Liathano
Liathano
Alias:
Bright One, Child of Flame
Appearance:
Age: 19
Height: 5'6"
Weight: 135lbs.
Eyes: Bright blue.
Appearance:
(Note: Liath's skin color is not accurately represented. Her skin is the color of slightly burnt cream...not black, but a light creamy brown. She also normally keeps her long hair braided.)
Personality:
Liath has spent most of her life on the run, trying to keep unnoticed because then she will remain safe. Recently this all came crashing around her ears, especially with her marriage to Prince Sanglant (whose father, the King, does NOT like her or favor the marriage) and the discovery of her true lineage. While she has mostly been timid and skittish, favoring flight over combat, she has started becoming more assertive and sure of herself, especially now that she has full control of her fire powers and no longer feels like a helpless pawn in the game of life.
Fighting Style:
Medieval Weaponry, Elemental Fire, Empathy.
Powers/Abilities/Skills:
Midieval Weaponry: Liath is especially skilled with bow and arrow, her primary weapon. She is also proficient with the short sword.
Elemental Fire:
Liath's mother was a fire diamone (what we would call a fire elemental). She (and anything attuned to her) is immune to fire, and can call fire to/from any object that is not another pure element (air, water, and light). Earth is not counted as a pure element. She can make anything burn, even something that is immune to fire, though that thing would technically take no damage or be destroyed by this act. She has to be able to see the target (and her eyesight is very sharp...she can read a book on a moonless night as if it were daylight), and something that prevents her from being able to make mental contact with the target would negate her ability to call fire to/from it (normal shields would not stop her unless opaque, but a mind or psychic shield would). She has wings of flame, and can fly using them. They cannot be extinguished, even from lack of oxygen.
Water or Ice elemental attacks don't have any added damage against her unless she has her flame wings manifested. Cold air has no adverse effect on her, and neither does fog, even with the wings in use, unless it is concentrated into liquid or solid form.
Empathy: Liath has a natural affinity with sensing and manipulating the emotions of others. She can both enhance and "turn off" emotions. She cannot tell what someone is thinking with this, only how they're feeling, though manipulating how that person is feeling could end up having an effect on waht/how they're thinking. Once again, this is a mental power, and can't be stopped by a normal shield, only by mental/psychic barriers.
Weapons/Equipment:
Seeker of Hearts: This is Liath's bow. It is magically enchanted so that any arrow shot from it will not fail to strike the heart of the target (or exactly where Liath is aiming for if it is a target that doesn't have a heart, like a tree...). The bow is attuned to Liath so will not burn, and is indestructible.
Lucian's sword: This is a plain, ordinary short sword that bears the inscription "This sword is Lucian's good friend." Liath was given the sword at the same time she was given Seeker of Hearts, but as far as she can tell the sword has no sort of special powers.
History/Life Story:
(Warning: Contains spoilers.)
Liath spent most of her life that she can remember on the run with her Da. They never stayed at one place for too long, because her Da feared that whatever was chasing them would catch up if they remained in one place. Finally, the year that Liath turned sixteen and had persuaded him to let them stay in the small town of Heart's Rest for over two years, what had been pursuing them caught up and Da mysteriously died.
Unfortunately, Da had run up so much debt in the time they had spent in Heart's Rest that even the selling off of all their possessions could not cover the debt, and Liath was sold into slavery to cover the debt price. The man who paid the debt price was Frater Hugh, the churchman who was the spiritual leader of the area. Now Hugh had been coveting her ever since he had come to Heart's Rest, and after many months he finally forced her into his bed.
After almost a year in Hugh's keeping, she was finally freed from him by Wolfhere, one of the King's messengers known as Eagles. She was offered a position among the Eagles, and eagerly took the position to get free of Hugh. While an Eagle, she met the King's bastard son Sanglant during the siege of the city Gent by the savage Eika raiders.
The city eventually fell through magic trickery, and Liath believed that Sanglant had been killed in the final stand. She returned with Wolfhere to King Henry to tell him of what had happened. For a short time she felt finally somewhat safe, but after about six months Hugh arrived on the King's progress and shortly after attempted to accost her. It was then that she first really discovered her innate powers of fire, because she called fire to save herself from him and ended up burning down the entire palace.
After this, she managed to get herself sent on an errand to the Count of Lavas, who King Henry had given the right to be the first to try and take back the city of Gent. She talked the Count's bastard son and heir, Alain, into keeping her with them because of her knowledge of the city, and during the attack to free Gent she discovered that Sanglant was still alive, having been kept a captive of the Eika chieftain for the past year.
With the return of Sanglant to the court, Henry was overjoyed because Sanglant was his favorite child, and the one he wanted to make Regnant after him. Sanglant, however, wanted none of this, his memory of Liath having been the only thing that had kept him sane during his time in captivity. He asked Liath to become his wife.
Hugh tried to interfere, wanting Liath for himself, and Henry gave her the choice to either remain an Eagle and therefore not allowed to marry, or leave the Eagles and be returned to Hugh as his slave. She chose to remain an Eagle, and she and Wolfhere were sent away on an errand to the Skopos in Darre (the equivalent of the Pope in Rome).
Sanglant followed after her, though, and persuaded her to leave Wolfhere and the Eagles and come with him. She agreed, and they were married before returning to the King's court. Needless to say, King Henry was less than pleased with this, having other plans for his son that marriage to someone who was believed to be nothing but a common born woman.
The same evening as their return, a strange thing happened. A woman arrived in the night who turned out to be Liath's mother Anne, who Liath had thought had been killed years ago by whatever had chased her and Da for so long. She told Liath that she could come with her and learn how to properly control her powers and learn the art of the mathematici (astrology sorcerers) which Liath was greatly interested in.
The three of them left the King's progress that night, and traveled to Anne's "home" in a strange mountain valley called Verna. While there, Liath became pregnant and gave birth to a daughter who Sanglant named Blessing. Liath then discovered that her mother Anne was the granddaughter of the Emperor Taillefer, the greatest king in known history, making Liath of the most noble descent. Sanglant gave her his gold torque, symbol of one of royal birth.
It was then discovered by Liath than Anne and her companions wanted to kill Sanglant because his mother had been one of the Aoi, the elves who had disappeared from the earth over two thousand years ago but were about to return in the near future, and who Anne and her six companions believed the be the enemy of humankind.
Outraged, Liath decided to leave Verna, but Anne tried to stop her. At this time, Sanglant's mother, who had for some time been searching for him, came at last to Verna and stopped Anne from using her bound daimones from killing Sanglant and the infant Blessing. Then the fire daimones (the most powerful of all diamones) at last found Liath and carried her away into the heavens with them, calling her "Child."
Sanglant and his mother returned to the King's progress, but Liath found herself being carried up into the heavens by the creatures of fire. But because of her mortal body, she was unable to go very far, and began falling back to earth. Then the Burning Stone appeared to her again and she passed through it to again find herself in the land of Eldest Uncle, an Aoi sorcerer who she had met before during an incident when she had been traveling to the Lavas Count.
She was given the choice to stay and learn or return to her husband and child, and heartbroken chose to stay and learn so that she would not be a danger to herself and her loved ones. During the four days she spent with Eldest Uncle, she discovered what had happened almost 2700 years ago when the Aoi had been banished from the Earth. Then, because of the Aoi council's distrust of her (and all humankind because of what had happened to them), she was ordered to leave and return to earth or die.
Eldest Uncle intervened, requesting that she be allowed to walk the Spheres before leaving, and his request was granted...if she could do it. She succeeded, and during her travel through the Seven Spheres discovered that Anne wasn't actually her mother, but that she was in truth the child of a fire daimone and her father Bernard (who was also a descendant of Taillefer, though not as directly as Anne). Upon reaching the seventh sphere where the daimones of fire dwelt, all was revealed to her, and it was then that she became fully aware of herself and the powers granted her by her lineage.
She returned to Eldest Uncle and told him what she had learned, then called the Burning Stone (a gateway between the worlds/spheres/dimensions) to return to Earth. (for remainder of how she got to the UFF, see the thread "Strange Arrival" in the Bazaar)
(This is a VERY down and dirty compressed summary of four 800+ page books, so please forgive any discrpancies those of you who have read the books. For anyone interested after reading this, the series this character comes from is called "Crown of Stars" by Kate Elliott, and is a VERY good read. I would highly recommend it. However, the character of Liath that I am running here is a little different that the character in the books, as I have added a little to her for RP/RFing purposes and personal enjoyment.)
Contact:
Email: yui_sama@hotmail.com