Here. Take a human.

[hider=Von Brandt]
[table][row][/row][row][cell][center][img]https://i.imgur.com/GjFA88z.png?1[/img]
[color=white]_______________________________[/color][/center][indent][indent]
[quote][color=f26522][sub][b]NAME:[/b][/sub][/color]
[indent][sup]Hazel von Brandt[/sup][/indent]
[color=f26522][sub][b]AGE:[/b][/sub][/color]
[indent][sup]29[/sup][/indent]
[color=f26522][sub][b]RACE:[/b][/sub][/color]
[indent][sup]Human[/sup][/indent]
[color=f26522][sub][b]PRONOUNS:[/b][/sub][/color]
[indent][sup]She/Her[/sup][/indent]
[color=f26522][sub][b]HOMETOWN:[/b][/sub][/color]
[indent][sup]Cassor Valley[/sup][/indent]
[color=f26522][sub][b]HEIGHT:[/b][/sub][/color]
[indent][sup]5’9”[/sup][/indent]
[color=f26522][sub][b]WEIGHT:[/b][/sub][/color]
[indent][sup]150 lbs[/sup][/indent][/quote]
[/indent][/indent][center]_______________________________[/center]
[I]"A fire can warm a house or turn it to ash. It all depends on who starts it."[/i]
[/cell][cell][center]
[h1][img]https://txt.1001fonts.net/img/txt/dHRmLjcyLmUxNjEyNC5TR0Y2Wld3Z2RtOXVJRUp5WVc1a2RBLjA/chopin-script.regular.png[/img][/h1]_______________________________
[sup][h1]
[color=black] the Sacrilegious Turncoat[/color]
[color=f26522]the Sacrilegious Turncoat[/color]
[/h1][/sup]
[I]"Seek out Evil. Destroy the Source. End the Suffering. Words I used to live by. Stupid, stupid words."[/i]
[/center]
[sup][h2][color=181818][b]▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅[/b][right][b]▅▅▅▅▅[/b][/right][/color][center][b][color=black] What are you? [/color][/b]
[b][color=f26522]What are you?[/color][/b][/center][/h2][/sup]
[indent][b][color=f26522]APPEARANCE[/color]
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[I]"I suppose most will only notice the cover of the book anyway."[/i]

[indent]The first thing most would notice about Hazel is that she looks practically untouched by the horrors of Deadwood. There is not a cress upon her face, a scar on her body, or a discoloration upon her light skin. Her lightning blue eyes have witnessed atrocities incited by the very words from her lips, but the weight and stress that it has brought upon her is only carried inside. Her straight, strawberry blonde hair is clean and cut just above the shoulder, framing her angular face. She wears golden earrings and a silver necklace that flashes in the sunlight, taunting brigands that watch from the shadows.

It’s easily assumed from looking at her that Hazel was born in a high station  and it extends into her mannerisms. She ever so slightly holds her pointed chin up, yet avoids appearing condescending. She stands with her shoulder’s back and her hands clasped behind her back, making her appear taller and broader than her actual body.  Her stride is confident and unrushed, her eyes shining as she engulfs the environment and people around her. Her voice is soothing like a warm blanket coupled and a cup of hot cider after weeks navigating through the wilds. Despite her aura of elegance,  Hazel dresses in sensible traveller clothes that, while pristine, are more functional than fashionable.  [/indent]

[b][color=f26522]CAPABILITIES[/color]
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[I]"Those things are still part of me, but now I can use them for something greater."[/i]

[indent]Hazel’s greatly shines when it comes to being an investigator of both mundane and arcane nature. After spending nearly a decade operating as a witch hunter for the Ember Makers,  she excels at following leads and sussing out the truth. Although less pertinent now as an independent agent, the skillset she learned while hunting witches still has its uses. In civilized or manmade areas she knows how to command authority, spot when someone is bullshitting her, or notice oddities and traps. In the wilds she can easily track just about anything, find safe locations for shelter, or notice the telltale signs of a monster’s lair. Against magic users she [i]claims[/i] to have a kind of sixth sense, able to intuit what sort of ritual they are attempting to cast or “detecting” residue magic surrounding them after recent spell casts.

While she has an abundance of stamina, she is not very skilled when it comes to fighting—typically Witchfinders hire muscle to work alongside them in the field. However, she has acquired an ancient arcane tome. While written in an ancient cipher based upon a dead language, Hazel has begun to work on cracking the code and has translated some of the spells. Her spells are largely supportive, serving to bolster her allies and hinder her enemies, but due to the rough translation are not perfect and can swell with rampant arcane energy. These Flares, as she has come to call them, are extremely rare but hint at a greater, more dangerous power to come. The obvious threat of being exposed as a mage and the potential for catastrophe with her Flares makes Hazel treat most of her spells as a final, desperate action instead of a go-to solution.

[hider=Decoded Spells]
[color=f26522][b]Healing Warmth:[/b][/color] Hazel can cure most forms of light wounds by laying her hand upon the injury and performing a short ritual. Blood, either from the injured or from herself, is traced with her finger near the wound and then burned in the ritual to quickly cauterize and heal the injury. After the spell is cast the blood turns to ash and falls away. People who are healed by Hazel feel warmth as it is casted. While she can momentarily stabilize gravely injured people, her normal heal cannot pull them back from death’s door. The spell takes enough time to cast and requires a steady hand that it is difficult to perform while threatened. It doesn’t treat diseases, curses, or other abnormalities.
    [indent][color=f26522][b]Flare - Purifying Ashes:[/b][/color] The blood sigils run causing the ritual to go array, yet while it should it does not fail. The target of her spell feels agonizing pain as all of the blood inside their body begins to boil and their flesh begins to glow like a star about to go supernova. Their skin is briefly covered in an encasement of ash that quickly cracks and falls away. Hazel’s heal can now pull someone back from the brink of death, remove all their wounds, and cleanse most abnormalities. Unless they are especially hardy the sheer pain of the heal will knock out most individuals for a short time, making it even riskier for Hazel to heal others with under attack. [/indent]
[color=f26522]
[b]Natural Barrier:[/b] [/color]Hazel draws runes with dirt on the ground that allows her to terraform the earth around her. Veins of harmless flames streak from the runes to the targeted area, momentarily glow in the targeted area, and then melds the earth. She can cause rock barriers to jut up to form defensive walls, loosen and muddy the ground to make creatures get stuck, or create safer paths through treacherous areas. The time it takes to prepare the ritual depends on the form of the spell, with barriers being the quickest and paths being the longest. The earth shifts slowly enough that it doesn’t harm anyone caught on it, but is fast enough that it can be tricky to avoid and can be used to block obvious incoming attacks.

[indent][color=f26522][b]Flare - Natural Disaster: [/b][/color]Something goes horribly wrong. The ground shifts and quakes, the harmless flames begin to leap like geysers and spew rocks and smoke, and then everyone better take cover or flee. Depending on the Natural Barrier she was going for, the intensity of the disaster shifts. The rock barriers now burst out of the earth as quick as a fatal spear thrust before erupting in a blast of hot magma in a small area around them. The muddied ground turns to tar and spews forth poisonous volcanic ash, slowly choking the life out of whatever is unfortunate to be stuck in it. The path causes a massive fissure, plowing through whatever stands in its way like a frenzied Beast of Suffering and permanently changing the environment til the end of days.[/indent]

[color=f26522][b]Bonfire: [/b][/color]Hazel sprinkles a circle of ash around a piece of coal and creates a magical flame up to the size of a decent campfire. She cannot be burned by the flame, but others can. While useful in a utilitarian sense, Hazel is capable of controlling any flames she creates in this manner with directions from fingers coated in ash. She can smear the ash across the ground to create an opaque wall of fire, grab the coal to create a torch in her hand, or chuck the coal to throw a splash of fire at someone. Due to being magical, the fire does not behave like a normal fire would—it does burn enough to hurt, but it will not spread outside of the ash lines, cannot catch flammable objects on fire, and goes out quick once the coal is tossed away from the ash. In a fight a blade is more dangerous than her flame, but the sight of someone throwing fire is generally enough to keep the swords at bay.    
    [indent][color=f26522][b]Flare - Funeral Pyre:[/b][/color] The ash lifts from the ground, encircles Hazel, and engulfs her like a witch being burned at the stake as she becomes a walking inferno. While the flames still do not harm her, the conflagration surrounding her acts like a wildfire and is capable of spreading. She can spray fire from her hands like a dragon’s breath and whip it around her like a deadly firestorm, but she has no control over the flames once they are produced. The spell burns quickly, but the destruction caused by it and the remaining fires continue to burn long after the ash has blown away from her form.

[/indent]

[color=f26522][b]Burning Gaze: [/b][/color]Hazel’s quickest and simplest spell. She streaks a smear of ash over her eyes and blinks it away. Her eyes appear like burning coals that strike fear into wild beasts and weak-willed, unintelligent monsters, prompting them to flee from her or freeze in place instead of fighting. While minorly unsettling, it is ineffective against humanoids and creatures at the top of the food chain. Since she must lock eyes with the target of the spell it is difficult to use against packs of animals, as the fear effect begins to fade as she turns the spell towards another.
    [indent][color=f26522][b]Flare - Terrifying Gaze:[/b][/color] Creatures see an unspeakable horror when look into Hazel’s eyes, capable of making even the most daring of adventurers stop in terror. She knows not what they see, for none who have witnessed it would ever dare to approach her after she looks away.[/indent][/hider]

 [/indent]

[b][color=f26522]EQUIPMENT[/color]
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[I]"My system is one of organized chaos verging on catastrophic destruction."[/i]

[indent]Her aforementioned satchel is stuffed with basic supplies, adventuring gear like rope and lanterns, and a journal. She wears three tiny pouches at her side, one for coin, one filled with coal, and the other filled with ash. Wrapped against her satchel is a map case stuffed with local maps, a spy glass, and cartography tools. Hung at her side in a brown scabbard is a shortsword for self-defense. The blade is beautifully crafted with nary a nick on it, and when drawn she holds it out like a rank amateur imitating a swashbuckler that they saw mock dueling at a harvest festival’s stage play. In a smaller scabbard behind her shortsword is a small curved dagger that has seen more use but is still regularly cleaned. The woman wears no armor, a questionable choice for any trying to survive in Deadwood.

Hidden in a false side of her satchel is an old, leather bound tome filled with ancient arcane secrets written in another language. The words are actually a cipher, and they appear to shift and move when the pages are open. A few of the pages are splotched with reddish-brown stains. Also inside of the secret compartment is a dark iron insignia of a torch with a spiral of smoke wrapped around it. This is Hazel’s badge that once showed she was a Magistrate of the Ember Makers, the title given to their high-ranking witch hunters. There are perhaps a dozen other similar looking badges mixed in with her own, soiled with ash and rust.
[/indent]

[/indent][/cell][/row][/table]

[sup][h2][color=181818][b]▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅[/b][right][b]▅▅▅▅▅[/b][/right][/color][center][b][color=black] Who are you? [/color][/b]
[b][color=f26522]Who are you?[/color][/b][/center][/h2][/sup]
[indent][b][color=f26522]GOAL[/color]
[sub]▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔[/sub][/b]
[I]"I thought I had it all figured out. Now all I am certain of is how little I truly know."[/i]

[indent]Repentance, knowledge, and security, in that order. She believes that she can find all of those things by helping the Queen and achieving residence in Exusia. A former witch hunter, Hazel has shedded her extremist beliefs after acquiring a mystical tome.  She knows she can never undo the suffering that she has caused, but perhaps she can achieve some sort of karmic balance by doing something constructive. However, to ease the path to redemption she’d like to learn more about her spellbook and find a way to detour the hunters on her tracks. [/indent]

[b][color=f26522]PERSONALITY[/color]
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[I]"I do not want forgiveness. I do not want a status. I only want to help. Why is that so impossible to believe?"[/i]

[indent]Hazel acts matronly, quick to lend a hand or offer an ear, hesitant to judge, and respectful to even the most repulsive of people. She views her past self as a vile monster that was cold, calculating, and quick to suspicion. She is trying her hardest to behave differently, falling into the role of a friendly but quiet caretaker. Hazel displays altruism and generosity where she can, traits that she somehow managed to survive with despite the harshness of reality. Hazel is an abomination amongst the defeated faces, cold shoulders, and broken spirits of the denizens of Deadwood, a naive woman who still believes in goodness and righteousness despite the obvious signs that such things are nothing more than a flight of fantasy.

Under her kind, unbroken exterior is a creature driven by little more than sorrow. While she doesn’t deny what she once was, thoughts of the past still tear at her heart. She rather keep the sadness to herself than be a burden on others who already have it so hard. There have been times where people travelling with Hazel have noticed her staring without blinking into fire or piles of ash for minutes, practically unresponsive, like her soul was ripped out of her body. She will be politely dismissive if questions about it are brought up about it later, uttering an excuse about just being tired.

It doesn’t take long for people who work alongside Hazel to realize that she is a deeply curious individual. While respectful of a person’s privacy, Hazel tries to learn as much as she can about different cultures and locales, always jotting down notes in her journal at the end of the day. Likewise, she’s the kind of person who checks out the strange noise at night instead of hunkering down in her bed, fearlessly walking into potential danger as if nothing could possibly harm her.  [/indent][/indent]

[sup][h2][color=181818][b]▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅[/b][right][b]▅▅▅▅▅[/b][/right][/color][center][b][color=black] Why are you? [/color][/b]
[b][color=f26522]Why are you?[/color][/b][/center][/h2][/sup]
[I]"I fear the thing I could have become."[/i]

Hazel doesn't tell her story often, for it is a long and harrowing one, and all the world really needs to know is that she is no longer the monster she appeared to be. Still, she is not the kind of person that is so cowardly that they refuse to face their shade. She will spin the yarn while seated across the campfire if properly encouraged, be it by the urging of companions or the pulling of a lingering sorrow. It begins like all tales from Deadwood begin—with hope, death, and misery.

[indent][hider=I. Smoke]Her home was a small but strong community centered around a winery, governed and ran by her family and nestled in the valley next to Mt. Cassor. The von Brandts grew grapes in the fertile soil next to the mountain, yearly sacrificing a portion of their crops to the crater atop the smoking mountain to appease the beast they believed laid inside. When she was thirteen Hazel, whose father was on a business venture, joined her mother with their guards on the trek up the mountain to learn how to perform the sacrifice. The mountain rumbled and spewed forth smoke as Hazel approached the precipice to toss the fruit into the crater, slipping as it shook and tumbling over the edge. She was able to grab an outlet and once the rumbling stopped her screaming was heard and the guards lowered a rope. The sacrifice was finished without any further excitement and a shaking, terrified Hazel descended the mountain.

After the incident Hazel began to notice her mother acting differently. The woman had always been austere to the servants but had been kind to her own daughter, but now Hazel caught her own mother staring at her with suspicion, treating her like an outsider, and muttering under her breath. A year crept by at a glacier’s pace as Hazel found herself being followed by servants, discovered strange minerals and herbs in her meals, and found burnt effigies under her bed. A strange, older man named Augustine arrived at their homestead with a letter. The letter was written by her father, who said he would still be away for months to come and that Augustine had been hired to tutor Hazel, which he did. Yet he also probed her with strange, terrifying questions about herself and her parents that kept her up at night.

The tension that had been building for the past year erupted during the next trip up to the mountain. Hazel did not want to go, but her mother insisted. Augustine offered to accompany the women, but he was declined by Hazel’s mother—outsiders couldn’t take part in the sacrifice lest they irk the mountain. Struggling to hold the basket steady, Hazel approached the edge of the crater yet again. As it started to rumble she heard a shout come from behind her and she dropped the basket, grapes spilling into the crater as she turned to witness her mother, dagger drawn and hate in her eyes, crumple to the ground with a crossbow bolt in her chest.

Hazel watched in a numb daze as Augustine appeared on the summit and struck down the guards before they could even draw their steel. He then grabbed the petrified girl and descended the mountain. Hazel regained control of herself and attempted to struggle, but Augustine easily overpowered the girl. Her struggling stopped when she realized he would’ve harmed her already if that had been his intentions. As Hazel was loaded onto a wagon and driven away from the volcano that had begun to erupt, lava flowing down to destroy the small village,  Augustine revealed himself to be a Magistrate of the Ember Makers, a hunter of witches—witches like her mother and father.

He explained everything to her. He told her that her parents ritually sacrificed people to the volcano to protect the regain and help grow their crops, that numerous girls had disappeared from neighboring villages, how her father had kidnapped them, and how her mother sacrificed them to the mountain. He had been tasked by the Ember Makers to completely purge the town, who all had been complicit with the ritual, but through his questioning had come to believe that Hazel was an innocent. As black ash darkened the horizon behind them, Augustine offered to continue Hazel’s tutelage—not as a student, but as a hunter. What was her other choice? Try to survive alone in the wilds of Deadwood when she used to have a lady help her get dressed in the morning? [/hider]

[hider=II. Fire]Hazel accepted Augustine’s offer, and their training began. For years she served as his apprentice, faithfully at his side as he went from town to town drumming up support for witch hunts and setting the torch to husbands, wives, brothers, sisters, sons, and daughters. Hazel learned to hate witches. She saw how the presence of even one could spread poison through an entire community and turn neighbors against one another. Much to her surprise, she also began to enjoy the thrill of the hunt, the game of cat and mouse, the rush brought upon by the feeling of kill or be killed.

When Augustine died, his insides forced out by a few arcane words and a couple lines of chalk, Hazel didn’t even shed a single tear. The man who had killed her family and left her village to burn and the surrogate father who had raised her to become just as awful as he had clearly succeeded in his training. She picked up right where he left off, a bloodhound sniffing after the arcane, spreading fervor and fear wherever she went and ripping out the cancerous growths that were choking the stagnating societies that were struggling just to survive.  She saw herself as a legendary hero, a knight errant, a champion of justice righting the wrongs in this world with a torch in one hand and the other waving on an angry mob.

And then came what would ultimately be her last hunt. It had turned sour once Hazel had realized some of the locals had banded together to protect a suspected witch, likely enthralled by her magic. So powerful was the spell that the only solution was to purge the village, level it completely like the lava from a flowing volcano and letting something better grow from the ashes. With a band of hired mercenaries by her side, Hazel led the wholesale slaughter of the town, sparing none, burning all. The town fought back valiantly. It was a bloodbath for both sides. Hazel pressed on even when the witch’s brother speared her through the ribs and just under her heart seconds before she drove her sword through his.

When she made it to where the witch was hiding she could barely walk and barely see, blood, smoke, and sweat mixing in her eyes. She saw the witch, a young girl perhaps in her late teens, not much older then when she had started traveling with Augustine, reach out towards her as Hazel’s world went black, the loss of blood finally getting to her. When Hazel awoke she saw the witch over her, spell book open, lips muttering. A warmth surged through her body and gave Hazel the strength needed to jam her sword through the girl’s belly. Hazel swears she saw the girl smile as the witch died, her tome falling open on the ground, the spell to heal Hazel having been barely finished.

The act of mercy towards an enemy shook Hazel deeply, and the vibrations broke Hazel free of the mold created by  Augustine and the Ember Makers’ indoctrination. She grabbed the woman’s tome and took off before the remaining mercenaries could find her. Her mind raced as it saw the past witches she had hunted in a new light. If this woman had only been a healer, then what of the others? She began seeing inconsistencies in her past investigations, explanations she hand-waved, and vile actions she justified all for the fervor of the hunt.

Augustine had always repeated the motto of the Ember Makers to her: Seek out Evil. Destroy the Source. End the Suffering. They had been her mantra, but now she couldn’t remember a single time where a community had called for her to lead a witch hunt. She had always been the one to arrive in the town and declare one, as Augustine had done before her, and as she was certain the other Ember Makers did elsewhere. Before her arrival the communities had been fine, but upon her departure they were shattered, unlikely to ever regain a sense of normalcy. Hazel felt sick. End the suffering? Destroy the source? She might as well toss herself from a cliff then, because the only thing consistent in all of these awful witch hunts had been her leading the push.[/hider]

[hider=III. Ashes]She was there on the edge when she felt the book burn in her hand. Hazel looked down at it, flipping through the pages, and watched as the cipher danced and shifted. She landed on the page with the girl’s bloodstained on it, the last spell the woman had ever cast. Amazingly, she could understand some of the text. Hazel sat down on the ledge, her feet kicking the stone cliff as her finger drew and redrew the arcane symbol in the dirt. She must’ve been there for hours before the sigil finally glowed, fizzled, and died. She couldn’t reproduce it again, but it didn’t matter. Her curiosity was piqued. She couldn't bring back the people she'd massacred or the towns she had destroyed, but she could show others the kindness the nameless witch had shown her. She just needed to learn how.

Hazel stepped away from the ledge. She abandoned the Ember Makers and began wandering to discover how to become the kind of person who could heal a monster that was trying to kill them. It didn’t take her long to realize that the other Ember Makers were after her. She was excommunicated from the order, branded a heretic, and slander was spread denying she’d ever been a Magistrate in the first place. Augustine was eradicated from Ember Maker history, his pages ripped out of their documents to remove all of Hazel’s ties from the fanatical order. It bothered her little. She wanted nothing to do with the bastards.

However, their chase meant she couldn’t stay in one place too long without fear of unleashing another witch hunt in a town she had resided. For the past two years Hazel has been on the move, helping travelers and studying her tome all while avoiding her former order. Hazel jumped at the call when she saw the Queen of Exusia’s plea for adventurers. It would be impossible for the Ember Makers to follow her there, and if she was able to live in Exusia then Hazel could get proper training on the spells in her book. She could finally achieve her goal. End the suffering? That was impossible, crazy even. But balance it? Perhaps that too was impossible, but she still had to try.[/hider]

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[sup][h2][color=181818][b]▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅[/b][right][b]▅▅▅▅▅[/b][/right][/color][center][b][color=black] What else is there? [/color][/b]
[b][color=f26522]What else is there?[/color][/b][/center][/h2][/sup]
[indent][i]“A world without joy is worse than a world with suffering, and you can’t experience one without the other.”[/i][/indent][/hider]