Appears on her right shoulder, just above her prosthesis's anchor.

Most people would be surprised to find out Ionna is Rodion. Warm, friendly to a fault, easily excitable and perhaps a bit gullible, she entirely lacks the stereotypical frigidness of her homeland. Often the last to draw swords and the first to strike up conversations, even and sometimes especially with those who may not appear receptive to it.

The life of a Templar both excites and fascinates her, but she’s also had to temper her expectations somewhat—in a good way. Her father has always impressed upon her the necessity for the Church’s influence over the Scions, and how important it is they be kept in line for everyone’s safety. However, rather than come into the job expecting to struggle with whoever she’s assigned to, she would rather believe them to be reasonable people. After all, Scion or not, humans can learn from their mistakes, and avoid them, too. To her, no matter the conflict there’s almost always a peaceful solution to be found.

And if there isn’t…well, like her father, Ionna has no love for violence. But neither does she fear it.

It began, as many things do, with a demonstration of power.

On a cloudy dawn in 981, when the lakeside village of Vuzkymist was inextricably occupied by its Kaudian neighbors, a Scion arrived to liberate it. By noon nothing remained, not of the Kaudians, nor the village. They called it “The Wrath of Vuzkymist”, as if to imply the people, so incensed by their occupation, would have dutifully chosen to see their village destroyed, rather than surrendered to the enemy.

In the ruins of his birthplace, a Rodion scientist by the name of Sascha Rani lost his faith in the Scions. And the little syrota he had come to collect lost her home.

She had been orphaned long before The Wrath of Vuzkymist, and was brought to Sascha’s attention when he heard tell of a young ward of his hometown church overloading their older, mana-based technology. He had come down to see her for himself when the Kaudians invaded, and despite everything, he was not disappointed. His status and stability made the adoption easy; in a month’s time she had his name. Ionna Rani.

For a child, she recovered quickly. The attack did not leave her frightened and withdrawn, but rather, Ionna was boundlessly curious about the world, and especially other people. Living in a sizeable town not terribly far from Alvar, she enjoyed relative safety and comfort, though the Rani house was far from some lavish estate.

Sascha spent much of his time away at work, or holed up in his workshop, neck-deep in personal projects. Often, Ionna was left in the care of her uncle, a former knight named Dragomir, well-reputed for his service repelling Kaudians at the border. Age and injury saw him walking with a cane, but he found many excuses to draw his sword even in retirement. Dragomir was tall, broad, and vicious as a gnarled bear, and Sascha was…much softer. He was kindhearted, passive, and seemed quite averse to conflict—not qualities many would say suited a Rodion, especially not other Rodions. So, Dragomir often stood as champion to the family name, defending it and his brother from conflict and slander.

Ionna took much more after her father, which aggravated Dragomir to no end. When she was ten, he resolved to teach her swordplay, assuming she would be hardened in the crucible of combat. He prepared himself for the arduous task of instructing someone so seemingly disinterested, but as it turned out, that was the lesser challenge. Ionna took to the sword quite naturally, it was her levity that resisted. Every session, no matter how long or how battering, she smiled, and thanked him, and looked forward to the next.

Over the years this never changed. His last hope came when he finally convinced her to step into the ring, fight a few duels herself. It was for naught; Ionna spent an hour before the fight chatting with the young man who had purportedly impugned her father’s honor, and when it came time to draw blades, they seemed like lifelong friends. Dragomir watched in horror as Ionna bested her opponent, and what ought to have been considered a humiliating defeat at the hands of a teenager with no record, was instead played off with good-humored laughs, and kind wishes of farewell. She was utterly incorrigible. Worse, he was too proud to abandon her.

What time she didn’t spend training or socializing, she aided her father in his workshop. She wasn’t permitted anywhere near his official duties, but for his personal projects he often asked for her help directly—and she always, enthusiastically agreed. She had little technical expertise, and while well-educated, she was by no means qualified for advanced robotics. She did, however, provide an excellent source of energy.

Ionna was a mage by the most technical of terms. She had zero aptitude for spellcasting of any sort, even the lowliest of parlor tricks were beyond her capabilities. What she did have was an astoundingly large pool of mana. With practice, she no longer shorted every bit of arcane circuitry she engaged with, and could easily provide power to her father’s prototypes. He was fascinated with magitechnology, with the influence of human will on machines. As time went on, fewer of his inventions needed a raw outpouring of power, and instead required her to carefully manipulate her mana output. As with swordplay, this too became natural to her with time, and practice. She liked being useful to him, they spent more time together this way.

Near the end of her twentieth year, Doumerc successfully created the first artificial limb, and many of the Dominion’s governmental robotics sectors swerved to find ways to improve and weaponize the concept, Sascha’s included. He was away from home much more often, and for an entire year, Ionna saw worryingly little of her father.

Dragomir, for his part, did his best to distract her with duels and training—though he was growing too old to keep up with her. It was the first time he had seen her truly distraught. Sascha didn’t call, or write, and what little time he did spend at home he hardly acknowledged her. She became convinced that, somehow, she had upset him, and it was beyond Dragomir's power to change her mind. Even with an old soldier’s heart, he found the treatment cruel.

Eventually however, when Sascha did return in earnest, all it took was a smile for Ionna to light up again. She came to him like a loyal hound, all neglect forgotten. Sascha burned with new inspiration, and the two of them quickly fell back into habit. Dragomir did not see Ionna again for months.

When he did, her right arm was gone.

In its place was a crude prosthesis awash with veins of arcane circuitry. It moved a bit stiffly, but responded down to the slightest motors. Not biotechnology, Sascha asserted, but magitechnology, anchored not to the brain, but the will. Dragomir was aghast; Sascha had created an artificial limb, but he’d mutilated his own daughter to do it. He nearly reported it, partly for the ethical failings, and partly out of his own patriotism. Regardless of how it had been done, it had been done, and the Dominion ought to know about it so they could get ahead. But alas, twenty years away from war had softened him to his niece’s pleas, and ultimately he agreed to say nothing. For now.

Two more years passed, and Sascha’s magitech prosthetic evolved. A fine-tuning of mechanics combined with Ionna’s control over her own mana saw it functioning as naturally as her old arm, better even. With long sleeves and a glove, the difference was all but imperceptible.

The last time Dragomir saw her, she dueled with a blade Sascha had embedded into it. The way she moved, she might as well have been born that way. His congratulations were empty, and though he expressed his displeasure to Sascha in private, his brother brushed him off. So be it. Dragomir decided it was time the Dominion knew.

Too late. They were both gone the next day, and though the house was untouched, the workshop was empty. All of the prototypes, all of the research, vanished.

A week later, they reappeared on the news when Sascha was accepted into the Church’s order, where his secrets would no doubt be put to good use.

And Ionna, standing excitedly beside him, was now a Templar.

Technically speaking, Ionna always has a weapon on-hand. Her prosthetic arm is equipped with a retracting blade which, when deployed, can extend to a proper sword's length, or be shortened. Its single edge carries a slight curve and, while kept sharp, the arm's connection with her own mana allows her to ignite it with arcane energy, making it useful for defense against attacks both physical and magical.

Much to his chagrin, Jannick's minor sigil was placed over his heart.

It is outwardly apparent that Jannick does not want to be here. He held it together well enough to get through his Templar training, but every day that passes is a day that it gets a little bit harder to pretend that his Blessing is the greatest gift on earth. He rolls his eyes in interviews, he smokes inside, he even refers to his Scion as “Holiness” - and sometimes just uses her given name. His patience grows thinner by the day, and his charge’s escape artist tendencies do nothing to alleviate his recurring headaches. He is a man of many words once you get him talking, but these days, very few of them are likely to be good.

The one thing he doesn’t scrimp on, however, is vigilance. Jannick may not take the vaunted positions of Scion and Templar very seriously, but he does appreciate his duty: keeping people safe. Annoying or not, his charge is as worthy of protection as anyone, and his head is always on a swivel, always looking for the signs he was trained to watch out for to spot a dangerous situation before it occurs. But he just can’t wrap his head around protecting his Scion and nobody else - as such, he has a tendency to slip back into his old habits and stick his nose in brewing conflicts when he finds them, even if his Scion isn’t involved.

Faith is a staple of everyday life in Veradis, and nowhere more than Juniperus itself. As such, Jannick, the middle child of six, got all the fixings of the pious upbringing: he went to a religious school, he served as an altar boy, and his parents made sure the whole family was in the pews every Sunday. To him, it was as routine as it was rigorous, with one teaching drilled deepest of them all: the Goddess loves you.

That wasn’t to say he didn’t love the Church, but what captured his young mind was not the priest at the altar, but the guards at the door: the Church Knights in their gleaming armour, shining like angels in the sun. Juniperus was crawling with them; with no civilian authority in the Holy City, all matters of public order were handled by the Church. Church Knights patrolled the streets, directed traffic, put out fires, and of course, fought crime. To Jannick, it seemed like they were the very force that made the world go round. And he wanted to be one of them.

The year of his seventh birthday, he begged and pleaded with his parents for months to let him become a page. While they were apprehensive at first, his pitiable whining must have worn them down eventually, because when the day finally came, he was introduced to Sir Ulrich Gerhardt, a man not too long out of knighthood himself. The new year would see Jannick join Sir Ulrich at the Civitas Equitum, where he got the chance not only to learn the basics of knighthood, but to rub elbows with the scores of other Knights, pages and squires who called the city barracks home. It was a dream come true.

The instruction of an aspiring Church Knight is rigorous and demanding, but Jannick sucked up every drop of it, from the mounted swordplay lessons to the late-night toilet cleaning. But his very favourite part was the field work, when he got to accompany Sir Ulrich on his duties. Sir Ulrich wasn’t the Knight Jannick had always pictured when he played Knights and Monsters with his siblings: instead of a traveling monster slayer or the Templar to a Scion, he was an officer of the Juniperus Police Department. His duties were varied and unique, and during his time as a squire Jannick accompanied Sir Ulrich on mounted patrols, investigations of crime scenes, arrests of petty criminals, and more small-time court appearances than Jannick cared to remember.

It was a strange job for a Knight, Jannick initially thought. It had its share of action, no doubt, and the JPD took immense pride in keeping the streets of the Holy City safe from all manner of crime - but at the same time, the job possessed a level of intimacy with the people of Juniperus that had never before come to Jannick’s mind, but soon became to him the very essence of a Knight. In the stories of his youth, the Knights were always slaying monsters on behalf of faceless villagers or questing at the behest of nameless clergymen for the good of the all-encompassing Church. But in Sir Ulrich’s line of work, the villagers had faces, names, and children who got lost and needed finding; the clergy consoled people whose apartments were broken into and whose assailants needed to be held accountable for their crimes. After a while, police work became, to Jannick, the truest expression of knighthood.

When he was 21, the time for his own knighting finally came. It surprised no one, least of all Sir Ulrich, when Jannick traded his golden breastplate for a kevlar vest and joined the JPD.

No one would argue that it was the right choice for Jannick, but life came at him fast, and he learned soon after his knighting that the calls Sir Ulrich saw fit to bring his squire along on were not the only calls the JPD had to deal with. Juniperus had no more crime than any other city of comparable size - with its heavy Knight presence, it probably had less - but the police department was kept busy all the same. Crushing boredom on patrol could turn into a deadly encounter in an instant; every time the radio screeched, Jannick never knew what he would face next. At first, it was exhilarating. In time, it came to test his faith.

He grew up learning - knowing - one thing above all others: the Goddess loved her children. That was why she created them; that was why, when they called out to her in anguish, she gifted them her essence, creating the Scions. But he was no clergyman; despite his training as a Knight, he didn’t know or understand the deep mysteries of the faith Incepta had instilled into her Church. He didn’t know why, if she loved her children so much, they so frequently forgot her teachings and turned on each other. He didn’t know why the Mother was so content to let it happen.

As a police officer, Jannick saw firsthand the depths of human suffering and depravity. He unearthed the OD victims from their squalid apartments, nameless and known only to landlords complaining of the smell. He wrestled battered women as they begged him hysterically to let their boyfriends go free, only to respond to their house again the next weekend. He pulled the mangled bodies of children from twisted cars while the drunks who hit them walked away spotless.

When he looked up, Jannick saw the gleaming spires of the Cathedra Incepta, the points of the Sigil star embracing the city like the open, loving arms of the Goddess herself. But when he looked around, he wondered if he and his heavenly Mother were seeing the same thing.

The years passed, and he didn’t pray much anymore.

Jannick’s growing burnout must have been apparent, because unbeknownst to him, Sir Ulrich had taken it upon himself to give Jannick a chance at a different career: a Templar. But when news came that Sir Ulrich had recommended him for the position and he’d been accepted, Jannick was devastated; he couldn’t deny that the reality of police work weighed heavily on him, but the answer wasn’t to walk away. If there was so much evil in the world, and Incepta clearly wasn’t doing anything about it, then somebody had to act. He had been working ever more intently, foregoing leisure and taking on a daunting overtime regimen, because someone had to do something. He needed to be out in the streets, not guarding some vaunted magic brat.

But there was nothing he could do. Sir Ulrich meant well, but it doomed him: if Jannick refused such an honour, his reputation as a Church Knight serving the Holy City would be irreparably cratered. No citizen of Juniperus would trust a police officer who didn’t think guarding a Scion was worth his while, and even if the people didn’t care, his superiors certainly would. The best job he could hope for if he refused would be as a deputy in some backwater Rodion village shooting polar bears, if he wasn't stuck at a customs desk in some forsaken train station. If he wasn't stripped of his Knighthood altogether under suspicion of apostasy, that is.

The choice was made for him, made all the more painful by the fact that he had to accept it himself. And now he’s no longer Officer Weber, but Sir Jannick, Templar of Wind, in charge of a Scion who somehow takes the whole “blessed by the Goddess” schtick about as seriously as he does. Honestly, that’s probably even more insulting.

They took back his standard-issue handgun when he left the police department, so Jannick spent his stipend on a pair of his own, which he carries in his shoulder holster at all times. In addition to that, he'll suit up with a military-style carbine when he has time to prepare, and he's always been an advocate of the good old-fashioned baton.