Parisa
"Well then, let’s have a bit of fun." Parisa Azadi (formly Bardeh)
Titles/Nicknames: Risa, Witch of
The Snap Deceit Age: 29
Race: Human
Gender: Female
Sexual Orientation: Heterosexual
Combat Role: Magical Offense
Hair Color: Black
Eye Color: Dark green
Height: 5’8
Weight: 137
Appearance: Risa has an angular face with high cheek bones that sets her smile into a lopsided, dimpled smirk. Her dark eyes spark mischievously beneath expressive and mobile brows and her naturally Saryian sun-kissed skin stretches tautly over a lean and narrow, reasonably toned physique. Straight, side-swept dark hair falls in choppy layers down her back. She’s adamant in her refusal to shear it short, and so, for pragmatism’s sake, she twists the majority of it back in a long braid. What’s allowed to hang freely maintains a windblown, perpetually tousled quality. Her posture if more often than not lax and slouched, though her standing defiantly hipshot is far from rare.
Risa’s style of dress is fairly simple. Out of the arena she enjoys wearing woolen pants and silken tunics belted low on her hips and dyed bright colors with calf high, flexible leather boots for most day-to-day activities, but is known to enjoy wearing dresses once in a while. She has a fondness for things that complement her figure, so fitted bodices and skirts that flow with her wind and graceful movements are something not uncommon to see her wearing to lounge around in or during social occasions. When the weather gets a bit colder her clothing is supplemented with deep hooded cloaks and jackets with puffed sleeves and high collars
Overview: Parisa is extremely extroverted. She walks with the swagger of someone accustomed to ship life and her patented crooked smirk and laissez faire countenance are almost a constant. Her sense of humor tends to be rather wicked and she has an odd habit of calling everyone by a nickname; kind of like a bawdy older sister. A liberal dose of sarcasm is present in most of her speech, and she enjoys engaging in witty banter and teasing. Despite her generally friendly -if not somewhat smarmy- nature, she has quite a few sly undertones about her that lend her a sense of slipperiness. In turn, there are few people she trusts farther than she can throw them (without magic, because that would ruin the point of her metaphor; she can throw people pretty far with her winds, you know). Especially nobility. Of course, this probably stems from her projecting her own life of a less-than-stellar citizenship onto others. She does sometimes develop soft spots for certain types of people, though she’d never admit to it.
She doesn’t change much in combat. Her insolent strut, bright clothing, spinning glaive, and swirling blue magics immediately draw the eyes of the crowd and enemies. She somehow always seems to be smiling despite the chaos of the arena and she feeds off the energy of the crowds. Her school of thought seems to be that she may die in the arena, but she’ll get better.
It might not seem it, as she does an admirable job of hiding behind snarky bravado, but Risa is someone who doesn’t know
what exactly she wants. She went from a life of basically gilded slavery to one with no boundaries in the proverbial snap of a finger; one extreme to the other. So now she lives, but she doesn’t know to what end. Maybe it sounds foolish to most, but up until a few years ago she never had options.
Strength: 1
Dexterity: 6
Intelligence: 1
Cunning: 7
Magic: 8
Willpower: 3
Endurance:3
Charisma: 5
Weapons of Choice: Parisa carries a glaive into the arena with her. It’s pointy end is wickedly shaped and has a small chain hooked to the base of the blade and is loosely wrapped round the shaft and connected to the buttend. It’s also has a magical rune, one of her own making that took her years of arduous trial and error to get right, that makes her weapon seem far lighter to wield without sacrificing any of the umph of getting hit by it. That’s it. The weapon is largely there to act as a conduit for her lightning magic though she can and will use it to fight.
Armor/Combat Apparel: She usually wears a silk tunic of a bright color, blues and teals being among her favorite, that is belted low across her hips. Over top she has a lightweight, sleeveless leather jerkin and vambraces that are of a surprisingly good quality and have whirling designs. Lastly she wears a pair of cream leggings and tall leather boots.
Fighting Style: Parisa is a mage, so she prefers standing in the back and twiddling her thumbs… or fingers and glaive, as the case may be. If she can get off a spell of two without having an arrow in her thigh or a sword swinging at her face, she’d be pretty happy. Her magic is a powerhouse, though, and her swirling blue winds can rip through enemies with devastating effect if she’s afforded enough time to build them up. If push comes to shove, Risa will step to the line and fight, but she’s far more effective with her magic than her glaive.
Magical Affinity: Storm Mage
The Four Winds - This spell was the first Risa ever learned, and also the most versatile in her arsenal. By pouring her own magical energy into the air around her, she grabs hold of the winds and gathers them to her before releasing them at her own discretion. As long as she has magical energy, she can keep weaving the spell into something more complex and dangerous. She’s used this spell to do anything from the most mundane, like pushing along tiny toy sailboats across a fountain (a few quick flicks of her fingers), to the most extreme where she can send enemies careening great distances into walls and holding them there until they’re crushed (which takes a couple minutes to build before casting).
Akzum’s Breath - Named after the Sariyan Patron God, this spell requires very precise control and concentration. Hands moving like a puppeteer on strings of shimmering air, Risa can slowly pull the air from opponents’ bodies and maintain a pocketed void in their face until they suffocate to death, or until she’s interrupted. Even if she doesn’t kill them outright, she makes them easy prey for others, and it is not a pleasant experience to feel both lungs shrivel and collapse.
Lightning Tempest - When the sky begins to darken and rumble ominously, and Risa’s glaive starts whirling in a dizzyingly quick, sparking pattern… well, you know you’re in for a treat. It’s her most complex spell to weave, as she has to not only create a storm out of nothingness (unless by happenstance there’s already one conveniently present) and then force the building electrical energy to strike her. She acts as a human lightning rod and contains the electricity with her body in a spectacle of an angrily sparking and dancing blue stom. Then, and only then, will Risa ever willingly enter the fray. If she can make contact with an enemy before the spell being disrupted, she will transfer all that lightning to them in one deafening crack.
Place of Birth: Sariya, Guhar Mines
Social Status: Smuggler, runaway house mage
History: Sariya is known as the purveyor of rare gems and minerals. Their nobility and high merchant class strut among the desert oases, laden in the sparkling source of their wealth and flamboyant, colorful silks. And indeed, so do the wealthy of the rest of the realms drape themselves in the gold and jewels dug from the depths of the South. But how often do you hear of those who toil in the fetid darkness of the mines? The people who dig until their fingers bleed, whose faces are forever stained with dirt and clay, who eat and sleep and work in the same tunnel they’ll probably die in. Nobody likes to think of human suffering that went into the shiny baubles that adorn their throats.
But it was in one of those tunnels that Parisa was born as a
Bardeh; not a surname, but a mark of bondage all those working in the mines shared. Slave. Serf. Property… That was Bardeh; a reminder of one's place and worth. It was in the dank mines where she spent her young childhood, using her small hands to shift through piles of pebbles looking for anything that shone in the low torchlight, and avoiding the attention of the guards and their whips. It’s where she’d be now, she supposed, had she not shown the spark of magic at age six. Her parents had thrust her into the hands of the nearest overseer, trying to get her a better lot in life. That day was the first time she remembers seeing the desert sun and the last she remembers of seeing her parents.
Her world changed. She was brought to the house of her master, a mushir of some influence, and after a substantial scrubbing and wrapping her too thin of frame body into some appropriate clothing she was presented before Jabir Al-Aswad Razi. The man was large with his wealth and had a cruel, possessive sneer already blackening his face. It didn’t take her long, even at that young of an age, to decide that she hated this man. After a thorough examination of her by both her master and the magical advisor that served him at the time it was decided that Parisa would not be sold off to a mage-school, but instead kept and trained within the household for Jabir's personal use.
Despite the constant threat of beatings and worse punishment, Risa still managed to grow into an insolent, headstrong young woman
who bridled against her reins and had too much magical power for her own good. But she was beautiful and rare, so her master made sure the blows never fell anywhere that might mar her looks. No, he liked to parade her around his extravagant parties like the expensive novelty she was and it wouldn’t do to have his guests look upon ruined flesh. He’d have her attend him in public constantly until she became a staple, always standing a few paces behind with her face lowered to hide the simmering anger there. Her collar chafed for many years beneath the silk finery he dressed her in. Every time she had to produce a gentle breeze to cool party-goers or put magical weight behind Jabir’s words as he negotiated with one of his ‘business partners’ she was reminded of how much she hated him.
But then, the year she saw her 21st summer, a man she’d never seen before started showing up to her master’s gatherings. He was bright, and smiling, and charismatic in a way the simpering nobles around him were not. Nasir was a captain of a ship the mushir had hired to smuggle the gems from his mines to faraway ports to avoid paying taxes on them to the Sheikhs. More importantly though, he was the first person other than her fellow house slaves who
saw her. Parisa can now admit that in her sheltered and deprived youthful self fell hard for him.
He made it a point to sneak in little chats and visits with her whenever he came to the household, spinning her tales of his adventures and the lands beyond the desert sands and being the light in her otherwise dull existence. He’d only been partnered with Jabir for little more than a year before their working relationship began to fall through, however. Her master was not known for keeping his word, or partners, for very long and Nasir wasn’t the type of man that took kindly to being played with. He told her as much the last time they ever saw each other, right before he leaned in close to her and said the words Risa will never forget: “You could run, you know. No one can catch the wind.”
The words resonated with her and hummed in her blood for days afterwards. It was the final push she needed. He was right, of course he was. She was stronger than the man that held her leash all her life. She could run. And she did. That night she unshackled herself from her life and old name. No longer was she Bardeh; she was Azadi. Free.
Parisa ended up finding her way to the docks and, hanging on the stories of Nasir’s adventures, sought out a ship that was leaving that night and would take her with them. Whether by pure irony or divine intervention she ended up at
The Snap Deceit, a fast sloop used mostly for smuggling and the occasional privateering. For the price of the handful of jewels she had stolen from her master she found herself in the hull with no questions asked.
Her initial plan had been to ride with the ship until the first non-Sariyan port they landed at, but after months of living on deck with the crew and learning much to solve her naivety she decided to seek permission to stay on. It was only then that she revealed to the sailors that she was, in fact, a storm mage. As one can imagine, the captain of
The Snap was more than happy to oblige with her request.
So for years Risa has served on the crew of the small ship where she has dabbled in all that a life full of choices could offer. She learned so much more in her years there than in the rest of her life combined; sitting at the feet of a bunch of boisterous, exuberant sailors. A sheltered housemage girl turned quickly into a savvy and confident woman.
The Snap Deceit, in return, has risen to no small bit of notoriety. With Risa’s magic filling the sails, the crew has been able to run the most dangerous gambits and come out alive and richer for it. After all, no one can catch the wind.
Now,
The Snap and her crew find themselves harboring in the port of a small city in Venatria for a bit of shore leave as their captain goes about his business finding them more prospective clients. Risa was thrilled at their timing too, as she heard from a few fishermen down by one of the wharves that there was soon to be a gladiator tournament held. She could use a little fresh excitement in her life.
