[hider=Kareet of Arcaeda]Name: Kareet of Arcaeda

Species: Tekeri

Appearance: Kareet appears fairly average, compared to most Tekeri. She has deep black, generally well-kept feathers and stands at about 6’11”. Like all Tekeri, she naturally stands with something of a hunched posture, which, along with her serrated beak, sharp talons, and four piercing red eyes, would give her a rather feral, monstrous appearance to a Human observer. At first impressions, all that might set her apart from an animal would be her unusually clean feathers and polished beak. 

Magical Affiliation: Lightning Domain Proficiency

Occupation: Seeker of the Order of Sages

Key Skills: Engineering, Wilderness survival, Combat magic training

Backstory: Kareet’s early childhood was, in its entirety, unremarkable. ‘Kareet’ was not her original name, as the original was left behind with her former life. She was hatched to a peasant family in the lowest rungs of Arcaeda, but she was in her seventh year when her fate shifted. In Arcaeda, per the  decree of the Archmagister, all children must receive at least one year of magical education, provided by the state. With the Archmagister’s vision of Arcaeda as a modern city with magic at its core, the education primarily serves to ensure that every citizen knows what to expect of magic in the city, and how to efficiently work around it. However, it also serves a secondary purpose. In most species, children are more easily able to awaken to magic than adults, so these classes have allowed the city to expand its number of magic-capable citizens. 

While the majority of children each year are unable to use magic, a small percentage, like Kareet, experience their awakenings, which then necessitates that the child must be trained in the usage of magic. In the event that the child belongs to a family that is unable to facilitate that training, then the state invokes what is called the “Law of Correction” to claim guardianship over the child. For Kareet, it meant being removed from the care of her former family and adopted officially by the Order of Magisters. While the Law of Correction can be contested, few ever attempt it, either because they recognize their child would have far greater opportunities in life with magical training, or because they are afraid of being unable to do what would be required to successfully challenge it. Kareet does not know her birth parents’ reasons, nor has she ever cared. 

Kareet was raised, by and large, by the Order of Magisters, which afforded her a proper education, including writing, logic, and mathematics, as well as training in forms of magic for which she had an affinity. For Kareet, that was the Lightning Domain. For youth trained by the Order of Magisters, their instruction encompassed the core skills of their chosen magic for most known applications, military and civilian. Kareet learned of how the Ascendancy had come to use her Domain, primarily magnetism, in construction and engineering, as well as receiving appropriate training in combat magic. 

Magister’s training provided a strong base for Kareet’s knowledge of her Domain. To continue with the Order of Magisters would have brought her along the path of a battlemage to learn more of military tactics and improve her ability in “battlefield” magic. However, her interests brought her instead to transfer to the Order of Sages upon her graduation; not an uncommon choice, for the more academically inclined. Over half of the mages within the Order of Sages were, at one point, members of the Order of Magisters. 

Within the Ascendancy, the purview of the Order of Sages is the accumulation and advancement of [i]all[/i] knowledge, magical and non-magical. It is the combination of both which drives Kareet. While she certainly still seeks to improve her magical prowess, she finds herself intrigued by the concept of how magic and invention can be combined. For her trial of proving, she traveled beyond the Ascendancy, spending time in the settlements of several nations, from the capital of Mythadia itself, to remote settlements small enough not to appear on most maps. She made a particular effort to immerse herself in the practices of magic from other cultures. The Sages taught that all knowledge was worth collecting, regardless of origin.

Upon her return to Arcaeda, Kareet worked to make her contribution to the Sages’ collective knowledge. Simply returning with something unique that was not part of their records, even if it was minor, would have been sufficient for her trial, but she did not wish to settle for sufficient with the mark she would make. Over about a year, she worked on concepts and designs that incorporated the capabilities of magic into her knowledge of engineering. Eventually, it was a device she had witnessed in Mythadia that inspired her own creation. Force mages were commonly used in many parts of the world to aid in construction, but she had observed a kind of elevator for lifting huge stones that used pulleys operated by a series of metal gears.  A lightning mage needed only to turn a single gear to operate the elevator, which could hoist stones heavy enough to normally require several force mages to move. After working through a few concepts, Kareet managed to apply that idea to a siege engine. The idea of using mages to operate more powerful siege engines was nothing new, but Kareet focused on achieving that power more efficiently. Her final prototype was a ballista that used a similar gear and pulley system that a single lightning mage could operate, which was just as powerful as similar weapons that usually required multiple force mages.

At present, Kareet has been granted the rank of Seeker within the Order of Sages, in light of her skills and interests. Seekers are generally the more independent and combat-capable of the order’s members who specialize in the search for knowledge, regardless of the dangers that may be required to obtain it. [/hider]