#and it extends to a bunch of mind-altering magic + she's a necro so she has extra resistance to necro spells

[mistfallengw2]

Guess it's time to expand on this with another "first in-game death turned into backstory"

It is now canon that Lenorey had a close encounter of the unpleasant kind with Draithor the Drill (I forgot he was that strong and I'm still leveling her, welp).

Short story under read more with screens to go along with it [tw: gross "food", implied human meat (and all Draithor-related stuff), written at 1-2am]

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The young sylvari wasn't even a yearling when she had stumbled upon the necromancer's lair, following the rumors she had heard during her brief stay at the nearby Black Haven fort. Well, more like overheard, from afar, disturbed by some drunken norn's bellowing, but she did hear the words meat, magic and necromancer, which were all things she had interest in. And so she went, dodging and sneaking past this unknown necromancer's minions after being so rudely attacked when she called for the owner of that lovely cave. Irked by such an unwelcoming welcome, she helped herself to what she felt more pulled towards out of the vials on the tables and the racks of smoked meat -or at least what she could reach and carry, given the average size of the furniture-, then left the place with her consolation loot, settling for a little personal picnic on the nearby hills.

Lenorey had already eaten quite the sort of questionable things in her short life, she was aware of as much in her incessant search and had learned a few important lessons, but while the smaller vials were tasteless or things she had sampled before, that piece of chewy meat was disgusting even to her. It reminded her of the time she took a nibble out of a risen she had found on the side of the road, but not even that left such a foul feeling in her whole body, and not one lasting for so many hours. That was utterly gross. That was new. She had to know.

After her insides and head stopped churning with that weakness, she went back to the cave, and this time something was definitely happening inside. Again, she extended a call and her thanks for the meal as she entered, ready to practice her appeasing skills in order to get to know more about that foul meat and why it made her feel queasy, maybe even apologize and pay him back for the purloined goods. The minions waited in their place, menacing, and a towering figure emerged from the corner, stopping for a moment to grunt before approaching her. Not what she expected, but it sure explained the too-high tables around the lair. This necromancer was a centaur. Lenorey was ecstatic! She had never met one, and she had so many things she wanted to know about the culinary and alchemical traditions of his people, but she barely got past her third question before a thick haze choked the words out of her mouth.

While the sylvari did fall in the thigh-high water of the swamp, she didn't fully lose herself under the toxin, only feeling dizzy and tingly all over as her body relaxed in a sleep-like state. The sudden splash in the water only jolted her a bit out of it, though not enough for her to really keep her eyelids open. Bummer. The centaur grabbed her arm and pulled her up, inspecting her limp body as if she was a discarded doll. Grunting again like the rude thing he was, he uttered something about plant people being useless to his research, then carried her deeper into the cave and tossed her body against something metallic. A cage, not unlike those she had been into before. Again, extremely rude, on top of being unwelcoming and a bad cook.

It didn't take her long to come back to her senses. It wasn't a strong spell to begin with, it had just taken her by surprise and the earlier meal had likely weakened her resistance in some way unknown to her. Another bummer, but she was more concerned with the weird sounds she had heard as she waited out the effects, and she had enough self-preservation instincts to know she didn't want to wait around for him to come back or find out what originated them.

Her frame had been turning more limber lately -or "shriveled" as some of her siblings had more or less worriedly said to her-, but she liked it, because it meant she could squeeze her bark through most narrow spaces with just a little effort, and cage bars were not an exception. To be fair, the door wasn't even closed, but she still opted to slip under the lower bar for the sake of it.

That rude hooved guy was clearly not going to give her any information she wanted, so Lenorey sneaked past the guarding minions, only stopping to disable a pair of them, but curiosity pulled her gaze in his direction. He had his back to her, close to the table she had taken food from, busy chopping something on it. Whatever he had done before that, it was all very bloody and very dripping-from-a-pointy-tool, and it reeked of unsavory necromancy so much that she felt her thorns bristle. Without hesitation, she removed herself from the cave with careful haste, then let her mind fade a bit deeper as she continued on her road. She was not going to find what she was looking for back there, and she already had enough unpalatable things to digest for one day.