<strong>Bast</strong>- Aliyah Djeserit<br/><br/>POWERS: Magic as the ancient priestesses of Bast used to wield. Such magic being ritual in nature, she can be more precise with time to complete the full casting, or it requires more of her own energy and risks unpredictable results if she casts on the fly, attempting to capture the essence of the ritual in her mind.<br/><br/>DESCRIPTION: Aliyah is a bit below average height, her hair blue-black, long and sleekly straight, her eyes dark brown, and her skin a warm mocha-color. Slender but curvy, when in private she usually dresses in long, sheer linen robes with heavy embroidery--thick with lapis, carnelian, turquoise and gold beads--at the neck, wrists and hem, belted with a sash also heavily worked in the same Egyptian-motif embroidery. Her hair is worn in tiny braids, each ending with beads woven in. She wears heavy kohl in the exaggerated patterns found in tomb paintings, and warm, spicy perfume. Her motions have the grace of a cat, and when she's working a ritual or out in public, she wears a finely-pleated, nearly-transparent linen shift with a heavily-jeweled collar and belt as seen in depictions of the goddess whose name she uses. While magic is flowing through her, it's not unusual for her head to appear to become a cat's.<br/><br/>PERSONALITY: Much like a cat, Aliyah is sensuous, curious, predatory, lazy, and territorial. Her one redeeming trait is her deep need to protect the few people who have earned her loyalty... or her current bedmate, depending on the situation.<br/><br/>HISTORY: Raped and left in some old ruins in the desert by soldiers on leave, Aliyah crawled toward what shade she could find to escape the sun, triggering a small collapse of rubble. When she awoke, she was in blissful, cool dimness, only a few slender rays of light illuminating what appeared to be a temple antechamber. Her family had raised her to believe they had the blood of the true Egyptians in them, so she thanked the goddess whose temple it had been. Though there couldn't have been oil in the lamp on the outer altar, a flame started there, and she saw lights appearing further in. Curious and frightened, she followed, and was led to the inner sanctum, where the Goddess appeared to Aliyah, and claimed the girl as Her new priestess. Healed, renewed, her mind full to bursting with knowledge that thrilled her, Aliyah set out that night filled with purpose: to raise a new temple to the Goddess who had saved her. The imam of her farming village proved violently unsympathetic to a revival of a pagan faith, and she had to flee the only home she had ever known. It was true everywhere until she left Egypt altogether. Building her life anew in Star City, made cynical by the way her own people had treated her, Aliyah she turned her powers and her body to whatever paid her well enough to live in the greatest luxury possible. The alien invasion disrupted that life, but it surprised her by focusing her defensive instincts more than anything else ever had.