life or eddy amongst my interests or friend groups, the character that would
eventually become Cipriana has been there, my oh-so-secret pet project to help me cope with things like
change, trauma and loss as well as to engage the creative part of my brain in positive ways relating to
interests, hobbies, faith and ritualism. I think the only thing that is really surprising, then, is how much of
 the terminology OF the character remains... unoriginal. Huge portions of her concept, imagery and
vocabulary come from other inspirations almost verbatum, ones that tend to have certain degrees of
importance to me, movies, video games, pro wrestling, musicals, tv shows and ESPECIALLY books. Some
of these things you may even recognize should you have had exposure to them, others may be more
referential or subtext, but the point is this character is a patchwork tapestry that, even if I did truly forge
her into something unique over the 15 years she's been bouncing around in my head, was never meant
to be played or even SEEN by anyone else but my therapist. I also would have been happy to keep it that
way, had Jon not expressed interest in reading about her.

But now he has, as have others, and when Sir commands, I can only obey. Which is why now the
unenviable task of coalescing the mythology, story and characters of Cipriana and the Sword-Cultists of
Stall-Ysta, an insane and disconnected rambling of patchwork documents of various ideas, notes, life
events, short stories, constant changes, real life joys and tragedies, new friends and lost ones, and other
assorted things that were constantly lost, refound, reshuffled, discarded and picked back up into ONE
DEFINITVE PLAYABLE CLASS, MYTHOLOGY AND CANONICAL CHARACTER.

Fuck me, here we go.

I'm also going to make a rule. I normally try not to include too many out-of-order character notes about
inspiration, but there is just too much I have to include for personal reasons so I will italicize it and use a
different font. Times new roman, probably. I'll also start it with Creation note, just so people know if they
can safely skip it or not, because even if you skip them, there is going to be A LOT of information.

Fuck. Me. Here. We. Go.

So, here we go. Who knows, maybe by the end of it someone will like this lore and character SO MUCH
they just HAVE to start a whole new D&D group so we get to use it together. Wouldn't that be a trip? The
one character more personal to me that any other and that I never intended to really share eventually
gets me the thing I've done for other people about a billion times and that I have been trying to get
people to do for me for about a billion years. Even though most of it is an insane fever dream of me
building off of a bunch of shit I like.

I think it would break my brain.

Fuck. Me. Here. We. GO.

Viscountess Cipriana Von Mavros

Creation note: This is a minor point but I really like this picture. I just found it but it captures the slightly
unhinged appearance, anger and dignity of Cipriana very well. Plus, the strange linework on the head
makes it difficult to figure out how directly she's looking at you, and with what expression, making her
difficult to read.

Name: Cipriana Delilah Von Mavros. Race. Vampire. Class. Sword-Keeper. Background: Noble.
Eyes: Green. Hair: Black. Height: 5'7. Favored Form: Trakata. Noble Rank: Viscountess.
Sexuality: Lesbian. Gender Identity: Cisgender female, Disinterested.
Alignment: Lawful Good. Blade-Ranking: An-Ishtoya.

Creation note: Yes, you read race right. No, she is NOT a monster manual vampire. That would be
bullshit. While sword-keeper is an original class of my own development, vampire race I used for this
latest version of Cipriana actually has official mechanical grounding within the game, if not in execution.
Basically I just smashed the two vampire races from plane shift: Zendikar and Plane shift: Ixalan
together to create a form of higher vampire that's basically a nerfed daywalker. This is actually the most
recent addition to the character, as well, and Cipriana was made a vampire primarily due to the events of
last year, when I lost my ability to love a hobby I had poured everything into by literally having it sucked
out of me by others and having those who could have helped me instead choose to hurt me. However, I
shouldn't have to explain where my interest in the concept of a Noble Vampire with a Soul was born.
More on that later. Also, those of you familiar with lightsaber combat, at the very least Jon and Will, will
doubtless recognize the term Trakata as a term used in lightsaber combat. This was one of three things
that was used to build the terminology of the way of blades. More on that later as well.

Traits: My eloquent flattery makes everyone I talk to feel like the most wonderful and important person
in the world, but If you do me an injury, I will crush you, ruin your name, and salt your fields.

Ideal: Respect. Respect is due to me because of my position, but all people regardless of station deserve
to be treated with dignity. (Good)

Bond: The faith of blades and my relationship with my Jivatma and my Simulacrum is the most important
thing to keep me grounded.

Flaw: I too often hear veiled insults and threats in every word addressed to me, and I’m quick to anger. I
also have an insatiable desire for carnal pleasures that has been used against me.

Creation note: I mean... yeah. Like four times over in that profile. Horny, pissy, friendly, kinky, well
spoken, talkative grudgeholding pagan with no illusion of false modesty, me.

WORLDBUILDING

MANDATORY Creation note: Yeah, this is probably already throwing you for a bit of a loop, isn't it? I told
you there were going to be a lot of these, and on top of that, those of you who have seen my characters
before doubtlessly realize that having a section entirely devoted to worldbuilding is a bit different from
my usual format. I'm normally pretty adamant that a character needs to stand up on their own without too
much extensive worldbuilding. However, the Viscountess Cipriana Delilah Von Mavros is what I have
dubbed in my book an Integrated Concept Character, which is basically a fancy way of saying this
character has inbuilt worldbuilding that the DM needs to factor into their planning and worldbuilding so
the character is not constantly seeming to pull lore out of their ass. This is generally best done in the form
of an extensive mythology that the character happens to be a part of and not because the character has
done so much that she should by all rights be a level 10 character even before the story starts. I will only
detail in this section how much you NEED TO KNOW to understand Cipriana, but there will be way, way,
WAY more later on down the line that the DM would be well advised to include whenever the party or
Cipriana herself has to interact with fellow sword-dancers, whether proper students of Staal-Ystra or not.

A peculiarly human institution, you may have seen a Sword Dancer school in your local large town or
city. Should you be in a very large city, there may even be two different ones, but never more. Sword-
dancing is a rare, difficult and demanding combat art and people who actually persued it enough to
become dancers of even the first level are a very rare breed. Practiced exclusively by those of human
ancestry, humans, half-elves, and half-orcs, and being rated most commonly on a scale of one to ten,
with the levels of eight, nine and ten exclusively held for teachers, the terminology, techniques, teaching
methods and emphasis may vary but there are always a few constants. The Circle, the Dancers, and the
Art. Most of the time, Sword dancers aren't even really fighting, it's an act, a great bit of theater
designed to get their audience to throw coins to them for the sake of entertainment, but every now and
again, a circle is drawn for a real fight, to surrender, to blood, maybe even to death. But it always,
 ALWAYS, looks beautiful.

However, nobody would dare to really consider sword-dancing "fake fighting" as most Dancers also make
healthy livings as bodyguards, mercenaries, adventurers and even occasionally assassins. There is
nothing "fake" about sword dancing, except when it is performed with other sword dancers in its artistic
and performative way. Most sword dancers still come across as theatrical even doing these jobs and
naturally take their image very seriously, cultivating a persona, a legend around it, a signature sword with
a name they openly tell to everyone, and they like to brag about how close they are to their swords, and
to each other. The very strong flair for the theatrical ensures no two dancers are really alike. This is what
the public knows about the dance as a whole, and this image is a lie, a bastardization of the Way of
Blades, an Ancient human institution which many have heard of but few dare to believe is real.

There are dancers who have association with this institution, but very few take inspiration from the TRUE
school of the dance, where the first seven levels are Ishtoya and the last three are Kaiden, and those that
do are careful to stop there. The true practitioners of the Way of Blades are VERY different, and very
frightening, because if you claim to be an An-Ishtoya, one of the above, but do not wield a Jivatma of
your own, and you encounter a true top student of the Way, they will draw their enchanted swords on
you on the spot and immediately demand you BACK THAT SHIT UP, likely resulting in you being
humilaited, maimed, and without the ability to ever raise a sword again because the trauma of that
defeat is too much to remember. If you claim to be An-Kaiden, you'll probably just die. Perhaps it is
thankful, then, that the school above all, Staal-Ysta, has only saw fit to declare eight An-Ishtoya in recent
years, and only three An-Kaiden remain to this day to keep the deepest secrets.

Staal-Ysta

There are as many stories about the school above all as there are snowflakes in the snowstorms that
perpetually surround it. It is a relic from when the first humans solved the deepest riddles of blades and
forged the first Jivatma, the legendary blooded-quenched swords of the Way of blades, forged of
something deeper than steel, tinged with color that match the piece of the soul their wielder puts in
them and inscribed with runes that twist and glow in strange, alien forms. What is known is that even if
you feel the call to dance in your soul, you cannot find Staal-Ysta unless you need to. It is a vanishingly
small Demiplane, somewhere between the planes of Air and Water, just below the Beastlands, and to
find it your need to learn the Way must be true, or else you must be brought to it.

Many ARE brought to it, as well! Surprisingly, Staal-Ysta welcomes guests of all stripes, though all
conflicts must be resolved in the circle. Those who are lead into the school by one of its Kaiden, scouting
for people who will respect the way, may even get to join this most holy of schools and can even find
their way there and back, but those people will never join the ranks of the An-Ishtoya. To learn the dance
in Staal-Ysta is like being able to learn Kung-Fu in Shaolin while also being able to attend Seminary in
Rome. Here, The dance is not a simple form of entertainment for the masses, but a most holy ritual
designed to honor the Gods within Men and the Gods above Men. Here, the Ishtoya learn their blades as
intimately as they can, often seeing them as boon companions with their own quirks, personalities and
favorite songs to be sung in addition to the legendary Hymn of Blades. Perhaps they will eventually
become Kaiden, teaching the way to others and searching for those who have the drive and Will to
respect it.

For them, there is no other Way, there is only the Way of Blades. If the Ishtoya of Staal-Ysta come across
as quirky, the An-Ishtoya can come across as alien at best and completely deranged at worst. They all
 honor the edits of the Way to some degree or another, their obsession with form and ritual can come
across as fanatical, and they treat their Jivatma with the time and attention benefitting something far
closer than living lover who also happens to be a god. Because, for the An-Ishtoya, that is very much
what a Jivatma is.

There are only eight An-Ishtoya at this time, all of them very different in goals and personality. They can
span from lawful to Chaotic, from Good to Evil, but they all tend to be very extreme in their devotion.
There are also only three an-kaiden right now, though until recently there used to be four. The fourth
was recently killed, used as the quenching blood for one of his students who he relentlessly broke,
abused and tormented before finally cursing her with the eternal state of Vampirism; The Viscountess
Cipriana Delilah von Mavros, known to those she's close to by Ria, and in the annals Staal-Ysta by the
honorfics she who hung herself in chains, the Moth Princess, and the Khanzura (Healed with Gold)

Creation note: While a great deal of this terminology is based on Sword-Dancer, Khanzura is actually
based on the Japanese art of Kintsugi, repairing pottery with gold. I just wanted to let people in on this
cool little factoid. Also WRESTLING IS THE BASIS OF SWORD-DANCING AS A WIDER CULTURAL THING.
Even if the people of Staal-Ysta do, in fact, take it very, VERY seriously because it was a holy touchstone
for them and lead to an actual magical and religious revival for lost souls, it is based on wrestling and as
such can be played for a variety of things. I very much stuck to my rule that unless set up to specifically
be dramatic you have to be okay with most things in D&D having the potential to suddenly turn into a
joke and this is very much an example of it. I will go into far more detail about the Way of Blades later, as
well as the bastardized version that has become modern Sword-Dancing, but for now just keep this
comparison in mind because it's sort of like realizing the Sisters of Battle of 40k are basically just nuns
with flamethrowers, it makes everything just a little funnier.

HISTORY

A war orphan adopted and legitimized at a very young age by the Count Tacitus von Mavros at the
behest of his wife Letha, Cipriana von Mavros grows up amongst the life of nobles and the games of
noble politics. Due to a combination of natural temperament, outsider status and knowledge that her
path in her family's plans can only grow so far, Ria, as she often prefers to be known, rarely feels the
need to behave as expected of her. When it is revealed that on of Ria's expectations is to carry on the
family line, Ria in turn reveals that she has no interest in doing so due to only being interested in women.
She flees into hiding and falls in with a group of travelling minstrels and bohemians, who widen her
worldview significantly (and not always kindly). Attempts to reconnect with her adopted siblings succeed
but she is disowned by her adopted parents, who want nothing at all to do with her. Her eldest sister,
Duvessa, promises to undo this decision when she gets older but for now she is cut off and alone in the
world.

While never fully fitting in with the free travelling minstrel lifestyle, she spends her adolescence happy
there, becoming a valued member of her found family. However, while she enjoys discovering things
about herself on the road she's never quite comfortable enough to enter into a full relationship with
another woman in an open and honest way due to her insecurity about her family accepting this side of
her.

Disaster strikes, however, when this found family is butchered by a tribe of ice giants under the
command of an adult white dragon, with Nia only surviving by fleeing with an arrow in the back of her
leg. As she flees into the storm, Nia passes out from blood loss after swearing righteous vengeance,
 awakening being tended to by a tribe of snow-dwelling nomads who tell her of a place where she can
"learn what she needs, if she can find it". She is told to simply "walk north, or turn back". When a
messenger raven finds her with news that she had been reinstated as her adopted parents were too old
to properly rule, Nia vows to walk north or die.

Nia finds her way into Staal-Ysta, being marked as having the potential to become one of the chosen An-
Ishtoya. The school proves a better fit for her and she becomes an almost fanatical believer in the way of
blades. However, one of the four an-kaiden, an elder vampire of common birth with a powerful hatred
for the nobility, takes exception to Cipriana, being that she is the only highborn to be accepted by the
school in an age. Despite the An-Kaiden vow to serve the school, he subtly starts working to ensure she
will never be able to pass the trials. He worms his way into her mind, shattering her sense of identity,
subtly at first, then directly, turning her into a plaything who would do ANYTHING for her vampiric
tormentor up too and including torturing herself while never forcing him to lay a hand on her.

The ruse is so convincing that by the time anyone has cottoned onto what is going on, none of her peers
nor superiors can find a way to help her directly, either from fear or disinterest. The ultimate act of
heinousness comes when, overcome with cruelty and drunk on his power, his vampiric nature fully
awakens for the first time in years and he moves to turn his charge into a vampire spawn. None of her
peers raise a hand to help her as she is almost drained of everything that makes her her twice over...
none but one.

Jaspar, an An-ishtoya, finds a way to subtly dance around his Vampiric An-Kaiden by beseeching the gods
within-and-without to intervene. Cipriana, against all odds, becomes one of the Legion of Dusk, half-
living vampires who can walk in the sun and claim no master. She is also declared An-ishtoya by the
school on the spot, her simulacrum appearing at her feet even without a Jivatma, an unheard of event
since the very earliest days of Staal-Ysta. The vampiric an-kaiden is shattered by the school and,
overcome with maddening guilt, offers himself up as the sacrifice to become her Jivatma. After a period
of healing that restores her to some level of functionality to endure she has a fair chance to survive the
ritual, she quenches her blade in the vampire's willing blood, giving introduction to Noctura, an
unusually powerful Jivatma with a blade of dark blue aura, blood red glowing runes, with golden lines
running through the aura and the blue tinted steel alike. The bizarre, patterned nature of her palette of
the gods, her somewhat shattered nature, the difficult-to-identify cucooned nature of her simulacrum
and her relatively low power give rise to her nickname within the ranks of the school, "The Moth
Princess." Despite that description, it was given lovingly; All of the nicknames can be somewhat
disparaging.

She eventually is restored to close to full functionality though she carries many scars from this dark three
year period of her life. One of the ways she did this was by reembracing her status as a noblewoman...
now a viscountess after the death of her adopted parents. She remains the odd one out in her family to
this day, but her relationship with her siblings is not nearly so strained.

For a while, she split most of her time between her family estate and Staal-Ysta. However, she recently
found out that Jaspar was slain in his sleep by unscrupulous bandits. Owing him a debt she can never
repay, she aasked to be the one to bring his Jivatma to Staal-Ysta, and was granted the honor.