Memento Mori

By That One Techpriest You Used To Know

• September 10, 2016

Age: 126 (appears to be 24)

Gender: Female

Species: Earth Pony

Appearance: Mori appears to be a young mare with pale blue eyes that match her coat. She is a large and bulky pony, easily bigger than most stallions, and her muscles are lined with centuries of development, making it immediately obvious that she is both exceptionally strong and, to those that do not get a good glimpse of her face, sometimes causing others to mistake her for a male. However, this is where the similarities to most normal ponies end.<br /><br />Mori wears a brown cloak that is ripped and torn, and through the tears, one can see the strips of armor worn underneath to protect herself. Her boots have wisps of blue emerging from between the straps, and she carries a sharpened shovel that reveals her profession as a gravedigger. Finally, and most noticeably, her hair is not hair but a coagulation of a soupy fog that clings to her skull and tail. However, despite her unsettling, ghostly appearance, she is very much solid and alive- she is not a spirit herself.

Cutie Mark: Mori's cutie mark is a shovel, impaled into the ground while revealing wisps of magic. This demonstrates her skill at her profession, as well as her innate abilities and her curse.

Personality: Mori is a stone wall to those trying to talk to her for the first time. She spends much more time in the company of spirits and ghosts then she does among the living, so she often comes off as unsettling and distant. Despite this, she attempts to be warmhearted to all, no matter their situation. Knowing that her unfamiliarity of the outside world renders her an outsider from most of society, she hopes desperately for ponies that have been greatly injured, for gratitude is a language spoken throughout the centuries.<br /><br />She is not quick to anger, fear, or disappointment. Even when she is, she often never reveals her emotions, though her face may harden and she may be much more blunt towards the offending party. However, she has a deep hatred of necromancers and necromancy in general, and it will be the only time when she is visibly angry- how dare they violate the sanctity of an anointed body?<br /><br />To those who can get past her very, very traditional lifestyle and her lack of understanding of most modern things (such as electronics), she is a forward, talkative pony (at least, as much as she can be) that enjoys the company of the living, warm drinks, and stories of myths and legends- even though, in several cases, those myths and legends aren't merely myths and legends after all!

Backstory: Memento Mori is a gravedigger from a long line of gravediggers, and grew up as tradition dictated within her family learning the trade- their social position on their island home preventing her from even receiving a proper education, let alone hope for advancement in life. She was an interesting child, having inherited her fathers abilities to see unrestful spirits as well as her mother's ability to siphon the world's energies in small amounts to heal the injured, and much of her childhood was spent controlling these inherited powers. Having been trained in the rites of her home, she quickly learned how to bury the dead and heal the living, becoming a fan of long walks across the island to find those who have been ravaged by bandit attacks and restoring them to life, appreciating the shower of praise directed at her by both the victim and her parents.<br /><br />She continued this existence for many a year, maintaining both her healing hooves and the graveyard that came behind them- even burying her parents as they died early deaths- and was set to follow the path of her father before her until the day that the island's noble came before her, with a command to heal her wife- or suffer the death penalty. Some talented untouchable wasn't going to be allowed to live over the life of the nobility. However, she payed it no mind- a victim was a victim, and they would either live by her hand or die without it.<br /><br />As soon as the rituals begun, however, she sensed something amiss. The spirits that stood around her watching started howling, gripping at the noble's soul and intending to rip it from her body. With a scream, she recoiled, and, as the rapidly forming ball of souls began to form a physical form around her, she closed her eyes and curled into a ball, allowing the mist to overtake her.<br /><br />What had occurred, as the information poured into her skull, was that the noble intended to rob the graves of every poor corpse on the premise before turning the land into an expansion of the local city for his own personal gain. However, no one would ever side with his greedy plot, the noble knew, so he assassinated his wife and locked her soul into her body, intending for the young girl to be overwhelmed at the malefic force and then be executed by the king.<br /><br />As the howling subsided, the poor girl stood up, her once shabby mane wisping around her eyes and the whispers of her friends filled her ears. Glancing in the ceremonial mirrors, she realized what happened- they had pooled their strength with her own to ward the attack of the vengeful wife, and, having done so, changed her into something... different.<br /><br />It had seemed that the transformation was not without cost, however, and, as she resurfaced from the shack she called home, it appeared that the spell had devastated the island, reducing it nothing but dead land. Walking among the wastes, she carefully and quietly spent the next century ruminating on her thoughts and those from the spirits that had coalesced onto her as she proceeded to bury and console the poor ponies who had suffered from the island. By the time she was done, there was nothing left for her there.<br /><br />She left the island on a boat of her own creation after salvaging all the material that she could from the island. She now roams the world, giving solace to those she finds and purifying the forgotten places of the world from corrupted spirits and forgotten geists, allowing the sacred sites lost to history to properly rest in peace.