[Reserved]

December Inanis

Age: 19
Gender: F
Element: Darkness

Personality:
Air-headedness or thoughtfulness? Apathy or stoicism? For December, it's probably both. December is quiet and aloof, often hanging back from action and avoiding confrontations. She is a follower type who goes along with whatever seems to be the most convinent at the time, but often gets lost in her own thoughts and blanks out. She is hard to excite but easy to please, being content with the most frugal conditions as long as she gets a plenty of sleep and doesn't get pushed around too much. However, behind her mask of indifference, December is surprisingly bitter and cynical, especially against her family. She feels lonely and helpless, but feels compelled to help others in worse positions. She is troubled by doubt and low self-esteem, and she often goes day to day living on pure spite against herself.

Bio:
Born into relative wealth, December was a trouble child. Not because she was disobedient or rowdy, but quite the opposite. Although the Inanis family was in a prestigious service position and had served the Council for several years, December's parents were secretly ardent opposers against the Council. They wished for a spirited child destined to take down the Council. Instead, they would often find their child lying around, completely still and staring into nothingness. She was silent, anti-social and reserved to the point that she was mistaken for being a mute. She received frequent beatings both from her parents to try and "toughen her up", with little success. December learned to bury her emotions deeper under her usual guise of blankness, as well as try and take care of herself in face of neglect and isolation (neither of which truly worked). December often befriended birds in lieu of human interactions, her favourites being ravens.

December's troubles did not stop there, however. At her Awakening, the crystal didn't function at first. Actually, December was spitefully suppressing her magic, no matter how many times her parents would try to "convince" her. So December's apparent inability to conduct magic was buried under bribery, and her official element was noted as 'Fire'. As a punishment, her parents poisoned the ravens in the park and forced December to bury them. When December attacked her parents in a fit of uncharacteristic rage, they had her restrained and forced to go through the Awakening once again. Darkness. A writhing, chaotic and powerful aspect of Darkness, kept in control underneath December's calm surface.

Suddenly her parents were very, very interested. In terms of raw potential, December was unlike many had seen. But due to December both conciously and sub-conciously supressing her magic, combined with December's habit of skipping regimen in favor of naps, it had rarely surfaced. December was then given a choice. Continue to pretend to be a Fire mage and be sent off to serve a Count, or foster power within the Academy. Seeing a lesser of two evils, December decided to attend the Academy. Perhaps she would find relative peace and quiet there.

Likes:
- Naps
- Coffee
- Ravens
- Really cold weather

Dislikes:
- Swimming
- Her parents
- Loud noises
- Memorization

Habits:
December tends to compulsively scratch her scars when she is nervous, leading to even more scarring. As such, she tends to wear several layers of clothes as a preventative measure. She is also very self-concious about her scars, and rarely wears anything short of winter attire to cover them, even in hot weather.
December tends to leave things unfinished, especially in terms of cleaning. December washes her clothes, but leaves them lying around. She sorts her belongings, but tends to leave a majority of it as 'Other'. December finishes most of her sentences, but
December's few personal belongings include a hairpin that doubles as a lockpick. December picked up a strange habit of trying to absent-mindedly lockpick whenever possible, but so far has only been able to successfully unlock her mother's jewlery box. Her other belongings include a pouch of bird seeds, preserved raven feathers, and two suspiciously expensive rings.

Full Name: Arlene Nadalia Senn
Titles: Lady Senn
Nicknames: Lemon, Lemonade to her friends (because apparently lemonade was a thing in medival times)

Personality:
Austere and stalwart, Arlene personifies an immovable glacier. She is rarely surprised and will almost always be the one to follow a code to the letter, at least in the view of the higher authorities. Under scrutiny, Arlene acts the part of a model student and is nearly always called upon to discipline peers. But for those who Arlene views favourably, she is always there to offer silent help and lets them go.

Arlene puts large emphasis on family pride and the concept of inheritance, which she strangely doesn't impose on Aria. Insulting the Senn name is the easiest way to earn her wrath, even if Arlene does not act upon it. Instead, it is manifested in a cold shoulder and a conspicuously intensified monitoring on her part, which usually cumulates in getting into trouble or being forced to extra gruelling training.

Arlene is seen in every available training, especially physical training. When she is not training she is seen patrolling down the corridors and keeping close watch over trouble makers, and when she is not doing that, she is helping teachers train younger peers or away on civil missions. However, she apparently always has time for Aria, whether to help her work out personal problems or related to management, with insights in both relationships and philosophy.

Wrapped beneath layers of both self-control and anger, Arlene is a very tired person. Pushed right from her childhood all the way to the eve of her youthful years, Arlene wonders if she had not been a Successor and not thrust in such an environment, what she would have been like. But just as soon, she will regard even the thought as weak and cowardice. She acts surprisingly vunerable when complemented and even more if she is pampered, but will recover quickly to reinstate her decorum.

Arlene apparently likes the country crests and strategic maps, but strangely her gifts are instead precious flowers and plants.

Legacy:
Successor of Kay. In line with Kay's legend of bottomless stamina, Arlene's powers surround defensive abilities, shining out especially in attrition and territory control. She can create barriers and shields made out of spiritual light, cutting off enemy advance and reinforcing allied positions. Although visually similar to Aria's light-based abilities, these spiritual lights don't seem to have any connections to the element. Combining temporary terraforming and buff amplification when in the vicinity of her allies, she can secure hardpoints and act as crucial pivots in large scale battles. Her actual stat are below average out of the roster, certainly falling behind stat powerhouse characters such as Lucien or HP sponges like Bors - but given her high scaling with equipment and skills that frequently grant invincibility frames, her effective tanking ability becomes exponentially powerful if her niche and complexity is used correctly.

Interestingly, Kay's legacy seem to offer mostly raw endurance, elemental resistance and some potential magical abilities that could have instead taken form as a berserking style that cares nothing more than hitting the enemy down until one of them falls. These powers, however, have been modified and honed by Arlene's personality of restraint and discipline that focused Kay's power and bravado into the strategic focus in the game.

Mechanically, Arlene is a reliable tanking character to introduce some of the more complex mechanics of the game, signaling the strategic element of the game that reward a methodical, team-based style. Her death in the mid-game removes much of the powerful team formation and invincibility skills that previously cushioned player mistakes, marking a mid-game difficulty spike where the game becomes much more unforgiving. Due to the player base learning quickly that her death was unavoidable, Arlene was usually neglected in terms of training her up as they regarded her as a 'dead investment'. Throwing an underleveled Arlene as bait to distract powerful foes was a common strategy to those disinterested in Arlene's character, spawning community jokes like 'Suicide Arlene'. The fact that higher skill trees locked behind impossible affection levels didn't help.

Normal Route:
Arlene was one of the very first characters in design and was meant to serve as a long time companion to the player character, with a fully fleshed out backstory and quite an extensive route also built for her. However, wider media coverage deemed a gay pairing with the female lead to be 'unsavoury' and 'degenerate' and pressured the developers to remove the character from the game. Although the RE/Birth's community backed the developers in keeping Arlene as a prominent character in the final release of the game, the developers decided to avoid further controversies entirely and simply relegated Arlene to a soulless side character whose job was mostly to provide exposition and in-game tips. As a consequence, her story is cut abruptly and is killed off-screen in the mid-game, regardless of the player character's actions/routes. The manner in which she died garnered some backlash, but it was generally understood that it was mostly a pacifist solution.

The remaining story roots before the ret-con was still left intact as it was too ingrained in both the need for a beginning tutorial character and Arthur's own backstory. As one of the oldest families in the courts of Caerlon, the Senn family has an effective tenure within the royal council. Having seen several wars, battles against the corruption and disasters in their time, they are well respected among their peers - that is, they would have. Having taken the brunt of a bad famine a few generations prior along with mismanagement of their fiefdom, the Senn family has been ostracized for their fall from grace and have continuously been assaulted with calls for their expulsion.

The result was that most of the extended family of Senn had given up attempting to hold power, having no proper leadership, save for a particularily bitter blonde girl by the name of Arlene. Having grown up with tales of lost wealth and having to deal with the snobbishness of the other families that were supposedly superior to them, much of Arlene's life was a fight for her family pride driven by seething spite. When she was identified as a Successor, she did not lose any time in turning herself into a political bargaining chip to secure her family's position. Her vigilant insistence in reclaiming her House made many enemies in other bloodlines as well as her own - but it also inspired respect and a silent solidarity in many others.

Arlene initially acts outwardly indifferent to Arthur, even if Aria chooses the most friendly dialogue options and gifts her the most lavish presents. Although Arlene begrudgingly agrees to pair up in missions and train Aria, much of her attention is apparently instead directed towards training. Yet in many encounters where Aria is in trouble, Arlene will sweep in to defend her. When she hears about Aria's preferences in clothes or hair style, Arlene can be found trying to buy such clothes in the marketplace. If confronted about this, Arlene will ardently deny that any personal feelings were involved.

Regardless of the routes Arthur chooses, Arlene is seen supporting Arthur's decisions. Even when Arlene is acting cold in the earlier parts of the game, in-game dialogue and scattered lore suggests that Arlene continuously vouched for Arthur's leadership. Arlene knew that, although she finds it rather unfair that she is relegated to an auxillary to Arthur despite her efforts in keeping the Senn house alive, as a Successor to the holy ability to cleanse the corruption Arthur is the only one who could save her homeland. And for that, Arlene willingly break her famously stout pride in order to serve Arthur.

By the mid-game, if Arlene's affection is high enough, Arlene will confess that she deeply respects Arthur. She hints not-so-subtly that the mantle of responsibility should be in Arthur's hands, but is also simultaneously aware of how gruelling it can be. Depending on the route the player chooses, Arlene will die either in trying to divert the attention of a pursuing army or defending a village from a rampaging monster. Arlene will make preparations for a hand-over regardless of affection levels however, with a heartfelt letter tucked away within family documents, apparently knowing that she will most likely die in an intensifying political climate.

Previous Life:
In her previous life,

Name: Gael, the Unwilt Epitaph
Weapon: Bow and Arrows
Combat Orientation: Balanced

Element:




Skills:


[indent]
[indent] Tier 1:
- Superior Agility: Your character starts with increased flexibility and maneuverability, and has higher aptitude in increasing this stats
- Target Definition: Once Gael spots a target, she is able to track it through obstacles such as darkness, magic barriers or invisibility. They are represented as sillouttes with white lines to track their movement since they were last seen. Wears off if Gael does not continue to track their movements.[/b]
[/indent][/indent]

"Shrewd, discerning and alacritous, this one intends to last."

Lenicivus ves Cteline, "Lein"
Former Helmsman of SSS Rochambeau
Estranged of the Shardlands

Skills
"Best Damned Helmsman" - Lein's good at steering those flying tubs; really good. His natural talents in astronautics, cultivated from early childhood in the wind tunnels of the Shardlands and most of his life spent behind the steering wheel all coalesce into an instinctual competence at any sort of vehicular navigation. Direct combat isn't necessarily his speciality, as his career as a smuggler has taught him to profit off running over mutineering. But when the chips are down and one needs an exit strategy, Lein will always be ready to fly.

Crossbow Marksman - Lein's primary role at hunting parties back in the Shardlands was the bait, but he was also trained in marksmanship to take down smaller enemies. By smaller enemies, it can either mean the occasional flying lizard, or the occasional raider foolish enough to appear down the iron sights.

Hardened Survivalist - Don't ask why he's taken up cooking or why he's good at finding food. He'll just going to laugh and say he'll never tell.

Equipment
Arm prosthetic: A prosthetic of bone and rope, honed with a considerable amount of craftsmanship. It's not the prettiest around, but it makes up for the lack of polish with fine motor control as well as containing hidden compartments for a switch-blade and some poison pellets.
Yvelin scarf: An enchanted scarf with a series of bells attached to the end of it. Given to Lein as per Yvelin custom, it has natural cleansing wards that filters any air passed through it. The bells chime at the presence of significant wind in a distinct pattern attributable for each scarf.
Goggles: A goggle made of thick glass and leather. This one's well-worn but has since been a long time when it was last used.
Gale-ripper crossbow: A steel-reinforced crossbow with low weight but high draw power. Its steel ammunition is designed to cut through wind and thick armour, but the tensile strength has since been toned down by Lein so as to not puncture ship hulls.
Fancy tail brush: For the sophisticated and vain.

Weaknesses
Arrogant and weak to flattery, he'll do much to prove himself as a competent pilot and take on dangerous tasks just to prove to himself that he could. Although his actual skill has kept up with his ego thus far, his constant compulsions for panache might just outlay his stakes...
He has much repressed guilt over failing his duties as helmsman in the Rochambeau, and his ego is a manifestation of deflecting blame. For if one is supposedly flawless at their work, how could they have possibly caused such a calamity?
Although he's also 'pardoned' for his crimes and he's so far only taken jobs outside the ire of the Navy, he's still on the hook for a number of charges. As long as he acts his part in being beholden to a nameless benefactor's beck and call, he's good in the eyes of the Navy. So long as he doesn't act out of order, that is...

Backstory
Hailing from the flying islands of the Shardlands, Lein had long since understood the meaning of survival. He grew up watching his neighbors thrown into flesh-ripping wind-tunnels by local warlords, village islands being smashed to pieces by rampaging astral beasts, and entire tribes falling under the unfortunate vice of delisium abuse. His family was the few that kept to the old traditions, even if it meant being driven into the coldest, inhospitable parts of the Shardlands by ousting warlords that constantly fought for delisium geysers. The Yvelin have endured much suffering, Lein was taught, and they would endure as long as necessary. And it would be up to Lein to carry on the torch.

But Lein had different ideas. Ever since he had glimpsed at a stormless sky he dreamt of being taken up into the void and conquer the very edges of the horizons, travelling the world and seeing other worlds not filled with poisoned winds and screams in the distance. Although his carefree attitude and aptitude in gliding curried much favour with his tribe, he was always missing in important gatherings and celebrations. His aloofness conflicted with his family's priorities of preservation and tradition, and no amount of cajoling or berating could stop Lein from sneaking out from his storm-watching post to watch warships sailing to and fro. Such a friction came to a head when Lein became of age, when he rejected his rite of passage. He had seen what delisium did to others, and with delisium abuse slowly creeping into his own family, Lein instead chose to take his chances with a passing smuggling ship.

Thankfully, Lein's skills with the glider translated well into astral seafaring, quickly climbing up from a deckhand to helmsman. He never took to captaining ships and moved between ships and allegiances quickly. Nonetheless, he grew a small following of infamy from his navigational talents and tendancy to agree to the most dangerous heists. He eventually settled on The Rochambeau, which to his description, was the "dumbest bunch of hooligans saved by sheer luck".

Not much is known about Lein's last voyage on The Rochambeau - not the cargo, the objective, nor even its navigational history over the course of three months. All that is known is that a passing trading ship happened on The Rochambeau, run aground against a rocky cluster. Upon exploration, they found a dessicated corpse of a void Leviathan, entire crew emaciated from hunger and dead from delisium poisoning, and the arm bones of a Yvelin, picked clean. They also discovered an imprisoned Lein, clutching unto an empty vial of delisium in one arm and the other amputated and missing. Even under interrogation, Lein did not elaborate, simply stating that he had a "disagreement with the crew" and it "cost them more than it cost [him]". Afterwards, he was arrested for a rather staggering number or charges, but after a dubious bargaining plea and a couple smuggling runs under an unmarked banner, Lein was pardoned. What exactly he smuggled, Lein does not care to elaborate or even has cared to find out.

Lein disappeared from much of the smuggling scene, only to reappear with a prosthetic arm and acting as if nothing happened. Only, he ran mostly safe runs (still legally dubious but arguably deniable) and a motivation to accrue as much wealth as possible. After he heard of the blockade on the Shardlands, Lein asked around for a sponsor to break through the blockade and retrieve Yvelin refugees stuck inside, but with tensions running high between the militant forces within the Fragment, not much has come of it. Besides, he has shown a particular interest in delisium and a potential cure to its effects...