#I’m only 2 quests into northern Elsweyr and I still do like his character

[falmerbrook]

When I said they should neuter Abnur I meant his balls not his personality

[the-skooma-den]

threw together a couple headshots of Syke cause i wanted to do a proper profile of her, so anyone curious about the character i spend so much time ranting about and drawing thats gonna be under the read more

Part 2 here 

directory to all posts about her and her siblings are here

Real Name: Ava Aurelia Cassia Camoran Tharn Latona. she has an untold amount fake names and identities for a wide variety of purposes, Nowadays she mainly goes by Syke Ivywood, and thats what most of the Dominion knows her as (and is also her in game name)

Age: turned 28 right around when the main plot started. I assume years pass through the DLC’s, including one year where she does the mages and fighters guild quest as well as a bunch of quests.

Race: Imperial. Her father was a bosmer and she takes heavily after him. Her grandpas a Khajiit, which is only relevant here because her dad took heavily after his dad. Hence syke’s weirdly golden eyes and slightly to sharp teeth. 

Class: Nightblade, focus on siphoning magic

Personality: One might look at her usual scowl and her serious demeanor and assume she's the typical lone wolf edgy assassin, and they’re only really half wrong. She’s not a loner by choice,she doesn’t hate people really, shes just not great at interacting with people. Anyone who knows who she actually is tend to be scared of her (even other members of the brotherhood) and that's not great for ones self confidence. In a few words, she’s just awkward and extremely introverted. That being said she is kinda grumpy, but if an evil god stole your soul you would be to.

As for the series Demeanor, that really just her face. She’s just not a smiley person ya know? She just as an incredibly flat affect and it either takes really strong emotions or a lot of effort on her part to break it. She’s actually pretty damn nice, even if she doesn’t really “get” a lot of social norms.Being raised in a assassin cult worshiping the void can do that to a girl.

What also does not help the usual perception of her, is her Bad temper and very very low bullshit tolerance. She’s not hard to piss off and it can be explosive. Usually not the yelling and screaming explosive but the getting right up in your face out of nowhere and quietly informing you that if you say one more word she’ll individually break every bone in your hand type way.

She’s what her mother would kindly call “strong willed” and what everyone else would call debilitatingly stubborn . Keeping in mind this is a woman who was wronged by what is essentially the demon god king of domination and then decided “I’m going to kick his ass” and then did. For good or ill she rarely if ever gives up.

Due to the fact she is technically a noblewoman, she tends to be extremely private as well. The other Cyrodilic nobles know of her and her family, but just know them as the family that for the most part gave up their titles and have no intention of trying to get them back, they have no idea that theyre a whole family of assassin in the Dark brotherhood. That does not mean that they ignore her or her family as even if her family doesn’t want the titles the fact they exist can mess up others claims to the throne.Especially Ava who suffice to say has a pretty decent claim to several very important titles. This has lead her to take on a variety of different fake names and wearing different masks to avoid being recognized both in her daily life and in jobs for the brotherhood...at least at first.

As it turned out she's a natural actor with one hell of a flair for the dramatic. She may have issues interacting with people as herself, but she finds it easier when pretending to be someone else. She got so into it that she has whole characters that she pretends to be for all kinds of purposes, like say if she needs access to mages or fighters guild resources or if a particular job for the brotherhood calls to act as a maid for a little bit.

as for how the Dominion crew know her, well they actually come closer to knowing her then most. When Raz dragged her out of the ocean at Khenarthis roost she was so out of it she was barely able to come up with a fake name let alone a whole character, so they all end up genuinely knowing her as she truly is. Turns out she doesn’t mind that as much as she thought she would.

Backstory (before the main plot): She’s a third generation member of the Dark brotherhood, and most of her direct family (siblings, parents, aunt and one set of grandparents) are apart of it. Her grandmother, A Bosmer noble named Cassa, married an Imperial nobleman when she was pretty young. Cassa wanted to get out of Valenwood and her husband was looking for a way to rebel against his family and found it in a hot bosmer lady. They ended up having one kid together, Lara

A few years later Cassa ends up falling in with and getting pregnant by a khajiiti baker her husband hired, and her husband is not to happy about that to say the least.  He fires and sends the Khajiit away and Cassa is less then happy about that as well. She kills her husband and so convincingly makes it look like an accident that if the brotherhood hadn't already had a contract out on him no one would have ever known it was murder. 

So Cassa ends up joining the brotherhood after her second kid by the khajiit man was born. She never really connected with the bosmeri pantheon or the Green pact, and she ends up taking to Sithis real well. She also as soon as she was able went to find her love and they were married as soon as possible. They all lived in Valenwood for a number of years and both her kids grew up in the brotherhood as well. 

 Eventually the younger one son, Tanis, marries an Imperial woman,Livillia. Also a runaway noblewoman,her mother was friends with Cassa and she was seeking sanctuary with her. Livillia is specifically one of Abnur Tharns kids, who no longer wanted to deal with the Tharn family drama. 

They have a kid together (That is of course Ava). Tanis’s older sister and Cassa’s first child, Lara, has a one night stand with an Altmer and has her own kid who she names Ceryneian (or Nia for short). And they all live pretty happily for a while, as far as anyone knew the family was just a bunch of nobodies, rich nobodies who kept all hours but still just nobodies. They had for the most part completely abandoned all noble titles, even if the nobles weren’t done with them.

When Ava was about 10 years old her great aunt Cilvia tharn found out that Livillia was still alive. She was well aware that if she tried to do anything to Elsweyr Livillia would likely act against her. Livillia may be a member of the brotherhood, but she wasnt completely evil. Cilcvia sent assassins after Ava’s parents, they missed her but her parents were taken by surprise and sadly killed. None of her family felt right staying in valenwood anymore, So Lara took Ava in and moved to the Gold coast where she had spent her early childhood and had inherited some estate.  Her grandparents Moved to Elsweyr and both Ava and Nia would spend summers there as kids. 

So Ava ends up “officially” a member of the brotherhood ,after toddling around the sanctuaries her whole life, at about 15 years old, and was never prouder. Normally they wouldn’t have let someone so young in but once again, she had literally been toddling in sanctuaries, they figured it was fine.

On one of her first genuinely dangerous missions, to kill a necromancer in Northern Elsweyr (chaperoned by her grandma of course), she came across one of said necromancers future sacrifices. This sacrifice happened to be a 13 year old khajiit boy named Thera (later going by Jo’Thera)  with some odd fur patterns, and fuck man he was just a kid (granted shes only a couple years older then him) and Ava couldn’t just leave him there alone. Ava saved him and took her back to Anvil with her after she killed the necromancer as according to the kid, he didn’t have a family or anywhere to go. Lara hears the kids story and is just like…. Welp… guess i got a 3rd kid now.  (as Thera grows up if there's one thing he gets from his adopted family its a love for drama and dramatic irony. He takes to necromancy pretty quickly)

That peace continued for a few years until she was about 19. At 19 years old she got the offer to join the Psijic order, Not because she was particularly powerful or even all that good at magic (at the time of course, she gets much better later), but due to her lack of formal teaching she had her own odd way of casting and working with it that caught their attention. Basically imagine that she did a really complicated math problem wrong, but ended up with the right answer and somehow accidentally discovered a new much easier formula to that particular problem, she did the magic version of that and showed a lot of potential even outside of that.

Then she said no, she was happy in the brotherhood and her current life and she saw no reason to leave

When Ava was about 20 years old, Nia ran away because, well she wasn't as fond of the brotherhood as her mother or cousin, and its not exactly something you can just quit and walk away from. It broke the whole families heart of course but Ava took it particularly hard. She had considered her and had been referring to her as her sister even before her parents death

What really set it all off though was when Nia popped up again alive and well in Valenwood using the last name of their grandmothers family. She didn’t send them a message or anything, it just got to them by word of mouth because Nia had disowned them and been talking shit about them. After she ran away she went back down to Valenwood to claim the title that was rightfully hers, it turns out that she had found proof of her birthright and between that and her uncanny resemblance to her grandmother she barely had to be questioned. 

So Nia is in Valenwood with her relatives and had completely disowned the entire rest of her family. Her grandmother, Her mother and her (now deceased) Aunt and Uncle, and Ava and their brother as well. she never made any concrete statement as to why per say outside of “Not wanting to go down the same path as the rest of her family” which most people assumed meant completely abandoning their noble heritage and titles, not to mention their bosmeri heritage as well (which was partially true, but it was mostly about the whole murder cult thing). So yeah, Lara was heartbroken and Ava was pissed off to oblivion and back and Jo’thera....he was just hurt, but all decided that if that was where Nia wanted to be they weren’t going to drag her back.

At about 23 Ava met her first real significant other, A Dunmeri noble. It didnt go well for either of them really, lots of drugs, lots of unhealthy coping mechanisms, lots of secrets. not a good time. 2 years later, The Dunmer actually proposes to Ava, and Ava not only says yes but Ava tells her everything about the brotherhood, her own noble status, all of it. The Dunmer seems okay with it at first, and admits she kinda suspected who Ava’s family was based on the little she spoke about it, The brotherhood was the real surprising part there. The knife in Ava’s stomach later that night Makes it clear what she thought about that. So it was a messier breakup then most.  

Ava doesnt like to speak much of the relationship, but it hurt her more then she lets on and makes her more nervous then ever to be in a real romantic relationship 

Well after that mess Ava threw herself back into the brotherhood hardcore and also into hardcore drugs and alcohol.for about 5 years. Over those 5 years between the Dunmer incident, a lot of self reflection, and all sorts of anxieties she’s an unstable mess. Like verge of a mental breakdown type of mess. 

When she was kidnapped and later sacrificed by the wormcult many who knew her assumed that she had offed herself for good. She was gone for long enough that even her own family started to assume the worst