Name: Rali
Gender: Female
House Name: Corcaleo
Age: 21
Appearance: Rali is rather non-threatening at face value, as she has a rather petite build to her. She also stands out in a crowd due to her white hair and bright red eyes, both lucky traits to be born with according to customs back in her homeland. Up close, one can see that she has a couple of scars on her face, with more covering her torso, arms, and legs, from a variety of sources.
As to her clothing, she is currently dressed in the same rags she had as a slave aboard the Black Dragon. Normally, she prefers the traditional, scholarly clothing of her people, which consists of trousers, a shirt, and a jacket, all of which are loose enough to allow free movement, yet elegant and dignified at the same instant.
Homeland: Aerian
Race: Mage
Spells: As of this moment, Rali is actually unable to do any magic because of the bracelets of Orichalcum on her wrists.
“Explosive” is the key word in describing Rali's magic, as she has a lot of latent power, but mediocre control over it. This is primarily because of the fact that magic was very rarely a focus in studies. It was always along with something else, like astronomy or meteorology in her case, so it took a lot longer to achieve the level of master than it does in the Five Nations. As such, Rali often has a difficult time with the more technical aspects of her magic, or of being subtle with it, especially after going so long without being able to use it at all.
Aeromancy:
Rali's Aeromancy is typically involved in manipulating weather systems to an extent. She can adjust pressure systems with her magic to change the direction or intensity of a storm, though not both at once. Of course, she can also do the basic manipulation that virtually everyone is capable of doing, pushing things around, stopping projectiles, etc.
Pyromancy:
Rali's Pyromancy generally sees less use than her Aeromancy, but is perhaps the more notable. Due to her magical power, the flames she creates, or even manipulates, are green in color, indicating that they are of a higher intensity than normal fire. Throwing fireballs is the typical use of Pyromancy, though she is able to create things like walls of fire.
Combinations:
Rali does know enough to combine her magic in several useful ways. One of her most impressive combinations is using air and fire to create an explosion that is mostly concussive in nature, though she often doesn't find the need to use that. For a sheer fear factor, she can also combine a whirling vortex of air with a flame to create a tornado of fire that she can move around or let go until it fizzles out.
Bio: Rali was born in a land across the ocean known as Aerian, specifically the capital city of Lumiya, which sat right on the coast. In all the lands she had known of while growing up, there had been no better city for learning or culture. The children of those who were citizens were expected to attend schooling in order to learn the basic skills to contribute to society, such as reading, writing, and how to perform arithmetic.
Once they graduated from basic, or elementary, education, they were expected to find a patron that would teach them valuable skills in a profession, such as blacksmithing or weaving. One of the most valued professions was that of a magician, as having a propensity for magic was required to attract a potential patron. These people were often called scholar, rather than mages or magicians, due to the fact that their education went far beyond that of the regular citizens. It included such things as astronomy, physics, history, etc., and it wasn't uncommon for a scholar to engage almost exclusively in a specific field of study after having learned the basics.
Rali was one of the fortunate few who were able to convince a scholar that they would benefit from taking her on as a student, as her magic, while unrefined, was remarkably powerful. The individual who became her patron was Sir Julius Lerown Telamon, a man with an intimidating presence, standing at 6'3” and with eyes that could out-stare a stone. He was also quite famous throughout the country as an astronomer, meteorologist, and astrologer, responsible for predicting future events and taking note of when events were to occur.
Like she had done during her elementary education, Rali devoted herself to her studies, proving that she was a wonderful student in short order. The concepts that Sir Julius explained to her never really seemed to be beyond her and what was said usually stuck like a steel trap, her love of learning evident in it all. It actually kind of made her the perfect student for a guy like Sir Julius, as he had a tendency to be impatient with people who were unable to keep up, and was well-known for his tendency to revoke patronage if a student was unable to perform to his standards.
Sir Julius was also a master in the use of magic, like virtually all scholars, though his expertise lied in aeromancy and hydromancy specifically. It turned out that Rali took to aeromancy like she did her other studies, but she did have a poor affinity with hydromancy. Considering she was a stellar student in other respects, Sir Julius was able to overlook that particular shortcoming and actually allowed his wife, Hestia to teach her pyromancy.
One of the many perks to being a student of a scholar in the employ of the king was the ability to tag along whenever they left on royal business. Of course, this wasn't something that was really open to Rali while she was just beginning her studies, but once she had gotten enough of the material down for her patron to be happy with, she was allowed, and actually expected, to go with him on business. This privilege, however, was something that took time to earn, even for a speedy student like Rali, and it as around her thirteenth birthday when she was finally able to go with him on a routine trip further inland to check on the signs to see if they needed to prepare for anything that would damage crops or livestock.
Unfortunately, it was one such trip that would alter Rali's life forever. A war had broken out with an island nation, Yuren, to the north over a petty dispute with the nation's ally, Korzin, to the west. The little nation, though lacking in military might on the ground, proved to have a sizable navy with which to pester the coastal cities of Aerian while their ally attacked from the ground to the west. To make matters worse, a massive volcano, Mt. Mulcibar, erupted shortly after the war broke out, destroying many of the farmlands to the north.
The peace the nation had experienced for so long had softened the military, which, when combined with the decreased food supply due to the eruption, meant that the military of Aerian was hard-pressed to turn the tide. Unrest over how the war was being handled grew among the elite, which eventually culminated in the assassination of the king. Confusion broke out over who was to take the mantle, which weakened the military even further.
While this was going on, Sir Julius and Rali, were heading west by ship to help reinforce the army that was trying to hold the border, their magic seen as a surefire way to turn the tide. Other scholars had been sent out as well, but most weren't sent to the same location, and so it wasn't unusual for there to be only one pair on a ship heading in a particular direction, even if there were other ships a few days ahead or behind traveling in the same direction.
It honestly isn't quite clear in Rali's mind what exactly happened or if more mages would have helped prevent it, but the ship she and Sir Julius were on was suddenly attacked out of the mid-morning fog by the enemy. Before either of them could do anything, the ship was being boarded by the enemy. They killed anyone that resisted or didn't seem worth the trouble, including Sir Julius. Rali's memories from that point on are rather hazy, as she had essentially gone numb, but she does remember having her hands bound and being lead to the other ship.
Shortly after the sea fight, she and the other captives, were taken back to land, specifically a small island that the Yurens occupied, guarded by a group with at least one mage in it the entire way. There they were told to strip off the clothes they had been wearing and to don a set of filthy rags before being marched out to a wooden stage in front of a crowd of people. It wasn't long before Rali realized that it was a slave auction and that she was on the market. They were sold one at a time, and the people that had orchestrated the event had put her near the end of the line.
Seeing as how most of the members of the crew were sold to what were clearly farm owners, Rali felt pretty confident that she would be passed over. She was nowhere near as large as the men of the crew and so there would be no need for her as a farmhand. Unfortunately, she didn't count on there being non-farmers there. She was sold almost immediately after she stepped up onto the stage to a man who had the bearing of a sailor about him, being ushered off the stage and to the side to wait for the transaction to be made.
Once the man officially owned her, he tugged the chains that bound her hands and motioned for her to follow him, eventually leading her to a large ship of dark wood. As they walked, he told her that she would be expected to perform routine chores on the ship, like swabbing the deck. He also informed her that she would be “entertainment” for the crew, as an entertained crew was less likely to mutiny on a long voyage than a bored one. This, of course, infuriated her, but she had resisted often enough on the way over that she knew it was more or less futile. She really didn't want another beating.
Before they left the dock, he took her down to his quarters and told her to sit, grabbing what she recognized as a brand. The lantern flame he stuck the end in heated it up rather quickly, and it wasn't long before he was placing the red-hot end on her hand, leaving an image of a clover, his personal symbol.
And so Rali's new life as a slave on a pirate ship began. Of course, she did her best to just survive. The bands that they had put on her wrists were made of a metal known as orichalcum, which nullified the magic of the wearer. It seemed, at least to an extent, that the knowledge that she was a mage resulted in the crew treating her worse than what Rali figured to be usual and generally having their way with her whenever they could.
After about a couple of years, a significant bounty got placed on the captain by the nation of Yuren. Due to their significant naval might, he figured that it would be best to skip town so to speak, and had the crew set sail for the undiscovered lands to the west. As the captain expected, the Yuren's weren't keen on sending a fleet after him across the ocean, and so it looked like they would be able to get away and start over in a new land.
Unfortunately, they were chanced upon by another pirate crew shortly after the new land came into sight. The two crews seemed to be equal in naval combat, but it appeared that the other had magic on their side, as the ballistae below deck were unable to hit the other ship, and the sudden, incredibly localized, churning of the waves beneath the Black Dragon.
The ballistae of the other ship, however, had no problem striking their mark on the Black Dragon, eventually sinking the ship entirely, though only after the loot had been taken from it. In the chaos, Rali had been able to leap from the ship into the water below, grabbing onto a floating piece of debris once she surfaced. The orichalcum bands on her wrists still prevented her from using her magic, and, even though the surge of water from the sinking ship pushed her towards the land, it was around two days before she washed up on the shore (of Valaria).
After a few days of recovery, mainly involving the location of a source of fresh water and some sort of food, she began traveling north through a fair-sized forest until she found a beaten road. From there, she began following it east (towards Vespar), figuring that she should be able to find a city of some sort. Considering that she was essentially on auto-pilot, she didn't really take in the oddity of her surroundings. Forests like the one she had passed through were essentially non-existent in her land, as was the flatness of the land. The topography of Aerian was characterized by its hills after all. Lumiya itself was built among several, with the king's palace atop the central hill and everything spreading down around it.
But all that goes mostly unnoticed by Rali, who merely hopes to reach a center of civilization before she starves to death out in the wilderness. There's also the hope that she can get the orichalcum bracelets off her wrists, though that is, of course, secondary to not dying.
Hopefully that addresses all of the issues. I'll have to find a good picture later, however.
