Name: Thalia Valke
Age: 27
Gender: Female
Class: Soldier
Appearance: Thalia is rather tall for a woman, standing just over 5-feet, 9-inches (1.8m) tall. She's a deadly beauty, with sharp features: thin lips, a slender nose, and focused hawk-like eyes. Her platinum-blonde hair is long and hangs just past her shoulders in the back. She usually ties the back in a ponytail while allowing the front to hang loose and frame her face. Her eyes are a striking silver-blue.
On the surface, Thalia has a rather slender, succulent physique, with long, smooth legs, curved hips, slim waist, and full breasts. On closer inspection, however, it becomes apparent (sometimes painfully) that Thalia is powerful; ripplingly strong with explosive force. Each muscle, however, is lean: iron-hard and as taught as a bowstring. Because of her frequently-endured magic healing sessions, only the most grievous of wounds leave any trace scars after they've healed. She has a slight tan, though her naturally fair skin doesn't get very dark, despite all the time she spends outdoors.
Thalia is usually seen wearing her combat gear consisting of a base layer of strong, flexible, form-fitting, dark-blue leather armor. A pair of steel vambraces cover both her forearms, while similar greaves provide the same for her calves. Segmented steel armor also covers her shoulders and part of her upper arms, as well as part of her upper torso and chest. The same type of protective armor also covers the outside of her thighs, connected across her waist. Sometimes Thalia completes her ensemble with a hooded dark blue cloak.
Personality: On the outside, Thalia is the epitome of the phrase "cold, hard, b*tch." She takes her family's mandate of aloofness and stoicism very seriously and puts much effort into reigning in her emotions and reactions. At the same time, she shows great passion and loyalty to her king and comrades. She appears cold, frigid even, with her unblinking attitude to most of the horrors she sees around her, and she rarely appears moved or impressed by the plight of others. She is slow to form attachments, but once she does she is fiercely protective of them...in her own purposefully-detached sort of way. If she pays you any attention at all, it means she's actually quite fond of you.
On the inside, however, Thalia is a genuinely good person. Like many, her story is a tragic one of pain and loss, so her desire to protect the little she has is very strong. She also has a soft spot for young children and families devastated by the war. And on very rare occasions she can fly into a vicious rage. Try as she might, she can't seem to rid herself of her rage or her soft spot.
Her pursuit of quelling her emotions and opinions means she doesn't often express them aloud, though that doesn't mean she's without them. She's usually rather indifferent when it comes to someone else's attitude towards her king and comrades so long as they remain civilized in their expressions of those attitudes. She will not allow mass ignorance or paranoia to have the last word, and her quick wit and sharp tongue are more than enough to put anyone in their place without resorting to quick blows and sharp steel. Otherwise, she doesn't really care what kind of looks or whispers are thrown her way; just don't get in her face if you want to keep your dignity.
In terms of men, women, and sex, she understands the appeal, but sees it as something that should be done only when necessary. She finds it repugnant when people stoop to "fornicating like mindless beasts," as she so often puts it. That's not to say she is above such fornication either: she recognizes and understands her body well enough to see to its needs, but "desires" and frivolous "pleasures" are avoided.
History: Thalia was born into a famous and powerful Sword Clan tasked with protecting the king of Halcyon: the Valke Clan. The Falcons of Halcyon. Their bloodline was renowned for its physical capabilities: inhuman strength, speed, and reflexes. From a young age she underwent a tortuous and arduous training regimen. She was pushed passed the limit of peak human physical capability. This training forwent any instruction on the usage of magic and instead focused on how to understand, anticipate, and defeat it.
Thalia made tremendous progress, but was still deemed a disappointment in her parents' eyes. They viewed her elder brother as the perfect specimen, the perfect embodiment of their bloodline. She was unworthy of the Valke name, but her parents deemed her worthy enough to produce a new heir. They believed that if she bore her father's child, the child would be a more suitable and much stronger example of their line. But her brother was having none of it. Sieghard saw their parents for what they really were, and protected his sister. He even went so far as to kill his parents in combat to keep her safe. It was then that Sieghard took over as head of the Valke Clan and began to secretly back Ryder Falkenrath's revolution.
To further ensure Ryder's safety, Sieghard assigned Thalia to him as his public personal guard. From then on, Thalia served as one of Ryder's best and closest friends as well as his personal protector. And even though he insisted that he didn't need one, Thalia protected and saved him more than once.
She never really partook in the bloodshed of the revolution; the emotional scars caused by her parents' betrayal never fully healed, and she blocked herself off from much of what was happening. She chose to focus instead on the responsibilities her brother - the only person who ever cared for her until then - had tasked her with. Despite closing herself off, however, Ryder's kind and good nature eventually began to wear through. Together with his close advisors and trusted friends, Thalia began to understand the value in their camaraderie. She began drifting away from her brother and closer to their group, despite her brother's protests.
After Ryder's revolution, Thalia continued in Ryder's service. She became increasingly aware of the difficulties he faced in maintaining the peace; a far more daunting task than winning the war. Ryder threw himself into the day-to-day running of Halcyon as well as into researching ways to continually improve life in his country. He excused Thalia as his personal guard and instead sent her out into the countryside to search for mystic relics of ages past. While she was able to track down clues and stories, Thalia realized that it was a job for more than one person, and with Ryder's approval and suggestions, she set forth to assemble a team.
Abilities: Thalia is incredibly skilled in the use of a two-handed sword, and moves with inhuman speed and reflexes. Ryder once commented that because mages require time to finish their incantations, it was impossible for them to survive combat with Thalia because of her inhuman speed. Her talents are purely physical, however, making her sword therefore her main weapon. She is not very adept in the arcane arts - primarily because she never bothered committing to her studies. She knows a handful of useful spells - mostly combat-based bolstering and fortification spells, as well as minor self-healing spells.
Equipment: Thalia wields a two-handed sword forged by her family's smith. It is designed to negate and dissipate magic on an intrinsic level.
__________
Name: Lance Donovan
Age: 27
Gender: Male
Class: Warrior
Appearance: Lance is rather tall, standing over six and-a-half feet. He's well built, with broad shoulders and well-defined muscles. His body is powerful but lean, emphasizing muscle tone over muscle size. Indeed, Lance's body looks and feels almost like it was chiseled out of stone or forged from steel. His inherent proclivity for magic means that his body is more resilient, and more resistant to injury and fatigue than a human of similar size and build. Due to the advanced healing he receives from the League and other healers, Lance's injuries are almost non-existent, though he still carries many various-sized scars.
Lance's facial features are strong and defined, almost predatory in nature. He has a thick head of brown-black hair; he's allowed it to grow out on his travels and it now hangs well-past his shoulders; it's now long enough for him to tie back in a low ponytail, though a few loose long strands hang in front of his face. At times, however, he's trimmed his hair to various lengths, even to what might be called a buzz-cut. His hair has a natural healthy sheen and smoothness. His eyes, too, are a deep, dark brown and have been described as "soul piercing."
The most stunning part of Lance's physiology are the intricate and interweaving series of tattoos over his entire body. Most of the time they're hardly noticeable, almost invisible - barely even there. However during states of heightened aggression or extremely arduous use of magic the tattoos become bolder and darker, and even begin to glow red.
When Lance loses control or allows himself to change, his "other" nature manifests different physical characteristics. First and foremost, his hair changes color, turning a blinding platinum, white-gold color. His eyes turn entirely black, while his irises glow a hellish fiery orange-red. His canine teeth on his upper and lower jaw elongate into fangs, and he is able to elongate his fingernails into razor-sharp claws.
Lance doesn't wear any one outfit all the time, but is known to wear a layer of basic black leather clothes with a high gold-trimmed collared shirt, and a flexible armor chest-plate beneath a black, armor-reinforced, leather trench-coat, with metal plating on the shoulders and forearms. Slits in the lower half of the coat are there to not hinder his flexibility. He wears a pair of leather sword-belts on his waist.
Personality: Lance is a rather unique character. He clearly enjoys his power and its uses; coming from a background in which his defining trait was his weakness, he sees the great power now afforded to him as a blessing.
He is cunning, calculating, and deadly. He's self-serving and selfish. He has dedicated his existence to following his whims, and this easy life of pleasure has brought him detachment and easy confidence. He has become a sort of bon vivant, seeking novelty and new diversions. But despite his fundamentally hedonistic nature, Lance does feel the pull of more lasting concerns, and over his long life this tendency has resulted in an arcane schedule of engagements and forays to far-flung places. As a result Lance is a busy man, traveling frequently to pursue concerns known only to him. Lance always seems to have business elsewhere.
He's become a charmer and a smooth-talker in this time, he has a vicious way with words and a critical eye that combine to make him extremely competent at picking someone apart and deducing what makes them tick. His ability to analyze and dissect people and situations mentally, combined with his physical nature and magic proficiency have made him an incredibly deadly individual.
He plays the stoic as well as anyone, and plays it in earnest. He does, however, have a much more personable and outgoing side, which emerges when he is around those he trusts and respects most. His easy-going side also has a bit of a wild streak, and he's been known to raise a bit of hell from time to time and city to city. Lance relates to others as his playthings, as he's found few beings capable or worthy of gaining his respect. He's found immense pleasure in traveling the continent. Essentially, he's a narcissist, with an "I come first" sort of attitude. This is most apparent in his pursuit of women. He tends to seek out the nearest tavern and beautiful woman (or women if he can swing it). He's the ultimate lady-killer, using his good looks, charisma, charm, and status to win (and subsequently break) the hearts of women everywhere. He's a connoisseur of the one-night-stand and is prone to seducing women of nobility, "just for the challenge." But Lance's eye isn't for power; he appreciates beauty no matter what social class it's found in. He enjoys the perks of his status; especially the free drinks and attention it gets him from women.
Upon going into battle, however, Lance changes completely. He becomes like a machine, unceasing, unflinching, and unrelenting in his mission. He is no longer either stoic or laid-back, but determined and focused. He becomes something else entirely, and it is in this "something else" that his separation from humanity becomes most evident. Lance becomes vicious, ferociously efficient and brutal. In this mindset, it's clear that he's no longer truly human, that he is indeed an inhuman force, and it takes him some time to pull himself back from this state of hyper-awareness and hyper-lethality once his mission is complete.
"Hyper-lethal" is the most appropriate way of describing Lance. His true nature is that of a killer: unflinching determination and hedonism. Within him lurks his "Dark Passenger," a pseudo-aware aspect of his personality. The Passenger drives him to fulfill the Hunger and the Need, the primal urges from deep within.
His revelry, womanizing, and overall hell-raising is actually a useful tool for his decompression, which is likely why the Ryder has continually turned a blind eye towards his behavior, even when it caused him some embarrassment.
History: Lance's first memory is one of complete and utter agony; of awakening screaming in pain; of something ripping over his entire body, searing itself into his skin and bones. Everything was fire. Then there was nothing. Just weightlessness; days of emptiness; complete silence and loneliness. Then pain again. And more fire; more screaming and ripping and searing. But this time, there was something else after. No more loneliness. No more silence. But a single sound; a low chuckle - a whisper. The Passenger. It was there that Lance's Dark Passenger took his first breath, born in fire and blood.
He awoke to find himself not-quite-alone, but confined to a dark cell, where he spent several days waiting and weakening due to lack of food and water. He wasn't there long; soon a representative from the military came and brought him to an orphanage without any explanation. The ten year old boy was concerned, but displayed no signs of fear.
The orphanage took him in, but the darkness was already there. He lashed out angrily and with no .regard for anyone else. He fought with the other children and even with the workers at the orphanage. Not a year later, a soldier and his wife came to the orphanage looking to adopt a child. While they were initially steered away from Lance by the staff there, the soldier recognized something in Lance and adopted him straight away. What the soldier did not reveal, however, was that he was a recruit for a special military establishment called the "Program" looking to find young boys with certain characteristics that they could then mold into the perfectly obedient soldiers or citizens
Lance was brought into the "Program", and subjected to the rigors and difficulties they set up for him and the other recruits. Competition between the "students" was fierce. They were encouraged to hurt, maim, and even kill one another so they might get an extra portion of food that day. They were taught to be cunning and ruthless. They were taught all the arts of combat from the very first day, receiving training with all forms of weaponry and hand-to-hand combat.
The Program itself had suffered serious setbacks. The cruel regimen that the cadets were subjected to was simply too much for most of them. A majority either died from training accidents or committed suicide. Many others were mentally unfit to rejoin active society and were shipped away to other parts of the kingdom. The instructors were looking for anything that might validate the existence of their program, and began conditioning the recruits to use magic. Lance showed a natural (if limited) proficiency and began his training. When Lance was eighteen years old he was immediately removed from the program and sent to the Halcyon Special Military Academy.
Upon entering the academy Lance realized how out of the ordinary he was. He was far more cutthroat than the other students--as a result of his time in the Program. He began to form bonds with his classmates and fellows and did everything he could to fit in, though it was almost completely on a very superficial level. It was there that he developed his outlook on life; he learned how to "enjoy" life, or at least appear as if he did. He developed his "charisma" hoping that it would help him to connect with someone.
It was in the Academy that he first met Ryder Falkenrath, the bastard son of the King and a commoner. He tolerated Ryder's ideals and concepts of a new world, mainly because he found Ryder an amusing and easy person to be around. They forged a friendship, albeit a wary one. Ryder confided in Lance his musings about changing the kingdom, and Lance offered his own, far more pragmatic, views on the subject.
Lance was among the recruits to travel with Ryder to Halcyon's border in the battle that won Ryder his fame. Lance was one of the few survivors and was instrumental in holding the line so Ryder could make his counterattack. Later, as Ryder began to plot his revolution in earnest, he turned to Lance for assistance. Lance accepted and served under Jocoul Delacroix. He thrived on the battlefield, pushed by his commanding officers and the incessant whisper of the Passenger, he became a monster, reveling in the bloodshed.
He found that the more he drew on his magic, the more his body changed. The tattoos on his body that he had known his entire life burned, glowing white-hot. They made him stronger, faster, angrier; they made each enemy's actions slower and easier to predict. Then he too would change, his hair bleached, his eyes blackening. In this state he heard nothing but the voice of the Passenger, nothing but the Need. In this form, all Ryder needed to do was point him in a direction, and Halcyon's White Glint would kill until there was nothing left.
But then...the peace was won. And Lance was left feeling wholly incomplete. Empty, trying to recall the days where he felt useful and had direction. But try as he might, Ryder no longer had much use for the White Glint; trusting others to operate as he once did. And so Lance struck out to the furthest corners of the Empire, searching for answers; for his memories, for amusement, and for a way to sate the hunger of the Passenger. The Need.
What he did not expect, however, was for Thalia Valke to show up three years later looking to recruit him into Ryder's service once again.
Abilities: Lance has an innate aptitude for magic and the manipulation thereof. His spell-casting repertoire is limited to a handful of techniques, but they possess incredible power and versatility. In addition, the tattoos along his body enhance and bolster his mana reserves, allowing him greater stamina when it comes to his magic. These large stores of mana give him much greater physical strength, stamina, and speed; allowing him to compete on an almost-even level with Thalia.
Lance's main proficiency is for lightning (and thunder)-based magic. He is able to wield and manipulate electricity to various degrees, either to start small campfires with a spark; or to atomize an enemy with a blinding bolt. Lightning, like many elemental magics can be both a purifying and corrupting power. It can rend the wicked or cut through the body and sear the soul. Lance is adept in both aspects of its power. On the opposite spectrum, however, he is able to manifest a rare and powerful type of black magic. Sangromancy, the magic of blood, a dark corner of black mana specialization. With this blood magic he can drain the lifeforce of other beings, place curses on enemies, and even possess the minds and bodies of others. One of his favorite methods of attack, however, is to create a "blood shadow", a deep-red shadow that forms around him, and with it, tear his enemies to pieces.
While his magic prowess is certainly significant, it is not the only thing Lance brings to the table. He's very skilled in hand to hand combat, though his chosen weapon is the long sword. Through the physical proficiency provided by his mana stores, he is a dangerous combatant.
Equipment: Lance wields a long sword that has become completely attuned to his own flow of magic. In his normal mind frame, the blade glimmers bright silver, but as soon as he changes, so too does the blade. As the Passenger takes hold, his blade begins to turn black.
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