Okay, revamped my character a bit to fit more properly with the changes you made since last time, Brand (and also because it was written with a character collab in mind). Hopefully it should all work still, and if anything needs changing let me know. I still have some of the names for Ferrorian places that were mentioned in the last RP in there, and am not quite sure if they're still relevant.
Name: Tegan, Warden of the Magi
House Name: None (Note: Her family back home has taken up the surname Stormgaze since her departure and while she keeps in contact with them, she does call herself by that name.)
Age: 29
Appearance: Tegan has a body consistent with the warrior culture of her people. She is tall, standing just short of six feet while wearing her sturdy boots. Being female, she lacks the bulk most commonly associated with a Guardian or other soldier types, but instead the muscles along her limbs and torso are long and each group well defined to compliment the fast, agile style in which she needs to fight to compensate facing foes commonly stronger than herself. Her face is oval with only the slightest protrusion of cheekbone visible beneath sun-darkened skin and her chin is small and rounded. A nose that looks to have been broken and then realigned on several occasions sits beneath intense eyes the color of rolling thunderclouds and hard with experience few others in the Circle can claim. Tegan’s high brows make it easy for her to vividly express her emotions, though they rarely stray from their crooked lift that accompanies her normal, lackadaisical smile. She enjoys letting the loose waves of her light, ashen brown hair fall around her shoulders while residing within the Tower but will almost always twist it into a thick braid while traveling, training, or on the hunt for feral mages. She has quite the impressive collection of battle scars, ranging from the most minor of blade nicks to a few scores longer than her forearm. The fingers on her left hand were crushed during an altercation and she did not have the luxury to have them set properly or allowed time to heal. As a result, most of the digits on that hand have limited dexterity, while the pinky and ring fingers don’t function at all and are noticeably misshaped.
The Guardian claims a total of four whole outfits for herself: two sets of training clothes which consist of a pair of black breeches, a red tunic with crest of the Wardens sewn on it in black thread; a set of worn, though well-oiled and cared for, leather armor made for training and traveling; and her full regalia plate armor in the style of the Wardens complete with helm and shield. It’s not uncommon to see her wearing a simple black leather glove on her left, injured hand. Tegan will never be seen without her slim, meticulously maintained longsword belted to hang doggishly off her left hip, while a dagger stays sheathed on the right.
Homeland: Ferros
Race: Guardian
Spells: Ritual of Sealing
Bio: Tegan was the fifth and youngest child of her family and born in the Ferronian capital of Snowhearth, high within the mountains that covered most of kingdom. Her father, Drest, was a royal guard who had left the mentorship of the Ivory Tower before his fifth year of Guardian training and her mother, Isolde, was a seamstress who worked at a shop specializing in finery. The family lived in one of the upper districts of the city and earned enough of an income to provide a comfortable lifestyle for their brood, and a young Tegan never found herself in want.
Being the youngest of five had its own brand of hardships, however, her three older brothers and sister constantly warring despite their mother’s chastising. Tegan often got the brunt of any sibling rivalry, being the baby of the family, and had to quickly grow thick skin and fast wit. This helped her greatly when she grew a little older and was allowed out of the house on her own. Being a society who celebrated the warrior so much, it was very common for children in Snowhearth to carry little wooden swords tucked in their belts and duel with one another; Tegan was no exception. When not occupied by house chores or by sword lessons given by her father or eldest brother, Cadeyrn, the young girl was often running with a small pack of practice sword wielding children like herself, fighting for honor and to prove her skill. She routinely came home at night with a bloodied face and bruised body, sometimes crying and burying her face into her mother's skirts but more often than not with a proud grin plastered across her face.
When she reached the age of thirteen Tegan, like all her siblings except her sister before her, began her official training as a soldier of Ferros. She would follow in her father’s footsteps. She would learn to better wield a sword, to shoot a bow, to wage war. The strict discipline of her betters and the harsh training would shape her into a formidable fighter. Then she would volunteer to leave for the Ivory Tower and learn to control the magical power she knew she was capable of wielding but never had. After four years there she would return home a warrior mage and, unlike her father, if she had grown strong enough under the tower’s tutelage she would earn her place among the most famous heroes of Ferros. The challenge of it rang heavily in her ears and the honor of it called to her young, ambitious heart.
Tegan would not have to wait long for either a challenge or her chance to earn honor. For it was not but a few months after she had completed her initial training as a soldier that the hordes of Malfear surged into their kingdom. When the armies of Ferros pushed past the Stoneguard Mountains to face the enemy, Tegan was among them. She was young and fast and so for the first two years of the war was made a messenger. It was no easy work and she often found herself scrambling through a gauntlet of swinging weapons and arrows arching down from the sky as she raced from one side of a battlefield to the other with only a shortsword to defend herself. Luckily she was largely overlooked by most of the combatants and managed to come back from errands mostly unscathed.
By the time she was sixteen Tegan was serving as a sword-arm on the frontlines of the war. They had had so many casualties that the military had been stretched thin and even younger children than herself were being conscripted into the army to perform the jobs Tegan and her training mates once had. The older children were needed to fight. Now she was a part of battle after battle, only pure luck and her own tenacity allowing her to survive. Through jungles, on the sides of mountains, and in the midst of valleys she waged war with Malfear’s army. She forged through what seemed like unending seas of the undead and barbarians time and time again. So many of her brothers and sisters in arms she had lost that Tegan often wondered why she was left standing. People so much better than herself -stronger, faster, smarter- had perished, yet she remained. Remained to step over their corpses to push back the enemy, to hold them as they screamed out in their death throes, to bear their bodies to the huge funeral pyres, to carry on for them.
Well before the war was over did the young woman give up on the concept of fighting for her own honor; the childish notion that it had been. It was for the men and women who stood with her, shoulder to shoulder, in which she fought. Her ethos became one of loyalty and camaraderie, to honor those who sacrificed everything for her and being willing to do the same for them. She grew better for them as she no longer sought glory for herself. And so, five years after she had marched from the kingdom’s capital, Tegan celebrated the victory of Ferros over Malfear’s horde, not as the foolhardy child soldier she had been, but as the adept warrior she had become.
When she returned home to Snowhearth for the first time in five years Tegan went immediately to her family’s house. There she found her mother and elder sister, Treva, and the three of them embraced, and cried, and rejoiced in their reunion. The three women waited several weeks for the men of the family to return from the wars, after all there were still some skirmishes and pocketed groups of resistance that could be keeping them from home. Every time the watch would sound horns to announce the arrival of another group of soldiers Tegan would climb up the ramparts to watch them march doggedly home. Then she would scamper back down and walk among them as they filed into the gates in an attempt to find one of her brothers or father. But only Cadeyrn ever returned. After a month where no horns sounded at all did Tegan finally accept the death of her two brothers and father. She didn't know if she'd ever learn when or how they had perished.
Still wanting to follow the path her father had, it was then that Tegan decided to make her way to Valeal to seek out the Order of Magi. She was perhaps one of the first Ferrorians to come to the Circle for training since the five year war (and probably one of the last) and it was no surprise that the young warrior chose the path of the Guardian. Already a veteran of combat and skilled with her sword, Tegan only became better as her instructors chiseled away at the rough fighting style she had used to survive full scale battles and refined it into one of precision and finesse. She was always at the top of her class, though she was generally not well liked among her male peers from rival nations despite their instructors’ insistence that all within the tower were equals. During the first few years of her training and while all the students acclimated themselves to a new way of thinking she had few friends, though those she did have she considered good ones. She would also often find solace in writing back and forth with her family back home, or even speaking with the Archmage of Ferros on occasion to get news of Snowhearth.
On the first day of the fifth year of her training, Tegan’s magic was taken and her life bound to the Circle. Though not her original intent upon entering the tower she did not regret the decision to stay. Though her brother had amassed himself a small holding and influence with the royal Ferrorian family, becoming a military advisor and taking up the surname Stormgaze in the process, there was no life for her in Snowhearth any longer. She had come to see the magi and guardians her family, albeit a crazy one, and had grown accustomed and contented with her life.
Her last year of training was turbulent. The tempo of the training grew even more rapidly and the hunting feral magi was not the type of fight in which she was accustomed. But luckily her skills in swordsmanship and uncanny ability to survive even the most brutal of situations saw that she gained full acceptance into the order of the Guardians. Her very first mage partner was one she knew well, as they had begun their training at nearly the same time within the Circle. Abe was a Gorgonite, though more tolerable than most the others, and they had even become close friends throughout their studies. More importantly, though, was that they made fantastic partners. They had quickly gained a reputation among the Circle as one of the go-to teams for the most dangerous hunts, as their efficiency and the level in which their fighting styles were in tuned with one another was something few other pairs could master.
However, nearly six months ago the two had been ambushed by a fairly large contingent of knights from the Order of the Rose while returning from an unfruitful feral mage hunt. Abe did not survive the encounter; Tegan shouldn’t have either. They had fought well, but were simply outmanned and could not hold up against so many well-trained combatants. Tegan’s memory of the fight was fuzzy at best, but she did recall seeing an arrow down her partner while she wobbled on unstable legs and used her waning strength to swing her sword ineffectively at the knights that circled her like vultures. After that, she was told that she had been left for dead by the Rose knights, but had been happened upon by fellow members of the Circle before she had a chance to actually die.
After having a little more than a month’s time to heal and rest from her injuries, Tegan returned to her normal duties. Or at least, as normal as they could be without Abe. She has not yet been assigned a new, permanent mage partner, however Tegan often supplements teams going out on hunts or other dangerous missions where having another sword would be beneficial. She can also often be found teaching swordplay techniques to both Guardian and Mage trainees as well as their full-fledged counterparts in the circle. With the rumors saying that Malfear has dragged himself back out of whichever hell he’d been sent to, and constant urgings via letters from her family in Ferros that she abandon the Circle and return home like the Archmage had, Tegan is willing to do just about anything to keep her mind and body busy.
