Supporting Illustrious Pain and Beauty/Illu

While Illu has a human form, she is clearly inhuman. Her blue eyes are luminescent and glow in the darkness. Her hair is bright white, as are her eyebrows. Her skin is pure black with a few dark blue 'freckles', and her lips are dark blue. She's petite, standing at only 5'. She also has one large fin on the left side of her head, also used for echolocation just like in her mermaid form. She has a round babyface and pouty lips.

Illu looks similarly in her mermaid form, now that the curse has been lifted. The only real difference is that her legs are replaced with her black and teal scaled mermaid tail.


She likes to wear bright colors against her dark skin, preferring cute and feminine clothing. She still dresses like a princess, even if she isn’t one anymore.



Illu was once the princess of the Ta’zzi Mermaid Clan, and has a high sense of self-importance. She once was desperate for power, but has calmed that down since the destruction of her clan...but she still feels she has to demonstrate her superiority to others sometimes.

Despite her prickly exterior, Illu is capable of caring and becoming attached to others—she just doesn’t express herself well. It’s easy to misunderstand her, and in turn she is easily frustrated. She is also stubborn and hates to ask for help until she really, desperately needs it. She is a bright girl in that she learns things very fast, but her stubbornness and superiority complex can be a real problem for her.

While she speaks very rarely of it, she does feel tremendous guilt for causing the demise of her clan--but now that she has merged the last few of her clan with the Dulla-di clan, she feels she has been able to redeem herself by helping them.

Illu still has a shaky grasp of English. She does have a language charm, but prefers to avoid using it so that she can learn the language herself.



Bodily Harm: Illu is able to cause anyone physical pain simply by looking at them. The pain is a temporary illusion, not caused by any sort of physical harm or disease, but it feels quite real. It requires a good amount of concentration on Illu’s part, especially when she intends to cause severe pain.

The amount of pain Illu can cause is restricted by how much of the body she focuses on. Attempting to cause pain to every area of the body will only result in a dull pain at the most, but concentrating on a particular part can build up to severe pain. The amount of time the pain lasts depends on how long Illu can concentrate on the target. If they are out of her sight, she can no longer cause the pain. The more severe the pain, the deeper Illu's concentration needs to be--which causes her pain as well.

For example: If she intends to give someone a slight headache, she can maintain that until the person walks away. If she intends to cause someone such severe pain that they cannot walk away of their own accord, her own head pain will become so severe that she will only be able to maintain her concentration for a few minutes before she has to end it.

The most severe pain Illu is able to produce has been known to drive people to attempt to cut off their own limbs to end it. The severe, aimed pain can affect either a certain spot on the body like one arm or the left side of the chest, or a particular organ.

Illu’s ability does not cause any sort of permanent, physical damage. It’s just a temporary discomfort.
Permanent Charm: Illu has a jewel embedded in her back, which was previously used to suppress her disease and prevent her from spreading it. However, Illu no longer has the disease and the charm has now been modified to allow her to change into her human form and allow her to see in the daylight.


Language Charm: Illu has a language bracelet but rarely uses it. She's stubborn and wants to learn English on her own, but she does keep the charm with her just in case she really needs it.

Spear of The Princess: A highly ornate spear that was handed down to Illu by her mother. It doesn't have any particular magical properties, but it is a highly durable weapon. Illu is highly skilled with it in water, but is still learning to fight with it on land.



Immortality: Illu is effectively immortal and cannot be killed by sickness or old age, but she can be murdered.


Mermaid’s Song: Like most mermaids, Illu has a special song she can sing to lure others to her. It tends to be fairly effective in her ‘human’ form, but her mermaid form is so creepy that her horrible appearance tends to override the power of the song.

Breathing: She is able to breathe both on land and underwater. In her mermaid form, she can only breathe underwater.


Echolocation: Because Illu’s species is normally blind in light, they have echolocation to help them get around when they have to swim up near the surface when the sun is out.


Nocturnal Sight: Illu is able to see perfectly in the dark. She is not able to entirely blend into the darkness however, as her eyes have a luminescent glow to them.

Shapeshifter: Illu is able to shift between her mermaid form, and a more 'human-like' form.





Illu was once the princess of a mermaid clan that lived deep down toward the bottom of the ocean, below the Caribbean islands. Her clan was of a unique breed of Fae-related Mermaids, called the Ta’zzi Mermaids.


Illu was a selfish princess, and thought that gaining her own special powers to make herself superior to the rest of the clan would make her an ideal ruler someday. For whatever reason, she became fixated on the idea of being able to see both in darkness and in light--while the rest of her species could only see in darkness. She also wished for legs, so she could explore the world above. So she sought out a powerful sea witch.


Sounds a bit familiar, right? But Illu’s story would not be the Little Mermaid.


The sea witch offered Illu the ability to see in light, but she would take away her ability to see something else in exchange. Illu chose to give up the ability to see written language. In her naivety, she thought it would not be important, since her species did not have a written language themselves.


The Ta’zzi Mermaids are all born with some sort of chronic pain, and pain is an important part of their culture--especially the tolerance of pain. Illu agreed to allow her chronic pain to be more severe in exchange for the ability to shift between her mermaid form and a human-like form with legs. The sea witch’s power utilized the pain of others, and part of the bargain was that the sea witch could feed off of Illu’s pain whenever she pleased--and she would have easy access to it simply by touching her. Illu, being hyper confident in herself, was sure she could handle the extra pain and made the deal.


But what Illu didn’t know what that the sea witch held a grudge against her family. The sea witch agreed to what Illu wanted, but she had added a little something else: a disease. Illu would not show the symptoms for another few years, but in time Illu’s body slowly began to deteriorate. She was once considered the most beautiful mermaid in the clan, but her beauty began to fade and her mermaid form began to take on strange, decayed look.


The disease soon became not just Illu’s problem, but a pestilence that ravaged the entire clan. Suddenly other mermaids were beginning to fall ill and die--first her family, then the rest.


A mermaid of the clan that was familiar with Manta Carlos managed to get a message to them before he passed, and a scout group was sent to extract the last few of the clan who still remained, including Illu. The last remaining survivors were hospitalized, and Illu herself was confined until they could figure out how to stop her pestilence from spreading any further.


While they could not get rid of it permanently, they did manage to make a charm that suppressed the disease. Illu’s mermaid form was permanently ravaged by the disease, but oddly her ‘human’ form looked just like she did before, except with legs instead of her mermaid tail. The disease also did not spread when she was in her ‘human’ form, though it was still insisted that the charm be added to Illu permanently, made impossible for her to take off regardless of whether she is in her mermaid or human form.


When Illu was finally considered safe, she was sent to the Academy to get basic education--then she was given the decision whether she wished to stay on the island or return to the sea.


With no clan to return to and with the guilt of the destruction of the clan looming over her, Illu decided to start her life over at the Academy.

—-

Where has Illu been for two years?

Illu seemed to be on Manta Carlos for only a few months before she had to return to the sea. It started when the last five merfolk of her clan finally healed from the illness thanks to the Manta Carlos Hospital. The Ta'zzi Clan tend to be fiercely loyal, but there was still a part of Illu that was shocked when they reached out to her. Not only did they still see her as their leader, but they wished to help her break the curse of the sea witch.

One of her clan explained that there was another clan of deep-sea merfolk who could break the complex curse: The Dulla-di. Unfortunately, the Dulla-di constantly traveled and were difficult to track down. It would have been nearly impossible for Illu to find them alone, but she felt confident she could do so with the help of the last five of her clan.

Illu informed the school that she would be taking a leave of absence, then worked out the details of what she hoped to accomplish. She would not only seek out the Dulla-Di clan to break her curse, but encourage them to come to Manta Carlos as well.

In addition--as much as Illu would have loved to taken some rather stabby and murdery revenge on the sea witch, she knew better. That would only get her in trouble with Manta Carlos when she came back, should they find out. So Illu swallowed her pride and took the safer route instead: if she found the new territory of the witch, she would inform the scouts and allow them to deal with her instead.

Illu worked everything out with scouts, including locations she could go to take a portal back to Manta Carlos once her mission was complete. She said her goodbyes to those she knew on the island, and she was gone.

Those two years were predominantly just the tedious process of tracking down the Dulla-di clan. Then came clan politics, which took more time to figure out. Illu ultimately made the choice to marry into the Dulla-di clan so that the last few of her clan would have a new clan to belong to. This also rose her status, which made encouraging the Dulla-di clan to consider following her to Manta Carlos easier.

She doesn't particularly care for the prince she is now married to. It is strictly a political wedding and they have both agreed that they do not need to be faithful to each other.

The Dulla-di agreed to break Illu's curse. They also agreed to help her find where the sea witch resided and escorted her to the old territory of her clan. The pestilence was long gone by now, and Illu was able to retrieve her old spear--a weapon highly revered within the clan. She also requested that some of her valuables be taken with them, so that she could sell them and use the money to help her now two merged clans.

Illu made contact with scouts, and they assisted in transferring her and the 50-something merfolk that accompanied her to Manta Carlos. Scouts were also sent off to find the sea witch.

Now that the curse is broken--Illu can see written language now, she was no longer diseased, and touching her no longer gives other people severe headaches. She also lost her ability to see in light and her human form--but fortunately, once she was back at Manta Carlos, those concerns were taken care of. She was able to have those abilities brought back via modification to the charm embedded in her back. The option was also given to all the other merfolk she had brought to the island with her as well.

The merfolk of the clan were given the option of living on island, remaining in the ocean below the island, or going between both. Many chose the ability to go between both, while some shyer members decided to remain strictly in the ocean for the time being. Either way, all of them were safely in the pocket dimension now.

To have everything go so well with was a huge relief for Illu. She was still a princess, not a queen as the Dulla-di clan still had their own royal family, but Illu was still considered highly important--especially in helping the merfolk adjust to their new lives. Because of this, Illu decided to put off school so that she could focus on the clan.

With her big mission over and done with, the first place Illu chose to go was right to the home of Marric Drakenhardt. Her small amount of valuables were left there, and he was someone she had missed the most.

And so, life goes on.

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