Sasha

"Sasha? She was always willful. She hated me when we were infants. But later she was as willing a sacrifice as I. Until that is, we went down into the deeper realm of the Gods and she became so enamoured of that place she spent longer and longer away from me."

- Niamh

Sasha is an ancient mutant encountered in Aeternis.

Background
Sasha was a member of a Pict tribe inhabiting north-eastern Scotland in the fourth century CE, who discovered the caves of Wick. She and her sister, Niamh, were forced into the caves as a human sacrifice during a solar eclipse to return the sun to its rightful place. The ceremony saw people come from a hundred miles away and the sisters entered the caves to meet the God Sun... However, they wound up lost, traveling through the byzantine corridors for years on end, slowly succumbing to grailstone. The beasts that lived in the caverns below drove them back and prevented them from penetrating the lower realms. Eventually, they managed to find a way below. Sasha became enamored with the ancient buildings below and separated from her sister. It was then that Oisin came, with dark hair and a cloak clasped with an amulet. Oisin spent a year with Niamh, before Sasha returned and he left to return to his people.

Niamh was later killed while sitting by the watering hole, near an ancient Byzantine well. A creature attacked and dragged her body into the well... And it is entirely possible that this creature was, in fact, Sasha, as long term exposure to grailstone caused her to heavily mutate and become one of the most dangerous creatures in the waters underground, terrorizing man and animal alike. It is entirely possible that the creature that attacked Niamh by the ancient

By the time the Templars established Aeternis, she was already a permanent presence in its waters, Her appearance degenerated further, with only the parts visible on the surface retaining some semblance of hominid form, with the submerged portion of Sasha being extremely large, unidentifiable, and heavily mutated, with cell structure literally laced with grailstone.

Interactions

 * Sasha is an environmental obstacle and only poses a real threat in two situations:
 * When taking the dinghy from the second part of the docks to the alchemist lab.
 * When encountering Jack for a second time, after Tobias floods Aeternis.
 * In both cases, Sasha can be forced to flee from the location by using the inkwell, amulet, or aqua fortis.

Behind the scenes
"Sasha is a water creature who lives in the canals, drains, fountains and waterways of Aeternis. She is the last of an !so ancient race of beings who have vague links to both humans and whales. She looks human and female but is not, for her skin is composed of millions of minute scales, her song, clawed fingers are webbed and her bottom half consists of long dual fins. Her teeth are sharp and triangular and her eyes are slit like a lizard's, with a double eyelids like an alligator's. All the creatures of the waterway obey her. The rest of her race inhabited the open seas and died out many millions of years ago, but she favoured the deep, ancient waterways of the caves under Dunstanburgh and survived, nurtured by the surrounding Grailstone.

She is old and wise now, but terribly alone. Tobias found her centuries ago, befriended her and taught her to speak English. She is therefore aware of the Holy Grail, the Raptors and the terrible Vision of the future that Tobias has foreseen. A player can sometimes summon her by tapping on the side of her fountain on Level One (near the Grand Library) or else she may appear in one of the other fountains or canalways on Level Two. Her thought processes are very different from ours which makes her difficult to understand, but if a player perseveres and a relationship develops, she may confer a gift of knowledge about the waterways."

- Original design