#with a specific interest in very small infectious 'gross' lifeforms

[guardsbian]

Iezekiel, a Plague druid and hunter of the Shade. Further lore for her can be found beneath the cut!

The Stygian Coalition, despite their reputation as "Shade hunters," never aims to fell the monstrous or corrupted until all other options have been exhausted. Their Plague druids' acute command of the flesh has been used to methodically rend Shade from body, while their Light clerics' extensive knowledge of the soul has been used to wholly cleanse Shade from mind. But no method is proven completely effective, and every new case may present a condition too advanced or situation too strange to salvage what was once warped, now long departed.

Iezekiel is among the Coalition's number of genuine hunters, though her speciality in viruses and microorganisms has always defined her role far more than any status as "willing executioner" could. Ask her how such a mild-mannered and studious Tundra came to wield a blade, shotgun, and enchanted gauntlet with such controlled effeciency, and she'd assure you that any member of the Plague clergy must be as well-versed in combat as they are prayer. Ask her why she's no longer a member of that clergy, and she's suddenly far less open to discussion.

Her outward sentimentality, then, is reserved largely for those inevitable ends. After all, she can be trusted to act alone; her judgment is sound, her blows are measured, and her opponents fight honorably and viciously in the hollow halls of whatever bit of ruinous construction they take shelter from the harsh Wasteland sun in.

The miserable, lumbering forms Iezekiel smites in the Plaguebringer's name are the life which proliferates in death, not so far from those revered, diminuitive forms she devotes her studies and magic to. There is a serene stillness in death; a stillness which the Rot-Mother's children riot and raze so vibrantly to combat. The squirming and pestilent things which invade death's stillness are exalted, beautiful, thrilling.

And yet, in the sprawling, hallowed carcasses of forsaken structures, long devoid of such fiercely devout and intoxicating life, Iezekiel must contend with a stillness of her own making.