Caracas is largely inspired by Venice and Spain. The Polvere Plaza is the main string of islands where most commoners live. Because of this you can expect a lot of bridges and canals with some buildings need their own small docks because they sit directly on the water. Though there are parts of the plaza, as you move further inward toward mainland, that have relatively little water. From here one could go towards the Palace District which are much more of the baroque and dramatic types of architecture. There are a lot of golds, and a lot of winding stairs and alleys as the district is built along a hill-ridden region. In the Palace district there are small pools of water decorated with rose-petals that flow in small vents on sidewalks and along stairways. The architecture for temples and administrative or other fanciful buildings is a mix of baroque, renaissance, and hints of gothic throughout the city though more fantastical with vibrant colors. Though there are a lot of Mediterranean style buildings with the redish/orange brick tiled roofing you expect from that style.

Immediately visible to the players is the number of shops that dot the docks and starting plaza. There are a lot of vibrant colors here, a number of different wares, art, and music. This part of the city is influenced by the renaissance period, but there are a mix of cultures and languages.

You're right in saying that southern Carthus is nearly as warm as Caracas. Though, the flora vary greatly (with The Union having a more Mediterranean climate and biome). Astoria is inspired by medieval British architecture and more specifically anglo-saxon. In Astoria there is a lot of timber usage (both inside and outside of homes), and hatch roofs are more commonplace. Tudor type buildings are also common. Such building types would not be sustainable in Caracas. There are also more elven influences in Astoria because they were conquered for a long while. The major difference is that there aren't places in Astoria built on islands. The closest Karlus would've seen is the city of Ardent's Fall. It is in the north, and is a major port city (this is where Karlus and Kjellfrid boarded the ship to Valenndale).

As for clothing you can expect a lot of tunics, and thin robe overcoats- there are some greek and overall Mediterranean influences there too. There are hints of a sort of flamboyant twist on renaissance style clothing. Some, more eager to impress folks, wear fanciful hats adorned with feathers. Most people are more simple than that, especially the dock workers. They tend to wear vests or long tunics that come down to the thigh or longer. The fabrics tend to be more silky or other such light articles. Trousers are typically worn tighter (if at all, with the longer tunics) almost akin to leggings in some cases, with often long (and sometimes heeled) boots. You may also see some houppelande style garments.

Hairstyles tend to vary, but many seem to led their hair grow out. You may even notice that many prefer goatee styles beards. A lot more manicured than some of the commoners of Astoria. However, Karlus may be used to this being in Cambridge.

These pictures aren't exact replicas of Caracas or anything, but this is the style and feeling evoked from the city.

Name: Annabella Stonefist
"I left my name and weapons in High Mist for someone more worthy of them. Many years ago, I helped a town and they decided my name should be Annabella. Then, they said my hands are stones and thus they added Stonefist to my name. It is a good name and so I kept it."

Theme: Colter Wall - "Sleeping on the Blacktop"

Titles: None

Aliases: The Wandering Monk

Age: 44

Race/Ethnicity: Orc

Continent of Origin: High Mist

Gender: Female

Class/Subclass: Monk/Open Hand


Strength: 15
Dexterity: 18
Constitution: 10
Intelligence: 8
Wisdom: 12
Charisma: 12



Height: 6’3

Weight: 195lbs

Appearance : A bit short for an orc, but still plenty tall for most anyone else. Annabella’s figure is well muscled and sculpted from years of honing her body into a deadly weapon with long, coarse hair black as pitch that just touches the middle of her back. Like that of the rest of her kind, Annabella’s skin is thick and green but with heavy scarring on her knuckles and forearms while her palms are a more calluses and scar tissue than actual skin. A soft smile is her most common expression or absolute serenity if she is the depths of meditation. She is the picture of calm even in the midst of fire and death.

Day To Day Attire: A simple linen shirt with tattered and patched wool pants rolled halfway up her calves. She does not wear shoes both because she does not need them and because they are very costly for someone who walks as often as she does.

Strengths:

• Incrediblly Agile
• Patient
• Calm Under Pressure

Weaknesses:

• Believes everyone deserves a chance to prove they can change (sometimes at her own peril)
• Her refusal of worldly possessions can land her in hot water that could’ve easily been avoided with a potion or a coil of rope
• Has almost no filter and says just about everything on her mind

Jovial * Serene * Blunt * Dauntless

Sexuality: Straight

Relationship Status: Single

Personality: The mental image most people have of a monk is a stoic and near emotionless warrior priest. While this idea rarely holds true even for traditional monks, Annabella breaks this mold even further. She is calm, but merry. She’s spent as many hours in meditation as she has in taverns and sees no sense in denying herself worldly pleasures. What’s the point of seeing the wonders of the world if you refuse to indulge in them? What she takes issue with is excess for its own sake as well as greed. But nothing gets under her skin quite like a blatant abuse of one's power be it physical or societal. She is thoroughly unconcerned with matters of race and species, and only cares about the character of a person.

Annabella is quick with a joke or words of encouragement to lift the spirits of a room. In the same vein, she’s a peacemaker and greatly prefers to solve conflict through words rather than resorting to violence. Not to say that she hesitates to use violence when necessary, she simply prefers to talk through a problem rather than punch through. She will, of course, not hold back once she must defend herself or others around her.

Habits:

• Has a thousand yard stare when deep in thought
• Plays with her hair when bored

Hobbies:

• Meditation
• Physical conditioning
• Practicing her form
• Gathering stories

Fears:

• Dying in a fire or being burned alive
• Dying before she finds true peace
• Leading others in a crisis situation

Likes:

• Alcohol
• Good Conversation
• Travel
• Story Telling
• Humor
• Meeting new people

Dislikes:

• Abuses of Power
• Willful Ignorance
• Freezing Rain
• Greed
• Shoes
• Violence for its own sake

• Unarmed Combat: Her hands are just as capable of cutting a man down as any sword and to say she kicks like a horse would not be an exaggeration.
• Unarmored Defense: All combatants wear armor of a sort. Her armor is forged with graceful dodges interwoven with deft parries.
• Acrobatics: Spin kicking a bandit in the face looks really cool but doing so takes a great deal of balance and agility.
• Wilderness Survival: The roads are long and often devoid of merchants. Traveling on foot makes any journal especially long and necessitates living off the land. Other times no one is willing to share their roof with a stranger and Annabella is forced to make due.
• Navigation: Avoiding starvation on the open road is ideal, but so is not becoming hopelessly lost. She knows the stars of many lands in every season like she knows her own family. Finding water or maintaining a path through dense forest are almost involuntary reactions for her.
• Language Comprehension: Her travels have taught her the languages of many peoples. She is fluent in Common, Orcish, Dwarven, Caracan, and Otmoni while being only conversational in Elven.
• Storyteller: Annabella has collected many, many, many stories over her extensive travels and committed them to memory. Everything from heroic epics spun by dwarven bards to folklore of villages so far flung that no one bothers to remember their names except on tax day. There is more to storytelling than mere memorization, she is also animated and breathes life into her stories with voice and movement.

Innate magic focus.

Step of the Wind - jump height and running speed significantly increased for a brief period
Thunderous Blow - a focused and devastating strike that can crumple or outright shatter metal and break solid rock
Falling Hail Style - empowering many strikes with one’s own magic against a single opponent
Harmony - aligning one’s very soul with the very cosmos to recover from moderate wounds



Possessions Generally On Person: A linen shirt, wool pants, a utility knife, and a small coin pouch with 4 gold are her only possessions.

Pack Contents: None. She doesn’t carry a pack.


Annabella had a proper name once. She even had a proper title and commanded the respect of many in her homeland. No one expected great things from a runt, even if her father sat at the head of her tribe’s war council. She wasn’t told to follow in his footsteps but she did regardless and pursued her goals with relentless drive. The air of a leader hung about her and she found it easy to rally others to her. It’s no wonder how she quickly found herself leading a small warband of her very own not long after she became an adult. Her deeds spread far by word of mouth alone and her renown seemed to grow by the day. Everything came crashing down when her thirst for glory lead to disaster. She never speaks of what happened, and even the vaguest details are unknown to everyone who has not heard the tragedy of the Rok’drol Company. Even then, not much is known other than the fact that Annabella was the only survivor.

She stumbled back to her village, barely alive with a dead-eyed stare and refused to speak at all. Once healed, she informed one of her tribe’s priests that should would be relinquishing her gifted weapon as well as her name and her place in the tribe. She left without another word and never set foot in I’Canxou again. That was 17 years ago. Since then, she has wandered Ithea in search of inner peace and the strength to forgive her own sins.


Character Quote: ”Existence is meaningless, a blank page. Anything can be written on an empty page and I intend to write something on mine I’d be proud to read.”