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 Post subject: Kalani the White
PostPosted: Thu Oct 24, 2013 1:31 am 
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Formal Name: Kalani Ostra Ya'Sima Solak Iz'Sigal

Informal Name: Kalani the White

Species: Fox

Gender: Female

Age and Place of Birth: 31, Hirang Erage Outskirts

Appearance: Kalani's most immediately obvious physical feature is that she is an albino. From head to toe, her fur is pure white with no natural variation, and both her eyes and nose are a faded pink color. Identifying her species beyond the vague notion of a canine is a difficult matter, particularly for foreigners, as she lacks the unique coloration and fur patterns reminiscent of any kind of fox. The shape of her face and body are considered quite attractive by the standards of her home, but these qualities are often overlooked in favor of her unusual condition, which itself is only appreciated by certain small minorities. A lifetime spent hidden away from the sun has left her build tall, slender, and frail.

Perhaps more off-putting than Kalani's albinism is her personal sense of fashion, which she displays proudly in open defiance of the social mores of Olahn Korlarin. Beyond a simple but contrary preference for deep and vibrant colors, she has also adopted several ideas from the eastern culture of the Mirelands, including a variety of hairstyles and a tendency to dye the fur around her eyes in unnatural hues. She is almost always seen wearing imported silk dresses, even those which others would consider immodest, and never displays shame or embarrassment when doing so. There is a sense of visual consistency to her appearance, but it makes her stand out unnecessarily and appears foreign to both cultures from which it borrows, which is the primary reason that mages and Nezumi alike take issue with it.

Visual reference: http://i954.photobucket.com/albums/ae23 ... b62028.png

Family: Her father, Donovan, and her mother, Isadora. No siblings.

Friends: Basso the Hardy, local Administrator of Kalani's neighborhood.

Enemies: Mostly political rivals who do not believe she deserves her position.

Love Life: None. Even ignoring her outward appearance, Kalani is quite unapproachable and has never submitted an official marriage claim or shown obvious romantic interest towards another creature.

Likes: Intelligent conversation (particularly about other cultures), meditation, the color red.

Hates: Discrimination, liars, unwarranted or excessive aggression.

Fears: Failure. Kalani's political position is anything but stable, and any signs of weakness place her under the threat of being replaced with little hope of recovery.

Strengths: Calm under pressure, highly rational, good at reading others.

Weaknesses: Physically frail, sensitive to sunlight.

Weaponry and Gear:
Rapier: A thin, long, and completely inflexible steel sword with a guarded hilt, specialized in thrusting attacks but capable of slashes and cuts as needed. Despite the blade being less than an inch in width, magical reinforcement has left it completely unbreakable, unnaturally resistant to incoming force, and sharp enough to pierce or carve through dense materials like wood with a relative minimum of effort.

Kimono: Kalani has personally weaved a number of minor enchantments into her dress. It repels dirt, water, and other unwelcome substances from her person, provides rudimentary protection from sharp objects (enough to protect her from slashes but not stabs from an ordinary kitchen knife), slowly mends damage to itself over time, and may change its color, pattern, and basic shape according to her whims.

Training:
Adept Enchantress: As the primary focus of Kalani's lifetime of magical studies, the school of enchantment allows her to improve objects beyond their natural limitations and grant them a wide variety of exceptional properties. Her skill with the craft is great enough that she is not restricted to working on inanimate things, allowing her to improve the bodies of willing creatures, or with greater effort, weaken and debilitate those of the unwilling. She is also quite capable of influencing the minds of others with this form of magic, usually to eliminate hostile intentions or improve a subject's disposition towards her, but finds the act invasive and prefers to rely on it only when all other attempts at persuasion have failed.

Novice Illusionist: Although she is less dedicated to the school of illusionism, Kalani is able to distort, create, and obscure the senses of others with her magic. She lacks the control to weave multiple convincing illusions at once, but possesses a particular talent for creating detailed images, and inversely, struggles in her attempts to mask existing imagery from attentive onlookers. Her recent attempts to introduce the principles of illusionism into her enchantments have yielded some promising results, such as the ability for her robe to alter its colors, but as of yet she has not made any "practical" breakthroughs from such experimentation.

Duelist: To meet the needs that arose from her desire to travel, Kalani was required to learn a suitable means of self-defense which was not dependent upon her unbroken concentration and ability to vocalize spells. Her choice, as unorthodox as ever, was to learn how to wield a rapier against opponents who used more conventional weapons like clubs, swords, and spears. The style is suited to her physique as it demands great dexterity and reflexes rather than strength to perform, but she is far from a master and has picked up most of her experience from controlled scenarios rather than actual combat despite having survived repeated journeys to the unwelcoming Greatmire. The style's greatest benefit is that it only requires one hand, leaving the other free to cast magic or perform other tasks unimpeded.

Linguist: Although she is incapable of speaking the language of the Nezumi due to prohibitive facial anatomy, Kalani is a fluent translator, and can both read and write the Mirelands script easily.

Magick Path: Sorcery

History:
Character Biography
Like most children born along the outskirts of Hirang Erage, nobody held particularly high expectations of Kalani at the beginning of her life. Her parents, while not suffering from poverty, lived a modest life as traders, taking what little the Nezumi exported overseas and selling back the likewise meager wares that their own kingdom's laws allowed them to offer in return. As the two were mere novices in their respective fields of study, trade was one of the best ways for them to make a living, and it was clear that they believed their daughter would share the same future. While she did fortunately possess magical potential, her albinism was no blessing; it distanced her from the other children, and she grew up to be a solitary creature during the few years that the three knew each other for.

In the absence of children around her own age, Kalani would look for willing adults to speak and spend her time with, and as her own parents were often busy negotiating prices with other traders, she would simply find whomever was available. The company she kept led her to mature well before her time and become knowledgeable in a colorful variety of subjects, from local views on the politics of her kingdom to a rudimentary understanding of magic before her power had manifested itself. Even the normally gruff and belligerent Nezumi silk merchants would occasionally entertain the girl out of an appreciation for her lack of bias, and as a result she became deeply interested in the stories they told of their culture, which were often exaggerated and embellished to favor the Nezumi as a people. By the time she was sent away to Gizli Yangin, Kalani possessed a highly romanticized view of the Mirelands, and one of her most prized possessions was an exotic dress that her parents had reluctantly purchased for her as a sign of good will towards the rats.

Although Kalani had always known that she was different, it was only once her schooling began that she came to realize how she would be judged for it. Some children were drawn to her unusual fur color while others saw it as a thing to avoid, but nearly all of them had difficulty coping with her mature outlook, and she expressed an unpopular adoration for Nezumi culture in more ways than her choice of clothing. As someone willing to defend the rats against what she believed to be unjustified hatred and mistrust, she became subject to many of the same prejudices that she sought to eliminate, and her reputation had solidified long before she realized that she was no more truthfully informed about the culture she defended than those she defended it from. In the meantime, her mentors taught her to be polite and respectful, but had little success in changing her fundamental beliefs. Being an outcast had become a way for the girl to identify herself.

While Kalani rarely spoke to her peers without good reason, this did not mean that she showed no interest in them. She was an intelligent and inquisitive student with a deep interest in the underlying causes of others' behavior, and her nature as a self-made outsider allowed her to study them without becoming personally involved. Over time, she came to understand her classmates better in some ways than they understood themselves, and this allowed her to forgive much of their treatment towards her. Even still, she remained too distant to make friends; the closest she ever came was to be regarded as a source of reliable advice and a skilled, impartial mediator, which suited her perfectly. When she completed her schooling at the relatively early age of 24, her departure was a quiet affair with few attendees.

The first thing that Kalani did upon her homecoming was establish a small enchanting business, which was quite successful due to her superior skill with the craft in comparison to the many novices normally found among the outer islands. For her, however, enchantment was more of a hobby than an ambition, and while her impressive creations earned her some recognition within her community, she became truly famous for her ability to resolve disputes among the local merchants and visiting Nezumi traders. The way in which she dressed gave her a reputation for favoring the rats, but she approached all conflicts that reached her attention without bias, and refused to settle on outcomes that were unfavorable to either side. Eventually, the Administrator of her neighborhood, a strong and even-handed wolf named Basso, took notice and offered to find her an opportunity to undertake small diplomatic tasks for the kingdom; one which she gratefully accepted.

At Kalani's own urging and with the support of Basso, she was able to receive funding from the Council of Mages for a journey into the Mirelands to improve trade relations with the Nezumi. In particular, she wished to speak with a trade commissioner named Stiff-Whisker who was responsible for imposing restrictions on the amount of minerals exported overseas from several of the Greatmire's mining operations. Being an island kingdom, Olahn Korlarin was highly dependent on its agreements with outside nations to receive necessities like iron and copper, and Kalani reasoned that it would be easier to convince the Nezumi to lighten their restrictions than seek help from the northern mountains of Akamu. Unspoken was the fact that she also wished for a chance to travel to the Mirelands and see for herself just how accurate the stories she had grown up on had been.

To say that Kalani's first visit to the Mirelands was worse than she was expecting would be an understatement bordering upon willful deception. Her peaceful ferry ride from Hirang Erage to the western edge of the swamps became a small-scale naval war scenario less than two hours after its departure when pirates mistook the transport vessel she had hired for a trading ship, and attacked. Her own ship was armed due to the frequency of such raids, and it was fortunately able to drive off the pirates despite suffering significant damage in the process. As such, its arrival at the nearest port left it in serious need of repair, and all of its passengers were stranded on the main continent until the damage was fixed or they could secure alternate means of passage across the sea. Undeterred, Kalani decided to travel overland to her destination.

Before she crossed the Supreme Wall, thieves had made off with illusory treasures in exchange for Kalani's life no less than four times, and her actual belongings had dwindled to the kimono she was wearing, a set of documents that identified her as a valid representative of Olahn Korlarin, and a small quantity of coin that she was forced to part with as part of an alleged toll to enter the kingdom itself. She later discovered that the other side of the wall wasn't much more welcoming, as many Nezumi townsfolk were willing to go to great lengths to insult everything from her fur color, to the style in which she dressed, to her simple status as an unwelcome foreigner. The only help she was able to find was from members of other species living in the swamps, all of whom painted a bleak picture of life under Nezumi rule.

Kalani's belated meeting with Stiff-Whisker was, in comparison to the rest of her journey, rather pleasant. While he was by no means kind or sympathetic towards her, he was used to dealing with traders from other kingdoms and cared too much about his profits to display open hostility towards them. Like the merchants she had met as a child, he appreciated her unbiased view of the Nezumi, and the two were able to successfully negotiate an agreement that easily fell within the limits of what Kalani was allowed to offer. On a more personal note, she was also able to secure passage back home on one of the rat's trading ships for a small amount of enchantment work.

The Council of Mages was impressed with Kalani's ability to produce results in the face of adversity, and decided to offer her a more permanent position as an official diplomat to the Mirelands. In spite of the trouble she had experienced, the young mage gratefully closed down her former business and took up the position, promising to perform even better as she grew more familiar with the culture she was expected to interact with. True to her word, she spent the next five years acquainting herself with the customs of the Nezumi while representing her kingdom's interests, and was eventually promoted to the position of Consul to meet with two of Cinder-Fur's daughters themselves. The three of them had much in common, and quickly took a liking to each other - far more than the Red Ladies preferred the company of Olahn Korlarin's other, more prominent political figures.

A few months later, after her kingdom's standing ambassador to the Mirelands was confirmed to have died by Nezumi hands, Kalani was reluctantly appointed to the position in spite of unfounded rumors that she was personally involved in the man's death. She refused to entertain these claims, dismissing them as being made by those who expected her to show them preferential treatment over the rats, but could not lie about how convenient the change in position was for her.

Regrettable though it was, she could not refuse it. She needed the power to stop a war that the Nezumi seemed all to eager to incite.


Last edited by Ganelon on Mon Nov 18, 2013 4:34 pm, edited 2 times in total.

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 Post subject: Re: Kalani the White
PostPosted: Sat Oct 26, 2013 3:22 pm 

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