May as well get around to introducing my little clan of Runes xD
First though, I suppose I should introduce the girl who owns them all--
Gabriella Donnell, once just a mechanic in Alabaster City, now... well, pretty much an avatar of chaos, as you'll see below.
She started off with this pretty little Rune, whom she is still very close to. Ashlyn is a Dreamcatcher Rune, and in addition to just promoting an overall more restful sleep, her magic allows her to catch nightmares and turn them into a pretty bead which is added to the net on her tail, but that bead eventually dissolves in the sunlight. And yes, there usually are quite a number of beads on there... there's a reason Ash and Gabby were drawn to each other.
Oriana was her second Rune, and is actually co-owned with another bearer, whose dragon mated with Ashlyn to produce this odd little girl. Despite her youth, Oriana is quite powerful, born with the ability to manipulate
dark matter of all things. She's done okay at limiting it to small things, like hands to grab objects she can't reach, but her time around Nyarlathotep is making her a little...
darker. Thank goodness she's still just a baby, though, imagine if she ever reached the level of Ancient!
Mirala was not actually owned by Gabriella! In fact, the only person who really paid attention to the little Banshee Rune was Nyarlathotep, under his guise of Hubris. Gabby has since grown fond of the baby though... even if interaction with Mirala usually consists of 'sit five feet away from Mirala while she stares menacingly at you'.
Adrian here was, and still is, Gabriella's bonded rune. She seems to have a slight influence over others' actions, in that she can inspire others to be more courageous and assertive... though whether this manifests in a selfless or selfish manner depends on the person in question. Adrian is larger than most of the others, too, standing at about three feet tall and nearly twice as long. No one is still quite sure who her previous bearer was, but whoever they were, they were probably in the military considering Adrian's dogtags.
And here we have the Ancient of Chaos, Nyarlathotep. He's had many names over the years, the most recent one being 'Hubris', the identity he assumed in order to shake things up in Eldmore. He is quite an egotistical creature, believing himself to be of no equal and with no need to answer to any other being, save for perhaps his own brother... and now, Gabriella. His pact was indeed cursed, taking Gabby's mortality and effectively making her his avatar in the mortal world. He's had her reborn in many times and places, where she is guided to do whatever it takes to shake stagnant worlds into action... or else destroy them. In the time between these upheavals, though, he and Gabriella (and their Runes) explore the multiverse, though they always find themselves returning to Eldmore whenever they simply need to rest. Like all Ancients, he is capable of taking a different form-- usually his
human shape, though he can transform into any number of creatures. He is also able to remove himself and up to six other individuals into a... 'void', for lack of better words, a place out of space and time. There, his form is unstable, and he constantly flickers back and forth between shapes.
Despite initial hostilities, Nyarlathotep and Gabriella have actually grown fairly... fond of one another, to where they have developed a sort of relationship, though it's still hovering between something real and a sort of... 'friends with benefits' situation.
This is the newest addition to Gabby's clan, the Drell Rune of indeterminate gender. Silha has a remarkable memory, and is somewhat capable of speech, though it only ever really 'talks' when it's reliving a particularly powerful memory.
Reference image of Gabby was made here, and it's just to give a general idea of how she looks.