Name: Daela Cyth

Pic:

Class: Bard

Race: Human

Personality: Daela has a real way with words. Even so, the trick is getting her to stop using words. Maybe it's that she's just really friendly, or maybe it's just a bard thing back East, but Daela can and will go on for hours - even days at a time if you let her. She's almost always the first chatterbox (and invariably the most honest) to join a conversation, even if she doesn't get what it's about, and is generally the last one to leave the conversation. It's also best not to let her appearance fool you; Daela's a fair leap older than she looks. Talking about her age is a handy way to turn her ramblings into rantings, since she likes to keep people either guessing about her age or make them think she's still young. Her height can also be a point of pride or shame for her, depending on if she gets complimented or ridiculed for it.

As a major social butterfly, Daela naturally likes being around other people. She's also a bit of a party type, often proposing to commemorate almost anything with a feast, and generally leaving those feasts unable to walk straight. She only drinks in the presence of drunk people, though, and drunk Daela is altogether different from sober Daela. The biggest difference is that she somehow talks even more when drunk, though her mood sporadically swings all over the place. And while her heart may be in the right place most of the time, Daela has a reputation for becoming greedy and selfish when she gets a bad feeling about what will happen next.

Physical Description: Dark-skinned and white-haired, Daela's appearance is a dead givaway of her origins to the East. Another surefire sign of her "pure-desert heritage" is her slightly-taller-than-the-norm stature coupled with an altogether-toned build. Daela often wears a white shawl she received as a going-away present back home, and almost invariably keeps her bag handy, its contents namely consisting of a spellphone, a runepad, and a tiny harp. She doesn't play said harp anymore, but keeps it as a lucky charm.

Background: Daela's story starts to the East, in a desert kingdom with its own distinct culture. Short of that, nothing special to say here. She grew up on the sands of her homeland, learning the ways of her homeland and being among the last generation of people whose heritage came fully from the desert. People back home loved Daela dearly in her childhood. Then she learned to talk. Day in and day out, she'd chat away about anything and everything, but her good nature kept people from disliking her just because of that.

Then the next fifteen years or so passed pretty normally. Daela grew up, she made some friends and lost some friends, and chose a path to take for herself when she came of age to set out on her own. She wanted to be a bard. A more traditional bard, that is. The ones who wrote poems and songs. For a fairly brief period of time, she actually did a pretty good job at that kind of work. Maybe it was years of chatting pretty much nonstop, but Daela had developed quite the singing voice over the years. But like all good things, Daela's freelance career had to come to an end sometime, and get replaced with something even better. That is to say, Chainmail Panties.

At the time, she was just a few years older than she now appears, but Daela was the first bard with Chainmail Panties, and despite bards of today being more tech-savvy than music-savvy, she really likes her job. Of course, she still plays for fun, and for tips when the group stops in a village to rest. One particular toccata of hers - "This Is Why Swords Aren't Lutes" - is becoming something of a hit, if only for the irony that it's played on her sword which doubles as, wouldn't you know it, a lute.

Talents: Making sure Chainmail Panties has a good reputation might be considered a talent in itself, especially with this recent incident with the team's previous mage. But if so, Daela's awfully modest about it, claiming it's just pretty much doing what she does everyday: talking to people. That said, she's alright with a sword and fond of lightning magic, as well as having a talent for the old bard traditions of music and poetry. Her greatest talents however, and the ones she outright denies as being talents, are drawing and reading maps, and letting her mouth keep running until it says the one thing it's not supposed to.

Flaws: Daela talks too much. Even her friends sometimes just want to choke her or seal her mouth shut, or remove it altogether. Add this to somehow only saying the worst possible thing at the worst possible time, and her mouth has sometimes been even more hazardous to Chainmail Panties than any dragon could. She's also terribly forgetful, enough so that she's not even certain how old she is anymore.

Quote: "No, no, no, it really isn't that hard."

Treasure: There are two times in which Daela has claimed a special treasure, mainly because none of them would save somebody in a fight but were a bard's dream come true. The first was a three-for-one deal, consisting of her sword and two gauntlets. The gauntlets aren't overly useful in battle, and the sword is only about average in a fight, but they have a unique enchantment that only works with all three items. Running the left gauntlet down the side of the sword (not the blade, as that could hurt) makes strings appear. From there, she can play it like an instrument. Going from the tip back up to the hilt has the opposite effect.

Daela's other treasure is kept even closer to her than her magic sword. This would be her necklace, the pendant at the end of which gives her the appearance of eternal youth, not to be confused with actual eternal youth. Even though she'll still look young in fifty years, she can still die of old age if her adventures don't kill her first. Since she's unsure about her current age (nor does she want to find out) Daela has wanted to see if she can make the necklace give her real eternal youth.

Magic: Daela doesn't have a lot of magic at her disposal. Pretty much all she can do is shoot lightning bolts out of her hands, but she's always open to learning new things.

Relationships: Daela meets enough people outside of Chainmail Panties that it all kind of becomes one big blur. She knows an old wizard back home and keeps up with him on Helmbook, but he's the only major relationship of hers besides teammates.

Allies: Aside from fans of Chainmail Panties, Daela has a tiny fanbase as a musician. This is only about twenty people who probably don't have much to offer if she came into town, but still. It's good to have fans.