Ava ‘Ed’ StockettCharacter Name: Ava Stockett/’Ed’
Race/Species:Human - Originally from Praelior
Gender:Female, masquerading as a male - ‘Ed’
Age:26
Role: Skills/Traits:
- Deception - Being a woman dressed and acting as a man means that Ava’s skill to deceive is quite high. She is able to act and pass for male amongst the pirates on the ship and avoid most suspicion. This has given her further confidence to deceive others, both verbally and through action. She finds it easy to lie and to be ambiguous with the truth, something that has worked in her favour on her short journey so far.
- Acrobatics - Ava has trained since she was a child in all things acrobatic. She can backflip, cartwheel, tumble, and perform other stunts easily. Her most impressive particular skill under this umbrella is her ability to pole vault long distances with the use of her Long Pole. Such skills in acrobatics make her evasive in a fight, which is for the best as she has no real combat experience, and if she were cornered by armed enemies she would surely be at a huge disadvantage.
- Athleticism - One cannot perform body-breaking stunts without first being at an utmost level of fitness. Ava has been training since she was a child to journey the seas; even at a young age she pushed her body to it’s limits. She would practice cliff diving, swimming against the current, running uphill with weights. Her whole early life was spent training with her twin brother to reach peak fitness. She can climb, run, and swim with little difficulty.
- Short Sword Combat - Ava is used to the cut-and-thrust style of fighting which she and her brother trained in. She has never taken up arms against a real opponent, so her skill level in this combat style is low and she knows it - so will do all she can to avoid it if possible. Of course, she is not afraid to unsheath it to intimidate someone and show it off where necessary.
- Cooking - Raised to be a baker and general kitchen-hand at her parent’s business, in this occupation she was able to learn a lot. She can skin, gut, and carve a carcass into sections before baking it into the most delicious pie you can imagine. This skill may not just serve her well on the ship, but her fellow hungry pirates too.
Weapons: - Oliver’s Short Sword
- Dagger
~ As a fighter, Ava is much better suited to being out of direct action. She has not mastered any weapon, and while her muscular build and natural strength mean that she can probably land an epic punch, if confronted by someone armed with a sword (or other) she is at a severe disadvantage. She does better by providing support to peers, and taking a more tactical and thought out approach. Of course she has her brother’s short sword on her person, but the only person she ever trained in sword fighting with was Oliver who was not a real opponent.~
Physical Description: She stands at 5’8” which is less than average for a woman of Praelior, and considerably shorter for a man. Her intense physical activity over the years has given her a muscular frame which gives more weight to her disguise as for the most part her lean and muscular figure conceals what could be a feminine shape were she ever to let the muscle soften.
Ava has muddy brown and shaggy shoulder length hair (she cut it herself!). With this new cut, she looks more like Oliver than herself, it brings her a comfort to look like him. She still bears a girlish face - beautiful bright green eyes set against a paler olive skin with full lips and high cheekbones. Luckily, her strong square jaw makes her face appear far more ambiguous and androgynous.
She binds her breasts flat with bandages at all times in disguise - this causes her discomfort at times but the sensation is a constant reminder to her to maintain a masculine posture, although she sometimes will slip in the heat of the moment. Finally, she is able to change the pitch of her voice to match that of a mans. Granted, it’s no baritone, but it’s certainly not girly. This practice does take it’s toll on her and so sometimes she will try to go a day or two avoiding speaking in order to rest her voice.
Armor:None
Equipment/Other- She keeps a locket gifted to her by Oliver.
- Long Pole
Mental Description/Personality: The single most accurate word to describe Ava at this point in her life would be naive. Yes, she is very deceptive, intuitive, and has a lot of book smarts - but she inexperienced with traveling, inexperienced with people other than the regular townsfolk she would see everyday. She is arrogant at all times. She is weighed under with the gigantic chip on her shoulder. Rightfully so, she is angry and out for revenge for the death of her twin brother, but her sole goal to kill Oliver’s killer is a tale as old as time. This burning rage gives her tunnel vision.
This one act of retribution leaves her little time to do anything that is truly for herself - like forming friendships, discovering her own identity, and enjoying her travels. It is the first thing she thinks about when she wakes up and the last she thinks about before she sleeps. She sees every step she takes as one that brings her closer to revenge. This grudge has built a fortress around a once witty, sharp, and adventurous young woman. She has been living in grief and trauma for close to a year. Like a stray dog, if approached the wrong way she is likely to act out and snap - unafraid of consequences.
As Ed, she overacts in a masculine way, often making jokes at the expense of women in order to get other men on her side. She is a caricature of what she typically believes men to be like. While in the disguise, she finds it hard to be around so many men without occasionally feeling lustful - she will often cast a pervy side-eye to those around her. She has not spent too much time with other man, and has had very little romantic experience.
A very typical woman from Praelior. She is dedicated to whatever it is she is doing - when she was a child she worked hard at the Academy and built her skills to an exceptional level. This mindset has carried over into her adult years.
Goals/Aspirations: Her major goal is to kill whomever killed her brother and she does not ever really dare dream of anything else. Part of her wants to live out their shared dream of sailing the seas too. While she is full of anger and grief now, the call to the sea has never been so strong as now. She is doing this as a way to feel close to him again, and to finally take action and slip away from her father.
~ She may not know it, but all Ava wants is acceptance to be who she is. She lived her life fighting for a dream which her father protected and shielded her from. She has no real clue who she is, nor does she realise that part of life and adventure is learning that. Dressing and disguising as another character just detaches her further from herself who deep down she deems unworthy.
To be accepted for who she is - and to be able to release herself from disguise would empower her to make different life choices. ~
Background/History: Ava was born just a few minutes after her twin brother, Oliver. The two were raised not far from the sea, and as children they would often race from their home to see the ships coming in to dock and thus they both fell in love with the open water and dreamed of one day owning their own ship and exploring together.
Ava was the absolute apple of her father’s eye. Oliver - not so much.
Mr Stockett doted on his daughter so deeply and had such a love for her, that when Oliver received his first sword to train with - Ava was given dolls and dresses. He wouldn’t have his daughter put herself at risk of harm with swordplay and dreams of being a sailor. For her whole life her father encouraged her to take other hobbies that would keep her safe and caged. He wanted to keep her from those who would harm her, and keep her from harming herself.
Little did Mr Stockett know, but as the twins got older, they began to train together, with Oliver sharing his swordplay lessons with his sister and pushing her physically to keep up with him. Ava found that she had to work twice as hard as Oliver to get the result. When he started to become a force of brute strength, she became much more nimble and able to bend her body into stunts. Together, with their differences to balance out the other, they were a force to be reckoned with. They managed, somehow, to do this behind their father's back.
At the same time, the two were enrolled in the Praelian academies. Ava, to study history, literature, and skills best suited to women (at the encouragement of her father). Despite longing to be taken seriously enough by him to be taught combat, Ava thoroughly enjoyed her studies and was considered one of the smartest in her classes.
Eventually, she came of age to enroll as a Sailor. Both she and Oliver were in their best physical condition, and ready to take on the seas at last. But only Oliver was allowed to leave, and Ava’s father forbade her from leaving (as expected) and demanded that she stay and put her learnings from the Academies to good use and help in their bakery.
Oliver left, and Ava stayed.
Over the next 5 years Oliver would come back to the town to visit every 6 or 7 months, bringing gifts for Ava from all of the places he had visited. Despite resenting that he was allowed to live their shared dream while she was trapped, she still deeply loved her brother and they shared the same strong connection. On many an occasion, for no reason at all, Ava would awake in the night feeling what she could only describe as being sea-sickness…
One day while kneading bread during work, she felt a pain she had never felt, a pain in her heart - and each panicked breath she took seemed to exhale something from her. She knew that something had happened to Oliver. Oliver was dead and she had been unable to help him.
The report came not long after, that his ship had been attacked and the entire crew had washed up dead on shore.
___
Half of her was gone after Oliver’s death. She was no longer who she was, she had nothing to make her whole. They had been inseparable in spirit and now his spirit was gone. Not long after the incident something in her snapped into place and she stopped what she was doing and left her home without care for her family, and for her father. She had only one thing to do - to find whoever who had killed Oliver.
And so, she became ‘Ed’. Leaving Ava behind in the pile of hair she had cut from her head. Ed travelled mostly by land to Seacliffe. Being out in the wild and beautiful nature was exhilarating in a way. Most people might find the journey from Praelior to a place like Seacliffe boring. Those people hadn't been locked away in their home for most of their life. She had heard there was a festival in Seacliffe so instead of travelling on with the same bunch, she chose to stay to see it.
Ava had seen festivals before, but not like this. It was something that most might take for granted or shrug it off as being a bit stupid - to Ava it was a representation of freedom. During the festival, she caught the tail end of a conversation between two drunkards...
"Yerrr... 'at Galen Blackmoore ish looking fer a new crew. I woulds do it mysell but the wife you know she don't approve of me avin' that lifestye anymoore..."Now, she is ready to join a band of pirates on their ship. Her reasons for this are that she fully believes that travelling as a pirate will allow her to explore every inch of the world in it’s glory. Not behind the banners of army ships, but truly free... Now, ‘Ed’ must prove himself useful...
Relationships: None yet!
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