Vera
Initiate
63 | 189 cm | 68 kg Vera is of a generous elven height, but also possesses a honed physique from years of determined practice. Fair skin, light hair, and cold blue eyes make her out as the youthful elf she is while her stiff body language and stern demeanor suggest the aspects of a knight. She has a brittle air about her, not the hardness of a soldier in control but the fragility of someone desperately seeming so.
Equipment: Claymore A heavy sword suited for two-handed use. Its wide guard and tapered point make it well suited to many schools of swordplay, but excellent at no task in particular. Swords of its make enjoy some favor in Vera's homeland. Hers is not her own, but stolen from her former squad captain. Vera's claymore is worn and dented with enthusiastic use, but cared for as best as she can manage on the road.
Arming Sword A versatile sidearm that exists in as many forms as there are fighters to wield them, but chiefly a nimble weapon that may be wielded with a single hand if one's primary armament is lost. It does as a sword does, thrusting and cutting without drama. The first weapon Vera was ever given, and one that she would not relinquish easily. It is kept well, with its original sheath and harness serving since her training began.
Mixed Armor Vera's protective equipment is gathered from whatever she could afford or scavenge on the way, with little of her original equipment remaining so as to evade identification. A leather breastplate worn over gambeson protects her core. Knee length boots keep the elements at bay, and plated gauntlets provide the bare minimum of hard protection needed to employ the sword techniques she was trained in.
Magic: Cantrip Was Before as Now Is A low Primal Magic arisen from the concept of substitution. An incredibly simple spell designed to trick onlookers, in Vera's case she can transfer an object from one hand to the other. This is more easily done with objects small enough to fit in her palm, but the spell does not actually need to fool someone, just to be able to move the target.
Ignite May Your Wish Be as a Spark A low Primal Magic arisen from the concept of fire. Most readily applicable as a means of spreading from an already lit fire. With enough potential in the air and luck on her side Vera is able to conjure a small spark for setting flammable substances ablaze. A useful ability when one is caught without a firestarter or trying to make a Xovic's View after a few too many safer drinks.
History: Native to somewhere north of Arskal on the High Road and chased all the way down it by her fate. She started calling herself Vera when she made her case to the Wayfarer's Guild, but at Kinthe she was named Elsi, and at Bandridge she was Helena, and so on. When she was born her mother named her Celaena Qe Louerlen, and that name she would keep until it became too muddied to bear.
Vera had a childhood typical of late-born city elves, spent mostly in solitude and study. When she was not preparing to do the same, she watched her more esteemed elder siblings mature to adulthood, receive their calling, and take flight from their family to become something to the world. It is often said that discovering one's calling is a the process of collecting the pieces of the self scattered along the path to maturity. For many of her brothers and sisters, this meant interpreting the visions brought onto them by their study of magic. She held the aptitude as well, but not the depth of ability. As a child, the magics she dabbled in gave her night terrors at worst, vague illustrative memories of disconnected moments at best. The clearest image ever gifted to her second sight was unmistakably that of a knight, a warrior harnessed in steel and adorned with glimmering weaponry. In her dream the warrior's back was turned away, as if leading young Celaena to safety.
She was not without doubts for her future as she came of age, but even a 12th daughter is worthy of a day to be her family's sole ambition. Her siblings advised her not to turn her back on the vision she had, fleeting as it was. Her family called their favors, spent what funds they could, and with much convincing Celaena Qe Louerlen was sent to apprentice for a Guild in her hometown. There she would have liked to have joined the long line of storied elven archers, quick with a bow, stern yet wholesome of character, handsome beyond her years. She was no marksman, she failed to earn that distinction again and again. She knew little of what she wanted and less of how to get it, instead falling in and clinging to any path that would help her keep her place in the guild and preserve the faith placed in her. When her captain offered her and the other initiates a final test of their loyalty, she did not bat an eye. When her progression in the guild was promised to her if only she would look out for the guards here and there every so many days, she kept good watch. When her captain threatened to expose her complicity in the smuggling of magical contraband, she stood by as witnesses were silenced. When that captain lowered his guard she battered his head until she could not see through the tears.
Cowardly, inconstant, spiteful, and now afraid. She fled for the next town, never to know if she was a murderer or just a deserter and a smuggler. She threw in with another guild, showing off the fighting basics she'd managed to glean. Even if she was on her own she'd get far enough to prove herself, maybe write home some day when she could bear through the shame. It didn't last, her past caught up to her and it was by luck alone she overheard enough to run before she was thrown out or worse. She went through a handful of names, serving short stints at guilds where she could and selling her sword to criminals when she couldn't eat. Town after town, life after life swallowed up as the shadow of her past followed her. She managed to keep kicking herself down the road for nearly a year before she found herself with no more dark places to crawl into.
And then there she was, at the end of the road looking in on a guild full of weirdos, failures, and heroes. A place that took in the unwanted and criminal by the same doors it welcomed esteemed warriors and magi. She needed only profess her sins and prove her worth to be given another chance. A final chance, offered in full knowledge of all the final chances Celaena Qe Louerlen squandered on the meandering path to this ending.
Fetzen