Veshka the Pale Knot – Relic Scavenger

Name: Veshka the Pale Knot
Race: Human
Role/Class: Relic Scavenger
Appearance: Veshka is thin to the point of gauntness, her pallid skin stretched tight over sharp cheekbones and knotted joints. Her hair is chalk-white—not from age, but from repeated exposure to alchemical preservatives and grave-dust—and is bound into tight cords that resemble burial knots rather than braids.

She wears layered scavenger leathers reinforced with stitched patches taken from burial wrappings, old priestly vestments, and shroud cloth. Her gloves are fingerless and stained gray with ash and soil. Bone charms and rusted holy symbols—filed down or snapped—hang from her belt alongside pry-bars, chisels, and sealed specimen jars. Her eyes never quite settle, constantly flicking toward corners, cracks, and shadows as if listening.

She smells faintly of salt, mold, and incense long extinguished.

Backstory

Veshka was once a corpse-handler for marsh burials—tasked with retrieving remains lost to floods so rites could be completed. Over time, she began noticing patterns: certain graves resisted disturbance, certain barrows shifted between tides, and some relics seemed to want to be found.

Her fixation turned to the Sunken Barrows, a drowned necropolis half-swallowed by the marsh and warded by rites long neglected. Veshka learned which symbols dulled the wards, which offerings pacified lingering spirits, and which bones were best left untouched—knowledge she now sells piecemeal to cultists, collectors, and desperate scholars.

She does not worship death. She believes it can be bargained with.