[hider=Mira Alamar]
Name: Mira Alamar

Age: 31

Gender: Female

Mastery: Illuminate
Specialty: Defender

Rank: Weaver

Appearance: [hider=Picture][img]https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/1e/6a/4b/1e6a4bd535450e7eb09ba7e25cebbc5a.jpg[/img][/hider]
Mira is a tall, strongly-built redheaded woman. There's a glow to her, particularly around her pale blue eyes. She has strong features with prominent bone structure, but robs them of their severeness with a gentle smile and kind eyes. She dresses in simple, plain white cloth robes bound at the waist with a belt of yellow cloth. From her belt hangs a device, a smooth piece of white crystal in the shape of a cylinder. A similar device of blue crystal, disc-shaped, about the size of her palm hangs on the opposite side of her belt.

Demeanor: Mira is a nice person, as a general rule. She's unfailingly polite and helpful, and tries to behave as an example to her fellow Mages. As an instructor of the younger Illuminates she's stern but fair, playing no favorites and driving her students to excel, and to her peers she's warm and friendly, managing to be cheerful without being obnoxiously chipper. For her the Academy is a family, and she tries to be the responsible big sister. 

When trouble strikes the academy Mira's less a big sister and more of a mother bear. For those who seek to harm her Family she shows a different side, a core of solid steel under her loving exterior, and this comes out no matter who is being threatened, whether it's her best friend or the Nightshade who seems to have no purpose in life beyond irritating her. 

History: Mira was a bit of a fluke. Her parents were both accomplished Mages, but neither were Illuminates - one a talented Storm Hydromancer, the other a Firesmith of no small repute. Mira being an Illuminate was rather baffling to all involved. Not that it changed their feelings for their little girl, she was the light of their life, just now it was a bit more literal. 

Her elevation through the ranks was swift - it was handy when you started your magical instruction almost out of the womb, and while her mother and father's experiences weren't exactly the same as hers Magic was Magic, and some of the groundwork was the same across the board. That gave her an edge. 

Shortly after her tenth birthday her mother became pregnant again, giving birth nine months later to twins - a boy and a girl. That continued the surrealism of the Alamar family, as a few years later her siblings were tested, finding that one was an Earthshaper, the other a Metallic. Needless to say people are still trying to figure that out nearly thirty years later, and it didn't get any less confusing the other times her parents had kids.

As she entered into her adolescence and began to enter the deeper mysteries of Magic Mira found herself beginning to notice the rifts and petty squabbles between the various schools of the Elementals, rifts that seemed patently idiotic to her. Her blood family was bound as tight as could be despite being from all different elements, and while it made life at the family home certainly interesting at times, sibling arguments turning into hailstorms of ice and boulders often enough, they were nonetheless family. They loved each other, they'd die for each other.

Never made sense to her that the rest of the Academy couldn't be the same. So she resolved that for her, it would be the same. 
Her elevation continued rapidly, and despite her peacekeeping nature she found herself drawn to the path of the Defender. She could manage a cut or a scrape or a little burn, that was essential in the Alamar household, but when it got right down to it she was all about keeping events from boiling over, and if they did boil over Big Sister would put the lid back on the pot, usually with firm application of a backhand. 
Shortly after her elevation to Weaver she came across the idea while talking to one of her brothers of focusing crystals. It was a little project in the Alamar house for a while. A brother brought the crystals, her father and mother helped to shape them into the correct patterns, one of her sisters used a nudge of Earthshaping to adjust the internal alignments, and then they were ready, a pair of focusing lenses for her light. One to form a blade, the other to form a shield.

[/hider]