Vala Barrowdown
The Blind Baroness
Vala Barrowdown , Ready for Battle
Most find the Vala's tendency to unerringly stare them down, her scarred and sightless eyes unblinking, unnerving, to say the least. Few can withstand her withering glare, head turning every so slightly to follow every twitch the speaker might make, undermining the notion that she simply faces the sound of their voice. No, it is clear to all who have met the Blind Baroness that she operates with a second sight. Granted to her by the Weaver of Fate, any who have witnessed her wield a blade
know that her mind's eye sees the world with far greater clarity than mere mortals. Indeed, her actions often seem prescient, be they on the field of battle or presiding over a matter of justice in her tiny fiefdom of Bunning.
Fortunately for most, Vala rarely appears in public without her trademark handkerchief - always a solid and neutral color - covering her eyes and burnt flesh around them. She has never disclosed the source of her injury and refused the blessings of more than one of Arimathica's faithful who have offered to heal the wound. "It is my destiny," she will explain dispassionately, using the same tone that she might to ask a servant to refill her goblet of Galencian or sentence a petty thief to a beheading. Those closest to her - her servants as the few mask wearing fanatics that enforce her will would never gossip - say that she takes no confidantes or lovers but that, on rare occasion, can be heard screaming hysterically in the dead of the night. If pressed, those same servants pale and shake, unwilling to repeat the subject of the Baroness's night terrors, only that she is destined to stand against the coming darkness.