[HIDER=Elmera Sarandas][CENTER][H2]Elmera Sarandas[/H2]

Female Dunmer | 80 | Serpent[/CENTER]


[h3][u]Basic Information         [/U][/h3]

[b]Birthplace:[/b]  Ebonheart, Morrowind


[b]Appearance:[/b]  Elmera has the pale grey skin and red eyes of your average Dunmer.  Once upon a time she had long dark hair which, when free, wavily cascaded down to her mid-back.  For work, it was often braided or placed in a professional bun.  Now, it is cut short and falls just between her jawline and shoulders.  Her bangs are parted to the left and amongst the dark black colour, one can find streaks of ashen grey.

The Sarandas’s only child stands at 5’7” tall and like many of her kind, her body is lithe, though stubbornly firm.  Her jaw looks almost like it was sculpted onto her face – cut with sharp angles, clearly defined from her neck.  On the other hand, her once small, pointed nose is now a little crooked from a poorly set break long ago.  Beneath her clothing, on her left shoulder, one can barely make out the slightly gnarled appearance of flesh that was frostbitten.  The damage was no so severe that it left her shoulder noticeably affected, but upon a close enough inspection and the medical knowledge to recognize it, one could tell its source.


[b]Personality:[/b]  Above all else, Elmera is a stubborn Dunmer.  Even in Skyrim, where she is seen by the common Nord as less for being a dark elf, she sticks to her guns and doesn’t let others push her around.  However, nowadays she’s more easily manipulated by those who can find her secrets – the Moon Sugar that has gone from escape to the only thing that keeps her sane, namely.  She is a studious and dedicated soul who lives by the very same values she did before her new life as a fugitive began; justice and loyalty before everything.  Those who do wrong and are not willing to accept their fates sicken her most of all, ironically.  However, she was raised with the understanding that she would not be the best at everything she tried and even to this day accepts that others will have abilities she can’t keep up with.

[HIDER=Background][b]Background:[/b]  Elmera was born and raised in Ebonheart, Morrowind.  Her family did not move often, as her mother owned a stall in the market district of the city while her father was a prison guard.  They made an honest living and to the young Dunmer girl, life was at least secure.  There was one thing her parents couldn’t give her, however, and that was magic training.  She was hardly an extreme bookworm, but her love for stories of wizards and warlocks all over the world gave her a passion for pursuing a school of magic for herself.  More than anything else, she admired the school of Destruction and the delicate balance it required to maintain its control.  She left home to study under an Expert of the school who claimed he could teach her a little bit of everything at an early age.  This was far from the hard or indecisive leg of her life.

Playing with fire was going to cause some burns, so to speak.  Elmera was not the fastest magic learner at first, but as soon as she could finally conjure elements on her own, she found a brand new motivation.  When she finally returned to Ebonheart many years later, with little contact since she left, the girl was officially an Adept User and her studies were placed in her own hands.  Upon her arrival, she was greeted by a strange family living in her home in the Market District who mentioned that it had been sold to them by a widower living in the guardhouse.  The scene is still etched perfectly in her mind’s eye…  No, that couldn’t be her father – he would never sell their home and he certainly wasn’t a widower.  She would know for sure if that were fact.  All the same, she found herself looking frantically through the guard’s barracks for her father.  He had aged far more than she thought and tiredly he recounted the tale of her mother’s murder over some fake gold trinkets in their house and how he’d found her after work one day.  He’d tried to find the thief, but he was long gone and there was nothing to be done.

Within days, Elmera was a guard in training under her very own father – she decided to continue her studies, but also work alongside him to ensure the rest of their small family remained intact.  She took to the blade, but could not get the handle of a shield or legitimate armor beyond leathers.  They were far too restrictive and the shield occupied her only free hand – the one she would use for magic.  After her training, she was the only guard in Ebonheart who was so lightly covered and seemingly unequipped.  However, it was quickly apparent she was not to be trifled with when a gang of rowdy drunk travelers were causing a ruckus in the local bar.  They ignored her polite request to quiet down and leave the tavern and one of them even stepped so far as to size her up.  She was issued a toothy grin from the unusually plump Dunmer as he gave her a line that she could hardly understand through his slurred speech.  Her fist clenched his shirt; he had received his warning and in a flash of blue, he slumped to the ground, shaking.  It was far from lethal, but it was certainly a surprising spell for shock upon contact.  His friends carried him out, staggering as they moved to find a new place to sleep for the night.

After a few years on the force, Elmera was showing great promise as a leader and prison guard.  She had a passion for justice, not realizing just how much her mother’s passing had really affected her.  One night, she was on-call in the barracks when the alarm sounded.  A prison break; some petty thief thought he was clever when he smuggled some picks into the cell.  It happened often enough – it was having the cunning to actually make it past the guards that was impressive.  Apparently, he’d unlocked his cell and pretended it was still locked until the patrol passed, then he moved to unlock the cells of multiple others.  They bolted out before anybody saw what was happening and now there was a manhunt.  One of the convicts was the leader of a bandit crew that had taken months of tracking and a stack of money to hire mercenaries to catch him the first time.

Elmera, her father, and two other guards were selected for the chase into the cold.  The warden hand-picked them because they were technically on duty and they had a matter of minutes to get their gear and head out.  They were given three months and a search area that even entered Skyrim.  The only requisite was that if the criminals could not be caught in the remote portion of the Nords’ country, then they would have to be left behind lest the Morrowind guards get caught in Skyrim unwelcome and trying to extradite without permission.

It was here that Elmera developed an irrational fear of freezing to death.  As expected, their chase led them across the border.  They were never more than a day behind their charges, but still had not managed to catch them.  Time was running short as they were lead into the mountains.  They lost a horse and a brother to a steep Cliffside and the second to an Ice Wraith attack.  They would have all been dead had Elmera not had a few fire spells up her sleeve.  Unfortunately, in the attack, she received a lot of frost damage to her shoulder (this resulted in light frost bite later, explaining why it didn’t start at her fingertips) and her father fell ill, but insisted they push on and that he’d dealt with much worse.  Finally, they reached a small cave entrance for refuge and she knew they’d found their criminals.  She had no intentions now of taking them home.  She was going to take their lives on this mountain – for her two comrades killed by the relentless mountains that they were not prepared for.

She helped her father from his horse and readied her blade, throwing a light into the shallow tunnel.  It clung to the ceiling where it struck and she dropped her sword – the remaining two criminals were huddled around a pile of really damp, insufficient kindling.  Their bodies were frozen in seemingly mangled shapes. Her stomach dropped – for nothing…  This whole manhunt was for nothing.  She started a fire for her father and dragged the bodies out – she could certainly handle kindling better than they could.  She dried their materials and used the clothes they were wearing to bundle her father and herself up.  They had to keep refuge for two days before they could leave, surviving off the little rations they had left.  Elmera maintained her father’s condition as best she could with her limited Restoration knowledge.  Unfortunately, this left her too tired to adequately treat her shoulder, which had started to develop light frost bite.  She still managed to get it under control and now only has a constant numbness and less sensitivity in her left shoulder.  Within a few weeks, the two returned home with nothing more than the news that they had lost two men and all of the convicts were dead. 

Her father received medical attention, but his body was still week and he struggled with the symptoms for over another month before he finally let go.  At least, Elmera reasoned, she had time to see him off.

Her morale was only doubled by this – the justice system around here did nothing for the victims and it only created more problems.  Upon the prison warden’s retirement, the last remaining Sarandas took the position.  It was a life she felt good in, but it was not bound to last.  Her sense of justice and own agenda led her to allowing the victims of crime see the convicts placed under her care.  They paid a small fee off the books for the risk she was taking and would get to confront, in private, the men and women who had killed, stolen, or negatively affected them in some way.  When this was finally uncovered to the rest of her city, she faced off the very men who worked for her.  She fled the city before the warrant had been issued thanks to the warning from a friend who had used her very service only months before.  They followed her all the way north along the border, but she cut her hair and assumed a new name when she finally crossed the border into Skyrim, sticking to the lowlands rather than the cold and relentless mountains.

To this day, she’s not sure which came first… the paranoia caused by living in a country where everybody hates her and would turn her in the moment they found out her true past or that first Moon Sugar trip with a Khajiit refugee caravan to escape that feeling.  Maybe it was the drug that has put this sense of constant fear into her and she simply took it in a moment of weakness…  On the other hand, perhaps it was the onset of paranoia that caused her to start it.  It matters little now, as she deals with both and uses the drug in small, but embarrassingly common doses to maintain a socially acceptable demeanor.  Funnily enough, she doesn’t remember it, but during one of her very first times taking the drug, she tripped on a rock and broke her nose on a wall…  The next day, she realized the mistake and had to reset the break, but it still never healed perfectly and remains a little bit crooked.  The story is rather embarrassing, so more often than not she says it was a bar fight.[/HIDER]

[h3][u]Capabilities                    [/u][/h3]

[b]Skills[/b][list]
[*]Expert: Destruction
[*]Adept: Restoration, One-Handed Sword
[*]Apprentice: Unarmored, Alteration, Athletics, Speech
[*]Novice: Mercantile, Dunmeri (Conversational)[/list]

[b]Weaknesses[/b][list]
[*][u]Paranoia[/u] – Her years as a fugitive, despite successfully evading capture, has left her a shaky and jumpy mess.  She hardly trusts a single fellow Dunmer she meets until she’s sure that they have no affiliation to people back home and remains on her toes almost constantly.
[*][u]Addiction:[/u] Moon Sugar – Elmera turned to Moon Sugar after arriving to Skyrim.  She can’t remember if the paranoia of being caught caused her to get on the addiction’s wagon or if she’s paranoid because of it, but she knows for a fact that now she needs it to combat her paranoia’s symptoms.
[*][u]Phobia:[/u] Freezing to death – Her trek through the harsh mountains of Skyrim and the loss of two comrades and her father to the perilous mountains and their cold have left her with a debilitating fear of dying in the snow.
[*][u]Light Nerve Damage in her left shoulder[/u] – caused by the frostbite she received on her first trip to the Nordic country, she now has difficulty feeling pricks and taps to her left shoulder.[/list]

[b]Relations and Affiliations:[/b] Only a few friends remain in Ebonheart, but as of now she has no way of stepping foot in her hometown, or likely even her home country for a long time.

[h3][u]Opinions of Comrades            [/u][/h3]
[b]Ashav:[/b]  There's not a doubt in my mind, from what little dealings I've had with Ashav, that this man is more than qualified to run his company.  I've not talked much with him, but he clearly knows how to manage his resources and delegate his subordinates.

[b]Leif Raven-Stone:[/b]  Being crippled and trapped at the lift in Bthamz gave me a chance to talk to this guy for a good while.  Leif has a kind soul, even if there's pain in his eyes.  He seems a little bit rash, but I can respect a man for his decisiveness.  His competence when it comes to injuries and battlefields is impressive too.  I owe him a good deal for his assistance with my leg.

[b]Sevine Varg-t'uk:[/b]  Now this is a woman if I've ever seen one.  She carries herself with a pride that I've rarely seen in non-Nordic women.  While she's not really my type, she's an excellent conversationalist and storyteller.  I look forward to working more with her.

[b]Jorwen Red-Bear:[/b]  What an enigma, that Red-Bear.  First impressions were piss-poor, I thought him little more than a brutish Nord, a stereotype personified.  I gave it a bit more time, though, and I can't help but have found a new respect for him.  He too has seen a lot of this world, and I can't hold it against him just because I met him on a bad day.

[h3][u]Spells                [/u][/h3][list]
[*]Destruction:[list]
[*]Novice: Flames, Sparks
[*]Apprentice:  Firebolt, Ignite, Lightning Bolt, Fire Rune
[*]Adept: Fireball, Chain Lightning, Lightning Cloak
[*]Expert: Incinerate, Thunderbolt, Wall of Flames[/list]

[*]Restoration:[list]
[*]Novice: Healing
[*]Apprentice: Healing Hands
[*]Adept: Close Wounds, Heal Other[/list]

[*]Alteration:[list]
[*]Novice: Candlelight, Oakflesh
[*]Apprentice: Magelight[/list]
[/list]

[b]Combat Style:[/b] Elmera is a strong swordswoman, but a better sorceress and it shows.  When caught in an exchange of blows, she will work to either put distance between herself and her aggressor or, at the very least, pass their guard to affect them with a close-range spell.  In a fight, she keeps magic in her left hand and her blade in her right unless she opts for two-handed casting.  Her style focuses mostly on parries and evasion until she can find the right opening.

[b]Other Capabilities:[/b]  Surprisingly enough, Elmera has a lovely singing voice, but it’s rare for others to hear it.  She considers it more of a vulnerability than anything and is more often heard in the simple form of humming.


[h3][u]Inventory                        [/u][/h3][list]

[*]Cash: 43 Septims

[*]Keys and Lockpicks:[list]
[*]A Keyring from the jail in Ebonheart containing the guards’ barracks key and the keys to the prison itself (so long as the locks have not been changed)[/list]

[*]Clothing and Armor:[list]
[*]Practical Apprentice Robes of Destruction
[*]Leather Gauntlets, chest piece (not full body), boots, and shin guards
[*]A thick, hooded cloak of forest green clasped together with a basic brooch[/list]

[*]Weapon and Ammunition:[list]
[*]Elven Sabre (curved lightweight sword)
[*]Steel knife sheathed in her boot[/list]

[*]Potion and Arcane Supplies:[list]
[*]A couple small parcels of Moon Sugar[/list]

[*]Jewelry, Valuables and Personal Belongings:[list]
[*]The brooch on her cloak isn’t her only, she has another in the shape of a wolf’s head – it was her father’s and his father’s before him, but she never shows it off, as it could help to identify her[/list]

[*]Books and Documents:[list]
[*]A poetry book from Morrowind
[*]The Exodus
[*]The Art of War Magic[/list]

[*]Food, Drinks and Ingredients:[list]
[*]A medium-sized flask of water
[*]Two loaves of bread
[*]Some jerky[/list]

[*]Load Bearing Equipment:[list]
[*]Normal rucksack of canvas, strapped for the back, her bedroll is slung to the side of it
[*]Pockets[/list][/list][/HIDER]