Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety percent...OUCH! Argh!! Goddammit that hurt...
P E R S O N A L I T Y
❖ Inquisitive
❖ Ballsy
❖ A bit odd
❖ Meticulous planner
❖ Brilliant
❖ Enthusiastic
❖ Flighty and easily distracted
❖ Occasionally academically haughty
Kaeli is an oddball and eccentric to the very core, especially by Elven standards. Sometimes stereotypes are exaggerated and sometimes they fit to a tee. Put simply, she's one of those people who wants to know how everything works, can usually give you an educated guess right off the bat, and - given enough time - can usually replicate it. In general, she is obsessed with technology, preserving it, repairing it, and improving it, a passion which goes far beyond her people's rather practical and uninspiring relationship with things mechanical. On projects of great import or that have struck a particular chord with her, Kaeli will work tirelessly, with near-boundless enthusiasm, an eye for detail, and a need for perfection that borders on the insane. Social interaction, sleep, and most anything else be damned.
If a given goal is not a project but an endeavour, then she will go to great lengths, often at not-inconsiderable personal danger, in order to see it through. Otherwise, she is curious and inquisitive but flighty, branching off tangentially at once in terms of ideas, conversation, and projects. She enjoys meticulously planning more than she does following through, and collects and keeps things that most people would consider junk simply because she sees them as works in progress, interesting, or simply because she wants to be prepared for any eventuality. In particular, she enjoys solving the problem of her own strange body and finding ways to do things that would seem to be beyond her physical capabilities.
Just as Kaeli can lose herself for hours in a project, she can lose herself for hours when talking about a subject or with with a person whom she finds genuinely interesting. This tendency, alarmingly aberrant among elves, has only grown more pronounced since she left her homeland. When engaged in these fits of passionate gabbing, she has been accused of talking 'at' people as opposed to talking 'with' them. Her standards in terms of 'interesting', however, are higher than she probably realizes. People are usually just surroundings as opposed to being genuine 'company'. They're an audience for her genius, a sounding board for her ideas, and the source of interesting problems and opportunities to be solved or seized. Some also make great guinea pigs.
In terms of romance, Kaeli thinks about it from time to time just as any red-blooded woman might. Then she shuts it out of her mind. She is keenly aware that society at large does not consider her attractive. Like most elves, she also can't 'do' smalltalk and flirting, and she isn't even any good at the social rituals expected of her own people, let alone the more elaborate and frighteningly involved ones so beloved of humans. She often ends up simply lurking and dreaming. In many ways, she's a dreamer. In many ways she holds delusions of grandeur and achievement on an epic scale. However, she's self-aware enough to see some of these for what they are. There's a thin streak of bitterness that runs through her thinking and it's a product of the subtle but ever-present discrimination that she has faced growing up with a very visible deformity. Elves are not a warm, fuzzy, communal people by any stretch of the imagination, but her upbringing was marked by complete disinterest from even close family, often tipping over into utter neglect.
A P P E A R A N C E
The first thing that stands out about Kaeli is the fact that she looks like half a person. The result of a rare birth defect, she was born completely without legs, not dissimilar to
Kanya Sesser or
Jen Bricker. Beyond that, she's rather unremarkable: petite and pale, with white, wavy, shoulder length hair often pulled back into a sloppy ponytail. It's all-but preternaturally unruly, though sometimes she can fuss it into place. Kaeli's facial features tend towards 'mousy' but actually somewhat attractive, though she doesn't put much effort into her appearance. Indeed, the closest thing to makeup that she's known to wear is the series of oil stains and smudges that can be found on her hands, cheeks, and clothes. These compete with a number of small nicks, burns, and scars from too much tinkering. She's also considered quite stocky and muscular by Elven standards due to the upper body strength that she needs in order to get around.
Kaeli's clothing reflects both necessity and her eccentricity. Both of her pointed upper ears are pierced in multiple places, and she's not averse to self-adornment, though it's rarely with the shiny jewellery common to her race. Rather, she owns a necklace made from a very light silver chain, some old screws, a handful of bolts, and a couple of washers. She can also always be found wearing either a pair of round-rimmed tinted shades or goggles that she uses to protect her eyes from the harsh sunlight or hold back her unruly hair. Kaeli wears a custom-made garment on her truncated lower body made of a rough, sandy-coloured fabric, with a thick, cushioned leather pad at the bottom that she uses to sit and 'walk' on. Generally, she dresses in a form-fitting shirt in either purple, forest green, or crimson with a row of buttons running up the middle. Its sleeves are invariably rolled up. A brown leather belt with a prodigious number of pouches, clips, and various doodads rests snugly upon her hips, and a second, thinner belt encircles her upper waist. Filling out the ensemble is a bandolier with several pockets running from her left shoulder to her right hip, where it's clipped into her belt. A pair of elbow pads adorns her arms, and tough, worn out fingerless gloves with protective mitts that flip over complete the outfit. Kaeli usually carries a backpack that seems slightly too large for her, and when it's cooler, she bundles up in a sandy-coloured hooded hip cloak that effectively covers her whole body.
H I S T O R Y
Kaeli Kinseld was the second girl as well as the third and final child born to parents of high standing. Her father was the town recordkeeper and brother of the thane while her mother was a jeweler of some repute. Due to her startling deformity, her birth was a bitter disappointment and it was hoped that she would die quietly in infancy, lest she grow up to be a burden. In the event, she not only survived, but grew into a curious, lively, and (with the exception of her missing legs) healthy child. Unlike her older siblings, Kaeli was not groomed for an advantageous marriage or a lofty position, either political or professional. As a result, her education was sparse and was piggybacked upon that of her slightly older brother, Heddenrad, who was privately tutored in - aside from instruction on recordkeeping - what were considered the classical Magdalenese subjects: linguistics, smithing, hunting, mathematics, natural philosophy (science), and jewellery-making.
In the event, while her brother approached his studies dutifully and at times diligently, Kaeli tore through her books with an appetite for learning that - while it was somewhat selective - bordered on the obsessive. The walls of her bedroom were often filled with drawings and partially-completed sketches, and her young mind was filled with ideas. In particular, she gravitated towards all things mechanical and electrical: understanding them, disassembling and reassembling them, and making them function. If she was hopeless at hunting, too small for smithing, and unenthusiastic about crafting finely filigreed and delicate jewellery, she had nimble, dexterous fingers, an eye for detail, and a keen intuition for the workings of anything with moving pieces.
For the most part, however, people paid little attention to the girl, except as a curiosity, and she was left largely to her own devices. The one exception was Kaeli's (really her brother's) natural philosophy and mathematics tutor, a prematurely cantankerous academic named Tasten Aldavere. He spent extra hours fostering what he believed was a brilliant young mind, and his attitudes, mannerisms, and methods had a profound impact on her development. In her mid-teens, she was betrothed to him, even though he was nearly twenty years her senior. In reality, it wasn't a marriage founded on love, since Tasten was rather clearly homosexual. Rather it was a union of kinship and mutual respect, carefully calculated by the pair to afford Kaeli both some independence from her family as well as some monetary attention.
For a handful of years, things went well. Kaeli continued to educate herself and earned the respect of a notable portion of Magdalene's academic community. Even her father, who had advocated for exposing her to the elements during her infancy, came to appreciate her gifts and even fund some of her pet projects. Then her uncle, the local thane, made the grave mistake of defying the Alfking of Magdalene. Exactly what happened is not something that she will ever talk about, perhaps because she has never taken much interest in politics. A ruler who had for Kaeli's entire life seemed distant and mildly benevolent struck with sudden, ruthlessly efficient ferocity, purging her entire family. A harmless and somewhat useful curiosity, she was spared, inherited a small portion of her family's fortune, and placed under house arrest. Driven to depression by the restriction on her ability to move about freely and to tinker and scrounge outside of the confines of her home (where literally all of the best stuff was) and sensing that Tasten was likely to protest (thereby putting him in the line of fire), she slipped out of her cellar in a small wine barrel, and arranged to have herself smuggled out of town.
With no choice but to end up far away from home and, to a lesser extent, curious about the mysteries of the world outside of the deep forests of Magdalene, she began traveling the roads of Invernier. Kaeli learned quickly and out of necessity how to cover large distances, where to hide, as well as who and what to avoid, while gradually using up her coin. She earns a sporadic income by repairing simple things well below the level of her expertise whenever she sets herself down for a handful of weeks as well as occasionally appearing in performances similar to sideshows. She doesn't particularly enjoy those jobs, but they put coin in her purse and provide her with free and easy travel.
I N V E N T O R Y
Kaeli carries a small, lightweight, and finely-crafted tool set with her at all times. She has a handful of semi-functional electrical lights, a magnifying glass, her wedding ring, various replacement parts for common mechanical items, a needle and thread, a few changes of clothes, a switchblade, and a couple of cans of something like improvised pepper spray, with different varieties effective in repelling different common threats. She's working on auditory weapons as well and on extending the range of the sprays. She swears that she'll finish eventually.
O T H E R
Even with legs, Kaeli would be considered small. Without them, she's absolutely tiny (maybe 2'6" and 55 lbs) and excellent at hiding in places where most people wouldn't even bother look. She can hold her breath for an extremely long time, remain still and quiet for extended periods, and go for longer than most without food and water. Conversely, she obviously moves at a slower pace than most people, expends more energy in doing so, struggles with tasks that require size, and tends to have her skills met with a certain skepticism in most places that she visits.
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