[@Mega Birb]

I look forward to getting them interacting.

[@KoL]

Despite the evidence to the contrary, I do understand the value of brevity. I've pared it down to be shorter than [@Mega Birb]'s (which surprisingly only meant shaving off about 200 words), I hope that's sufficient. Please, tell me if there is anything I can change to make her fit better or be a better character, I really am sorry for making you waste your time looking over it again.

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Character Sheet
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[color=steelblue][b]Name:[/b][/color] Aeolia Ferrar
[color=steelblue][b]Age:[/b][/color] 23
[color=steelblue][b]Gender:[/b][/color] Female
[color=steelblue][b]Race:[/b][/color] Elf
[color=steelblue][b]Height:[/b][/color] 180cm/5’11
[color=steelblue][b]Weight:[/b][/color] 70kg/154lbs

[color=steelblue][b]Appearance:[/b][/color] Aeolia’s appearance is wasteful.  Long blonde hair, straightened and neatly braided for her debut, curls forlornly between her shoulder blades, cut cheaply and poorly kept. A pristine complexion that earned her compliments in her youth is marred by the pallid hue it has gained after months deep within ancient chambers, surrounded by shuttered windows and old books. Reluctantly, she wears the finery she is prescribed by her mother: once-crisp white shirts long since in need of ironing drape her slender figure, trousers of fine wool cover her long legs, bearing the specks of old ink and the patterned ghosts of alchemical mishaps. She views the world through narrow, hawkish eyes and their inquisitive, hurried gaze. She walks like she speaks: too fast. She uses crisp, richly-accented and clipped words, fluctuating between tacit and lugubrious depending most often on the current state of her dissertation. Her hands are clever and dexterous, and rarely content themselves with stillness when she is in conversation, and the bright cerulean eyes she boasts roam free of their own will.

[color=steelblue][b]Character Concept:[/b][/color] Aeolia is an innovative, if not particularly powerful, Spirit User, and a shining star of the youngest generation of University students, a scholar to the very core in constant need of money to fund her research. She is the scion of the affluent, new-moneyed Ferrarus family,  the fourth child of four. Her mother was born to failing aristocrats, her father to a wealthy jewel trader, and together they raised her with all the advantages wealth and modest status could bring. From an early age, she proved a prodigious student, and was blessed with a Spirit, and her oldest friend, Tacitus. She lacked the charisma and ambition that drew her father’s love to her older brother, or the demure beauty and grace that made her mother dote on her older sister, and so she found patronage in books. She excelled in school, impressed the private tutors she demanded, and exhausted the family library. It was only natural for her to continue her education at the University, studying everything she can find time for. She spends her days balancing the ever-dwindling allowance from her family with teaching, research, writing and insufficient sleep. She has poured her entire being into the pursuit of knowledge, and has resigned herself to the fate of the candle burning at both ends, to be brilliant and poorly-planned. She works fingers to bones to stay afloat in the life she’s chosen, but she has found herself wondering more and more if it is a good one.

[color=steelblue][b]Combat, Abilities and Skills:[/b][/color] Aeolia is not much of a combatant. She’s naturally frail, lacking in much physical constitution, and as weak as can be expected. She’s never been in a real fight, much to the chagrin of her spirit, Tacitus, and despite his urging has taken few steps to learn how to better protect herself. With the help of her Spirit, she has a versatile and worthy set of magical abilities if she ever was to put her life in danger, with Tacitus being a Spirit with an immense and exclusive affinity for metals in general, and Iron in particular.

To Aeolia’s parents, she is defined by what she cannot do. She cannot dance, she cannot sing, she can weave to only the most meager standards. The last time she tried to cook without a recipe she ruined not only the dish but the pot it was cooked in. She has never had interest in money-making, never had the charisma to trick or inspire or convince outside the debating hall. She has little patience for politics, and truth be told has very few true friends.

She prides herself on what she can do. She can speak three languages at a conversational level, and read two different kinds of long-dead runic scripts. She can write ten pages of research notes, or a particularly inspiring thesis proposal, in a night. She could navigate an alchemy lab blindfolded and still distill whatever was asked for her. She can treat rheumatism, flux, and a hundred other ailments of the body or mind. She is the authority at the university on the study of explosive reagents and chemical fuels, and has taken work as a teacher, an accountant, an assistant engineer, and in one particularly interesting anecdote a diary-thief.


[color=steelblue][b]Equipment and Inventory:[/b][/color] Aeolia goes nowhere without an inkwell, pen, and several pages of cheap paper. Besides that, she travels light, never bringing more than she thinks she needs.

[hider=Sample][color=steelblue][b]Sample Post/Introduction:[/b][/color] “I swear, Lia, you’ll turn invisible if you stay locked up there forever!”

Sander, dutiful and longsuffering as ever, trailed a stride behind Aeolia despite his impressive size as she rushed from the library to the Masters’ quarters. She clutched reams of parchment and beakers as she rushed through the cloisters of the university, boot heels clicking on the stone. She weaved through the small groups of fellow students, skirting around clusters of gossipers and between those who didn't share her sense of urgency, weaving a sharp and nervous dance towards her destination.

"I'll not tell you again, Sander, I'm too busy, I need this grant or I'll have to-"

She spoke in her usual rushed alto, the wealthy accent losing itself in a sea of similar voices. Sander, with his deep bass, cut her off with a scoff. "Talk to your mother? You're going to ha-"

"Just drop it, boy: she's not stopped moaning about this for weeks. Let her see the end of it, for my sanity." The little ball of coruscating grey metal materialized behind Aeolia's shoulder, the customary form of her Spirit. Tacitus sounded as weary as Sander was exasperated, worn down from another night as Aeolia's sounding board and reluctant rehearsal partner. His deep bass scraping, the sound of a pick on stone or an axe being ground, was more dull than usual.

Aeolia, distracted by the new entrant into the conversation, badly misjudged the gap between two shoulders. The shock made her gasp, and as her hands clutched at the valuable notes and samples she held, she left herself no time to save herself from the hard ground. Sander's arms propped her up, less than gently, and she felt a blush form as she muttered out two different apologies and a gruff 'thanks' to her old friend.

"You know Sander, I'm beginning to think you have a point." The spirit faded with its closing remark, and Aeolia heard a chuckle as she sped away, unable to concentrate.

Three hours of impassioned research proposition later, she slid onto a tall bar stool next to the distracted form of her burly friend at the University tavern. Shocked eyes met her elated stare, and her smile infected him. "I don't suppose your grant has room to pay for drinks?"

They both knew it didn't, but that didn't stop them.
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