[hider=Kiera Ventel]

[B]Name:[/b] Kaer’anyth Ventel (Called Kiera by Brand and her adoptive family)
[B]Age:[/b] 34
[B]Gender:[/b] Female
[B]Species:[/b]Dark Elf
 
[B]Physical Description:[/b]
[INDENT] Kiera makes an impression wherever she goes, and whether she wants to or not. Her skin, the blue-grey colour of a stormy sky after sunset mark her to any who care to look - one of the Dark Elves, those reclusive creatures of violence and legend. Her hair is a bright, ashen grey, and kept not-quite-boyishly short - just long enough to tuck behind an ear, but not long enough for a tail. Those locks frame elegant features with little of the haughtiness one might expect from the Elven races, her lips often tugged into the beginning of a knowing smile. Her eyes are wide and likely would be pretty - save that both are blind, milky and clouded-over. Though her people are smaller than the forest Elves of the world above, Kiera is small even by her own people’s standards, being half a head shorter than most humans. That doesn’t, however, leave her seeming frail or fragile - Kiera’s build is one of lean muscle and dangerous grace. Her figure, too, is slim and taut - but not one that anyone would mistake for a man’s.  Her ears, pointed but not enough to interfere with her wearing a hat, hold a handful of metal studs each in a variety of designs, mementos of her travels around the world. Other than those, the only jewelry she makes a habit of wearing is a pendant Brand gave her many years ago. Kiera has several scars, some from wounds that were clearly life-threatening, scattered over her body, and no tribal or tattoo markings. 

Her clothing is usually simple, preferring hard-wearing boots, trousers, and buttoning shirts, all well-tailored and well-made. When moving about in cooler weather, Kiera prefers to wear a long, dark grey cloak, since it keeps the chill off and lets her have a reason to wear a hood. 

[/INDENT]

[B]Skillset:[/b]
[INDENT]

Easily the most remarkable thing about Kiera is her perception of the world around her. Being blind, she has a nearly perfect lack of visual information - the colour of a guard’s uniform or the shade of the sky is something she can never know. Instead, her experience of the world is to “see” flow of magic through reality around her, the warp and weft of psyche and will and fate. This means some things are very difficult or perhaps outright impossible for her to perceive - a fern that turns red at a traveler’s passing will mean nothing to her. Should that person be running from the murder of a relative, though, there’s an outside chance Kiera could “see” their passing in the slowly-fading pull they left on the world behind them. 
(In purely mechanical, out-of-character terms, I’m envisioning her having no less visual [i]acuity[/i], but substantially different visual [i]information[/i], along with certain psychic impressions of what’s happened - or may happen - there within a short period of time.) 

Like all of Brand’s adopted family, Kiera is a shadow in the forest, less than a shape in the dripping fog. She never was much of a ranged combatant, however - whether by dint of not having proper eyes for the hand-eye coordination of a longbow, or simple natural disinclination, the art of archery is one Kiera is barely adequate in. She is, however, a close-quarters fighter of exceptional skill, preferring to fight with a pair of daggers but almost equal entirely unarmed. Heavier weapons, including shortswords and axes, are things she has spent very little time practicing with, however.

Above and beyond the resourcefulness that any of Brand’s wards should have, Kiera is adept at making, repairing, and building things, from toys and intricate self-sealing ink pots to improvising crossbow bolts or shoring up a gate. Much of this is training gathered after leaving Brand’s company, but some is an innate understanding of what objects feel like they [i]should[/i] go together to achieve a particular result. She is a skilled blacksmith, but only for smaller objects, from arrowheads to daggers. Kiera does not have the skill (or, likely, patience) to make swords or armor.

Kiera’s relationship with magic in the world is complicated. She has received very little formal training, though she spends a considerable amount of time experimenting with what she does know. She has, over the last few years, begun to learn how her own will can manipulate the world of magic and life around her, and to channel that into certain effects. She is no warlock - but she still might be a little surprising.

Finally, Kiera is a fine singer, though many of the songs she knows are the lilting, haunting music of her homeland, filled with the sliding, liquid syllables of her own language. She, of course, knows the songs Brand taught her, and a number of ballads from traveling bards, too.


[/INDENT]

[B]History:[/b]
[INDENT]

There are many stories about the Dark Elves, and their famous reclusiveness makes verifying any of them enormously difficult. But there are pieces of truth hidden in the legends, gleaming gems among tavern-tale dross. Their underground cities rival those of the Dwarves in splendor and intricacy, and it is dangerous to go looking for their hidden entrances. They are distrustful of the surface world and indeed, everything not of their own culture - every new wonder built is only one more reason to believe those above the surface will come to claim the Dark Elven homelands, and so their people curl ever further in on themselves. And most of all, the Dark Elves are ruthless - with those who intrude on their domain, real or imagined, and, most of all, with one another. Entire Houses have been put to the sword for seemingly-minor slights - and deformities, inherited or otherwise, are harshly punished.

This is the world Kiera was born into. Daughter of an ascendant House, her milky, blind eyes raised questions from her first few breaths. Her House was watched closely, and the birth of an heir to the family’s power had been an event hotly anticipated in the volatile, vicious circles of Dark Elven nobility. They couldn’t simply kill the child and dispose of her body in the endless pits that filled the city - news of the death of an heir would rock their House, and especially right now that could topple the entire House. At the same time, she obviously could not be presented to society - not with so visible a deformity. Kiera’s father, a practical man, saw a neat solution to the problem. With a flash of steel and the clink of gold, all anyone knew outside of Kiera’s home knew was that Kiera’s mother had died in childbirth and that her father, grief-stricken, couldn’t stand to face society until a much later date, requiring time to devote to taking care of his House’s heiress.

For the next twelve years, Kiera lived in her family’s house, guards at every window and door preventing her from leaving or, indeed, even being seen. Tutors and governesses came to her, paid well to say only what her father wished them to say about Kiera to the world, and to teach Kiera how to behave. They taught her dances, how to write and, to their immense astonishment, apparently how to read. She learned how to dress, and how to comport herself with the public she knew she would never meet. She knew this because of the lesson everyone in her house, from her father to the cooks taught her - that she was a freak, a disgrace, an embarrassment, and that she deserved to die.

After her twelfth birthday, a year after her father had remarried, two of her step-mother’s personal guard came into Kiera’s room. Without ceremony, they rousted her from her bed and bound her, hands at the small of her back. Though she made no sound, they gagged her and though she was blind, they covered her eyes. Then they covered her in a prisoner’s cloak, and walked Kiera out of the silent House, through city streets emptied for the day. Part of her wondered at what she saw and felt, the world through her strange perceptions that none of her teachers cared to ask about. 

The inside of her blindfold meant little, except for a slight dimming of the coruscating, whirling world everywhere she turned her head. She saw the domes and arches of buildings, their shapes and decorations and thousand intricacies pulsing incandescent in her awareness. She turned her head, looking up, down, side to side, an entire world she had barely glimpsed from inside her House surrounding her with its echoes, its smells, with the feeling of people passing through a market square or arguing outside a public house. She felt, for the first time, excited - but then one of the guards cuffed her along the back of her head and she let her awareness fade, looking down only at her feet.

She walked, her head down, and even though none of the men said a word, Kiera knew what they were doing. At any moment, she expected the guards to grab her, throw her into one of the depthless chasms, but they only kept walking, walking, walking, for what seemed like hours. Eventually, the feel of the air on her face changed, becoming less of the close-in warmth of deep underground. A few more steps, and for the first time, Kiera felt a breeze against her cheek, and she nearly stumbled from the surprise. With a growing sense of dread, they still walked. They walked until she felt the world change around her, a tingle across her skin, a quivering pulse in the way the lines and whorls of the world around her pulsed. Only then did the guards pause.

The sun rose, and the two guards spoke quietly to one another. They seemed to be arguing whether they were far enough away from the City, whether anyone would come this far out. The second said that this was the Nightwood, and that sensible people kept away. Kiera heard the sound of a sword coming out of its scabbard, and before she had time to be afraid, she felt a sharp pain on the back of her head and everything, even the whirling patterns of life and magic around her, went away.

She woke up, and immediately Kiera knew she was alone. She suspected she wasn’t supposed to wake up, but that seemed over with. For a long time, she lay where she was, only rolling her head slightly to keep pressure off the growing lump on the back of her skull. The guards had left her to die, she knew that much. Part of her couldn’t believe how long it had taken, part of her was angry that it had come now. After a long time, she tried her bonds, found they were still tight, her arms with nothing like the strength to help her. There would be no point in struggling, of course. She was a deformed, failed heir to her House. She was a wastage, a loss. She deserved to die…didn’t she?

Suddenly, Kiera felt very tired. She closed her eyes again, and the world drifted away from her.

The next time she woke, she saw a figure standing over her - a man in his middle years, with a heavy build and a kind soul. Still, she tried to jerk away from him, heart fluttering, and she gasped against the gag over her mouth. The man moved slowly, loosening the bands around her mouth, around her eyes,  and from around her wrists, his hands moving with perfect confidence and gentleness. Kiera still said nothing, but turned to look at him when the blindfold came off. The man frowned, leaned forward to take a closer look, and frowned before leaning back on his heels.

He asked her if she understood him. The Common Tongue of the world above had been part of her lessons, and she nodded. He asked her if she was blind. She shook her head, and the man looked confused. In halting Common, thickly accented, she told the man she saw him, his hands, his beard. She said she could tell he was curious about her, but she didn’t understand why. Growing more concerned, but still with that infinite gentleness in his voice, the man said his name was Brand, and that this was his forest, and that what happened in it was his concern - though he said it with a quiet laugh.

They talked for some time, Brand with his slow, quiet, coaxing speech, Kiera in her slow, precise Common. At length, he asked why she had been left out here, bound and without supplies. Kiera hesitated, then told him what she had been told, what she had been waiting for, her entire life. She told him she should die, that she was meant to. He said that of course she was meant to, that all men were meant to die, his arms stretched out to encompass the whole world, his voice a rich, deep laugh. When he looked down at Kiera, the smile had stayed on his face, and she could see no deception behind it. Then he rocked forward and held out one hand, huge compared to Kiera’s small frame, and asked her a question that nobody had ever asked her before, one that would change her life.

Brand asked her if she [i]wanted[/i] to die. And, though she was scared and more than a little confused, Kiera realized that she wanted to see more of this world, to know more of herself and what she saw, and she shook her head. She pushed herself to her feet and took Brand’s hand, and the big man smiled.

The next dozen years were less easy than Brand might have hoped. The girl was first shy, too quiet, too ready to acquiesce, and the other orphans he cared for treated her poorly. It took until Kiera was into her teens for her to start standing up for herself properly,  and another year before she started slowly asking Brand questions about the world, and more specifically, why everyone called her blind when she certainly could see, after a fashion. Through simple trial and error, Brand began to find ways of teaching the girl, and he taught her what he could. Though the two never entirely understood one another, there was a deep respect between them, and Kiera, into her teens, took Brand’s lessons to heart - though sometimes she would have to find the place in her heart for those lessons before she understood them.

Brand taught her the bow, though she showed little promise in it. Later, he marveled at the speed and precision she showed with small blades, the perfect grace she moved over broken ground, and, if he was honest, the way her body curved away from a sword thrust. The two of them tried to extend and expand her understanding of her strange sight, with limited success. Even when magical scholars would stop by, few had heard of anything like her…conditions? Affliction? Blessing? And those that had would treat Kiera more like a curiosity than anything else. Around the house, Kiera would, when not otherwise occupied, find small things to fix, her nimble fingers weaving leather hinges back together, replacing shutters, or fixing a wobbly writing desk. Those skills Brand encouraged almost more than anything else - in such a remote place, having a chair that didn’t wobble at the end of the was a decadent luxury.

When Kiera left Brand, it wasn’t under the greatest of circumstances. For all his kindness, the man could never understand Kiera’s side of her upbringing and dismissed her culture as one of barbarism and viciousness. He told her that she would be better off forgetting all about them - even though everywhere she went, someone would remind her of her own heritage, even if she could manage to pull those first twelve years of her life from her mind. Though he never raised his hands in anger, she knew he didn’t care for her singing lullabies she remembered from her youth to the newer orphans the man took in. 

Their differences mounted, each one a small stone layering on another. They argued about whether Brand was too soft with his wards, leaving them vulnerable to the liars and thieves outside the forest. They fought about how often he left them alone, the mischief that half a dozen teenagers could get into. One night, over the evening meal, Brand and Kiera quarreled - if you can call something that left a broken table and ringing arguments in three languages echoing through the house a “quarrel.” Kiera said things, cruel things, that Brand had no rebuttal for, though he said nothing like that back to her. Through the entire argument, Brand made no demand that Kiera leave - but in the morning, she was gone regardless.

For the better part of a decade, Kiera has been making her way slowly through the world. She has spent a considerable amount of time at a number of places of magical learning, trying to learn more about herself. For a number of years after leaving Brand, she tried to find one of the hidden entrances to the city she was born in, but gave up - for reasons of her own. She has been a caravan guard, a puppeteer, and a member of tavern staff in the distant parts of the Kingdom. Not long ago, at a public house near the Nightwood, uncomfortable memories bubbling to the surface, and after a long and dusty day of guarding a load of what she was increasingly sure were weapons,  Kiera heard news that part of her had been dreading for years. That night, she left a stack of coins and an apology in her characteristically gorgeous handwriting in her room, and headed back to the Nightwood…

[/INDENT]

[B]Psychological Profile:[/b]
[INDENT]

Kiera has always kept herself a little bit apart from people - even among Brand’s adoptive family there were few who could look past her race, or her blindness. She is deeply introspective, and part of her, a part that she strongly dislikes, feels like she almost has to apologize for still being alive - not necessarily that she deserves to be dead, and she’s anything but suicidal, but on long and lonely nights there are thoughts that bubble to the surface, that leave her wondering why Brand wanted to keep her in the land of the living.  Even after all this time, Kiera isn’t entirely sure who she is. Though she tries to simply be the best person she can, virtually everywhere she goes, Kiera is confronted by a different set of legends about what her people are supposed to be like, ranging from stories of indiscriminate viciousness to equally indiscriminate promiscuity. Wherever she goes, though, she feels an urge to make things whole, make them just, and make them right - whether that means helping a poor family re-thatch their roof (If they’ll let her) or argue with the town guard about a street urchin. Brand taught her to try and see the best in everyone around her, which she tries to - even when she wonders what the worst might be inside herself. Though her anger at Brand has burned to ash, she still thinks that in many ways the man was a fool - but she maintains a fathomless well of complicated respect for the man.


[/INDENT]



[B]Equipment:[/b] 
[list]
[*] Two daggers of very high quality, along with a couple of different belts and harnesses to carry them in their scabbards
[*] Light traveling gear, including clothes, rations, a water bottle, etc.
[*] A set of very flexible, very light leather armor - only enough to turn away the most glancing of sword blows, that closely covers her from throat to ankle and leaves her arms free
[*] Comfortable, well-made boots of dark leather
[*] A kit containing several small tools for cold metalworking, weapon maintenance, leather punching and binding, and mending clothes
[*] A long hooded cloak in dark blue, accented with silvery-grey trim
[*] A pendant made of the dulled arrowhead from the first (and only) arrow Kiera ever put in the center-ring of an archery target, engraved with complex designs by Brand.
[*] Several sheets of paper in a waterproof wax envelope, pens, and a clever inkwell of her own design.
[/list]

[b]Yes, and:[/b][indent]

Twenty-two summers have passed since Brand helped Kiera out of her bonds.  Kiera knew Loden for the entire time she stayed with Brand, and watched him grow from a young boy to a young man, fascinated at his skill with healing. There was always a certain way that he pulled the world around him, as though his very presence could alter the future - to make something whole or give it a chance to live and thrive. He is probably the person she was closest to, save Brand, at the homestead - Grimm being able to look past the stories of her kind and her strange not-quite-blindness. She came closest to thinking of Loden as a brother, and still worries that her disappearance after an explosive fight with Brand may have ruined that. She is unaware that he left Brand's the same year she did.
[/indent]

[/hider]

[@HeySeuss]