Name: Rothros

Race: Undine

Age: 49

Text color: Yellow

Special skill:
Toughness. Rothros is a hardened farmer, miner and soldier who has seen both the bitter cold of water and the fiery heat of the earth, the world below the water's surface and also a bit above. He can absorb unusual punishment and a dragon bonded to him would probably exhibit the same ability. A 'go anywhere' creature that has not much trouble transitioning in and out of the water. Also, if one combines water and fire, the result could be a breath of steam that can be just as damaging.

Ambition/dream:
There is nothing specific Rothros craves for not yet knowing about an invention prior to inventing it lies in the very nature of the thing. Imaginations there are many: An armor more robust than simple seashells, yet light enough to carry while swimming. A projectile than can be launched from below the surface just like an archer does with his arrow on the battlefield, yet is strong enough to cripple a ship that would otherwise need to be intercepted by Undine warriors at the risk of their lives... But how to propel it ? How to aim it and how to give it enough oomph upon impact ?

Childhood:
Rothros stems from a place that is commonly referred to as Hetrop, although not many people outside of Undine society know it actually exists. That cannot come as much of a surprise though as a certain level of daringness can be considered a prerequisite for any desire to live there. It is a place where the hot innards of the world boil close underneath the surface, yet above that surface is an immense layer of water that allows one to stay cool.

The white and black smokers caused by ocean water seeping through cracks and touching molten stone spew out a constant stream of sulphur and other minerals considered valuable. Mining those is hard and also dangerous work, but still the Undine seek out the opportunity for there is another thing to be found there: food. There is a competition for fish and other sea fauna from humans and elves, but nobody cares about seaworms that thrive in this kind of environment at the ocean floor.

Rothros' parents are farmers who maintain, harvest and post-process the worm colonies and mineral deposits so it was only natural for their son to follow their footsteps as soon as he could. Workers in this area are usually free to take comparably long leaves in one of the coral reef settlements where living conditions are a lot more hospitable though.

Adolencence/training:
Joining the military was pretty much set in stone for Rothros, just like many others of his kind do. The Undine marine forces are faced with a few challenges that could be considered rather unusual and which always require people to act and risk their lives in order to safeguard them, their families and all the others. The war is fought on the sea as fiercely as it is on land and the remains of this pointless carnage tend not to stay on the wind-whipped surface for very long. Instead, they sometimes literally fall onto Undine people's heads or at least their cities.

The military has sort of a special branch that is occupied with cleaning up wreckages and, more importantly, disposing of any dangerous cargo that might damage the coral reefs. Salvaging precious goods or returning the bodies of deceased seamen to their human families also poses a significant source of foreign currency and bolsters relationships with the coastal settlements. On top of that, there have been several attempts of Phospholite vessels to cause deliberate damage to Undine settlements by polluting the shallow waters with oil or dragging anchor-like structures and nets over the ocean floor.

Rothros spent his base training with such tasks before becoming involved in sneak attacks upon hostile vessels. Coming from below and damaging a ship's hull from outside sounds like a rather safe thing compared to surface-based approaches, but the Phospholites keep learning in terms of how to dodge or escape such things. A thin layer of copper or bronze on top of a wooden structure can pose quite the barrier to overcome already.

Adulthood/After Completing Training:
Rothros has seen how dangerous the 'job' can be. It served as motivation to try something different, to become an apprentice in one of the several workgroups who try to develop new techniques of defending Undine territory. Many of these involve digging deeper into a discipline that so far, for the rather obvious reason of being underwater, has not exactly been any Undine's forte: blacksmithing.

The challenges are unique for it doesn't suffice to just find a facility on land, but one also can't count on the experience of human masters alone. They work with steel and steel is both too heavy and too prone to corrosion in salt water. Bronze doesn't rust, but is even heavier. Undine have started to mess around with other metals, but there is a lot of new knowledge to build up from scratch when it comes to combining and processing them. Rothros' new job involved a lot of learning, experimenting and trial and error, but also getting to know humans much more closely for everything happened on land.

The information provided to him about this 'expedition' to the remote island has not been very specific, mostly that his employers would keep the spot open for him even if it would take very long for him to return...

Notable family:
His parents are still alive, but they still work in the Hetrop mining and farming colony. It is therefore not very likely to encounter them unless perhaps they are forced to leave the ocean. Rothros has no siblings yet.

Notable figures:
William is the master human blacksmith he worked for in a rather small human town at the coastline. There are also several other apprentices Rothros has worked with prior to his sudden, new assignment.

Character Themes:
Experimenting, discovery, fighting, brutal raw strength.

Character Tragedy:
Rothros has once misjudged the jets of hot water in Hetrop, causing significant damage to the left side of his body. More importantly however he was the foreman of an entire party of seaworm gatherers and still feels somewhat responsible for two of his followers also having been injured very severelyin this incident. This is in spite of the fact that common consensus is that nobody could have foreseen this sudden outburst.

Character flaws:
The accident in Hetrop has left him with a slight limp and impaired vision on his left eye. Rothros is not exactly stubborn, but at times a bit imprudent and prone to jump into action before thinking all too extensively. Also, while his body is perfectly adapted to swimming, at land he's rather sluggish. That certainly isn't helped by the fact that he's just a damn heavyweight individual.

Hobbies:
Deep-diving (sort of a competitive sport that involves testing each other's limits while roping down the continental shelf into the deep sea), archery, wrestling (both in and out of the water).

Appearance:
Rothros exhibits a skin typical to his kind. Adapted to efficient movement underwater, it is very smooth and tight to minimise resistance. Its color is mostly blue-ish, but with hues of silvery gray mixed in almost like a shark. There is some significant scarring running along his left thigh and also a bit on his head, but at least on land most of that is rendered invisible by clothing. As one could expect he has neither hair nor beard, but can definitely brag with a large fin running down from the back of his head almost to the level of his hips. He also has smaller fins running along his elbows and legs and some webbing between his toes and fingers.

At 5'6 he's average for his people, but more on the short side from many others' point of view. A combination of great natural disposition, his time in the military and hard work helping in the forges have caused him to bulk up immensely however. He's well fed and bristling with muscle from top to bottom.

Name: Leith

Race: Undine (Crocolite)

Text Color: 0054a6 (blue)

Special Skill: Linguistics, particularly ancient languages (inclusive of paleography and orthography) and ciphers
(I know this is leaning a little tricky application-wise, so areas where ve has related skills could include ink-work in general, sharp eye for details (paleography), and ciphers are already on the more useful side of applications anyways.)

Ambition: On a fundamental level, Leith wants to understand the world around ven. Ve initially chose to do that using words, but soaks up whatever knowledge ve can from wherever ve can find it.

Personality: Leith is fairly quiet and tends to be attentive to detail. Ve struggles with spoken language and takes more time to formulate spoken responses than is typical for someone who is as proficient in written and encoded language as ve is. Ve loves observing and generally spending time with people, particularly anyone that ve latches onto as "interesting" or having something they can teach ven. On the whole, Leith is generally easygoing and friendly, and assumes the best from people. Ve is openly expressive and demonstrative of emotions.

Childhood: Leith was born in the swamp and raised in a small, quiet extended family, somewhat secluded from even other Undine. Ver parents and other adults had several difficult interactions with humans in the area, and a disagreement with leaders in the nearby crocolite communities drove them to set up a place to raise their children away from as many potential "dangers" (real or imagined) as possible. Leith never knew which of the adults that raised ven were ver parents and which were aunts, uncles, or other relations, and which of the other children were siblings, and which were cousins. This wasn't ever important to ven. As one of the middling-youngest, Leith was never particularly outstanding to the adults, and though ve was happy and not neglected, ve also developed a very strong yearning for something More and to know more than ver family could teach ven.

Training: When Leith was entering adolescence, an unfamiliar trader came to ver family home with a strange book. This trader and the book both fascinated Leith, and ve almost unthinkingly followed the trader back to a library at the edge of the swamp. The librarians and scholars were initially cautious, but after a few clumsy attempts at communication between them and the strange undine child lingering persistently outside, they took Leith in and started to educate ven on what they could.
As Leith started to learn, ver proficiency with written language soon outpaced ver spoken ability, which didn't bother ven or the scholars very much. Over time, ve started to take up transcribing and translating texts from the oldest parts of the library, and was fascinated to learn about how things used to be. Ve took particular interest in stories, myths, and legends, as well as in ancient puzzles and ciphers.
Despite ver interest in people and in learning about others, Leith almost never interacted with library patrons after one frightened human lashed out at ven early in ver stay at the library. Leith was more scared than injured, and the human patron was also safe, but the scholars made an effort to keep ven from

Adulthood: Leith continued translating texts, and eventually one of ver translations became popular in scholarly circles, eventually circulating out of those circles and into the awareness of the general educated populace. Ve venself didn't become well-known, though ver name did start circulating in the circles of noble scholars. It wasn't until ve proposed an almost perfect solution to a previously cryptic ciphered text that ve became more well-known as someone of note and talent.
Leith took up a more practical approach to developing a broader skill set after ve was an adult, following guidebooks from the library and working to sharpen ver physical abilities as well as ver mind. So far, it's slower going than ve would like, but that hasn't stopped ven from trying.

Family:
Leith's primary caretakers were Andali and Kariun, who looked after most of the family's younger children. Both of them were later put into military service.
Mobin, Farbur, and Lyn were the three children that Leith was closest to. They collectively were slight troublemakers. Mobin and Lyn are still in the military, and Farbur left as soon as he could and works in a rural seaweed farm, courting someone he met in his time in the military.

Figures:
Raelyn (human) was the scholar who started working with ancient languages with Leith. She helped ven to finish and edit ver translations, and then to distribute them.
Thesson was the human 'trader' who Leith followed to the library. They worked regularly as a scholar of biology, particularly botany, and had been on a quest for a specific rare plant when they stumbled on Leith's family. They taught Leith basic plant identification.
Baker is a halfling scholar who ran the library as a whole and made the executive decision to allow Leith to live there. She was almost parental to Leith in some ways, but more distant as Leith grew older.

Themes: shadows, memory, truth

Tragedy: Due to (albeit unintentional) evasion of military service from many of the adults, Leith's peaceful family life fell apart after ve left for the libraries. Ve doesn't know where many of them ended up, and ve deeply regrets not being able to keep in contact at the very least (and not being there to 'try help' at the very most).

Flaws: Flighty, quick to withdraw from danger and easily startled. Due to ver inexperience with people past a small, select group, ve is easily manipulated or fooled, and doesn't think to question a lot of what other people tell ven.

Hobbies: Reading, poem-craft, geography (particularly the study of natural history in relation to geography), and more recently, agility/mobility type things (Leith aims to be able to do the strangest most gremlin-y things possible).

Appearance: While most undine are blue-grey, Leith takes more after the crocolite coloration, with brown and green hints to ver blue-ish skin. The patterns and variations of ver skin break up ver shape when ve is in swampy waters or in shadows, but in the light, the same variations look more like someone stirred ver colours together.
Leith is short for an undine, reaching 5'4" on a good day, but ve can reach the top shelf in the library (and that's all that matters). To someone looking at ven and expecting a scholar, ve looks fairly unimpressive and overall soft, though ve is deceptively strong and agile from ver more recent forays into becoming like the heroes of history that ve admires.
(I will make either a picrew version or a HeroForge of ven later, for now it is late.)

(I personally have some passing proficiency in Old and Middle English, but much more limited ability with ciphers, so if Leith works then I'd plan on leaning on my experience with translating, but no promises that I myself could do anything related to encryption or decryption of ciphers.)