[hider=Lanaya]
[b]Name:[/b] Lanaya Triskell Dionisa (or to those who know her personally, Lana)
[b]Age:[/b] 27
[b]Gender:[/b] Female
[b]Position:[/b] Magister
[b]Personality:[/b]
Lana is a proud and arrogant woman with strongly held beliefs in the superiority of mages. Nonetheless, like many in the grand political game, she has multiple faces. Publicly, she is a polite and occasionally outspoken Magister, who strives to be noticed but not annoy. She hides her arrogance and disdain well. She is happy to demonstrate her magical prowess on request, and also makes heavy use of her abilities without being obvious about it. In public she treats other mages no different than others.

Privately, she is far more opinionated, and once she has determined you agree with her opinions, will tend to be much more vocal and outspoken with them. She respects mages far more than ‘mundanes’ as she calls those without magic, and is prone to ignore the flaws of mages while exaggerating those of non-mages in conversation.

She also has a strong streak of wanderlust, which she indulges with regular traveling in the lands nearby wherever her current residence is - traveling alone and far further than most would be able to in a short span by making use of shape-shifting.

She is motivated by a strong desire to see mages take a larger role in ruling Formaroth. She argues that Circle trained mages are both more neutral and more logical than the current self interested rulers currently in place. She is exceptionally dedicated to her cause and will happily manipulate, lie and in extreme circumstances, injure or kill to achieve her goal.

[b]Appearance:[/b]
Lana is of average height (5’6), and low weight, maintaining a slim appearance. She is not particularly curvy, but nor is she unpleasantly lanky. She has pale skin, green eyes and straight copper-red hair stretching down to her waist.

Her clothing varies wildly - if she is traveling she wears more form fitting, practical clothes together with enough small storage pouches to collect any interesting curios she finds or carry limited supplies. At court and around the city, she wears the typical dresses of a noblewoman, in whatever fashion is current. Of note, is that, particularly in the warmer months, she has been known to wear very little while creating an illusion of clothing around herself. Only those who have been intimate with her know of this tendency however. Even when she is not doing this, she does tend to add details to her outfit via illusion, covering for the fact that she does not own quite as much jewelry and extra finery as she would like.

[hider=Lana Courtly Dress]
[img]https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/206305273894273024/215261580126846978/Lanaya.jpg[/img]
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[hider=Lana Travel Attire]
[img]https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/206305273894273024/215287728923738112/Lanaya_Travel_Attire.jpg[/img]
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[hider=Lana Alenius Dress]
[img]https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/206305273894273024/248632314861584384/Lana_Alenius.jpg[/img]
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[b]Background:[/b]
Born Lanaya Triskell Dionisa, first daughter of house Dionisa, a minor family living in the capital city, Nyhem. Lana’s early childhood was a relatively normal one as far as noble children went. As soon as she was able to speak, her education began, her parents obsessing over ensuring she would be a worthy continuation of the line. Despite this, they still eagerly granted her almost every wish, doting on her in the extreme, particularly when she did well in her classes. Needless to say, this quickly turned her into a spoiled brat who expected to get whatever she wanted whenever she wanted.

Near her seventh birthday, everything changed. An abrupt and clear manifestation of magic drastically altered her parents view of her. Suddenly, in their eyes, she would not be able to continue the family in any way. Though it was not exactly a dishonor for her to be a mage, it ruined their carefully laid plans for the future. Though it was not her fault, she was nonetheless blamed for the manifestation of magic. No time was wasted in contacting the Summer Isles to inform the mages they had another child to take.

Mere days later, she was collected by mages from the city and sent on her way to the isles. The last expression she remembered on her parents faces as she was taken was one of profound relief. To her, it seemed they were happy she was gone.

By most standards, the journey to the isles was a smooth one. To Lana, it was something else entirely. She had never traveled beyond sight of the city before, much less been on a ship. It was terrifying at first, but once she realised she was safe, both from the strange mages around her and the road and sea, she began to look upon the wilderness with wonder. After a time, however, she became so eager to see the next grand sight that she became impatient with the slow speed of travel. Fortunately for the mages accompanying her, she only began to act up the day before arriving at the Isles and the Circle proper.

The mages identified her as a possible trouble maker early on and did their best to eradicate her attitude, knowing how much of a catastrophe it could be to teach a child with such a mindset how to bend the world to their will. Their success was limited, and by her tenth yeah she had changed from demanding to manipulative.

Her magical studies went on regardless, though in the first two years they were extremely unfocused. Early on she lacked discipline, and had a tendency to flit between the next most impressive magic on the list, dabbling in the basics of many different kinds of magic. She was a nightmare for the teachers, who could see clear signs of potential and finesse in the basic techniques she learned, but regularly found themselves being informed by the self important young girl that she was going to go learn something else instead.

By her tenth birthday, Lana had finally decided on a type of magic to focus on - illusion. For three years she focused exclusively on illusion magic, despite her teachers recommendations that she study more broadly. Her focus within the field was broad, focused both on illusion to create art and illusion to aid in subterfuge. When she was thirteen, the wanderlust of travel began to once again grip her. Initially, she roamed the area near the circle during her downtime, but quickly decided that walking was far too slow. This led to her taking an interest in shapeshifting. By taking the shapes of other creatures, she reasoned, she would be able to travel faster. To the surprise of her teachers, she did not abandon her study of illusion at this point, instead balancing her time between the two pursuits more reasonably.

By the age of 15, she had become quite capable with several bird forms, each suited for a different kind of travel. With these new skills, she decided to travel back to the capital city and visit her parents, hoping that perhaps, they might be happy to see her again.

Initially, they were. But the initial joy at seeing their daughter again lasted only a short time before they tried to incorporate her into political machinations. For a time, she stayed, hoping to be something other than a playing piece in their political games, but however valuable a piece she was to them, she was never more than that. Three months later, she left once again, returning to the circle, now with knowledge of what it was like to be on the receiving end of manipulation. She decided when she left that she would not be manipulated ever again.

Upon her return, she further diversified her magical studies - picking up destruction magics to better defend herself against those who might seek to control her with force. It was only one year later that the Remonnet-Manshrew civil war broke out. Lana did not have the dubious pleasure of taking part, instead watching events unfold from afar, safe on the Summer Isles. Her personal hope for much of the war, was that the Remonnets would be victorious, but that the despotic king Heylot would fall in battle. Safe as she was, however, it was all somewhat surreal, affecting her little until the end came. With the conclusion of the war came news of the fallen. 

Several of her friends from the circle, older, more battle capable mages, had left to fight in the war - none returned, sacrificed for some tactical advantage or another at the hands of generals who often did not understand their abilities. As well, she discovered her parents had supported the now dead King Heylot. Whether from fear or greed, she did not know, but as minor as they were, they were not spared the fallout. They were among those to die at the order of Patrick De Reimer, though they were not important enough to warrant his personal presence.

The entire affair convinced Lana that the leadership of Formaroth could not be trusted to the political machinations of the mundane, the unwise who held no magic. She kept this opinion to herself at this time, knowing that agitating about it would get her nothing at this time. She requested, and was granted, the chance to study politics and governance within the circle. As with most pursuits she set her mind to, she learned quickly, though not abandoning any of her magical studies.

In particular, she was seeking ways to push her newfound agenda without having to become directly involved with any particular family as an advisor. At the age of twenty, she was deemed to be sufficiently capable to leave the circle, however, she was also sufficiently capable in Illusion and shape-shifting by this point to begin assisting in teaching novices in the circle. Thus, she remained on the Summer Isles in the official role of a teacher, while continuing her own studies in fields both political and magical.

At the age of 22, Lana decided she had studied sufficiently to try her hand at some real politics. She was able to call in sufficient favors at the Circle to select a particular house to be assigned to as an advisor to this particular family. She chose the minor House Thale, a Nyhem noble house with a singularly weak leader. At first she advised on magical matters only, but within the first year she had influenced the Houses head to follow more and more of her recommendations. After her third year as advisor, House Thale was totally dependent on her for its running. Recently, she has begun speaking openly for the House, and persuaded the members to extol the virtues of having a mage advising them.

To Lana the Death of the King represents opportunity. Though she has made a public show of grief, as expected, she has in fact been happy, for now more than ever she is in a position to push for Mage oversight in the governance of the land, if not a Mage on the throne itself.

[b]Skills and traits:[/b]
[b]Magic:[/b]
Illusion - Master
Though no longer Lana’s prime focus, Illusion is the form of magic she has studied the longest. She is capable of creating detailed images of places she has been in still motion up to the size of the average room, though this requires time to create and active focus to maintain. She can create or shroud light nearby, as well as hiding herself or altering simple features of herself, such as hair color. She is capable of creating illusory clothing for herself, and often does so when required to appear in fancy dress, while wearing something else entirely.

She is skilled with maintaining moving images, in particular clothing. In addition, she is capable of maintaining many small illusions at once with almost no focus, having been incorporating such magic into her daily life for well over a decade. She is capable of a number of sound based illusions - including boosting or softening her own or others voices, as well as recreating sounds she has heard in the past - though the voices of other people are difficult for her to accurately recreate, and the longer the sentence in such a recreated voice she casts, the more likely it is to be determined a fake.

Lana’s current path of study is in tying Illusions to Glyphs in order to create remotely triggered effects. This has met with extremely limited success thus far.

Shapeshifting - Adept
Lana has a total of eight shapes that she has mastered. A moderately sized Eagle, a small Owl with dark plumage, a fast but fairly small Falcon, a moderately sized Tern and three separate songbird shapes make up her known bird forms. She is also capable of taking the form of a Dolphin. She has fully mastered all of these forms, but has chosen not to study any more since mastering them.

Of note is that she can use more advanced shapeshifting spells while transforming, one to maintain all of her clothing through the transition, and another, more complex one, to carry small objects like sheafs of paper and coin pouches through the transition. The more she takes with her though, the more preparation she needs, in the form of spoken spells.

Destruction - Master
Force - Lana’s grasp of Force magic is strong. She can create both wide and narrow waves of Force, easily enough to knock a man over. She has also studied how to generate such waves from sources other than her hands, and though such spells still require a somatic element, she can bring force down from above or other directions. She can fully integrate Force based attacks into glyphs.
Fire - Lana’s grasp of fire magic is the strongest in her destructive arsenal, and she is capable of generating incredibly hot fires in bolts, sheets or glyphs. Of particular note is that she is capable of manifesting bolts from unusual directions, not needing to originate them in her hands, although somatic elements are still required to cast such spells.
Ice - Lana’s capability with Ice magic is less than fire, and she cannot generate temperatures much lower than freezing. She can however, create a wide aura of this lowered temperature around herself, as well as the typical ice bolt type attacks. She does not usually carry any water with her to use in creation of such ice bolts however.
Lightning - Lana’s least capable elemental magic, she is limited to summoning a single directed bolt from her hands, or, if outside and in sufficiently cloudy weather, above. Though not strong compared to what other mages can achieve, she can easily kill with this lightning.

Like all mages, she is capable of working with others of her kind to generate larger, more destructive spells. Given her great power and knowledge, she is often elected the leader of such a channeling group when involved in one, though not always.

Her current direction of research in Destruction is the combining of Force and Fire into a single circular, band shaped glyph to be cast around herself or a group of people she wishes to protect. The intent of the glyph is to direct force and fire outwards to repel aggressors. This project is going quite well and is close to completion.

General Magical Knowledge:
Though incapable of effectively casting any other forms of magic, Lana is quite familiar with all forms on a theoretical level, in particular recognising what a spells desired effect is likely to be and methods of countering or mitigating it. This knowledge allows her to accurately advise on all but the most extreme and specialised of magical matters.

Her knowledge of general magical theory is also fairly extensive, though often not up to the level of more dedicated Magisters, as she does not dedicate as much time to its study as most of her similarly ranked peers.

[b]Other skills:[/b]
She is a capable dancer, both in typical courtly manner and for performance’ sake.
She is a skilled singer, both with her natural voice and that of the songbird form she can take.
She is an adept ruler, though focused on magical solutions to problems.
She is a master manipulator, unafraid to employ magic in her manipulation but not relying on it.

[b]Flaws:[/b]
Disdain of mundane combat:
Lana looks at combat with ‘mundane’ weaponry as a barbaric and crude. She has no skill whatsoever when it comes to wielding a blade, staff, bow or any other form of weapon. In addition, her lack of practice with such things has left her physically frail compared to those who do regularly wield weapons. Dancing has ensured she is not a complete weakling, nor is she clumsy, but she could still be easily outmaneuvered and overpowered by the vast majority of her peers in a physical confrontation.

Arrogant:
Lana looks down on everyone who is not a mage, and though she typically hides this in public, those who know her privately are aware of the strength of her feelings in this matter. In addition, she is prone to underestimating the capabilities of non-mages, though experience has tempered this somewhat.

Fear of being Manipulated:
Lana hates the idea of not being the master of her own fate. She constantly second guesses people, especially non-mages, analysing her interactions with them to ensure they are not manipulating her.

Love of fine things:
Lana has lived in luxury her entire life, save for very short sections while traveling long distance, sections which she hates with a passion. As much as she loves the natural beauty of the world, she also hates having to live outside of comfortable environments for more than a day or two.

Barren:
Due to an unfortunate genetic defect, Lana is incapable of conceiving children. She is not aware of this fact.

[hider=House Thale]


[hider=House Thale]
Family House Name: House Thale


Kingdom Location: Land within the Nyhem City area.


Crest: Yellow background with a gold fleur de lis


Family Motto: Persistence Conquers All.


Relations with other Kingdoms: Neither hated nor loved by any. Directly under the control of the King in Nyhem, currently House De Reimer


Family Reputation: House Thale is notorious for being effective and powerful in the local area twenty years ago. Now it is slowly gaining notoriety as ‘The House of Lanaya’ as knowledge of Lana’s control over Dominus Thale slowly spreads. Some within merchant circles know it is a producer of grain and other bulk foodstuffs for the city, but it is not particularly notable amongst the many others also doing this.


Main Export of Goods: House Thale’s goods are not exported, they are immediately utilised in Nyhem. These goods consist of grain, poultry and other foodstuffs grown in the fields of the Nyhem area.


Description of Kingdom: As a minor House, House Thale has little influence over the large scale management of the area it owns. It owns a number of fields and the associated farm infrastructure near Nyhem, as well as a Manor within Nyhem. The Manor is run by predominantly female staff, and is the home of Dominus Thale and Magister Lanaya Triskell Dionisa. The armed force of the House is similarly small and primarily employed in the policing of the lands they own, made up of militia. It is notable in that its militia are trained to handle all manner of magical anomalies. It is also notable in that it funds the entry and travel to the Circle of Magi for any Mages found on its land, and also those mages that can be found within the city of Nyhem, though it does not find many in the massive metropolis, due to having such a minimal presence in the City proper.


Family Background: House Thale is an old house, but not one of great interest for much of its history. Twenty years ago, its holdings grew significantly, its fields tripling in size as Lord Dominus Thale bought up the land of other nearby landowners, and also developed some new land. However, with the death of the Lord’s wife, it began to stagnate. Five years ago, the Magister Lanaya Triskell Dionisa was assigned as a magical advisor to Lord Dominus, and quickly took effective control over the House. She has not increased its holdings, however she has made use of Lord Dominus’ limited political pull to raise her own stature and put in place some initiatives for assisting mages in the area.

Claim to the Throne/House Motives: House Thale has no claim to the throne. Currently its motives are the motives of Lanaya, and she uses it as a vehicle for negotiation with other political groups within Nyhem, ‘acting in the name of Dominus.’

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[hider=Dominus Thale]
Name: Dominus Thale
Age: 41
Gender: Male
Sexual Orientation: Heterosexual
Position: Noble, Head of House Thale
Personality: Dominus was once a capable leader, but no more. He is a broken and easily manipulated man, who would rather just live out the rest of his days in safety and routine, enjoying the perks of his nobility. He avoids conflict whenever possible.
Weaknesses: Weak minded and easily convinced. Dominus has a weak spot for beautiful women as well, and will do a great deal to have them pay attention to him and remain in his presence. He is extremely conflict averse, and will go to great lengths to avoid conflict of any sort.
Appearance: Dominus is a frail looking, but rotund man of moderate height. He does not focus much on his appearance, though his clothing is usually proper it is often behind the current prevailing fashion of Nyhem. It is very rare to see him wearing his sword or mace, and he has not been seen in armor since his wife's death.
Skills: Apprentice Swordsman/Maceman, Apprentice Ruler, Adept Politician, Apprentice Economist.
Background: Dominus’ heyday is long passed. Once, he was a capable ruler of House Thale, increasing its reputation and holdings threefold. However, his wife suffered complications in childbirth and did not survive the birth of his only son. The sudden loss of his wife broke him, and since then he has fallen far. House Thale has stagnated, not losing any holdings but not gaining any since this time either.


He now spends his time in his manor in Nyhem, engaging in minor politics and the day to day logistics of the Houses lesser holdings at the behest of Lanaya, the Magister assigned to give him advice in all matters magical. Nominally, he remains the head of House Thale, but in truth, he is utterly beholden to Lanaya and follows her every command. He happily allows her to make the important decisions relating to the House, and the extra time he has is often used reading works of fiction.
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[hider=Thanatos Thale]
Name: Thanatos Thale
Age: 19
Gender: Male
Sexual Orientation: Heterosexual
Position: Noble, Son of the Head of House Thale
Personality: Thanatos is bitter young man, with a lot of hate and arrogance. He is also ambitious, seeking to ‘reclaim’ his House from the ‘Witch’ that controls it.
Weaknesses: Thanatos is arrogant and overconfident, believing himself a more skilled person than he is. He is prone to rash action and only looks to plan things in any depth should his initial actions fail.
Appearance: Thanatos is a tall, well built young man. He is in good physical condition from his regular martial practice
Skills: Adept swordsman, Adept crossbowman, Adept Hunter, Novice Ruler.
Background: Thanatos grew up with no mother, eternally blamed by his father for taking her from him. As such, he has no great love of his father, and spent a great deal of his youth on the Thale holdings outside the City. He was taught by a number of retainers, some belonging to House Thale and others hired from Nyhem. A good deal of his youth was spent hunting beasts and chasing skirts, but more recently he has begun to learn the art of managing the family holdings.


This is spurred on, perhaps, by his taking notice of Lanaya’s control over the family. He is known to have argued with her on several occasions and resents her for multiple reasons. Partially because he believes he should be in charge of the House, and partially out of jealousy - she holds his father's utmost respect, he dotes on her, while he barely pays attention to him, and when he does it is usually a cold interaction.
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