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[color=0072bc]Name[/color] 
Ianthe

[color=0072bc]Race[/color]
Human

[color=0072bc]Age[/color] 
22

[color=0072bc]Class[/color] 
Fighter

[color=0072bc]Place of Origin[/color] 
Alexandria

[color=0072bc]Personality[/color]
-More like Paci[b]FIST[/b]
-Honor or gtfo
-Talk is cheap, but medicants are expensive
-Respect and provide for your peasantry so I know it’s real 
-I want to like you, but I don’t have to like you to tank for you
-Sword and [i]Bored[/i] 
-If I hear the words “proper lineage” or “unfit for knighthood” one more time I am going to [i]snap[/i]
-The strong who don’t protect the weak are weak themselves
-Motivate don’t dictate
-Just a small town girl
-Don’t have to worry about having big shoes to fill if your family can’t afford shoes

[color=0072bc]Backstory[/color]
Growing up along Alexandria’s border, Ianthe learned early what it was like being invisible. Argo was a small village of only a dozen or so families, most of which were farmers. Ianthe’s parents maintained meager if consistent crops, and made their living at the markets of bigger towns. The Alexandrian regency only ever remembered them when the levies were due, and the soldiers came knocking, equal parts expectant and disdainful of the place and its people. They didn’t care whether the harvests were barren or bounteous, they didn’t care if the bandits had come through and left them empty, the payment could be coin, it could be property, it could be conscription, so long as the crown received its due. 

The bandits who trolled the edge of the Free Cities, fearing no retaliation, had fallen into a routine with Argo. They came, they took, and if they felt generous, they left enough for the levies. The fiends had no mind for negotiation, and though they came more rarely, their attacks never went without casualty. When it became clear that no help was coming, no matter how desperate Argo’s pleas, most of the families resigned themselves to their fate. 

Not Ianthe. 

They didn’t have weapons, really. Farm tools and slabs of wood bound with rope were just about all she had to work with, at first. She was tough, weathered even as a girl, and put up enough of a fight against the smaller bands to drive them off. She gathered scraps of armor and shoddy old swords this way, which came in handy, because meeting fiends with nothing but an old scythe and hammer wasn’t going to cut it. Hell, the bandits’ rusty swords and roughshod armor only just had her scraping by.

Iron and steel sated the taxmen just fine, and the viscera of fiends pulled interest at the markets, which meant that Argo was, for the first time, making a profit. 

As Ianthe grew older, the bandits grew indignant and sparse, the fiends only grew fiercer, and the international relations grew tense, but by gods were the levies as steady as the day she was born. People had begun noticing Argo’s greater contributions to the markets, and eventually word began to spread of Ianthe and the few villagers who had taken up Argo’s defense alongside her, too stubborn to just roll over and let fate befall them. Merchants tried to hire her on for protection, mercenary bands offered her more money than Argo had paid since she was a child, even the regency came asking after her enlistment, citing her duty to the crown, and to the people of Alexandria. It was the Hunters Guild that intrigued her. 

Ianthe, admittedly, was not very adventurous. She had a small life in a small home, and had spent most of her years focused on protecting it. The Hunters Guild, however, was genuine in a way that she admired: it wasn’t about debt, or civic duty, it was just about keeping people safe. She understood that, she respected that, but she couldn’t reconcile leaving home for it. Not until the borders shut, suddenly and almost inexplicably, and the levies increased. It seemed as though Alexandria had entered into some sort of national emergency, perhaps even all of Atles. 

It was then she realized that Argo had overestimated its profits. With the borders shut, that meant the Free City markets and bandits were gone, which left only the distant Alexandrian markets, whose competition had only grown fiercer. They could bring crops, but they couldn’t match prices. Soon they would be back where they started, penniless and at the mercy of the regency. 

So, Ianthe made a difficult choice. She left Argo in the care of the men and women who had protected it with her, and set off for the Hunters Guild. She hopes the steady work, and maybe a bit of luck, will be enough to keep her home above water until Atles settles down.

[i]If[/i] it settles down.