*flailing*  I KNOW THERE'S STUFF THAT STILL NEEDS WORK AND EDITS I DIDN'T MAKE BUT IT'S ONE AM AND I'M NOT SRUE WHERE MY ATTENTION WENT.  And also bedtime.  So I'm dropping this here, and will work on it more most likely tomorrow.  ^.^;;


[hider=moar progress -- check char relations please guys!]
[hider=click for pic][img]https://i.imgur.com/vUqHNX9.png[/img][/hider]

Name: Ziotea Elpis Phaidros (zee-OH-tee-ah EL-pis FAY-dros)

Age: 19

Height/Weight: 4'8" and ~110 lbs

Race: Omestri-Lanostran halfbreed

Appearance: With bright red hair, eyes closer to gold than to brown, and a very distinctive etheric signature, there's mistaking Ziotea for anything but Omestrian, and a strong one.  She keeps her bright hair short, never past shoulder length, and often ties it back somehow.  She has a round face and heavy brows often draw together in a frown.  Her skin tans easily where it is frequently exposed to the sun, namely her face and arms.  The rest is fair though marked with various scars she's picked up over the years.  Of particular note are the marks of whippings on her back, a set of ragged parallel lines from deep slashes gouged across one hip, and the puckered dent where she had a chunk ripped out of the opposite shoulder at one point.

She's a tiny little thing, very short and deceptively thin, but she is muscle and sinew without an ounce of extra fat.  This makes her rather bony, and combined with her narrow hips and a general lack of bust she could be mistaken for a boy with a particularly pretty face from a distance.  She's learned how to pick clothing that flatters what little figure she has in order to compensate, but even that can only do so much.  The armor she wears is heavier than that of many Inquisitors, and she favors sturdy gauntlets with vambraces, greaves that protect the front of her knees, and a full brigadine and tassets in addition to her breastplate.  She carries a round curved and spiked shield with a diameter about the same as the length of her arm and a winged spear, as well as a small quiver of darts.

Personality: Ziotea is cynical and misanthropic.  The world is a terrible place, and people as a rule are awful.  Those who raised her for her first few years hated Lord Varya and the conquering Varyans, and she picked up some of the attitude even though she has few specific memories from that time.  She was not so sullen as a child, but the harsh life of an urchin turned her rough, as a certain amount of callousness was necessary to survive.  She saw all the different ways one person could mistreat another, and she realized that humanity was anything but humane.  The idea of people as bad didn't solidify until later, but it had its beginnings here.

The tales about what was done to ether slaves, heretics, and rebels (only these were called traitors) were terrifying.  Ziotea knew her mother had been a strong and defiant woman.  She knew the people that looked after her those first few years were members of some secret group that hoped to rebel -- and she learned that her flame-colored hair marked her as Omestrian and loathsome at best, heretical at worst.  She knew the Inquisitors came to take bad people away, and she remembered clearly being told to run, and seeing black coats stitched with red dragging the two people she loved off when she dared to peek out of her hiding place a couple blocks away.

When she entered the seminary, she was a frightened waif of seven, smaller than all the others and with a habit of breaking things.  She learned of acts even worse than those committed on the streets, and she felt nothing but disgust for a god that would call for his people to do such things, to slaughter and conquer and drain people for ether as she saw them being drained (the reality was so much worse than any story).  The Lady followed by the two in her earliest memories was no better, for she'd ordered her people to go along with it -- indeed, a number of half-remembered stories from her childhood claimed that the Lanostrans were not losing at all, making her little better than a coward.  The other fallen remnants were even weaker, and none of those from the far lands had ever come to Varyan lands  People were awful and the gods either didn't care or else encouraged them.

And she was no exception, for when she'd been given the choice between looking after her own well-being and trying to help her only friend in the world, she'd run away.  What hope was there in a world like this?

The answer was none at all.

Ziotea has turned into a hard woman who never smiles, save in battle.  She feels a fierce joy at prevailing over a difficult opponent, and if she is a child of Lanostre as she knows she is then there is little reason not to enjoy it.  She speaks harshly, even when she isn't trying to.  She resents being forced to fight, forced to help the cause of the god she loathes and surrounded by people who don't even realize that he is not the salvation they make him out to be.  Her general disposition is irritable, often angry, and she's been known to harbor a grudge for years.  She likes arguing, and often plays demon's advocate in discussions.

She is not particularly friendly, and has few good friends.  She does not mind this, preferring the company of Rodion to all others when she doesn't just want to be alone.  Her form of friendship is strange, manifesting most often as simply being near another person and liking it, or else constantly challenging them.  She does not take compliments well in any area save combat, and even then they can be hit or miss.  Attempts to scare or intimidate her now earn her ire, particularly if she is successfully frightened.  Actual fear, the sort felt when facing a dangerous opponent -- the sort that helps an Inquisitor stay alive -- also angers her, and makes her all the more determined to win.  She doesn't give up easily once she gets it in her head to do something, and there's indications that this might get her in trouble in the future.

At the Red Seminary, people know Ziotea as she is, instead of as she appears.  She is no longer frightened or even remotely shy, and if truly provoked she can be vicious and potentially violent.  It is hard to anger her to such extremes now, given her general disdain for everything, but when she was a little younger -- once she'd gotten over being crippled by fear, in fact -- she had a very short fuse.  Commenting on her appearance, particularly her height, was one sure way to infuriate her, though she has since become comfortable with herself, secure in her strength and her skill.  She still has aggressive tendencies, but for the most part she keeps physical combat to the training yard and the battlefield.  Still, they all know what she's capable of -- and combined with the stories that sprang up from her explosive ether and the number of deaths that occurred in her initial training (not a time when most are strong enough to kill an opponent with misapplied skills), a number of younger students are outright frightened of her.  She can be intimidating to strangers too, though not as much as she'd like.  In the end it comes down to whether her size and apparent weakness outweigh the reputation of the Inquisition and the threat of the wicked flames she resembles.

Though she wouldn't be able to explain why, Ziotea is perpetually restless and dissatisfied.  Ever since she saw the world for what it truly was she's longed for something more, but she's no idea what that "more" might be.  She has no real religion, doing what is expected of her to pay tribute to Lord Varya but without any sense of awe.  She has no faith in humanity, knowing them to be selfish, cruel, and apt to turn on each other at the least provocation.  And she has no hope for the world itself, because there is nothing that can change any of it.

Background: Ziotea was born to Adrestia, a Lanostran priestess with a gift for preserving life as well as taking it, captured in an early raid on the nation before the war officially began and forced to serve as a Varyan slave.  Her father was a pureblooded Omestrian, one of the many ether slaves the woman was forced to look after.  With the help of the members of the Lady's Anger, Adrestia feigned a stillbirth and had the girl smuggled out.  Unfortunately there are so many ways for a revolutionary to die, and those that had care of Ziotea met with one such, leaving her with only vague memories of kind people that looked after her before her days on the street, as well as a lasting disgust with the ways of the world.  Fortunately for her, they'd kept her hair dyed black, and by the time it had grown enough to be an issue she'd added a coating of grime and learned to keep her hood up at all times.

The life of a young child on the street is a hard one, but the urchins have a rough camaraderie and even a tiny girl like Ziotea could learn enough to scrabble out a meagre living.  Things changed dramatically when she dove headlong into a nook she thought would be secure, a determined guard on her tail.  Instead of safety she found another child, who made enough noise when she slammed into him that they both had to flee.  By way of apology she split the loaf of bread she'd stolen with him once they escape.  It wasn't long before Ziotea and Rodion were inseparable, and towards the end of their time on the streets they pulled off a number of dramatic thefts.  The boy might not have been particularly skilled, but he was fast and did well with machinery -- and it was far easier to get away if there was a huge ruckus in the opposite direction.  Ziotea's ether had an affinity for heat and explosions, and she was able to pull off some truly spectacular distractions.

They couldn't escape capture indefinitely, of course.  [[That sort of thing caught the attention of a warpriest, one General Vasaliev.]]  He snagged the boy first and as close as she was to Rodion, Ziotea had a crippling fear of the Inquisitors.  She didn't know why one of the elite was after them, and she didn't really want to know.  Rodion might lose a hand, or be pressed into service, but if they caught /her/ she would end up an ether slave, doomed to a half-life of agony.  She fled, and upon his return with a promise of amnesty for her she still required a great deal of convincing before she'd come anywhere near their stern benefactor.

If life on the streets was difficult, life at the Red Seminary was brutal.  Training demanded every shred of strength and willpower Ziotea possessed, and she's grown into an exceptional fighter, skilled with her weapons alone but truly devastating when she uses her ether.  She's had little time for hobbies at the seminary, driven by her heritage to enjoy fighting and forced by the unruly nature of her ether to take extra time to learn to use it well, and to make up for what it just wouldn't do.  If she didn't concentrate well enough, any spell she cast tended to blow up in her face -- literally.  This was in addition to the trail of broken dishware and shattered glass she left when stressed, and the need to compensate for that sort of thing was another demand on her time.

She is looking forward to getting away from Varya, though she is less sure about their mission.  Perhaps Eluria will hold answers to the questions she doesn't know to ask.  Perhaps a simple change of scenery will keep her from being so restless.  Either way, she's ready.

Talents/Ethereal Abilities: 

Ziotea has a larger than average reservoir of ether to draw on.  Her Omestrian heritage is strongly evident in the color and strength of her ether, but the true nature of it is...[i]explosive[/i].

Literally.

[[needs work!]]
She is able to generate bursts of concussive force that can be devastating if properly applied.  Initially she had major difficulty controlling the strength and aim of such attacks, and more than one sparring match turned lethal when she misjudged.  She's refined her skill over the years, and she can use her ether internally easily enough, but any use of ether beyond her person comes with a risk, and she's best kept away from anything that requires restraint.  Furthermore, this aspect of her power means that a number of basic skills are beyond her.  Simple things like heating a rock to boil water, cooking an egg, kindling an ether lamp, carrying additional weight -- she can do none of these things.  Rocks and eggs explode, lamps shatter and the liquid ether evaporates, and while she can /lift/ things, actually carrying them for any length of time is an issue.

However, force can be used in countless ways, and what she lacks in finesse she makes up for in creativity.  She uses her ether to hit with disproportionate strength, far beyond what is expected from someone her size, and to support her shield when deflecting attacks, including bullets though these pack a big punch if she doesn't catch them just right -- she broke her arm in an early attempt.  She can add height to her jumps, and fling herself forward with considerable momentum.  Combining the latter with a shield bash makes for a particularly nasty attack.  Her darts leave her hand at high speed, even without being thrown, and she has good aim, able to hit a target at a good fifty paces, possibly more if conditions are good.

Application of force at a weak point in an object can break it, as she has demonstrated on countless plates and vases, and some objects can be made to explode.  She can knock chairs over -- or poorly built market stalls, as she did as a child.  An unexpected shove can put opponents off balance or even knock them down.  A stronger, less focused push can move them a few feet, though she's determined that this is not usually a useful technique, save occasionally for driving enemies towards her.

Ziotea is unusual in that she can draw not only on her own ether and her personal totem, but also nearby sources, though she cannot use them efficiently.  This exacerbates the problem of her unpredictable offensive casts, though the ability itself wasn't uncovered until a couple years after the rest.  With Rodion's help she's experimented with pulling ether from nearby creatures as well.  She's managed to siphon small quantities from animals, with some difficulty, but the only successful attempt to pull from another person resulted in Ziotea and Rodion both passed out on the floor of a destroyed lab, and they've abandoned the idea for the moment.

Alternatively, instead of drawing on nearby ether, she can use some of her own to negate ether others are actively using.  The technique is difficult and drains her strength far quicker than any of her other skills.  This means that she is most effective countering single attacks, instead of undoing things like personal buffs or crafting an anti-ether shield.  She still needs to refine the skill, as careless use of it will result in a loud explosion instead of simple negation.

Ziotea is skilled with her weighted spear and shield.  She knows how to fight unarmed, though she prefers not to.  She can use ether to punch hard enough to break bones if she must, and she knows a number of throws and pins, but if someone gets a good grip on her that's the end.  Her ether is unsuited to supporting lengthy grapples, and her size leaves her at a major disadvantage.  Her best bet is to slip quickly free of an attempted grab, then use a few quick strikes and an ether push or a throw and to get out of grabbing range.  From there she can make a clean escape, or keep moving and use makeshift weapons and her ether to wear the opponent down.

She's not much slower than people with longer legs, though she worked [i]hard[/i] to be able to say as much without resorting to the use of ether.  Her physical endurance is excellent, as is required of everyone at the Red Seminary.  Her etheric endurance is superb, but her ability with sustained casts is very low, and trying to do generally results in her signature explosive backfire.

Personal Seal: ((something in a sunburst -- probably a spear)) and the sunburst pattern in general, which adorns her shield.

Character Relationships: 

[hider=WIP, need to talk to people]

[@Sisyphus]
Hassan -- he bothers Ziotea on an very basic level.  He doesn't always realize when he uses his Word power -- and he does it often -- and she doesn't know that she's having to counter it, but something about the man just [i]really[/i] bothers her, and it has since the day they met.  It doesn't help that her reaction to humor from those she's not close to is a negative one, and that his constant goofing off gets on her nerves.  He is one of the many people she has hurt badly while sparring, matched against her because they both fought dirty and it was thought her haphazard offensive abilities would counter his greater strength and size.

She waited for him to make the first move, he made some inane joke about the situation, they fought, she screwed up a cast and (insert injury here?  broken bone?  concussion?  this was probably after she could be relied on not to kill an opponent, as he's a valuable asset and there's others that are more easily replaced)  (at this point I'm thinking she sent him flying across the yard and into a wall for your choice of injury).

Not sure how that would affect his opinion of her, but I figure that was at least five, six years ago and might even have been the first time they met properly, since they're two years apart and that's forever in the development of young children.

On some level she's jealous of his cheerful nature.  If he hangs out near Rodion she might put up with him, otherwise she probably avoids him as much as possible, because he puts her on edge.  It's entirely possible that this is an actively adversarial relationship, but I'll let you decide if so and how much.  If he picks on Rodion she will probably try to hurt him on top of any blasts she lets off by accident.  

[@OppositionJ]
Tatiana -- another lighthearted one.  Ziotea doesn't mind Tatiana's presence nearly as much as she does Hassan's, perhaps because the other girl wasn't entirely certain of where she belonged.  It also helps that Tatiana was never particularly good at fighting, and so Ziotea could use basic skills against her and never felt particularly endangered, even at the very beginning.


Lovejoy
Ragnar -- as small and as childlike as he is, Ziotea is still smaller.  His perpetual cheer annoys her if she spends too much time in his company, in large part because she just isn't happy like that, and sees no reason to be.  His (apparently) genuine affection was not something she trusted in their early years, and when they were both with Rodion in the metalworks she would be an angry, glowering little raincloud in Rodion's shadow.  She's since come to realize that he really /is/ that kind and compassionate, and she has [i]no flaming idea[/i] how to respond to it.  She's amazed that he hasn't gotten himself killed yet, or failed out of training.  She's even more shocked that he's escaped the seminary without becoming jaded, and she really hopes he doesn't lose that.

She does consider him a friend, after a fashion, and even enjoys having him around -- though not for too long, or she ends up even grumpier than usual.  Still, he's someone she can relax around, and if someone hurts him you'd better believe that they will have slightly over 100 lbs of pure, vicious fury in their face (and possibly in their gut, as that's a better target).

[@The Angry Goat]
Yerokhin "Stina" -- a giant even as a child, he towered over little Ziotea, and initially she avoided him out of pure fear.  As she began to conquer her fear of various things, this included him, and she has since seen him as a measurement for excellence and is determined to surpass him.  Or at least kick his butt in a fight once.

Hm...Ziotea goes through the motions of worship, but she makes no secret that she doesn't think the gods are good, and this includes Lord Varya.  She's more or less loyal, but it's not so much out of devotion as because she doesn't see a good alternative.  There's really not much point in fighting a hopeless battle, especially since there's nothing to work towards.  People are awful, etc.

If that doesn't bother him, these two might end up a very strange sort of friends -- y'know, that thing where they are constantly fighting but actually enjoy it?  She'd definitely want to face him in combat, and beating him is a longtime goal (I don't know if she's managed it yet.  Probably not).  She might also try to goad him into verbal arguments, about religion or really anything.  I can see him being in some conversation, it coming more or less to an end, and if she overheard part of it she'd plunk herself down and just contradict him, just to argue about it.  She probably insults him regularly.  If they have been on reasonably good terms for a while, he was one of the very few people who could get away with commenting on her appearance, particularly her size.  Her response would be to call him a hulking giant or something similar.  If not, there was a period of time where a comment on it would send her flying at him in fury, though she's past that now.

[@deathbringer]
Astraea, as a fullblooded Lanostran, is not someone Ziotea likes.  The way Lanostre and its Lady surrendered and just abandoned who they were leaves a bitter taste in her mouth, all the more because she's half Lanostran herself.  Part of her animosity comes from a personal grudge against the goddess for failing to protect the mother she knows only by name and her two childhood caretakers, and seeing Astraea take pride in that same heritage twists a knife in her gut.  Some of it is congealed resentment from a time when the fair girl was everything fiery Ziotea was not.  And some of it is a growing jealousy for the fact that Rodion seems to like having her around.

[@Drakey]
Rodion -- her dearest companion.  She can barely remember a time when she didn't know him, and the idea of a life without him in it seems...lacking.  The relationship is a relic of...not happier times, but more innocent ones.  She simply does not form the sort of connection they share anymore.  He has her complete trust and her unwavering devotion.  He is the one Ziotea confides in, and she does so willingly.  She keeps few secrets from him, if any -- though one such was how she'd run away when he was caught.  It ate at her for years before she was able to discuss it with him, though they've since gotten past it.  While she does laugh, Rodion is the only one who can make her smile -- her usual expression of joy and cheer is either a fierce, defiant baring of teeth that really doesn't merit the term "smile" or else a gentling of her hard eyes and a slight upward curve of her mouth.  Truthfully, she isn't happy all that often.

He is best able to disperse the worst of even her darkest foul moods, and there's a certain gentle affection in how she treats him that she shows nobody else.  "Friend" doesn't begin to cover it, and even "family" falls short of explaining what for Ziotea is a unique and treasured relationship.  Even when she wanted to be alone, there was always room for him as well, though it's only in the past year or two that she's started realizing how much she's taken his presence for granted.  For her the question is not so much whether she loves Rodion -- she's known that to be a yes for almost as long as she's known him -- but rather just what sort of love it is, and asking didn't even occur to her until they started approaching the final days at the Seminary.
[/hider]


[/hider]

[@Lovejoy] Aaah, I see.  I was figuring ether vials were required for basic magic, that animals were not a good source of ether, and...a few other things.  If the vials aren't needed for basic combat, then yeah, letting her actually /use/ that is an issue.  Maybe she can use some sort of negation to mess it up so it's weaker or something.  ^.^;;  As for replenishing her own ether...well there is the whole issue of getting it inside her, but she might be able to refill her vials?  I'm going to have to toy with this, and figure out how I want to work this.  Draining people is very costly, and I would *think* draining a nearby vial would not be -- since she has her own vials she can use, after all.  There needs to be something to keep people from using other people's stored reserves or that'd be the first goal of any priest vs. priest battle....Eh, I might just leave her with the basic negation and have the draining thing be something that she would use as a last resort.  I will think on it!  I'm tired and just plain babbling now.  @.@

She's Omestrian, or at least her ether is, so it packs a considerable punch.  I didn't realize that the spells using the vials were superpowered.  I did want to trade off most of her lesser skills (most of the standard stuff -- she's actually not bad at all at generating heat so a personal aegis might very well work, and countering attacks as with the paling falls under a function of force -- so she can, but she has to go about it differently.  Her paling itself is pretty weak, but she can use force to counter incoming attacks in much the same way.  Summoning spellblades and sustained enhancement are not in her wheelhouse, nor could she steady her aim directly (she'd need to make herself warm instead, but that's rarely an issue).  Enhancing her endurance is also out in all but the most dire of circumstances -- she could for a short while, but the cost to her is far higher than to most others, so she'd be helpless after.  I'd say 15-30 minutes, tops.  She did a lot of exercising to make up for this.

If there's shields and such, I'm far more comfortable letting her throw people around and blow things up with impunity.  And sure, if she used a vial spell she could totally take out a tank.  A drop from a vial probably is enough to let her punch right through palings, and that's probably what she uses it for most.  I'll work on this more later too.  *collapses on the keys and goes to sleep*