Editing User:Aprogressivist/Iselsi Narak (section)

=Background=
Iselsi Narak, usually known as Stillness Without Atrophy in the Threshold, was a promising young Exalted born into what appeared to be a broken House; he proved to be studious, intelligent and hardworking during his education, and Exalted in his early adolescence. Though at first embarassed and disappointed to belong to a House that had fallen so far, he soon began noting discrepencies between the House's purported weakness and the gathering strands of wealth slowly percolating and collecting their way to the Threshold, to agents formerly loyal to the Iselsi. No intellectual slouch, he had managed to perceive the faintest outlines of the Ruse; when he interrogated his House elders about this, they were sufficiently impressed with him to feed him a few more clues, testing him to see if he was worthy of knowing the truth; when he proved not only insightful but discrete, he was finally initiated in full into the Iselsi conspiracy.

Narak became an agent for the Iselsi; his first assignment was to be sent as a back up observer to an operation in Thorns; House Iselsi were attempting to gauge the threat-level posed to the House and Realm by the Mask of Winters. However, assassins were sent out to destroy the team of Iselsi operatives; one by one, they were slain, until it was Narak's turn to face down his assassin: Silent Laughter, an Air-Aspected Outcaste who had been brainwashed by the Mask of Winters.

Fortunately, Narak was able to overcome Silent Laughter, removing her mask and sending her into shock at the sight of her own face. Managing to incapacitate her, he then escaped Thorns, capturing Silent Laughter in the hope of being able to interrogate her for more information. However, the trauma of the unravelling brainwashing had made her unreliable and mentally fragile; hoping to find contacts and a safe place to retreat, he and Silent Laughter retreated to Nexus, the former because he needed a place to regroup and rethink, the latter because she had no better place to go.