My schedule will be a little erratic for the next few weeks, but I wanted to toss my hat in the ring sooner rather than later in case you were still accepting applications. Very interesting setting you've woven here! If I've gotten anything wrong in my signup, please let me know. Likewise, if I did miss my shot, no worries!

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[hider= Kieriel “Kestrel” Valcora][i][u][b][h3]General[/h3][/b][/u][/i][color=BF8725][b]Name:[/b][/color] Kieriel “Kestrel” Valcora
[color=BF8725][b]Race:[/b][/color] Elf
[color=BF8725][b]Age:[/b][/color] 122

[color=BF8725][b]Appearance[/b][/color]
She is cinders and smoke, were one to pluck a line of poetry to lay upon Kieriel’s shoulders. Of considerable height for her people, she is corded with lean muscle and sinew beneath windburnt, heavily tanned skin. Raven-black hair lies in ragged, coarse sheaves down to her shoulder blades, habitually bound in string or in half-remembered braids she learned from her mother and sisters long ago. Eyes of pure, startling amber glare out from beneath thick brows, assessing and marking the world around her, almost never at rest. Little about her is graceful, though she moves with the calm surety and confidence of one accustomed to a life of gunpowder and steel. 

[i][u][b][h3]Personal[/h3][/b][/u][/i][i]Hate drove me here, consuming as a raging fire, a pure white-hot blaze – it drove me across the sands, through forgotten places and terrible storms, and the breaking of everything I ever knew. Until day had passed to night, and again, and again, and the unyielding sun worked its own fury upon me, and the hatred flared down to fading embers and all that was left was the shadow of what I was…[/i]

[hider=Biography]
She had thought to be a hero, once, but life rarely allows for the dreams of children to flourish the way they’d like. The cruel, steady progress of time has a habit of stealing from the idealistic the heart of their aspirations, leaving little but dust and wistful nostalgia in its wake.

On the scale of the short-lived races who drive the world into which she was born, Kieriel was sired when ancient history was still the news of the day; even to her own people it was in many ways a different era, predating even the hopeful and – in the words of her father – vainly foolish Eildi Society’s foundation. 

Her home was a kind one, all things considered, though despite her father’s reputation as a magnificent trader and pillar of the elven community-in-exile, his quick temper and pride saw his family uprooted and replanted with regularity within the borders of Berevin. Her mother and her sisters served as a positive and nurturing counterbalance, and all of them encouraged in the family’s youngest daughter the idea that she could do anything with her life, unbound by any expectations save those she placed upon herself.

It was this spirit of freedom which led her to roam the halls of whichever home the family inhabited, dodging tutors and engaging invisible foes in armed combat, usually to the death. No trees or trimmed shrubberies were safe from her terrorizing and terrible fury, at least not until her father grew tired of her waywardness and decided to try pushing her back to her studies by enlisting the services of an irascible, alcoholic, and unapologetically brutal weaponmaster to beat the spirit of adventure out of her.

But the best laid plans often go awry – she took to the curmudgeonly instructor’s lessons as a fish to water, gaining skill with almost preternatural speed. As she outgrew her first teacher she took on others, younger and more able to keep up with her across the years. Her sisters grew as well, each more beautiful and graceful than Kieriel and easy enough for her parents to pair off, and who in turn seemed to embrace their civil and cultural duties as elfen wombs with gusto.

Desperate to make similar use of her youngest daughter to expand the elfen race, her mother eventually discovered another elf of the same cloth as Kieriel, a dashing rogue who flitted through human society as though he’d been born to it, earning a reputation not only as a talented warrior but as something of a philosopher as well; arranging for her daughter and this promising candidate to meet (quite by accident) proved challenging, but rewarding.

Kieriel and Daeryn became acquainted in the gardens across crossed blades, and soon shared far more than just a love of combat.

Their attempt to undo the damage of the Burning Egress between matrimonial sheets proved futile, however, for as the years passed it became clear that Kieriel was barren, unable to serve her race in the capacity required of her. This, coupled with her father’s refusal to support the burgeoning Eildi Society – a vanity project he considered a ruinous endeavor at best – threw her family quickly from grace amongst their racial peers, and in a desperate bid for self-preservation Kieriel’s sisters and mother distanced themselves from daughter and father both.

One exception remained, however, as Ilaya – eldest of Kieriel’s sisters – bucked the family’s disdain and remained loyal and a constant companion to the unluckiest Valcora daughter.

With the passage of time came another disaster, however; a betrayal of another sort soon radically altered the course of Kieriel’s life and the lives of her family. Seeking the comfort and honor of doing his due diligence for the elfen race, Daeryn managed to sire a child of his own with Ilaya, a grave mistake which destroyed both Daeryn’s reputation and his lover’s life.

Mother and daughter perished in the throes of childbirth while the culprit fled. Broken by the betrayals, horrified by the carnage wrought, and now possessed of a terrible wrath, Kieriel took up what remained of her household and gave chase, seeking retribution.

Long years passed, and long miles wore past underfoot. Many jobs of dubious morality came and went, and what coin she garnered on the path often came from those enlisting her skills with the blade and pistol. Money became increasingly important, though always fleeting -- it would be a long time before Kieriel would find the one she sought, and though much occupied her in the intervening years nothing was ever enough to dissuade her from the hunt. Finally, only a short time prior to the beginning of the story, she caught up to him at last.

What began so very long ago as a sparring match between would-be lovers ended in a battle in the pitch-black darkness of the desert night, filled only with the light of gunfire and the sound of an approaching storm. It lasted mere minutes but felt like forever, neither combatant able to definitively finish the job of vengeance or self-preservation before the dust storm caught them, guns abandoned and blades crossed as the wind threw them from their feet and ripped the world apart around them.

Beaten, bloody, and burnt out to her core, Kieriel staggered from that unholy night towards the only civilization she might conceivably reach before dying. And it was there, half buried in the dust, that a Kevol caravan found her and brought her – for a price – to the bastion of Glimhollow. No sign of her once-paramour remained, and he never surfaced in the city or in the talk of traders.

Unsure of herself and of what remained of her solemn vows of revenge, exhausted from half a lifetime of pursuit and from a battle which very probably should have stolen her life, she found herself in search of something to do, of something to occupy her hands and mind so that they could not be turned back to the road and the yawning abyssal question of whether her quarry yet lived, for she knew in her heart of hearts that he did not.

And so it was thus that the Dusthawks found her, gathering dust and drink in the dim emerald light of Lower Shenul. It took little effort to persuade the self-named “Kestrel” to their service, though perhaps not their causes; the immediacy of their desires serves as a sort of pleasant, numbing balm for Kieriel now, and provides her with a way to pay back those who saved her life and to stay in her cups. It also provides her the fringe benefit of keeping her out of the eye of the Wid and its masters, for whom she’s inherited her father’s distaste.
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[color=BF8725][b]Prime Motive:[/b][/color] Seeking a Purpose
[color=BF8725][b]Accessory Motives:[/b][/color] Slaking Frustration, Avoiding Pain, Drifting

[color=BF8725][b]Internal Conflict:[/b][/color] The major internal conflict facing Kieriel now is the apparent end to her pursuit of vengeance. The need to move on coupled with the inability to recognize it. Sustained for so very long on her hate and pain, she finds herself adrift and unsure for the first time in living memory, unable to bridge the gap and overcome the howling void gnawing at the pit of her stomach. In an effort to feed that emptiness and avoid the pain of self-assessment, she buries herself now in the only thing she’s ever been particularly good at: Cracking bones and spilling blood.


[i][u][b][h3]Vocational[/h3][/b][/u][/i] [color=BF8725][b]Occupation:[/b][/color] Enforcer

[color=BF8725][b]Talents[/b][/color][list]
[*] [b]Long-Lived:[/b] Kieriel’s life has been long, and while a great deal of it has been narrowly focused, it does leave her with a wide array of experiences to draw upon.
[*] [b]Martial Skill:[/b] Having honed her combat prowess both under many tutors and through a lifetime of spilling blood for the currency necessary to continue her hunt, Kieriel is no slouch with sword or pistol.
[*] [b]Bloodhound:[/b] She’s spent a long time tracking, and consequently has gotten really good at it. It helped that she had such elusive prey.
[/list]

[color=BF8725][b]Flaws[/b] [/color][list]
[*] [b]Uninterested:[/b] Her narrow focus and her recent victory have left her fairly detached from things around her, and she tends to drift without focus when not actively engaged in a particular task.
[*] [b]Barren:[/b] Something of a mortal sin amongst her kind, she is unable to bear children and does her best to avoid the company of her race.
[*] [b]Bad With Money:[/b] Beyond basic sustenance, housing, and equipment maintenance, Kieriel doesn’t really handle money very well. She usually wastes almost everything she earns, often splitting it between trying to repay the Kevol who saved her and drowning herself in alcohol or other intoxicants.
[/list]
[color=BF8725][b]Equipment[/b][/color]
What raiment she bears is tattered and frayed, long worn out from the road and weather. Tough boots, loose leggings, a pair of wide studded belts, and a simple tunic coming apart at the seams are all she usually dons beneath her threadbare traveling cloak and ragged leather cuirass. Unremarkable, in general. An array of pouches, pistols, and ancient elfen fighting-blades mark her as a rung above the common traveler, however.


[i][u][b][h3]Supplemental[/h3][/b][/u][/i][color=BF8725][b]Secrets:[/b][/color] Though she does not think on it often or too deeply, sometimes the details Kieriel remembers from the night of her sister’s death – and the close encounters with Daeryn over the years – don’t quite align with the narrative she clings to.

[color=BF8725][b]Quirks:[/b][/color] Kieriel is capable of playing several instruments with varying degrees of skill and once considered musical pursuits to be almost as important as martial training, though has since let the former slip by.
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