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[center][img]https://i.imgur.com/HflokMf.jpg?1[/img]
[h1]Elodie Maya[/h1][sub]18 y/o | Human | Female[/sub][/center]
[b]Appearance[/b][indent]
5’4 if you include her boots, Elodie stands tall with uncommon poise, often an individual who feels as if they should be bigger than they actually are. Her pale skin, flawless and lovely as it is, is more a product of staying underground for far too long than recommended for a normal human being, while her slender build is built from the same conditions; often, Elodie would forget to eat altogether, becoming progressively crankier and crankier without realizing the root cause of it. She likes to keep her long hair down, despite what others say about it interfering with her work, and her hands are callused and thick-skinned, marked with years dedicated to learning her craft.[/indent]
[b]Personality[/b][indent]
Elodie is ferocious and aggressive, not in the way that she picks a fight with everyone else (though that’s totally in-character for her as well), but in that she will pursue her goals and her work with a single-minded focus that often disregards tact and etiquette. She’s no master of her craft, of course, and her high self-esteem could be easily interpreted as youthful arrogance, however, her willingness to never stop is a very admirable trait. She owns up to everything she does, whether it be her achievements or her mistakes, and the girl bounces up from disappointment and displeasure fairly quickly. What time spent moping about can be spent working out, after all. Only a moron would rest on their failures, rather than build up on their successes. Elodie has no patience for people who just want to feel sorry for themselves, and this often crosses the boundary into just making her seem like a cold-hearted bitch.

Which could easily be the case. For someone who has so little ‘real’ experience in the battlefield, this particular Iron Rose Knight appears rather unmoved by all the death that accompanies such a profession, after all. Is it an iron will that makes her this way? An unshakeable faith? Or something less…acceptable?[/indent]
[b]Brief Backstory[/b][indent]
Elodie was an orphan.

Her parents had been merchants travelling to the Grey Mountains, when an attack by highwaymen left all dead except for baby Elodie herself, lying in her mother’s arms, bawling all the while. A caravan of dwarven craftsmen stumbled upon this wreckage and, recognizing her parents as ones who’ve formed a relationship of mutual benefit and trust with the people of the earth, sought to raise their child in their stead rather than abandon her in the callow homes of unrelated man. Thus began her life and her tutelage, working metal with the greatest artisans under heaven.

Her adopted parents were virtuous if not stern, and Elodie became a child more at home by furnace than by hearth, her lullabies made of hammer strike and bellow roar, her toys the tools that will one day become her life. She was raised up on the stories of Dwarven smiths who’ve crafted weapons fit for the Gods, mere mortals who, without magic, gleaned the secrets of steel from the whispers of the mountain itself. Oh, the wonders of the Elden Ring. Oh, the might of the Hordebreaker. Oh, the beauty of the Starglobe. On myths were her dreams stoked, and in training were her ambitions realized. Day in, day out, ever since she became strong enough to hammer hot steel, Elodie polished her craft alongside her dwarven brethren, drinking and working in turn, her skills steadily improving under the masters she dedicated herself to. Beardless and longlimbed as she was, her tenacity drew merit, her devotion drew admiration, and slowly, her flexibility became her most valuable trait as well.

Her stubbornness, after all, was merely her personality, rather than something coded in the racial bloodline that her stouter brothers had. And as life went on within the caverns of the Deep King, so too did another difference pop up. All dwarves could hear the whispers of the steel they bent, but it was Elodie and Elodie alone that could [i]speak[/i] to that same steel. Her tutelage was of the dwarves, scientific and unyielding, but her bloodline was of the humans, arcane and irrational. And as the magic she taught herself became more and more useful, Elodie came to a conclusion.

If she were to create something that’d surpass the myths and the artifacts, the ancient objects that were revered across history, then she surely needed to expand her horizons, to see the world beyond the mountains.

Her journey took her to the Iron Rose Knights, where she plied her services not as a master swordsman or a legendary warrior, but as a blacksmith would could take care of herself and all the tools of trade they had. All for the low, low price of having them try out all the new weapons she’d come up with.

Really, she was a bit lucky that the captain of the Knights was a young girl too.[/indent]
[b]Equipment[/b][indent]
Outside of her set of tools for smithing, from her hammers to her tongs to her chisels, Elodie carries a variety of interesting weaponry and armor befitting of someone who has the ability to make her own equipment. Of note are the clothes she wears for combat: despite appearing like flexible fabric, steel threads have been worked into them, giving them a great degree of resistance to sharp edges, though less so for piercing thrusts or bludgeoning blows…but that’s why she wears portions of stiff plate armor over it as well, namely chestplate, greaves, and gauntlet. All are crafted of the miraculous alloy that dwarven craftsmen use, maintaining a lightness similar to leather while being more durable than steel.

Her weapon, too, is oddities. Elodie’s preferred weapon is a magical artifact of her own invention, dubbed the ‘Blasting Rod’. Cylindrical in shape, it’s crafted of magically fortified wood and steel, with additional inscriptions inside it to generate a fiery explosion when a verbal command is given. With only one place to exit, the explosion shoots out of the open end of the Blasting Rod, generating a powerful, cone-shaped blast potent enough to tear down stone walls in one fell swoop. Charged up through heat, the Blasting Rod can hold a maximum of five charges, and is heavy enough to also be used as a bludgeoning weapon.

Of course, using the Blasting Rod merely as a club is pretty crude, so Elodie did to it what any reasonable person would do: she added the necessary parts so that she could turn it into a melee weapon. A collapsible pole can be attached to the bottom end of the Blasting Rod to turn it into a blunt staff, while an attachable axehead completes the Blasting Rod’s transformation into a wicked halberd. Magical enhancements exist in this form as well; the explosive force once generated inside the Blasting Rod is modified by the inscriptions of the axehead, turning those fiery charges into propellant for a devastating blow instead.[/indent]
[b]Skills[/b][indent]
Elodie has serviceable, all-round combat skill, enough that she generally knows how to use most common weapons, from spear to axe to sword to bow. While she’ll never win any tournaments with her proficiency, it’s enough that she can sorta hold her own in a fight. More important, however, is her skill at smithing, taught to her by the master artisans of the Grey Mountains, and runic inscription, self-taught through trial, error, and explosion. Her self-taught magic enables her to change the properties of metal, allowing her to heat chunks of steel white-hot without requiring a forge and allowing her to then rapidly cool them down without requiring an ice bath. Oils are still necessary, however, and the process is far too slow to be of use in combat, but this magic is primarily what makes her more useful than other, more skillful blacksmiths when it comes to journeying with the Iron Rose Knights.

Outside of that, Elodie’s also ridiculously good at holding her drink for a girl her age, and seems to be able to function well even with no sleep at all. Of course, her personality takes a nosedive for the nastier, but her mental faculties remain sharp despite that. She also enjoys reading, which is weird for such a salty, sooty brat, until one realizes that, rather than considering herself a smith, Elodie fashions herself an artificer, and seeks to learn as much as possible to augment her own creations.[/indent]
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