Gloria Hölzer

Sold soul to demon, saved by Briz

Gloria sold her soul long ago to the demon known as Charles when she was 23. She desired two things from the contract - eternal beauty and the death of the all dakarians. She has worked with Charles, without fully understanding his motives. She has even kidnapped a child, something that would haunt her for the rest of her days.

Her salvation came in the form of a wandering minstrel named Brizanthimus. His gentle demeanor attractive features hid a strong soul. He was kind to those around them, regardless of who or what. He even shielded those unfortunates from those who preyed upon them. Briz even signed away his own soul to Charles just to protect her.

Gloria sacrificed herself by allowing a demon to kill her. She did this not only to undue the contract that Briz signed, but so that Charles would never again be able to gain an advantage for Briz. For hate she sold her soul - for love she reclaimed it.

• Occupation: Handmaiden
• Nationality: mladovians
• Spouse: none
• Issue: none
• Father: Unknown, Prince Baldar (foster)
• Mother: Unknown
• Lifespan: Summer 317 - Winter 462
• Religion: none
• Race: Human

Gloria grew up in a small Mladovian village. The people payed a tax to a Dakarian lord and he left them in peace - that ended when she was 23. Two men came to the village and sought shelter with her uncle. Men from the lord came and killed the men, then hung her parents, uncle, and eldest brother. She was left to care for her younger siblings.

The next year a fever swept through the village killing all of her brothers and sisters. The village spirit talker said the fever was unnaturally birthed in the earth. She was driven from the village wearing only a shift while her house and its belongings burned.

It was in the city of Bornheim that Charles found her. The Wash was the worst part of the city and the only place she could live. Bruised, battered, and starving was how the demon found her. He protected her, fed her, and seemed to be the first in a long time to care for her. He nurtured her and in time she signed over her soul to recapture what the Dakarians took from her.

She worked for Charles and not all the work was terrible. Most of the time he only wanted her to get a job within a house as a maid, handmaiden, or even scullery. She would answer his questions about the house. Charles had an almost insatiable appetite for information about the people of the city.

For his part of the bargain Charles made sure that she had plenty of time to enact her revenge. Not everything involved their death. In most cases she simply worked to undermine the nobles in the eyes of their gods and peers.

The event that changed her was when she began working as a handmaiden for Baron Donat Lange's, the Lord Marshall at the time, young daughter Ilse Lange. She was a very small child whose mother died to the fever the previous year. Charles demanded the child be brought to him. Gloria resisted at first, the child was innocent and so much liker her own siblings. In the end she sold herself long ago and so did as Charles bid.

He only kept the child for a few hours, but what he brought back was not the Baron's daughter. She looked like her and acted like her, but she was not his daughter. Something about her eyes was off, something unnerving when you looked to closely.

Her salvation came in a very unlikely package - she fell in love. Not just infatuation or the love many people knew, but a true love that was better than herself. Briz is a traveling minstrel who arrived in Bornheim with amer_terrante and Xarth. His companions were unsavory murderers, but Briz was the sunlight on her stormy day. He was a kind and caring man who did not care that she was not Dakarian - in fact he helped save many of her people during his first months in the city.

Charles ordered her to watch over Briz and this simply made her commitment to him deeper. They spent idle moments together. She worked to get Briz into the Lord Marshall's graces so they could be together. She told Charles everything Briz and his companions did, but she held back that she was falling in love with the minstrel.

Her death could never be comprehended by Charles as he is incapable of understanding sacrifice. Briz has signed a contract with Charles to save her life. It was contingent upon Gloria never coming to harm by “him or his kin.” She use the “Demon beneath the Rocks” that she used to undue so many of Charles' enemies to strike a blow at him instead. Her death not only invalidated the contract, but gave Briz the ability to harm the demon.