Member
Savo
fellsing
Forsythe
Achronum
PatientBean
mickilennial
Morose
VitaVitaAR
Rune_Alchemist
Coda
“Yevon, give me the strength to protect the weak. Please.”
Name:
Gwendolyn
But she prefers “Gwen”
Age:
17
Gender:
Female
Race:
Human
Job:
Warrior
Faction:
Yevonist
Warrior Monks
Appearance:
“Oh the armor? It’s uhm...surprisingly light. Go figure.”
Gwendolyn isn’t the tallest girl around, standing at only about five feet five inches (167.64cm) with an athletic build. Weight? Don’t ask. Asking is likely to get you a shield to the jaw. Take our word on it. But enough with that, let’s go over some details, starting from the top. Atop her head lies a ginger mop of medium length, more often than not pulled up into a side ponytail. Bright blue eyes full of youthful optimism burn with determination from beneath her fiery locks. A light smattering of freckles run across her cheeks and nose.
As for her attire, Gwen prefers a slightly modified version of the standard traditional uniform donned by the Warrior Monks. The chestpiece is cut smaller, offering a bit less protection, but it restricts her movement less. Everything else remains pretty much the same. Though she does opt to don a sword and shield as well as the usual rifle. The former is much more likely to be seen on her than the rifle though.
Personality:
“Heeey, that looks fun! Lemme try!”
Gwen, calm down. Gwen, cut it out. Gwen, chill out.
And thus goes the symphony of Gwendolyn’s life. The girl always did have a bit of a bounce in her step, an extra spark of energy if you will. But that tended to flow both ways. The long and short of it is simple: Gwen’s an emotional girl. Highly emotional. When she’s happy, the world’s all sunshine and rainbows, puppy dogs and moogle tails. But when she’s down...well, she gets extra bummed out. She’s blue da ba dee da ba daa. And when she starts tipping one way or another, oh boy. Everything seems to compound with her trigger.
But the worst would probably be that temper. The girl’s got a hair trigger on that anger. Just about anything could set her off, and when it does, oh boy, watch out.
Despite her rather, unsavory temperament, Gwendolyn takes her job as a Warrior Monk seriously. Well...perhaps that’s a bit of a reach. It’s not that she’d a hyper-focused workaholic...she’s just extremely passionate about protecting others. The young, the elderly, the weak, the strong...even an Al-Bhed if they happened to honestly be innocent, Gwen just can’t bear standing around doing nothing. If somebody needs help, she’s stepping in. Maybe it’s a hero complex. Most likely...but that’s just the way that she’s always been, even as a young girl.
So when she’s not at the mercy of her emotions, or plunging headfirst into danger on behalf of some poor mook, Gwen’s an alright person. Not the best, by any means. She tends to just speak her mind, not taking a moment to think about how her words might be taken. On one hand, it keeps her pretty honest. On the other...well...the girl has a habit of lodging her foot firmly in her mouth.
It doesn’t take much to amuse, Gwen. Not that she’s stupid. Not by any means. It’s more of a...youthful fascination with the world. The simple things delight her to no end. Wild chocobo roaming the fields, the mighty Shoopuf doing its thing, so on and so forth. While if asked what she wanted to do with her life, she’d answer that she would want nothing more than to protect the weak, there would be a small moment of hesitation. And it is in this hesitation that Gwen’s mind would flash to a dream of seeing the entire world, discovering secrets long forgotten by man, or perhaps never encountered at all. But that would be just a dream.
Always a dream.
And nothing more.
Character Flaws:
“Blah blah blah responsibility this, duty that. Whatever! Lemme just go hit things, dammit!”
Patience may be a virtue, but Gwen never got around to learning it. She’s always eager to just jump into the action. Planning, plotting, strategy, she’s got no stomach for any of it. Whatever happens is Yevon’s will, so why worry about it? But that impatience, along with her already emotional nature, leads the girl to making hasty or rash decisions quite frequently. In the heat of the moment, she follows her heart, acting off instincts. While it hasn’t gotten her killed yet, surely she can’t keep being lucky...right?
Being a devout follower of Yevon, Gwendolyn has little tolerance for heathens. The Al-Bhed being prime examples. Sure, they may be alright people, but for them to completely turn their back on Yevon? That’s not right. She values her religion quite highly, and will fight to protect it via words or swords. Obviously, she does have a preference…And as she does have a strongly Yevonist view of the world, she’s utterly helpless when it comes to machina. She just doesn’t get it, man.
Gwendolyn’s not exactly the most knowledgeable of the world, most of her knowledge of it coming from old books that she was forced to read, or, and much more prevalent, from the other Warrior Monks. Unfortunately, a lot of this information was either very much outdated, or just plain wrong. But it’s a source of pride for the girl, in the knowledge she thinks she has. And with her being rather...stubborn, she’s not quick to admit that she’s wrong. In fact, she reacts rather poorly to being called out on her so called “Spira Knowledge”. By all means, go ahead and do it to get a rise out of the girl. Just uh...don’t get mad with us when she beats you down with a shield. It’s not pleasant.
Special Abilities:
“C’mon! C’mon! I’m just heating up!”
It’s not exactly common place for Warrior Monks to use swords and shields. Most have moved on to firearms, with good reason. Distance and ease of use allow for just about anybody to become an effective fighting force, provided they can aim. Therein lies Gwen’s main flaw in the eyes of the Monks: she can’t aim to save her life. She’d miss the broadside of a barn even if she could literally put the barrel of the gun against the damn thing.
So, sword and board it was. At least with that, all she had to do was swing her arm. That she found to be much easier. Learning to do it in a skillful manner though, that was significantly less easy. But she did it. The girl isn’t too shabby with the ol’ long razor. She even learned some basic magic attacks. Well...in a way. She wasn’t exactly conjuring up the elements like the mages. Hers was much smaller, simply channeling an element into her weapon, Gwen can focus her limited magical ability to cause a very small, localized spell at the point of contact with her sword.
Weapon of Choice:
“Pfft...who needs a gun anyway? Too lazy. I’d much rather be right up in the action! Waaaay more fun, heh!”
Sword and Shield
For a girl who can’t aim, there’s not too many other options. Her current sword and shield were a gift from her instructor. Just something from an old woman to keep a brat out of trouble...
Inventory:
“Ohh...I KNOW I had something for that around here somewhere...lemme just look real quick, okay?”
Beyond her sword and shield, Gwen carries a number of small potions in the pouch on her belt. But uh...she’s not exactly the neatest person around. Or most organized. As such, she’s ended up with plenty of vials full of stuff...with no labels. So it’s always a bit of a gamble when taking something from here. Oh well...more fun, yeah?
Bio:
“Pfft...it doesn’t matter where we came from, just where we’re goin’. So stop gettin’ all nostalgic and LET’S GO!”
Oh?
Looking for some sort of tragic backstory? Well, sorry to disappoint, but that’s not the case here. Gwendolyn was a born to a widow whose husband had passed in an accident just months prior. The woman and her husband had been devout followers of Yevon, with he being a member of the Warrior Monks and she a humble priestess, so it’s not much of a surprise that Gwen ended up being raised in the temple. Which was fine, really. All things considered, her upbringing was fairly normal. She was even able to get an education. The young redhead never had much of an interest in books though, and it became increasingly unlikely that she would make it as a priestess.
Rather, she was much more drawn to physical activities. Indeed, the girl would practically bounce off the walls, and getting her to sit still was a bonafide miracle. But that worked out just fine. Yevon was always looking for more of the devout to pick up arms in the name of the Holy. Gwen’s mother protested a bit at first, but ultimately agreed. The girl was just following in the footsteps of her father, after all.
Training was...rough. But damn if the girl didn’t pour her all into it. She gave it 110% and it showed. While no, she wasn’t the greatest around, she could hold her own and was always eager to get to it. This did not go unnoticed by her instructor, an older woman who prided herself on training some of the best of the Monks. She made it a personal mission to see Gwen become a fine young warrior. And despite all the girl’s many faults, the old woman in the end felt as if she had accomplished her goal. And thus she passed on her own sword and shield to the little punk and shortly after, retired to live out the rest of her days in style on one of Besaid Island’s beautiful beaches.
Gwen hasn’t been a full-fledged member of the Monks for long, so she still carries a sort of pride and eagerness that tends to wear off as time passes by. And while she is only a low ranking monk, she dreams of greatness...especially in proving herself worthy of joining the ranks of the prestigious Chocobo Knights.
Maybe then she could fulfill her secret dream of seeing the world...
