B A S I C S
Name: Ziotea Elpis Phaidros (zee-OH-tee-ah el-PIIS fay-DROHS)
Age: 19 (celebrates her birthday towards the end of the dark season -- that is, winter)
Height: 4'8" (142cm)
Weight: ~75lbs (~35kg)
Race: Omestrian-Lanostran halfbreed
Personal Seal: winged spear in a sunburst, and the sunburst pattern in general
With bright red hair, amber-gold eyes, and a very distinctive etheric signature, there's no mistaking Ziotea for anything but Omestrian, and a strong one. She keeps her bright hair short, never past shoulder length, and often ties it back. She has a round face and heavy brows often drawn together in a frown. Her skin tans easily where it is frequently exposed to the sun, namely her face and arms. The rest is fair, though marked with various scars she's picked up over the years. Of particular note are the marks of whippings on her back, a set of ragged parallel lines from deep slashes gouged across one hip, and the puckered dent where she had a chunk ripped out of the opposite shoulder at one point.
She's a tiny little thing, very short and deceptively thin, but she is muscle and sinew without an ounce of extra fat. This makes her rather bony, and combined with her narrow hips and a general lack of bust she could be mistaken for a boy with a particularly pretty face from a distance. She's learned how to pick clothing that flatters what little figure she has in order to compensate, but even that can only do so much. The armor she wears is heavier than that of many Inquisitors, and she favors sturdy gauntlets with vambraces, greaves that protect the front of her knees, and a full brigadine and tassets in addition to her breastplate. She carries a round curved and spiked shield bearing her sunburst design with a diameter about the same as the length of her arm, as well as a winged spear and a small quiver of weighted darts.
Ziotea is cynical and misanthropic. The world is a terrible place, and people as a rule are awful. Those who raised her for her first few years hated Lord Varya and the conquering Varyans, and she picked up some of the attitude even though she has few specific memories from that time. She was not so sullen as a child, but the harsh life of an urchin turned her rough, as a certain amount of callousness was necessary to survive. She saw all the different ways one person could mistreat another, and she realized that humanity was anything but humane. The idea of people as bad didn't solidify until later, but it had its beginnings here.
The tales about what was done to ether slaves, heretics, and rebels (only these were called traitors) were terrifying. Ziotea knew her mother had been a strong and defiant woman. She knew the people that looked after her those first few years were members of some secret group that hoped to rebel -- and she learned that her flame-colored hair marked her as Omestrian and loathsome at best, heretical at worst. She knew the Inquisitors came to take bad people away, and she remembered clearly being told to run, and seeing black coats stitched with red dragging the two people she loved off when she dared to peek out of her hiding place a couple blocks away.
When she entered the seminary, she was a frightened waif of seven, smaller than all the others and with a habit of breaking things. She learned of acts even worse than those committed on the streets, and she felt nothing but disgust for a god that would call for His people to do such things, to slaughter and conquer and drain people for ether as she saw them being drained (the reality was so much worse than any story). The Lady followed by the two in her earliest memories was no better, for She'd ordered Her people to go along with it -- indeed, a number of half-remembered stories from her childhood claimed that the Lanostrans were not losing at all, making Her little better than a coward. The other fallen remnants were even weaker, and none of those from the far lands had ever come to Varya. People were awful and the gods either didn't care or else encouraged them.
And she was no exception, for when she'd been given the choice between looking after her own well-being and trying to help her only friend in the world, she'd run away. What hope was there in a world like this?
The answer was none at all.
Ziotea has turned into a hard woman who never smiles, save in battle. She feels a fierce joy at prevailing over a difficult opponent, and if she is a child of Lanostre as she knows she is then there is little reason not to relish it. She speaks harshly, even when she isn't trying to. She resents being forced to fight, forced to help the cause of the god she loathes and surrounded by people who don't even realize that He is not the salvation they make Him out to be. Her general disposition is irritable, often angry, and she's been known to harbor a grudge for years. She likes arguing, and often plays demon's advocate in discussions.
She is not particularly friendly, and has few good friends. She does not mind this, preferring the company of Rodion to all others when she doesn't just want to be alone. Her form of friendship is strange, most often evidenced simply by her being near another person and liking it, or else constantly challenging them. The only exception to this is Rodion, who she's known most of her life. He is the one she confides in, and she does so willingly. She keeps few secrets from him, though one such was how she'd run away when he was caught. It ate at her for years before she was able to discuss it with him. While she does laugh, Rodion is the only one who can make her smile -- her usual expression of joy and cheer is either a fierce, defiant baring of teeth that really doesn't merit the term "smile" or else a gentling of her hard eyes and a slight upward curve of her mouth. Truthfully, she isn't happy all that often
At the Red Seminary, people know Ziotea as she is, instead of as she appears. She is no longer frightened or even remotely shy, and if provoked she can be vicious and potentially violent. It is hard to anger her to such extremes now, given her general disdain for everything, but when she was younger -- once she'd gotten over being crippled by fear -- she had a very short fuse. Commenting on her appearance (particularly her height) was a huge trigger, though she has since become comfortable with herself, secure in her strength and her skill. She still has aggressive inclinations, but for the most part she keeps physical combat to the training yard and the battlefield. Still, they all know what she's capable of -- and combined with the stories that sprang up from her explosive ether and the severe injuries dealt numerous other students early on in her training, many younger students are outright terrified of her. She's not looking to injure people at the seminary, not really, but she learned young that if you want a message to stick you used force, and the moment she broke her habit of fleeing to keep herself safe she stopped letting people walk all over her. Given her waifish appearance, it was necessary during her years of insecurity to strike hard and strike fast if someone tried to get ahead of her in the pecking order, and she had no qualms about doing so. Nowadays she doesn't mind so much being underestimated, though she would prefer to be more intimidating than she believes she is. In the end it generally comes down to whether her size and apparent weakness outweigh the reputation of the Inquisition and the threat implied by the wicked flames she resembles.
Though she wouldn't be able to explain why, Ziotea is perpetually restless and dissatisfied. Ever since she saw the world for what it truly was she's longed for something more, but she's no idea what that "more" might be. She has no real religion, doing what is expected of her to pay tribute to Lord Varya but without any sense of awe. She has no faith in humanity, knowing them to be selfish, cruel, and apt to turn on each other at the least provocation. And she has no hope for the world itself, because there is nothing that can change any of it.
Ziotea was born to Adrestia, a Lanostran priestess with a gift for preserving life as well as taking it, captured in an early raid on the nation before the war officially began and forced to serve as a Varyan slave. Her father was a pureblooded Omestrian, one of the many ether slaves the woman was forced to look after. With the help of the members of the Lady's Anger, Adrestia feigned a stillbirth and had the girl smuggled out. Unfortunately there are so many ways for a revolutionary to die, and those that had care of Ziotea could not avoid all of them for long. They left her with only vague memories of kind people that looked after her before her days on the street, as well as a lasting disgust with the ways of the world. Fortunately for her, they'd kept her hair dyed black, and by the time it had grown enough to be an issue she'd added a coating of grime and learned to keep her hood up at all times.
The life of a young child on the street is a hard one, but the urchins have a rough camaraderie and even a tiny girl like Ziotea could learn enough to scrabble out a meagre living. Things changed dramatically when she dove headlong into a nook she thought would be secure, a determined guard on her heels. Instead of safety she found another child, who made enough noise when she slammed into him that they both had to flee. By way of apology she split the loaf of bread she'd stolen with him once they escaped. It wasn't long before Ziotea and Rodion were inseparable, and towards the end of their time on the streets they pulled off a few dramatic thefts. The boy might not have been particularly skilled, but he was fast and did well with machinery -- and it was far easier to get away if there was a huge ruckus in the opposite direction. Ziotea's ether had an affinity for heat and explosions, and she was able to create some truly spectacular distractions.
They couldn't escape capture indefinitely, of course. That sort of thing caught the attention of the Inquisition, and a young Inquisitor nearing Culmination by the name of Vasaliev was tasked with finding those responsible for the disruptive blasts and machines running amok. He snagged the boy first and as close as she was to Rodion, Ziotea had a crippling fear of the Inquisitors. She didn't know why one of the elite was after them, and she didn't really want to know. Rodion might lose a hand, or be pressed into service, but if they caught /her/ she would end up an ether slave, doomed to a half-life of agony. She fled, and upon her friend's return with a promise of amnesty for her the girl still required a great deal of convincing before she'd come anywhere near their stern benefactor.
If life on the streets was difficult, life at the Red Seminary was brutal. Training demanded every shred of strength and willpower Ziotea possessed, and she's grown into an exceptional fighter, skilled with her weapons alone but truly devastating when she uses her ether. She had little time for hobbies at the seminary, driven by her heritage to enjoy fighting and forced by the unruly nature of her ether to take extra time to learn to use it well. If she didn't concentrate well enough, any spell she cast tended to blow up in her face -- literally -- and this was in addition to the trail of broken dishware and shattered glass she left when stressed. The necessity of extra training to balance the difficulties her specialized ether created, and to compensate for what it could not do, often left her completely drained. Easily half of her limited free time was spent with Rodion, hanging out in the metalworks or elsewhere. Most of the rest she spent on her own, with slivers carved out for her other friends.
She is looking forward to getting away from Varya, though she is less sure about their mission. Perhaps Eluria will hold answers to the questions she doesn't know to ask. Perhaps a simple change of scenery will keep her from being so restless. Either way, she's ready.
She is quite sensitive to the ether around her in most forms, some more strongly than others. If she focuses on this ability to the exclusion of all else, she can increase her range to about a mile, but this requires her staying still and meditating, and she cannot disengage easily if her concentration is broken, leaving her disoriented for a few crucial moments until she pulls her awareness back to herself. She can reach as far as a hundred yards without needing to stay put, but she still suffers a reduced but noticeable impairment of her awareness of things around her. Simple concentration gives her a range of about fifty yards, but maintaining it for extended periods is draining. Her unenhanced senses extend about twenty yards, though naturally whether Ziotea picks up on any specific thing varies with the strength of the ether signature and its distance, and precision locating requires additional effort (such as a vial in a pocket versus one in someone's hand). She is particularly aware of Rodion, though he has caught her off-guard on occasion when she was concentrating on other things. Perhaps it is a product of spending most of their lives together, but she tends to instinctively know where to go if she wishes to find him.
Ziotea has a larger-than-average reservoir of ether to draw on, not as deep as the top Inquisitors but only a step or two below them. Her Omestrian heritage is strongly evident, but the true nature of her ether is...explosive.
Literally.
Ziotea is able to generate bursts of concussive force that can be devastating if properly applied, and dangerous when she messes up. Initially she had major difficulty controlling the strength and aim of such attacks, and sparring matches often resulted in serious injury when she misjudged. With her ether taking the aspect of force bursts and explosions, her power is destructive, and it resists containment. She's refined her skill over the years, and she can use her ether internally easily enough, but any use of ether beyond her person comes with a risk, and for a long time she was best kept away from anything requiring significant restraint. The various uses that priests turn their ether to in addition to their area of affinity are beyond her. Simple things like heating a rock to boil water, cooking an egg, kindling an ether lamp, carrying additional weight -- she can do none of them. Rocks and eggs explode, lamps shatter and the liquid ether evaporates, and while she can /lift/ things, actually carrying them for any length of time is an issue.
However, force can be used in countless ways, and what she lacks in finesse and variety she makes up for in creativity. She uses her ether to hit with disproportionate strength, far beyond what is expected from someone her size, and to strengthen her shield and shield arm when deflecting attacks, including ether-charged bullets and enhanced strikes from other priests. She can add height to her jumps or fling herself forward with considerable momentum, and combining the latter with a shield bash makes for a particularly nasty assault. Her darts leave her hand at high speed without needing to be thrown, and she has good aim, able to hit a target at fifty paces in most circumstances, more if conditions are favorable. She can change direction with very little effort, no matter the state of her footing, and come to a dead stop at a moment's notice.
Application of force at a weak point in an object can break it, as she has demonstrated on countless plates and vases, and some objects can be made to explode. Even large structures can be compromised by hitting a weak point, though Ziotea has no particular skill at determining those points. She can blast doors off their hinges, or throw an opponent across a room and into a wall. Furniture and obstacles can be shoved aside or into someone's path, or even sent flying at them, and precision application can trip people up and send them sprawling. With the use of ether from her amulet, she is capable of ranged strikes powerful enough to cripple a tank and seriously injure those inside, if she doesn't kill them outright.
Ziotea is unusual in that she can draw not only on her own ether and her personal totem, but also nearby sources, though she cannot use them efficiently. The priests that first figured out how to harvest ether from living things had a form of this ability, though as with everything else she has little skill at anything that requires maintaining a spell. She does not require a totem to make use of extracted ether and can use it in its raw form, but only in close proximity to the source (within a few meters at most -- ideally she'd be holding the vial of ether, as the toll on her increases rapidly with distance). She can use ether from the totems of others as well, though this is even more difficult. She's no good at putting any ether she draws on in this fashion into a vial (she tends to break them), and attempting to use it to replenish her personal reserves is difficult even if it's the right type, and generally not worth it. If it's the wrong type, the result is painful and messy at best, and certainly not helpful. As a result she must use the drained ether, and she must do so at once. Mediocre execution results in uncontrolled explosions, poor execution results in injury to herself as well.
The other half of this skill is that she should eventually be able to drain ether from animals and even people around her, and perhaps learn to store it in vials. As of yet she has little skill in doing so, and has managed to siphon only small quantities from animals with some difficulty, and in controlled circumstances. With Rodion's help she's run trials, but her forays have been uninspiring thus far. Her only successful attempt to drain ether from another human resulted in the duo passed out on the floor of a destroyed lab, and they've abandoned the idea for now.
Perhaps her most notable ability, though not her strongest, is that she can nullify the spells of others. Ziotea is able to use her power to neutralize ether in use around her, though she is far better off using this ability to negate single attacks than she is countering things like personal buffs or crafting and maintaining an anti-ether shield. For stronger spells, the more power put into them the more power she needs to use, roughly equivalent to how much someone at a similar training level to her own would need to cast the incoming spell in the first place. A simple ice bolt is easily stopped, but if an opponent uses a vial of ether to raise a hailstorm, she would need to draw on a similar quantity from her own amulet.
In the early stages of learning how to use her negation skill properly, it was common for her to end up unleashing loud explosions instead of simply cancelling as she intended, frequently coupled with weakness. This still happens on occasion, especially when trying to disrupt stronger spells, and she is not yet satisfied with her mastery of this ability.
Ziotea is skilled with her spear and shield. She knows how to fight unarmed, though she prefers not to. She can use ether to punch hard enough to break bones if she must, and she knows a number of throws, holds, and pins, but if someone gets a good grip on her that's usually the end. Her ether is unsuited to supporting lengthy grapples, and her size leaves her at a major disadvantage. Her best bet is to slip quickly free of an attempted grab, then use a few quick strikes and an ether push or a throw and to get out of grabbing range. From there she can make a clean escape, or keep moving and use makeshift weapons and her ether to wear the opponent down.
She's not much slower than people with longer legs, though she worked hard to be able to say as much while unable to use ether to bolster her endurance. To do so is a considerable drain on her, and not worth it in all save the most dire circumstances. Her etheric endurance is superb, but her ability with sustained casts is very low, and trying to do so generally results in her signature explosive backfire. Her paling is weaker than that of most Inquisitors, but she compensates by using force and her shield to block incoming attacks, and she can briefly flare it to be stronger than average -- she just can't keep it that way. She is not able to summon a spellblade at all, but with her ability to enhance her strikes she really doesn't need to. Any sharp object can become a dangerous weapon in her hands, and if she has nothing then she can strengthen her hands directly. Despite her limitations, Ziotea is a highly capable Inquisitor, and if perhaps she is not as enthusiastic about their mission of exploration and conquest as some, well, there are far worse flaws she could have instead.
Rodion: He is her dearest companion. She can barely remember a time when she didn't know him, and the idea of a life without him in it seems...lacking. The relationship is a relic of not happier times, but more innocent ones. She simply does not form the sort of connection they share anymore. He has her complete trust and her unwavering devotion. He is the one Ziotea confides in, and she does so willingly. She keeps few secrets from him, if any -- though one such was how she ran away when he was caught. It ate at her for years before she was able to discuss it with him, though they've since gotten past that hurdle. While she does laugh, Rodion is the only one who can make her smile -- her usual expression of joy and cheer is either a fierce, defiant baring of teeth that really doesn't merit the term "smile" or else a gentling of her hard eyes and a slight upward curve of her mouth. Truthfully, she isn't happy all that often.
He is best able to disperse the worst of even her darkest foul moods, and there's a certain gentle affection in how she treats him that she shows nobody else. "Friend" doesn't begin to cover it, and even "family" falls short of explaining what for Ziotea is a unique and treasured relationship. Even when she wants to be alone, there is always room for him as well, though it's only in the past year or two that she's started realizing how much she's taken his presence for granted. For her the question is not so much whether she loves Rodion -- she's known that to be a yes for almost as long as she's known him -- but rather just what sort of love it is, and asking didn't even occur to her until they started approaching Culmination and a future outside the walls of the Seminary.
Ragnar: As small and as childlike as he is, Ziotea is still smaller. His perpetual cheer annoys her if she spends too much time in his company, in large part because she just isn't happy like that, and sees no reason to be. His (apparently) genuine affection was not something she trusted in their early years, and when they were both with Rodion in the metalworks she would be an angry, glowering little raincloud in Rodion's shadow. She's since come to realize that he really /is/ that kind and compassionate, and she has no flaming idea how to respond to it. She's amazed that he hasn't gotten himself killed yet, or failed out of training. She's even more shocked that he's escaped the seminary without becoming jaded. She sees him as childish and naive, his constant optimism incomprehensible, and his honest compassion as asking for people to hurt him. Even at his most irritating, there's something precious about a person that can maintain the sort of outlook Ragnar has despite all odds, and in a way she wants to protect that innocence.
She does consider him a friend and even enjoys having him around -- though not for too long, or she ends up even grumpier than usual. They still clash, and though she is no longer actively vicious feelings and egos do end up bruised. Still, he's someone she can relax around, and if someone hurts him you'd better believe that they will have slightly over 100 lbs of pure, vicious fury in their face (and possibly in their gut, as that's a better target). Of course, when Ragnar tries to take Ziotea herself on she shows him no mercy. This generally ends with him on the ground, though she has taken to giving him bluntly factual advice on what he did wrong and how to do better afterwards.
Yerokhin "Stina": giant even as a child, he towered over little Ziotea, and initially she avoided him out of pure fear. As she began to conquer her fear of various things, this included him, and she sees him as someone worth beating. He rapidly became one of the standards against which she measured herself, and defeating him in single combat is a longtime goal of hers that she has yet to achieve. His ability to take even the worst of her magical misfires makes him a good opponent for her, and their styles bear passing similarities. Her complete inability to faze him was infuriating at first, but he was always matter-of-fact about handling the bubbling rage that came from her insecurity, and eventually she realized that she actually liked testing herself against him. For a while, he was one of a very few people that could get away with commentary on her appearance -- particularly her size -- without her flying at him in a fury, though sometimes she would anyhow just to have an excuse to fight.
Their dynamic has turned into a very strange sort of friendship/rivalry. Ziotea makes a habit of trying to goad Stina into debates about almost anything, particularly religion. She enjoys contradicting him, and there's been occasions when she'll come in at the end of a conversation he's having with someone else and just plunk herself down and start seeing how long she can go before her arguments loose cohesion and fall apart. She insults him regularly, but in a casual, offhand way that is more habit than anything else. Going up against him, physically or verbally, is a great way for her to let off steam.
She's made no secret that her faith in Lord Varya is perfunctory at best, and she goes through the required motions of worship with no particular reverence. She knows her life and the lives of all Varyans is in HHis hands, but that doesn't mean He's a good guy, and she feels no personal connection to Him. Stina does not approve, but he blames her lack of devotion on her inner turmoil.
Hassan: He bothers Ziotea on an very basic level. He doesn't always realize when he uses his spoken power -- he does it often -- and she doesn't always realize that she's having to counter it, but something about the man just really bothers her, and it has since the day they met. The idea of someone able to twist people to their will isn't something she sees in a positive light. Nor does it help that her reaction to humor from those she's not close to is a negative one, and that his constant goofing off gets on her nerves. On some level she's jealous of his cheerful nature, and without Ragnar's accompanying naivete there is nothing to smooth over the rough edges. Where her fighting with Stina is good-natured and enjoyable, with Hassan she has an actively adversarial relationship.
He is one of the many people she injured severely in her early years at the Seminary. Father Gregoroth matched the two of them in an unarmed and unpowered spar, hoping to teach the girl that she could not run from everything larger than herself.
She waited for Hassan to make the first move, he made some inane joke about the situation, they went at it, and while she tried to do as instructed she soon panicked and a violent burst of force flung the older boy clear across the room. Up until that point she'd never stood her ground against an opponent that frightened her so, and Ziotea was shocked and horrified at the way he slammed into the wall and crumpled into a heap. She dashed over to see if he was okay, just in time to watch him pass out. He'd suffered a concussion and a broken arm, though nothing permanent.
That day marked the first time she was seen as anything other than a helpless waif with unpredictable ether good for breaking things and little else.
Astraea: The full-blooded Lanostran is not someone Ziotea likes. The way Lanostre and its Lady surrendered and just abandoned who they were leaves a bitter taste in her mouth, all the more because she's half Lanostran herself and primarily identifies as such. Part of her bitterness comes from a personal grudge against the goddess for failing to protect the mother she knows only by name and her two childhood caretakers, and seeing Astraea take pride in that same heritage twists a knife in her gut. Some of it is congealed resentment from a time when the fair girl was everything fiery Ziotea was not. A lot more is animosity Astraea herself fostered by constantly trying to knock the smaller girl down. And some of it is a growing jealousy for the fact that Rodion seems to like having her around. They're more evenly matched now than they were at first, though their fights were always emotionally charged if not just plain intense. The first time she put Astraea in the dirt was a major triumph for Ziotea.
Tatiana: Ziotea doesn't mind Tatiana's lighthearted nature nearly as much as she does Hassan's, perhaps because the other girl likewise uncertain where she belonged. It also helped that Tatiana was never particularly good at fighting, so Ziotea could use basic skills against her and never felt particularly endangered. Since Tatiana and Rodion get along well, Ziotea has more or less accepted the woman as well. She sees the summoner more as an okay person to have around than a propr friend.
Galahad: Ziotea didn't pay him much mind at all until several years into her training. By the time they found themselves in any sort of competition, she was able to hold her own without feeling overwhelmed. He seems like more of an intellectual than a melee fighter to her, and there's little to be gained in fighting him. He is Lanostran, a mark against him, but he's not as in-your-face about it as Astraea and so he's far less of an irritant. They clashed on occasion when she was less certain of herself and took the criticisms of perceived equals poorly, but she's learned to recognize him as an intelligent and capable individual, and she has a quiet admiration for his superb control of his ether.
Viveca: She's Omestrian. Ziotea...doesn't even know where to begin processing that. She feels a strange kinship to Viveca, but she's never made any move to approach the other person who shares her heretical heritage, especially one so openly proud of it.
Oren: Another Omestrian. She can sense, in a vague sort of way, that he's conflicted, but beyond a certain mild curiosity she really doesn't care. She noticed, of course, when he started his downward spiral. It's not like the Seminary has all that many people, and the kind of mess he became, people noticed. He seems to have gotten past it, though with him joining the Phoenix Warband it has come to mind again. There's something he's hiding, she thinks, but none of her admittedly sparse memories of him give indication what that might be. He at least appears to view Lord Varya with respect and gratitude, and she can't reconcile that sort of perspective with the cruelty of the gods's teachings, but then he does seem conflicted about his heritage, much as she is. In the end her opinion of him is mostly neutral.
Ilya: He is egotistical and has an inflated head, and Ziotea has never seen a need to look past the surface of this one. She's heard his reputation, and she doesn't buy it. She's seen how he scrambles to adapt when something unexpected happens, and she's occasionally entertained the perversely pleasant thought of going toe to toe with him and overwhelming his flimsy plans. Competitive? Nah....
Mother Indira: Beyond a certain curiosity as to how the woman measured up to her legend, Ziotea did not have any particular interest in Mother Indira initially. She learned a little about the instructor very soon after her arrival at the seminary -- the Omestrian and her research were famous, after all, not to mention the tales told by the children. By the time Ziotea had enough control to be a potential candidate for the Circle, it was becoming painfully clear that her ether was strongly focused in a way that did not facilitate summoning. Mother Indira did take a brief interest in her when it was discovered the girl could not only sense ether around her but also draw on it to some extent, but the child's growing hostility made her reject Ziotea outright. As a result there was little reason for the girl to further associate much with the instructor, who was busy nurturing the skills of her chosen few. Ziotea sees her as a symbol of false hope, someone who is not the hero others make of her. While she doesn't quite hate Mother Indira, she does view the summoner with general disgust, and she will not voluntarily spend time near her.
Father Gregoroth: Ziotea despises the Bear, and thinks of him more often as the Butcher or simply the Brute. She was tiny and frightened when she first met him, and he immediately pegged her as weak. He would demand she complete tasks beyond her abilities, put her up against partners who would show her no mercy, and in every way possible make her life miserable.
And it worked. Unable to maintain control of her ether when under stress, her inadvertent and unrestrained use of it rapidly built up her endurance, far quicker than could be accomplish by standard exercises. The girl had a massive potential, between her large pool and the concentration of her powers, but it was raw and untrained. On the streets she'd learned to run and hide, but in the Seminary Father Gregoroth forced her to stand and fight if she wanted to survive.
Pushed to the breaking point, often left badly injured in the wake of brutal lessons, Ziotea's intense hatred of the cruel instructor crystallized the day she finally figured out how to direct her explosions. Up until that point she'd been limited to "away" or "overhead" with a side of "shatter explosively". She'd just managed to deliberately send a sack of rocks flying across the yard with her power, but all Father Gregoroth said was, "Again." Worn out and frustrated by the theft of even this minor victory, the child's anger proved stronger than her control. The snow around her shoes blasted outwards, and a couple feet away one of the rocks she'd been working with exploded, sending shrapnel flying. The Great Bear was right next to her, but though he shielded himself from harm he left Ziotea to suffer the consequences of her ethereal instability. She has absolutely loathed him ever since.
She harbors a secret desire to crush him into dust, but between the terror he stirred in her as a small child and his world-renown strength, she lacks the nerve to actually challenge him. He is a large part of why Ziotea's fighting style is so physical, even if it does combine this with high mobility.
Father Antonin: A tiny girl under the supervision of harsh instructors and expected to compete with children bigger and stronger than she would get injured often. One with a bad habit of shattering thing and causing explosive discharges that drained her ether and could even cause her bodily harm, well. It was no surprise that Ziotea ended up in the infirmary a lot, even by Seminary standards. This meant she saw a great deal of Father Antonin, a healer and teacher with a mysterious past. Ziotea knew the story, and she'd heard the rumors, but when she eventually asked him about it, as nearly all students did, she didn't want to know how he'd lived so long.
Instead she asked why he would want to spend a hundred fifty years with the Inquisition.
Each time she ended up in his care, she would have another question for him, and each time his answer was honest, often making her think. He was the first of the seminary staff she formed any kind of bond with, since Father Creid never interacted with students outside of class. Eventually she began to seek him out on her own with her more philosophical questions. She was interested in the perspective gained over the course of a life as long as his, sometimes about things that few still living remembered. He in turn challenged her perpetual cynicism, and encouraged her to explore the less violent side of her ether.
She agreed, after years of delicate convincing, to let him tutor her, though the sessions were difficult and highly stressful. They often ended with her breaking something, deliberately or otherwise. Still, she owes most of her ability at handling others' ether to Father Antonin's patience. He also helped her refine her control in general, helping her develop and practice techniques to keep her volatile power in check.
Father Creid: Yet another instructor with rumors and legends in his past, Father Creid has never lived up to his epithet for Ziotea. Not that she doubts his capabilities or his skill, but when any Inquisitor at all is terrifying, somehow it lessens the impact of a spooky story. Compared to Father Gregoroth, "the Brave Man's Fear" was a plush toy to the child's eyes, and while he was constantly demanding, he never made her feel worthless. He was scrupulously fair, which she could respect, and he encouraged the Inquisitors-in-training to use their minds.
To most people he seemed detached and emotionless, even inhuman. To someone with Rodion for a best friend, used to seeing past the inexpressive surface to what lies beneath, Ziotea is entirely at ease with his manner. Even his sharp sense of humor didn't bother her after the first few years. He may be strange, yes, and she is quite curious about how he was injured, what sort of power he really wields, and what he's thinking behind his mask, but when it comes to his emotions she believes she simply doesn't know him well enough to see through to what he feels. While Father Creid is actually someone she would like to have some sort of relationship with, it became rapidly apparent that for whatever reason he preferred to keep them all at a distance. Ziotea might wish it was otherwise, but she can hardly begrudge him his decision.
Ziotea has never identified as Omestrian despite her appearance and her etheric signature. She has no knowledge of her father beyond remembering that she was once told he was an ether slave, and she has no clue how much of her heritage is Omestrian. It was a cruel trick, be it chance or fate, that gave her not only fiery eyes but fiery hair as well, traits strongly associated with the subjugated race. She feels little if any connection to the lost nation. With its history and culture all but gone, even if she did have strong ties to the land or the people, there would be no way to learn much about them.
Calling herself Lanostran isn't so much a statement of pride as an "up yours" to both Lanostre and Varya. It's a way of subtly separating herself from the cold god that rules their lives with His icy hand.
While she does not have very many hobbies, Ziotea does have a few. Most notably she likes to doodle, and when she was pressured to nurture some interest other than training she took up painting. She has no great skill, but she's learned how to get the basic shapes of things onto the canvas, and her pieces are recognizable as fairly impressionistic representations of scenes and landscapes. She's best at capturing light and motion.
While Warband Phoenix did not have any casualties, one promising young man was nearly killed after pushing Ziotea too far. Magnus of Warband Seraph, several years her senior, confronted the girl where she was doing chores, cleaning the small chapel to the Ravenous Lord with Rodion and Ragnar. He'd accosted her before, of course, but this time she was already in a particularly bad mood. Though she warned him that he should get out before he got hurt, he didn't listen. Ragnar tried to step in, getting mocked for his trouble. Ziotea actually tried to take his advice, but it proved disastrous. With her trying to control her temper and the added fury at an insult to her friend, the resulting explosive discharge was deafening. Though neither Ragnar nor Rodion suffered anything more than a minor tumble, the unfortunate lad taunting them was sent flying into the statue of Lord Varya immediately behind him with such force that parts of the statue broke off and both he and they continued on to slam into the wall beyond. Ziotea herself was knocked backwards as well, with more force than transferred to either of her two friends. She fetched up against the pew behind her, and between hitting her head and the amount of ether she'd expended, she passed out. She escaped with a mild concussion and a broken collarbone. Her tormentor had numerous injuries to bone and tissue, with the most notable being a depressed skull fracture, broken spine, and a shattered humerus. While the other two boys were able to fetch Father Antonin fast enough that Magnus lived, permanent damage had been done. Combined with the lengthy convalescence and need for intensive rehab, it was decided he no longer had a future in the Red Seminary. He was subsequently shuffled off to another branch of the church, and a different location.
Ziotea never acted particularly sorry for the outcome of that clash. She had warned him, she had even tried her best to maintain control. It was his own fault for being stupid, she said, and she'd no intention of beating herself up over something where she'd done her best. In truth, she was shaken, though not so much as she had been by her first spar with Hassan. To Ragnar she admitted it was a shame Magnus would never fully heal, even if he was a jerk and a bully. To Rodion, however, she confessed to feeling guilt, as well as the concern that she was never going to be able to get a handle on her powers.
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