[hider=Avery Harper][color=#5b8a7f]Name[/color]
[indent]Avery Harper[/indent]

[color=#5b8a7f]Age[/color]
[indent]16[/indent]

[color=#5b8a7f]Gender[/color]
[indent]Female[/indent]

[color=#5b8a7f]How did they get onto the Officer Programme?[/color]
[indent][s]Noble[/s] | [s]Buying In[/s] | [b]Scholarship[/b] | [s]Promoted[/s][/indent]

[color=#5b8a7f]Prefered Weapon[/color]
[indent]Magic![/indent]

[color=#5b8a7f]Appearance Details[/color]
[indent]Lean and [i]relatively[/i] tall at about 5'8, Avery has fair skin and a slim build lacking in much physical bulk. She has medium-length, slightly unkempt blonde hair, usually worn in a loose braid over one shoulder, and sharp hazel eyes. Her facial features are overall somewhat angular, but their intimidating potential is mostly undermined by the easy smiles and friendly expressions they're usually occupied making.

Avery dresses generally in functional, practical clothing, with a fondness for long jackets and sturdy boots, although it's possible that that's just because she's never been in a position to purchase much else. She is agile and nimble, with a good mind for stealth and footwork.[/indent]

[color=#5b8a7f]Personality Traits[/color]
[indent]Avery is bold, personable, and cunning, with a keen mind and an even keener sense for getting into trouble. She is deeply resourceful and fond of mischief, with few moral sensibilities when it comes to subverting the rules of tradition or authority. She makes friends easily and rarely holds grudges. Normally easygoing and possessed of little discipline, she can be laser-attentive on the rare occasion that something truly important catches her eye, although this overall intermittent style of focus doesn't lend itself too well to a soldier's discipline. 

Common-born, Avery lacks a fair deal of "traditional" knowledge, although the very worst parts of that failure of education have been addressed sternly in the past several years -- unlike personal combat or self-defense, both of which she knows essentially nothing about beyond the basics of "trip them and run away." Somewhat paradoxically, in spite of this, she has an excellent intuition for military strategy and tactics, a skill that secured her entry into the academy.

As one of very few at the academy not possessed of some prestigious noble heritage, Avery is very self-conscious about her place in the program, and determined to demonstrate her worth.[/indent]

[color=#5b8a7f]Biography[/color]
[indent]Avery was born inauspiciously in a large city on Lorholt's western coast, her father entirely unknown and her mother a household servant for a local merchant. When Avery was ten years old, her mother was accused of pilfering valuables from said merchant's household and promptly tossed into prison, after which Avery began her illustrious career as a street urchin. Working with a local gang of n'er-do-wells, she developed into a skilled child pickpocket.

At thirteen, now confident in her skills at theft, Avery picked a particular mark on a busy street and managed to abscond with a valuable-looking book that had been on his person. Discovering the book to actually contain dozens of complex glyphs and magical incantations, she spent several weeks transfixed by the learning within, and actually managed to figure out a few spells before eventually being tracked down by the mage she had stolen it from. In trying to escape, she successfully managed to cast those spells, a feat impressive enough that once well and truly cornered she was offered an apprenticeship -- the mark, it turned out, was a master at the city's local mage's guild.

Avery spent the next three years under the tutelage of the wizard she had stolen from, and proved a quick study at both magic and the many fundamentals she'd missed in her book-learning-free childhood, although she routinely frustrated her teacher with shortcuts and lack of discipline. After one particularly annoying antic, she was assigned to the study of military tactics, partially as punishment (there aren't many drier subjects compared to learning to [i]cast spells[/i]) and partially in the hopes that it would improve her self-restraint. Surprisingly, Avery turned out to be something of a prodigy at the subject, finding many of the battlefield's maneuvers to essentially just be large-scale versions of the ploys she had executed as a common thief. Soon, Avery found herself sent to a distant, intimidating fortress to take a battery of tests on the subject -- and then, shortly afterward, extended an invitation to Estermere Academy.[/indent]

[color=#5b8a7f]Misc.[/color]
[indent]Color code: [color=#5b8a7f]#5b8a7f[/color]
Avery tends toward spells that manipulate the world around her -- for instance, raising pillars of earth (for climbing into high-up windows or positioning archers on high ground), opening snares and pitfalls in the ground (for escaping after a theft or twisting the ankle of the knight bearing down on you), or changing the surface of terrain (for hiding your footsteps or miring down enemy cavalry in thick mud).[/indent][/hider]