"Laila is a powerful mage. She was the son (and later, daughter) of an ombudsman in Camlorn, where she was born and raised. The only person she was closer to than her mother was a crazed serf obsessed with achieving knighthood who only ever referred to himself as Sir Marchany (mahr-shay-nee). Her and Sir Marchany became friends because he constantly hung around her mom's office complaining about the city's wastewater emptying onto his 'vast lands', though he never held a single acre in his name. Laila was one of the few people who did her best to listen to Sir Marchany and treat him with respect, so she is one of the few people he wasn't overly aggressive toward.
Laila is intersex, and lived as a boy until she was 14. It was around that age that others started picking on her because they thought she looked too feminine to really 'pass'. So she chose to start living as a woman. Her relationship with her mother strained severely, afterwards. Sir Marchany was the only person Laila knew who really supported her in her decision, even when she realized she was also seen as too masculine to pass as a woman. Eventually, her mother disinherited her and she left Camlorn. She took up work as a wastewater management consultant in various cities in western Skyrim, including Markarth and Solitude, before the stress of the work wore her down to the point she could no longer spare the energy to keep her more feminine appearance with the aid of magic. Social problems followed–nothing outright, but enough to make her feel unwelcome. She was in the process of trying to secure a place in the Thieves' Guild when she crosses paths with a terrifying, melancholic vampire."
