Aelna cen Novus
| height - 4'10" | weight - 142 lbs | age - 28 |
| nationality - garlean | birthplace - isca baelsar | residence - gelmorra |
| profession - culinarian | jobs - drk, cnj, pug, cul, militiawoman |
(Unmarked MSQ spoilers beyond this point!)
Night. Garoth quo Novus steps out of his chariot into the wet mud beneath its wheels. Rain has heralded his child's entrance into the world for the past three hours. He enters his town home, a magitek workshop configured into a makeshift delivery room, to lay eyes on his wife resting on the sofa his mother gave him eight years ago. She holds an infant swaddled in white cloth in her arms. A beautiful baby girl. Aelna, they think. What a lovely name.Twenty-two years later, Aelna is reciting sonatas from memory to an audience of thousands crammed shoulder-to-shoulder into the Teatro Polmero, the Empire's most prestigious theater. Everyone assembled claps when Aelna's fingers leave the keys of a grand piano. As she stands to take a bow, her eyes fall onto a man in the audience who later manages to intercept her in the minutes before her motor carriage arrives. Tyrsten, he calls himself. He makes an impression. She invites him home. He proposes to her two months later.Five happy years pass. Tyrsten puts his background as a military engineer to practice as the new proprietor of elderly Garoth's business. He also becomes an idealistic Populares, hoping to make a difference for downtrodden immigrants and their children; children like his wife Aelna used to be. They discuss siring children of their own frequently over dinner. Aelna adores the prospect.But Tyrsten senses a storm brewing. Whispers abound among his colleagues of a lone savage who managed to rally occupied Doma and Ala Mhigo into rebellion. As he and his wife convene for bed one night, he lends a cane to her for safekeeping. A magitek artifice of his making, designed to be an effective catalyst even in the hands of an untrained user. To an incapable pureblood like him, it is worthless. In Aelna's hands, however, it would assuredly find use.Three weeks later, Varis zos Galvus is murdered on a cold summer morning. Before dawn's break, Aelna is hurried into the basement by her husband, rushed further still through a secret passageway hidden behind a false bookshelf, and instructed to run southwest as far as her legs will carry her. As she sprints through the underground tunnel with her cane in hand, she hears the crack of a gunshot close behind her.It isn't until she emerges from a cellar across the block that she witnesses three dozen soldiers gathered outside of the front door of her house. She watches a man clad in black steel drag Tyrsten's limp, bleeding body into a corpse wagon. Heeding her husband's final words to her, Aelna runs southwest with tears streaming down her cheeks, never to look back.
(Unmarked MSQ spoilers beyond this point!)
Most Garlean music aficionados know who Aelna is from her record-breaking performances at concert halls across the Empire. She is among the youngest pianists ever to set foot on stage in these enormous places, and for the descendant of a savage to do so is an even greater feat.
Even the most uncultured Garleans can recognize that Aelna hails from the central provinces, owing to her faint accent and fair complexion. Families who can afford to live in the heartland spare their daughters the burden of manual labor, a privilege not typically afforded to those in the outlying provinces. Despite this, Aelna has come into her own as a capable combatant, though her callouses have yet to run deep.
Rumors rarely escape from the Empire's borders, and fewer still travel far enough to reach other continents. Even so, the exploits of Aelna's late husband have reached ears in the Ala Mhigan resistance. He helped establish an underground railroad to funnel slaves out of Imperial territory during the final years of his life.
Aelna has faced terrible tribulations since returning home via the Ilsabard Contingent. The Final Days have subjected her to trauma of such mind-shattering magnitude as to split her previously solitary intellect into two distinct beings. One half of her mind identifies as the woman she was before, retaining the name Aelna and keeping most of her introverted behaviors. The other half, her darkside, cohabits her body without making an attempt to conceal itself, periodically possessing her flesh when given consent to do so whilst otherwise providing banter, observations, and reflection as a disembodied voice (insofar as speaking to one's own split personality can be considered not talking to oneself). Those with aether sight may catch some indication that her mind is not whole; even without any peculiarities of vision, word of mouth has spread of her odd 'guest' as well as its proclivity for pushing her into new and unusual situations.
Though she has not formally accepted training as a conjurer, Aelna nevertheless practices her conjury out of a self-imposed moral obligation to her countrymen. More than a few Imperials once trapped in the ruins of Garlemald recall a teal-haired auri plucking them from the rubble and mending their wounds. Commendation of her distinguished service has reached Eorzea through relatives of those still present in Tertium; or at least, there is praise from those who can look past her 'savage' heritage.
Thanks for reading my Carrd! I'm a CST-based roleplayer in my twenties who's here to make friends, craft cool stories, and have a good time doing it. I have over a decade of experience under my belt, and I'm comfortable with any themes. While I prefer to keep my own style of roleplay lore abiding, I won't personally demand the same of my partners, as I find the breadth of characters I consider interesting often walk the line of what is canonically acceptable.Roleplay with me requires that you can separate IC and OOC interactions completely. If you're reading this, you're probably deep enough down the roleplay rabbit hole to already know what that means.
