Right, what would you say about a sixteen year old adrenaline-junkie pilot with janky, mostly homemade cybernetic arms and legs that sometimes (often) break down?
The general concept I'm running with here is "kids up to no good actually end up doing good", so I don't know if a veteran character would work here. I could amend it to allow people in their early 20s (no further than like, 22 or so), however.
Nah, no worries; if she doesn't fit, she doesn't fit, and I don't want to shoehorn her in weirdly. I'll come up with a kid instead, no shortage of ideas there.
General character concept that immediately runs on up to me, though it doesn't work if "teenage crew, stolen ship" is a proper thing to run with, or if this is the tone you want to go with at all: veteran of an intergalactic war who doesn't talk much, has some PTSD, tends to have some flashbacks. The only thing that gets her to relax is a small hydroponic garden of orchids and bonsai trees she takes care of. She keeps her military-grade exosuit in a high-security locker in her cabin on whatever ship she's on. Never takes it out, it's mostly there as a reminder.
Auonar was truly a breed apart from any city that Entyrea had seen in her life. She'd been around occasionally after she'd resolved to study wizardry, it was true. But most of it had been near where she'd been born and raised. There was plenty of questionable adventures to have in the southron kingdoms, and there was certainly no shortage of rare books to find throughout. So the great dwarven gate held her gaze as they passed through, the vague interest she'd felt outside the city turning to a deep fascination.
When the carriage finally stopped in the stables, she shivered at the cold air once more before wrappping her cloak around herself. "If you want me to do the talking, Chip, then that's perfectly fine by me." The more people she could talk to, the more she could familiarize herself with this new and exciting domain she'd found herself in.
"Well," she responded to...oh, what was her name? Lodah? Ludus? She couldn't quite remember, the books she'd been reading on the journey had distracted her enough that only a catchy name like Chip could stick. She grimaced; she'd need to make more of an effort to remember. Then she stretched, cracking her neck to the side as she stood. "If you're talking about normal people on the street, they might not. It really depends on the caravan, doesn't it?"
She climbed carefully down from the carriage so as not to catch her dress or cloak, inhaling a deep breath of the cold, sharp air.
"Fortunately for us, we don't need to rely on the memories of normal people in the streets. If Auonar is anything like the cities down south--and I don't see a reason for it to be different in this particular manner--there's a person, or an office, or a group, that manages all the commercial goods that leave the city." She stroked her chin with her hand and looked briefly up at the roof as she pulled her staff and heavy, book-laden backpack from the carriage. "There's always the chance, of course, that Ordrin kept it secret from whoever manages that here, in which case we will need to rely on street memory. Still, we'll cross that bridge if we must, yes?"
She turned to their driver, cocking her head. "Gudrik, do you know if there's any office like that in Auonar? You seem well-travelled, and I'm afraid I'm a bit lost here." She laughed lightly.
Etoile whirled Vent de Trancheuse around her in huge, sweeping arcs, the invisible aura of wind around the blade shearing through the vines with minimal resistance. All frustration with Pythia was gone now, blown out like a candle flame in a typhoon. She couldn't afford to let even a single strand of her attention stray, or else she'd miss something important and get chokeslammed by treeants until her her spine broke. Face stone, she continued her deadly dance.
"Etoile, watch your–!"
–back, she finished grimly as a vine managed to tangle itself into her heavy cloak, pulling her sharply backwards and nearly knocking her off her feet before it steadily began to pull tight against her throat. She fiddled gamely with the toggle with her metal hand, even pulling hard on it in an attempt to break the stitching, but one hand just wasn't dextrous or strong enough to free it. As stars began to dance in front of her eyes--still cutting through encroaching vines as she struggled--she realized that she was going to die if this kept up.
Sol damn it.
She lashed backwards with her saber, shearing through the heavy wool and sending her into a forward stumble. She hit the ground hard, swearing as she did so. As she desperately struggled to regain her feet--a struggle she was steadily losing, as vines swarmed her again and she lacked the footwork that she desperately needed--she saw Clara fall to the ground, smacked down and shattered by a huge, menacing vine. Gritting her teeth, she pulled herself into a little ball, cradling Vent de Trancheuse protectively, and spat out, "Densus ventus."
A bubble of steel-hard air formed around her, and she took a moment to stand and collect herself as vines flailed wildly at the invisible barrier. Clara wasn't moving.
Taking a deep breath--the pain in her throat refusing to go away--she dropped the barrier.
Moving more freely now that her cloak was battered and muddy on the ground, only a foot or so left sticking comically out from her back and the remainder of her Inquisitor's uniform now openly displayed, she smacked a vine away with her crest-emblazoned prosthetic, struggling as best she could over to the downed Clara and neatly severing the vine that stood above her. Wheezing from her painful throat and from the adrenaline pumping through her, she crouched down over Clara's prone form. Curse it all, I need a second to think!
Dropping the aura from her sword, she heaved out one more rattling breath into a pained invocation of densus ventus, giving the two of them a momentary reprieve from the assault. Gripping Clara by the shoulders, she pulled her upright, gasping lamely. "You'd better be alright, Clara. Otherwise I don't know what I'm going to do."
There was a thump as Bechina Hallehaukar's Fugue Dance, a seminal work on the historical applications of mental curses, was gently closed. With a sigh and a regretful look, Entyrea Imbryss slid an elaborately-embroidered bookmark between the pages and carefully wrapped it in oilskin before sliding it back into her knapsack. Shivering a bit in the cold, she sat up straighter, shaking her red silk dress and creamy white cloak out to settle them more comfortably over her narrow frame.
She peered past Gudrik, craning her neck to scan the grand stronghold of Auonar. A small smile played over her face as she watched it draw closer. She'd never been to the far north; and while yes, it was a bit unpleasant out--she shivered briefly again--this was a rare opportunity to study the writings of a totally different culture. Besides, she smiled to herself, the cold had never been able to stick to her anyway. If things went really sideways, she could probably conjure enough fire to keep them warm.
"I must agree with--" she paused for a moment, searching her mind for the name that she'd learned in their very brief introductions some time ago, "--Chip, yes?" When she spoke, it carried not only the accent, but also the refined diction of a member of the nobility. As she spoke, she grasped the wood-and-opal staff that leaned on the seat against her, leaning thoughtfully against it as she spoke again. "If this was just a simple matter of the caravan never leaving Auonar somehow, then I get the feeling--perhaps the sinking feeling, in particular--that Enthys wouldn't have gone to all the trouble of contacting us."
"Still," she continued, "at the very least, we may be able to find some kind of clue as to what direction the caravan went if we ask around. Knowledge is power, yes?"
“Never yet discovered a problem that I couldn't solve with intensive studying and/or liberal application of fire.”
_______________________________________________ Entyrea Faloia Antosis Imbryss _______________________________________________________________ 23 | Female | Human _______________________________________________________________ Chaotic Good | Wizard | Noble _______________________________________________________________
▼ A T T R I B U T E S ▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔ ► Blaze Mage: Entyrea has spent her adolescence and young adulthood studying fire magic, and she is very skilled at it. She's no archmage--it's only been perhaps a decade for her--but she doesn't need to be an archmage to snap her fingers and burn a house down. ► Scholastica: While Entyrea is a powerful fire wizard, her true passion lies not in the execution in magic, but in its theory. In her mind, a wizard is a spellcaster second, and a scholar first. She's spent more time in the library studying than she has performing magic in recent days, and she's more than okay with that. ► Prestidigitation: While the self-titled Blaze Mage is, as expected, mostly a fire wizard, that's not to say she can only use fire magic. She can make small illusions, place glowing marks on walls, quiet or amplify sound, things like that; nothing major, but certainly not useless. ► Turn Of Phrase: Entyrea, though she spends most of her time with her nose in a book, is surprisingly skilled at navigating social situations when she can bother to pull her nose out. As long as she devotes the effort that she needs to, she's not at all bad with talking to people; she's irrepressible and unfailingly cheerful. It's just a matter of whether or not she can be bothered to devote that effort. ► Okay, Okay, Slow Down: Entyrea is quite patient from years of study and reading. There are very few things that can get her to act impulsively; she prefers to think through things before she takes any major action (though if she's confronted with a rare book, she'll probaby do something stupid, let's be honest). -
▼ I N V E N T O R Y ▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔ ► Armor - Entyrea doesn't wear traditional armor; it interferes with the casting of her magic too much, she insists, and is uncomfortable besides. Instead, she's perhaps a touch vain, and overly fond of silk, usually in the form of dresses done up in bright crimson. Being able to clean and mend them with magic has led to her wearing them in truly bizarre situations. When she's traveling, she generally wears one to the tune of mid-calf, and a creamy-white cloak of heavy, fine wool. ► Weapons - While Entyrea does carry a single knife on her--the blade maybe just shy of seven inches long--it sees less use as a weapon and more as a tool. Her primary weapon is, of course, her magic. She channels it through an ornate wooden staff, carved with runes and stained red in a spiral. It is capped off with a fire opal the size of her fist, which is her actual focus; the staff is just a convenient way to carry it while traveling. She's terrible at actual combat with the staff, but it's still better than nothing. ► Coinpurse - As might be surmised by some of her possessions--red silk dresses, fine wool, an opal bigger than probably necessary--Entyrea is fairly wealthy. She hasn't really earned much of that wealth, though. A good 90% of it is sourced from her parents, a pair of nobles that absolutely dote on their daughter, and have spoilt her rotten. She asks for something, she'll probably get it (within reason). She carries a fair bit of coin on her at any one point. ► Misc. Items - As mentioned, she's a touch vain, so she carries with her a little bit of makeup, and a few rings and bracelets of gold and gems. But of all the pretty trinkets and expensive jewelry that she owns--thanks mostly to her parents, of course--she treasures most of all a necklace that she never removes; a silver chain holding an oddly-cut, misshapen, occluded ruby in a crooked setting. Even if asked, she never reveals where she got it. Of course, I would be remiss if I didn't talk about her main luggage: BOOKS. She carries a lot of them at any one time, and she's become reasonably used to their weight. She loves them, and never leaves home without them. -
P E R S O N A L C H A R A C T E R
Surprising some people that have preconceived notions on how fire wizards should act, Entyrea is a patient, academic sort, who much prefers reading books on magic than burning things. Born to a long line of nobles, Entyrea didn't want for much in her early life. With overprotective parents who loved her deeply, she spent basically her entire childhood spoilt rotten inside of the Imbryss estate, sheltered as the day is long. Most of her time was spent learning etiquette, crafts, cooking, all in preparation for marriage.
Of course, she's developed some past then; it's been quite a few years, after all. She's no longer the incredibly naive and sheltered child that she once was. Her parents weren't...exactly thrilled when she took to the wizard's life, but sighed and philosophically accepted that it would happen, and she would perhaps bring a bit of class into the wizards' societies. Not so. She's instead begun delving deep into hidden markets, searching for lost texts of magics not practiced in the world anymore. Anything for more reading material. In fact, she might perhaps have become just a tiny bit of an adrenaline junkie, completely by accident (not in the sense of seeking danger out, of course; but she can't say she doesn't enjoy it sometimes). But her first and last love will always be an armchair by the fire and a whole stack of books.
Still, she's certainly not world-weary or cynical; she's still very much an idealist, and largely believing in the overwhelming good of people. She never assumes the worst, really. If someone does something malicious, she's all too keen to chalk it up to simple ignorance or careless instead of actual malice. She's rather gullible, and far too willing to put herself in harm's way for others' good.
F A V O R
Entyrea had been looking for the fourth volume of Edmynd Lecryszur's Faith, Folly, and Futility: Dissertations on Time Divergences for well over a year. It was the preeminent work on time magics of the last three centuries, and though she had no gift for time-workings of her own, that didn't mean it wasn't interesting!
Her debt to Ordrin is a bit less elaborate than most, really: a collector of rare books, he managed to procure for her that volume, completing her collection. She's maintained a guilt that all she'd given him in return for such a gift was mere coin. And so, when Ordrin called in a favor of the self-titled and perhaps overly confident Blaze Mage, she eagerly assented. After all, who knew what kind of books he would be ready to sell after something like this?
Name: Kanako Akhmatova, though she goes by Kana Nickname: Kana Age: 22 Eyes: Very pale, watery blue, almost grey. Hair: Very dark brown, almost black. About to the small of her back. Description: Kana mostly takes after her mother in terms of appearance. She has her pin-straight black hair, which she's grown out long. It's usually tied either in a ponytail or a tight bun, depending on the situation she's in. She has her facial shape; rounded cheeks lead to a sharply pointed chin, though her cheekbones are significantly higher and more pronounced, giving her a bit of a haughty look sometimes. Her eyes--perhaps her most obvious take from her Russian father--are narrow and piercing, and do not angle downwards. Those eyes sit atop a narrow, hooked nose, like a falcon beak, which in turn surmounts a mouth of lips that, while full, are pale, nearly bloodless in appearance. Her skin doesn't lean far either way; it's a fairly faithful mixture of her parents' skin tones, resulting in someone too pale to be fully Japanese, but too dark to be Russian. She is naturally about 5'6" and on the slender side; though not devoid of curves, she's certainly not very full-figured. She is extremely fit. Her naturally narrow frame conceals--but cannot completely hide--a not insignificant amount of powerful, wiry muscle, especially on her upper legs and hips. She has a small yellow tattoo of a Schrenck's tulip on her left shoulder, usually hidden by her armor. When she's off-duty, she favors very lightweight clothing: tanktops and athletic shorts are the norm for her. When it's too cold out, she'll toss a hoodie--any color is fine, really--over the tanktop, and swap out the athletic shorts for casual jeans or high-waisted cargo pants that cut off just below her knees.
Of course, I haven't mentioned the elephant in the room, and the reason I specifically referred to her natural height. Starting at just below her kneecaps, her legs have been replaced with long, heavy blades of dark metal, the tips of which serve as her very-difficult-to-balance-on feet. These curved blades are viciously sharp, both on the inside and outside edges, and LONG: they extend her natural height from 5'6" to a sliver over eight feet, towering over most people. Consequently, she sticks out in essentially every crowd; if not just because of her height, because she's navigating through said crowd with bladed shins. When she's around other people and not working, she wears a pair of hard black plastic guards on the edges so she doesn't accidentally cut someone.
Country of Origin: Her mother is from Japan and her father is Russian. She was born and raised in Japan, and still lives there. Condition: Adept Biograhy: Kana really is not a fan of her Septima.
Up to the age of seventeen, she barely remembered she had one. Given its fairly specific conditions for activation, the only time it was useful was when it was her turn to cook for her mother Haruka and her younger sister Rika. She never used the thing because she barely ever held a knife. She went to school. She talked to her friends. She had an incredibly average childhood and adolescence. Her father Dmitry was a career airline pilot, so he was rarely home, but when he was, he lavished attention on his daughters. Until seventeen, she had a pretty good life. And her personality followed suit: she was happy-go-lucky and optimistic, always ready with a joke and a smile.
Then some asshole didn't stop on a red light, and both of her lower legs were completely destroyed by a heavy truck. Rushed to the hospital, she was patched up. But for some strange reason, her parents were never allowed to visit, or so they told her. She found out later that they were told she had died of blood loss in the ambulance. Her Septima--noted down as an anomaly on her medical record--had caught the attention of the corporation who owned the hospital, a truly colossal tech firm called Suzushii that had taken notice of her abilities, and decided to snatch her up. Instead of throwing her in a wheelchair and letting her get on with her now-inconvenienced live, they snapped her up and augmented her stumps with the formidable weapons that now dominate her silhouette. Then, when she was healed--a traumatized teenager, months later--they told her what she would be used for: an assassin. Those the higher-ups at Suzushii wanted to 'disappear' would be disappeared by her. And if she refused? Well, the debt that she was in now was immense. Dmitry, wanting to be closer to his family and blaming himself, had found a comfortable job teaching aviation in Moscow. If she refused, her bladed legs would be removed, and she would be thrown out on the street.
So, caught between a rock and a hard place, she chose the rock given to her, and began her wet work as a 'deniable asset' for Suzushii.
The surprising thing is that over the years of murder, her personality hasn't actually changed too much. While of course she's a bit traumatized because of what's happened to her and what she's done--she abhors violence, but has forced herself to do what she needs to--she's still a fairly cheerful, playful person. And while she's been buried in layers of pessimism and fatalism, at her core she's still an optimist with an unshakeable inborn faith that things will turn out okay.
Skills- Mobility: Run (25 Points) Jump (25 Points) Wall Jump (25 Points) Wall Slide (25 Points) Dash (50 Points) Air-Hop (50 Points) Air-Dash (75 Points) Mobility total: 275 Points Combat: Weapon Training- Traditional [Large] (50 Points) Combat total: 50 Points Gear: Tech Armor (Enables her air-hop and air-dash. Additionally helps her recharge EP and recover from overheat much faster when worn.) (100 Points) Gear total: 100 Points Septima- Name: Edgedancer Element: Knife (Psychic power: 200 Points) Color: Pale blue Powers- Waltz: When her Septima is active and she's holding a knife (which, since her legs are knives, is in fact ALWAYS), her physical strengh, her speed and reaction speed, her perception, and the speed at which she processes information and multiplied by roughly four to five times, making her an incredible physical threat. She stops being clumsy and becomes terrifyingly coordinated, able to strike with incredible accuracy multiple times per second with her legs. (Self-Adjustx4: 300 Points)
Tango: As she strikes with a blade--usually her legs--she can extend it up to twice its length in a snap, increasing her striking range by a pretty significant margin. It retracts just as quickly, before she can put her leg down again. (Self-Adjust: 75 Points) Septima total: 375 Points
Build: Average SP: 1/1 (2 sold for 150 KUDOS) Special Skills: Support Skill Power Charge (150 Points
Kudos: 0 Start: 1000 Total Used: 1150 Total Earned: Total BONUS: Highest Earn: Highest "Combo": Kudo net total: 0
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