Lemons

Gamblers of Vox Fortuna

And c'mon, you know you'd miss my janky wide posts

Gamblers of Vox Fortuna

By the time I figured out there was a template, I'd already written like twenty Alja posts and it just wasn't worth it at that point.

Gamblers of Vox Fortuna

<Snipped quote by Lemons>
It's just the Pariah template, Lems.

@TGM

Yeah, but I don't use the Pariah template.

Gamblers of Vox Fortuna

Ah shit wait I just realized there's a post template
Gimme a hot sec, I can fix this

Gamblers of Vox Fortuna

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Pilot's Quarters, Fortuna | In Transit
February 21st, 3061

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"Now, take two of these tonight, and another two tomorrow morning, then come back to me again. I'll get you fixed up."

Andrea held a smile as she spoke into the standing mirror propped against one side of her quarters, voice carrying an emotion that could pass for kindness, but slightly too exaggerated, too saccharine. After a moment she dropped her head and sighed, rolling her shoulders. Stepping primly over to her desk, she barely held back a yawn as she began to play her fingers over the projected image of a keyboard that emerged from the small computer terminal, typing up her results. As she did, she muttered under her breath, "Still no success. Still looks and sounds disingenuous. Have yet to figure out how I used to be able to do it. Perhaps a live trial would be more efficient than speaking to a mirror; having a subject might precipitate a better response from the amygdala and limbic system and allow for better recollection of how I used to speak during medical practice."

She slapped the side of the terminal, turning the keyboard off to avoid any stray errors that would result in a typo or skewed data. Then she leaned her head back, pulling her hair out from behind her and letting it fall over the chair. She puffed her cheeks out, huffing a breath and staring out into space. My colleagues used to be able to do this too. What did they do that you're missing, Andy? Perhaps I went too far on the tone of voice, or the language wasn't casual enough?

Shaking her head, she failed at holding back the yawn this time, her perpetual sleeplessness dogging her heels as it always did. She ignored it, pointedly staring away from the bed. She had too much to do. Scooping up half a dozen pill bottles from her desk, she carefully placed them into a bag that she kept hanging by the door. Then, even more carefully, she transplanted four syringes from a rack on her desk to a case that she slid into her pocket. Sliding the bag over her shoulder, she pulled her door open and headed for the medical bay. They'd never cared too much about her working there, as long as she never made too much of a mess and always cleaned it up. But it was nearly impossible to get live test subjects there. If she tried, she would alarm the rest of the medical staff, and she didn't need to get tossed up the Fortuna like she was tossed off of Kallas. As unimpressive as they were compared to her old laboratories, they were still a long way better than most of the places she'd worked after her license was stripped.

But that was neither here nor there. She didn't need a live subject at the moment. Not until much later. For now, she just needed to make sure the drugs she was working with could actually be worked with the way she hoped they could without losing potency. Or gaining too much potency. Muscle relaxants were all well and good when used to keep someone from moving during an operation, or any other situations where she might not want them to. But too much of a good thing, as they always used to say. There were drugs that were meant for killing that she'd used before. This was not supposed to be one of those.

As she walked quickly through the narrow hallways towards the lifts that would take her to the inner decks and, eventually, the medical facilities, she carefully opened up the needle case, scrutinizing each just to make sure that they were exactly what she needed. Good. She smiled to herself, quietly humming as she blinked her tired eyes and closed the case and delicately placed it back into her pocket. She accelerating her pace. The earpiece in her ear hummed quietly along with her. If there was anything she needed to know, she'd hear it. Otherwise, she hoped she'd be left unbothered.

After all, there was so much to do!

Steal Away The Light

Quinnlash

_______________________________________________ // INFO P E R S O N A L D E T A I L S Full Name - Quinnlash Loughvein (Don't call her Quinn. She hates that.) Age - 28 Gender - Female Vocation - Caster Nationality - Midnos // PERSONALITY P E R S O N A L I T Y Emotional Quinnlash is boiling with emotion. Even if she could bottle it up anymore, she wouldn't, and it flows freely out of her. Most of her emotions are...less than charitable much of the time, but she has a greater range than that, certainly. While uncommon, it's not impossible to see a wide smile on her face after a stressful situation has resolved in her favor. Most of the time, though, it's anger. Lots of anger. Reckless Just like emotions, Quinnlash boils with energy. She has issues with thinking things through. Exacerbated by her emotional nature, it's all too common for her to shoot first and ask questions later, or to run headlong into certain and overwhelming danger. She does put a bit of thought into controlling this impulse, but it's always there, and usually controls her instead. Critical A vestigial remnant of an ignored past, Quinnlash is very critical, both of herself and others. While this can be useful, as she never throws around criticism unless she means it, it's often misunderstood. Her often hostile emotions can conspire to make genuinely constructive criticism sound a whole lot like "just be better." // GIFT G I F T Soul Ablaze The burning soul-ember that Quinnlash received erupted against her innate pyromancy. When the two settled, she found that in the process, her magic had become unstable and volatile, allowed her to break pieces of her soul off and wield them. Though each one created reduces how long her magic can last, these fragments become flames that never fade, never waver, never die, until the magic within them burns out and returns to her. They can be reabsorbed at will, restoring her splintered soul with a flash of light from her eye; or fed from her magic, renewing them ad infinitum. Nobody else can fracture their own soul this way. Nobody but Quinnlash. This is her Gift. // EQUIPMENT E Q U I P M E N T Undying Light Quinnlash's weapon of choice against the Void is an enormous rifle-cannon. Created with one of her broken-off soul flames at its core, she can stoke it until it destabilizes and erupts, raging at its constraints until the trigger is pulled. When it is, the magic is released, launching an explosive barrage of scorching fire from the barrel. It takes time for Quinnlash to feed the fire to its fullest extent, but when the furnace is fully stoked, Undying Light is a force of nature and a sight to behold.

Physical Description A woman of perhaps 5'5" with an extremely average build, Quinnlash can melt into a crowd of people with relative ease as long as she pulls a hood over her head. Not only imbued with a pyromancer's ember but a pyromancer herself, her single eye gleams with a brilliant yellow light. Her hair is very long, kept in a tight braid that trails down her back. Though most if it is the dark gray it always was, bits and pieces of the fringes around her face have begun to bleed the same vivid hue as her eye. While her body certainly isn't unfit by any stretch, it's not to the same standards that many other Hunters have trained to. Her tendency to keep her distance means that much of her evasive skills in combat rely on creating space between her and enemies as fast as she can. She's nimble enough, of course, needs to be in order to avoid being struck by any return fire, but not very strong. The most obvious place to see this is in her musculature. It is very apparent that she's not a frontline fighter by any means. What she lacks in strength, though, she makes up for in consistency. Though her muscles aren't overly strong, they are filled with a seemingly unnatural endurance and surefootedness even for a hunter. Bought and paid for with each backwards step taken while lining up a shot, that manifests in confident and easy movement, even in the most perilous situation. She wears long, baggy, thick clothes with many layers, worn and tattered by now, as she travels. She no longer feels the cold now, heated as she is with an ember from deep inside. But deep within her, in a part that she despises, there is a fear that one day, she will lose what makes her human. That perhaps she already has. That her soul, already so fragile, will shatter like a pane of glass, and she'll lose something very, very important. Character Conceptualization Quinnlash was a scholar once. A books-in-a-library-in-Midnos, dyed-in-the-wool scholar. She'd been raised to be one her entire life. Ever since she could read, her parents—both reputable scholars themselves—had inundated her, drowned her, with diagrams, carvings, and so many books. Some as heavy as she was and varying widely in topic, the only way for her to keep her head above water was to swim. And swim she did, meekly accepting her parents' demands and doing her work, kept totally isolated in her room within the small but lavish house in the capital of Midnos. She grew very knowledgeable for her age as she simply read. Not that she could understand most of what was in the books. But what else was she to do? With nothing else around her, all the time she could ever want, and the only two people in her world constantly telling her to study at such a young age, what could she do but eat, sleep, and read? She didn't want to go outside. Her parents told her that it was dark. It was dark, and scary, and filled with things that wanted to hurt you. Best to just stay inside studying, right? She could go outside when she was older. But when she was seven, she was allowed to leave the house. Just once, with her father close beside her. She clung tightly to him, looking fearfully at the dark world, as he took her to see a strange woman. The two of them spoke seriously in low voices for some time. What little she could hear, she didn't understand. Words like "magical affinity," "innate talent," "potential for phenomenal things." She had no idea what was going on, and flinched away, clutching to her father's clothing, when the woman reached her glowing hand out to her. She averted her pale violet eyes from her and closed them tightly, terrified. But no touch came, only a faint warmth that soon faded entirely. She opened her eyes in time to see the woman nod gravely at her father and then turn to walk towards her. And no matter how Quinnlash struggled, no matter how she screamed or cried—the pyromancer took her. The last things she ever heard from her family were two words from her father, as she tearfully begged him to take her back home with mama, please, whatever she did she was sorry, she'd be a good girl from now on, she'd never ask to go outside again: "Goodbye, Quinn." From then on, she studied different topics, in different ways. How to conjure flame. How to use it to defend yourself. How to exercise fine control over it. How to channel it for sustained periods. The work was grueling—mentally and physically exhausting. Months bled into years and years bled together, as she studied and trained as a pyromancer. Still, the habits ingrained into her by her parents held. Whenever she had time to spare, little enough of it thought there was, she would plod her way into the library and find a book to sink her brain into to distract her from the crippling fear she felt of the outside world. In reference tomes, the world was categorized. Understandable. Dissected. But whenever she stepped outside, it all bled together into a mess of darkness and confusion that she fled from time and again. She'd heard the stories of the Void. She'd heard tales about what lurked out there in the darkness. And she was, as ever, afraid. So she buried herself with scholarship, distracting herself from the anger that had begun to take root within her. Time ticked by, revealing Quinnlash, now a practiced—if inexperienced—pyromancer of 24 years, still lurking in libraries, reading about the world that she was ever and always too scared to explore, even past her doorway. There was a hidden, growing part of her that wanted, that desperately yearned, to see what was out there. But it was crushed beneath something far more meaningful that had bubbled up beneath her of late. Studies had been done on how to fight the Void. How to resist their corruptive influence. She'd read them all. But nothing she'd ever found knew what they were. And with that realization, the deep-rooted anger reared its head. She had been shut up her entire life, first of her parents' will, then her own. Always too scared, too wilting, to leave. And now, 24 years into her life, what did she have to show for it? An exhausting fear. A horrible feeling of being trapped. And not a fragment of new knowledge to contribute to anything. Angry. Angry. Angry. Angry at the entire world. But she didn't let it out. She couldn't let it out. She closed in again. And she let it fester. It simmered beneath her for a year and a half, during which time she grew increasingly desperate to find out more about the Void. To find out something, anything, about the Void. A way to justify to herself the decades spent in isolation. But she never did. And nearing the tail end of her twenty-fifth year, the caldera of rage had swollen within her, growing more and more misplaced tremors of anger. Anger at her parents, who locked her in one room for years, and instilled deep within her the fear of the unknown that still dogged her feet. Anger at that damned pyromancer Elan for taking her away from her family when she was scarcely old enough to understand what was happening. Anger at the scholars of Kethiline, for finding out so little about the Void. But most of all? Most of all, she was so furious it made her sick to her stomach at herself. If the sorcerers of Kethiline were useless, what was she? Hiding in her library walls, never daring to take more than a few steps outside? Her whole life...what did any of it mean? No more. No more calculating decisions for weeks before taking a single action. No more staring silently at the ceiling, unable to sleep, eyes fearfully darting about the room for hours. No more suppressing her emotions, crushing them down until they boiled her alive. No more books. No more. No more useless scholarship. Never again. No more. The caldera burst. The volcano erupted. She needed to leave this place. To escape. To throw herself into something else, something so singular and savage that she could only ever think of it. Her brain screamed for it. With barely a conscious thought, she found herself strapped to a table as a willing volunteer. And then came the pain. Her pyromancy warred with the ember within her, violently rejecting this foreign flame. Her skin peeled off and regrew. Her blood seethed and boiled. Her muscles were shredded, rebuild, and shredded again. She vaguely remembers her bones snapping like brittle burnt twigs under their own weight. And her eyes incandesced, searing themselves white hot and bubbling within her skull. One of them ran out of her face, dripping like magma to the floor and collecting in a smoking, ruined pool. Only the other made it through the transformation from scholar to something far more dangerous, and it was forever dyed with a baleful yellow light. In the years since, she's changed so much from the her that hid from the world that she doesn't even recognize what she was anymore. She's a different person now. The life of a Huntress was one that she'd only come upon through reckless abandon and overpowering emotion—sheer blinding anger—and so that is who she became. She barely even remembers the old Quinnlash. The Quinnlash that she left behind. And for that she is thankful, as she embraces a new Quinnlash. The Quinnlash who fights the darkness. Who embraces the constant pain. Who does all she can to not feel fear. Because if she does, then the rest of her—the one she's tried so hard to forget—may come creeping back. Never again. Fight for the sake of fighting. Never again. Move on. Never again. Don't ever look back. Other Information TBD

Pariah Online: A Voyage into the Intangible Aether

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Alja sighed, resting her cheek against the bar as she lost herself in thought. The gods, huh? If only. it would make things a lot simpler, wouldn't it? But no matter the heart-to-heart they were having, she couldn't explain to her that she'd been coming to this world as an avatar in a video game locked into her dreams. Trailing her finger along the edge of the flagon almost meditatively, she found herself stuck in her thoughts. Didn't fail anyone, hmm? Well, that was a flat-out lie. The only job of the wayfarers was to clear the dungeons and keep the world of Aetheria safe. They hadn't. Failing that, the purpose of wayfarers was to protect the denizens in more clean-cut ways; escorting them from city to city as guards, searching the wilderness for a plant that was needed to cure a sick elder from a terrible cough. They hadn't They had shirked everything that a Wayfarer was. And so they had failed. And ain't their fault they couldn't go back? That was true enough, she supposed, but it was still their fault they were here to begin with. They'd made a conscious decision to put that headset on each and every time they played. Nobody was forcing them. They'd become part of this world by choice. But now that their choice had been taken away, they were supposed to be able to pull away from the world, and it was all supposed to be okay? Something about it didn't sit right with her.

She was afraid of dying. It was why she hadn't gone with the group to clear the dungeon in the Western Marshes instead of rat hunting in the sewers. That it had turned into a dungeon wasn't relevant. She was afraid, and that was understandable, she thought. On earth, in Edinburgh, life-or-death situations were the exception, not the rule. But if she let that fear stop her from doing what she needed to do...that was less understandable. And yet still, she felt it. Shout at her friends about protecting the denizens—the people—under their care all she wanted, that didn't change that she was scared. But clearly, this world had a need for wayfarers. It ran under the assumption that there would be wayfarers to clear the dungeons. But now there weren't. And so the world's needs were not met. Only they could purge them. So if not them, who?

So they couldn't pull away from the world. If they were trapped here, then they couldn't treat it like the game it was rapidly ceasing to be. If they were trapped here with these people, then it didn't matter that they might have been code, might still be code. They were still people now for all intents and purposes. To stop clearing the dungeons would be to break a fundamental part of the world. And if the world went, then so did they, right? The world needed them. Perhaps the thought came to her out of egotism. But she didn't think so.

But on one thing, Dariel was right. The best that they could do was handle it the best they could. For some, that might mean doing the jobs that needed doing in the cities. For some, it might mean hiding, doing their best to ignore the situation entirely. She didn't think any less of them. A part of her wanted to do that too. But it was the lesser part of her, born of that primal fear. For her, 'doing the best she could' meant going out and doing what wayfarers did. Because if wayfarer's didn't...

...Then who would?

Her face cleared. Set now in her resolve—do what must be done, remain calm, always be a presence to fall back to, protect as best she could—she sat up straighter, shooting a loose salute at Dariel with as a quick grin came to her face. "Well, you've given me a lot to think about, haven't you? And it's stuff that needed thinkin' 'bout. You ever need anythin', you just let me know."

She sighed again as Seele called her over, but a different kind of sigh, and her grin blossomed into a full smile. She lifted the flagon, and with a quick "Cheers!" drained the orange juice in one long draught.Good goddamn, that's good—before tilting her head at Dariel. "Guess that's my cue, huh?" As she rose from the seat where she'd been slumped, her brow was clear, and so were her thoughts. Truly, she needed to be better than she had. Taking the first step towards the table, she shot one final glance back to the tavern keeper, smile still bright on her face. "...And thanks, Dariel. Thanks a lot. Seriously, I owe ya one, hey?"

Then she clomped over to the table and slung herself down in a chair sideways, pitching her legs over an arm and laying her own arm casually on the table. "Sorry 'bout all that, not very Guard of my Frost." She winked at Artemis and turned the full force of her smile straight at her, determined now to be a comforting presence. "So, what'd I miss?"

In Search of Gaea A Seafaring Fantasy Adventure (REBUILD)

<Snipped quote by Mcmolly>

BATTLE NUN BATTLE NUN BATTLE NUN

@DruSM157

bun

Pariah Online: A Voyage into the Intangible Aether

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As Dariel ruffled her hair, Alja—for just a moment—was transfixed, snapping back to Kelly's childhood, with Elaine doing the same until she'd ducked away, embarrassed. Before Alja could do the same, Dariel pulled away, and she had to resist lightly touching her tousled hair. It was just so unexpected that she had no idea how to deal with it in the moment, but there was still a dim comfort tucked beneath her fading anger.

She listened as Dariel spoke. Listened, as he peeled away a bit of himself and showed her the adventurer that had been underneath him the entire time. As he told her of his history, of the time he'd spent before Pariah, she found herself wondering: he didn't seem like an NPC. So was he ever one? Now that the 'training wheels,' as they were, had been taken off, he seemed more real than he ever had as a generic tavern-keeper. He had a history. He had his own thoughts and opinions. And like she'd said, he had a life of his own. Programming only went so far, could only be so detailed. Something about it bothered her. Something about the way that Denizens had been speaking recently, all the history that underscored the world that had been Pariah. There was an idea building in her mind, something half-formed that she couldn't quite put her finger on. But it was there nonetheless.

She breathed out heavily. Her eyebrows lightened as she exhaled the frustration, leaving her a touch ashamed of how she'd acted. She'd done it again, just like with Rael after the Glitch. She'd lashed out. She needed to stop. She needed to help keep the group united, not wedge them further apart. A knife of self-loathing pierced into her, but she shoved it roughly aside. There was no time for that, no time to feel sorry for herself. There were more important things to deal with than her. She could not snap at her friends like that again, no matter how frustrated she was. She was not Kelly now, nor could she afford to be. She was Alja, created from whole cloth to be the strong center of the group. She needed to act like it.

"I think we're all tryin' to keep goin' in our own way. But some are more shaken. They're afraid. We're afraid. We have lost that feelin' of invincibility. And we weren't prepared to watch friends die." She smiled sadly, shaking her head a little bit. "It must seem silly or downright absurd to you, the thought of adventurin' being a riskless endeavor. But that's what it's always been for us. We'll get there, but it's going to take time for us to adjust. Time that we don't have." She brushed a strand of hair out of her face distractedly. They hadn't done enough. When she looked up, she couldn't meet Dariel's eyes.

"We've failed all of you. Tha mi duilich."

In Search of Gaea A Seafaring Fantasy Adventure (REBUILD)

Tella, The Repentant

“I don't know where I'm going, but it's not back.”

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Tella Lecta Lumia

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24

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Female

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The Imperial Sea

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Sun (Fire)

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Tella's skill in using aether is fairly weak compared to many others her age, and certainly worse than most others who trained for six years in the Imperial Fleet Academy for Future Cadets, then four years in the Imperial Naval Academy. She was never very good at using it, so she mostly ignored it, dismissing it as a weakness that could be compensated for by her other strengths. Though she's been working to remedy this in recent times, she's still fairly unskilled. Competent enough to not be called a novice by any stretch, but certainly not enough to be called skillful.

What command she does have is almost strictly offensive in nature, though it does carry a few additional benefits. Her principle usage of it is to enhance her expertise in swordplay, though there are a handful of other uses she's found and basic pyrokinetic powers such as lighting campfires or burning ropes.

• Blade-Conjuring - Far and away her most advanced technique and the only one that could be classed as skillful, Tella practices this regularly in order to maintain some level of consistency in it. With a flick of the wrist, she conjures a short blade made of solidified flames into her offhand, switching fluidly from a one-handed duelist's stance to one more fitting of a sword and long dagger. She can also throw the blade, which to her is functionally weightless; it maintains its form until she ceases concentrating on it, at which point it disappears in a flash of light.
• Sword-Wreathing - Much simpler than her Blade-Conjuring is the basic ability to surround her sword with an aura of fire. While not much more powerful on a base level, it allows her to also project the fire a little ways away with a strike, extending her reach and causing painful, if superficial, burns. It also has a not-insignificant effect on the thought processes of an opponent; a sword spontaneously lighting on fire is certainly cause for some consternation.
• Flame-Casting - The most basic of the combat techniques at Tella's disposal, this is exactly what it sounds like. She can project motes of flame, or a fast, narrow stream. As her skill is lacking, she can't keep it up for very long, and the flames are fairly weak. But, as with Sword-Wreathing, it is excellent for superficial burns and distraction.

In addition, she has the peculiar talent to manipulate her own body temperature. While it's not exceptionally useful much of the time, it has its niche on the open seas, and it's most definitely saved her life on at least one occasion.

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Tella has much to think about right now, and it's not hard to tell. Though for much of her life she carried an intense conviction with her, manifesting in an easy, almost arrogant confidence, this has been shaken if not completely shattered of late, resulting in an existential dread and a terrible lack of purpose. The burden of expectation from her instructors that once weighed heavily upon her has been replaced with an expectation that she burdens herself with, and heavily. Owing largely to that expectation, but also due to the haughtiness that once dominated her, she was never the most smiley of women. Now, she doesn't talk much, other than to give cursory responses, though she's very polite when she does.

All of that is fairly surface-level: the look on her face, the set of her shoulders, her silence, and the troubled air around her. But any more than a cursory examination will additionally reveal a strangling undertow of confusion that runs just under the surface, pulling her along with it. She is hesitant to make quick decisions much of the time, expressing a great deal of doubt in her ability to choose the right path unless she has a great deal of time to think it out and weigh her options.

But further beneath it all—beneath the pressing self-doubt, beneath the weight of the shattered shards of her confidence, beneath the confusion of what she should do and where she should go now, beneath the distracted hush, beneath the expectations that she burdens herself with—she is still the same Tella that once sparred with naval officers and soldiers, pushed herself to the point of breaking and beyond, and pulled through the Naval Academy with flying colors. And in moments of extreme stress, the questions that she spends so much time thinking about silence themselves and she is fully in the moment, making snap decisions like she was born to, pushing herself past any expectations that she puts on herself, and showing the steel-hard resolve that still forms the very core of who she is.

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From the very beginning, Tella's life was one of privilege. The only child of the wandering trader Sohge Lumia and Lecta Tilme, only scion of a vast mercantile empire in Galma, she was incredibly spoilt and rarely ever heard the word 'no.' From a very young age, it was taken for granted that she would eventually take over her mother's family business and carry on the Tilme legacy of merchants. But as she aged, she began to feel...uncomfortable. Constrained. Shackled. Though she had everything she asked for, there was something missing. And only when she was out with Sohge and caught sight of an Imperial Navy vessel disembarking did she realize what it was.

Her parents were aghast when she told them at a very young age that she planned to enter the Imperial Fleet Academy for Future Cadets and forbade it immediately. But she would not be dissuaded. She insisted. Day in and day out. And her parents, spoiling her even then, eventually caved. They would pay her way through the Academy for Future Cadets. They would even finance her way through the Imperial Naval Academy, if it came to that. As long as she was ready to do that for life.

As a child, she didn't recognize the veiled threat behind it. And as she aged and went through her six years of education in the IFAFC, especially later on, as she developed more physically, she began to feel a fierce pride that she would one day be part of so noble a cause. The entitlement of a child of massive wealth turned to the confidence of someone who felt that she had truly found her place in the world.

When she left the Academy for Future Cadets, though, her parents made good on their veiled threat, delivering unto the now nominally adult Tella an ultimatum. They would pay her way through the Imperial Naval Academy, as they'd promised. They had so much money now they had little else to do with it. But if afterwards, she committed to the Navy—if she chose that path over their own mercantile empire—then she was a Lumia no longer. A keen sense of betrayal and anger poured through her, and she narrowed her eyes at them. They treated her like the twelve year old that had entered the prospective cadet's Academy still. And then turned, and marched to her new Academy.

After four years, she graduated, and entered the Navy proper. By this point, she was a hardline Imperial zealot. The rest of the world was ignorant, and they needed to be civilized and enlightened by the Empire. They would thank them eventually. And Divers were cutthroat mercenaries at best, and a threat to life at worst, if they woke up something deep down that shouldn't be woken. People that shouldn't be allowed to live. Expansionist. Arrogant. And skillful enough in martial combat to back up any threat she made. So did her parents, cutting her off permanently from the family fortune. But she cared little, twenty-two years old and flush with pride as she sailed on her first mission as a true member of the Navy, to the Frozen Sea.

It was to be her last as well.

In the depths of the Sea, their ship was suddenly smashed to bits as the Frozen Sea Leviathan assaulted this intruder to its domain. Thrown into the icy waters—without her armor on, luckily—only Tella's strange ability to increase her body temperature saved her from an agonizing death immediately. And she would have died regardlesss, if the Diver vessel the Dragon's Tooth hadn't pulled her nigh-unconscious body out of the water and taken her to Windkeep to nurse her back to health. Tella's mind, already shaken by the loss of not only the ship, but the entire crew, was deeply confused. Divers were cutthroat mercenaries at best and a threat to life at worst. Yet here she was, still alive. And all thanks to Divers. And the strict orthodoxy of the Empire—its rules, its strictures, its edicts and expansions—suddenly seemed to fit too tightly.

Desperate to repay the captain, she offered her unconditional services to him. To repay him not only for saving her life, but for all that the Imperials had said about Divers. She served him as a crewmember for three months, and found herself, against all odds, finding a dim enjoyment in life as a Diver, and the freedom it offered. But little enough, still broken as she was. Working in the great Diver's Guild city of Makrus for many months, she was eventually allowed to set off with a crew. She still felt the cloying guilt, still felt the need to give recompense to Divers. But more than that, she craved the manual labor that came with it. The repetitive tasks cut her mind free to think. She had a lot to think about. And she would have plenty of time to think about it on the Sharkfin.

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• A standard-issue Imperial saber that rarely leaves her side. Almost unused in the fashion that the Imperials intended for it to be used, but occasionally used in her time as a pseudo-Diver to fend off roving pirates or overcurious creatures.
• A knife kept behind her belt as a basic tool, and a weapon of last resort. She typically doesn't use it in her offhand, preferring Blade-Conjuring for that purpose. Very useful as a utility knife when underwater.
• An expensive sapphire earring given to her by her parents for her tenth birthday. As much as she could sell it for, it's the one remnant of her childhood that she can't bear to part with.
• A diving suit. Ill-fitting and secondhand, patched in places, but serviceable nonetheless. She purchased it with her rapidly dwindling funds in Makrus. Essentially required to work as a Diver.

Nearly everything else she had on her, all the expensive trappings that she'd retained and gleaming Imperial affects, she either lost in the catastrophic crash, gave in gratitude and regret to the captain of the Dragon's Tooth, or pawned off in Makrus to afford a slightly nicer living situation.