User:Joshmaul/Nyssha Swiftblade

"'You've all been plucked out of whatever safe graves you thought would contain your sorry corpses and whatever pleasant afterlife you thought awaited your pathetic souls for a single reason: This world is not done with you yet. And with some of you lot, having to be stitched together like the poor bastards you are, this is an improvement over rotting in the ground. Believe me, I get it, this is hardly a pleasant fate, but we've got a job to do, so we'll just have to do it. Anyone who wants to whine about it or thinks they can sit it out, your exit is over the side of that balcony there, where you'll serve Azeroth by feeding the carrion birds. Welcome to the Ebon Blade.'"
 * - Nyssha Swiftblade, address to new recruits

A former member of the Defias Brotherhood, Nyssha Swiftblade was killed during the war in Outland... but her putrified, decapitated body was stolen by agents of the Scourge from her resting place, just prior to the war against the Lich King, and raised as a death knight to fight in the Scarlet Enclave. Now a Knight of the Ebon Blade, she helped in the training of the "new recruits" in the wake of the recently-concluded Fourth War, and followed her dark brethren into their natural battlefield: the land of the dead.

Origins
Born in the town of Moonbrook, Nyssha Petrand's parents joined the Defias Brotherhood, under the disgruntled Stonemason Edwin VanCleef, when she was eight years old. When her parents were killed by the Stormwind army, Nyssha was trained by the Defias as an assassin. Nyssha fought against the invaders sent by the Westfall People's Militia into the ruins of Moonbrook for many years before VanCleef sent her on a mission to kill a target inside Sentinel Hill: A paladin named Saavedro of Stratholme. But she was not as stealthy as she had wished, and was quickly captured by the People's Militia. She was sent to the Stockade in Stormwind, along with the other Defias prisoners, awaiting her execution... when fate offered her a second chance.

Saavedro - guided either by compassion or by some whim of the Light - offered Nyssha two choices: Die by the hangman's rope, or serve him in battle. Nyssha, ever opportunistic, chose the latter. She still wore the blackened Defias armor and the red mask that was the primary trademark of the Brotherhood, but instead chose to fight for the Alliance against them. In return for her loyalty, Saavedro had a pair of bronze knives crafted for her. She saw the altruistic paladin as a father figure, and Saavedro saw her as the daughter he never had.

After the death of Defias kingpin Edwin VanCleef, Nyssha offered her services to SI:7. She was paired with Arrhae Leafrunner, Saavedro's ally in the Cenarion Circle, who gave Nyssha a wyvern tailspike to act as a blade. They travelled east to the Redridge Mountains, to do battle against the Blackrock orcs that had begun their incursion from the Burning Steppes. But before long, she was summoned by SI:7 chief Mathias Shaw, for an important mission - one she would not return from.

Death and Resurrection
Based on information gained with some urging from Saavedro, SI:7 targeted Urgan the Corruptor, a powerful orc warlock who had belonged to the Shadow Council during the First War, and was responsible for killing Alliance agents in Outland. To break his support base within the Horde, Nyssha was sent to assassinate Ordevaas Portalseeker, a Blood Knight Master who served as the Corruptor's lieutenant.

However, the Blood Knight Master got wind of Nyssha's mission from the draenei vindicator Velenkayn, who was captured and tortured by the Corruptor shortly after Nyssha received her mission. Nyssha began her journey to Quel'Thalas to locate the Corruptor's lieutenant, but he located her first. Two Ghostland guardians ambushed her near the Quel'Lithien Lodge in the Eastern Plaguelands and took her before the Master, who waited at the gatehouse in the Thalassian Pass. Taking the wyvern tailspike from her belt, Ordevaas ran it into Nyssha's chest and left her lying on the ground, then watched and waited as the poison slowly killed her. He then had her decapitated, and the body dumped at Chillwind Camp. Her head was delivered to Saavedro as a package. Grief-stricken and enraged, Saavedro swore vengeance against Ordevaas, but was convinced (reluctantly) to forgive once it became clear that Ordevaas was a puppet of the Corruptor.

Saavedro had Nyssha buried outside Shattrath, a place where the Light would watch her rest... or so he thought. Just before the war against the Lich King, agents of the Cult of the Damned raided the cemetery outside Shattrath City. Nyssha's body had putrified by this point, and her head was reattached to her body. She was placed under the command of General Varan Metheius, a former Forsaken executor and battle-hardened warrior. The general had lost his jaw during his "second death", and had to rely on writing notes or sign language to communicate - but found that Nyssha took to the death knight's training very quickly, and was pleased with her progress. Together, they battled against the Scarlet Crusade, and later the Argent Dawn at Light's Hope Chapel. Upon the defeat at Light's Hope and the breaking of the Lich King's hold on his death knights, Nyssha was inducted into the newly-formed Knights of the Ebon Blade.

But Metheius, wishing to rejoin the service of his Dark Lady, returned to the Undercity after his liberation. As a token of his esteem for her, he invited Nyssha to fight alongside him as the war moved to Northrend - telling her that the Forsaken had no real love of the Horde it was ostensibly part of. Although she agreed to fight as an "auxiliary" of what became the 122nd Deathguard Battalion, Nyssha remained a member of the Alliance and the Ebon Blade, working in Valiance Keep in the Borean Tundra, on the opposite coast from where Metheius was deployed - a means to avoid coming into contact (or conflict) with her mentor. When they reached Icecrown, Nyssha convinced Metheius to formally join the Ebon Blade, which he had refused to do at first. Together, they would serve as part of the "Ashen Verdict", the combined Argent-Ebon forces assaulting Icecrown Citadel, ending with the fall of one Lich King and the rise of another - one who would play a major role in Nyssha's later destiny...