Sonia Zobek (Charlotte Alt)

[Sonia Zobek]

Name: Sonia Natasha Zobek

Class: Hero
Age: 28
Height: 5’10”
Weight: 155 lbs
Hair Color: Brown
Eye Color: Blue

Born in: Viscounty of Ligure, Etruria

Appearance: Sonia is a beautiful woman once you clean off the grime and gunk. Her eyes are round and large, and the skin on her face is largely unblemished, save some discoloration under her eyes due to her often long and tiring hours fighting against the unholy monsters of Lycia. Her body bears a few scars, most noticeably down her left arm and side from the Battle of Ostia. She has long, wavy, auburn hair which is often tied in a tight bun at the top of her head, hidden under a light metal helmet, to prevent from having it grabbed by a revenant.

Her armor is light and conducive to quick, fast, and sudden movements, allowing her to dodge and roll as needed. It’s largely functional, though there is a bit of detailing around her collar. Her boots were specially cobbled for her; while largely made of leather that has worn over the years, the heel and toe are made of the same silver her blade was forged from. When prepared for combat, she ensures every inch of her skin is covered with either cloth or leather underneath her armor, and she carries the bare minimum on her person, no excess fabric or bags hanging from her.

She has a fur travelling cloak, the only thing she still owns that had been given to her by her father. Her shield is emblazoned with the Ligure coat of arms, though since leaving she has scrubbed off the paint and decoration, so the shield is simply a metallic silver coloring. Her swords are always double fullered for lightness, with light, soft leather wrapped around the grip.

Personality: Sonia is a passionate woman who is wholly pushed and pulled by her loyalties to her country and her own personal disciplines. While a rebellious and defiant teen, Sonia always approached her training and love for Etruria with the discipline of the knights she grew to spend much of her time with in mid-twenties. She was certainly no upstanding vision of a lady of a viscounty, but one could never doubt her dedication to a cause. As she did in her and her brother’s revolt against the Prophet, she can feel strongly for a cause that she becomes short-sighted, the very opposite of her more experienced and forward-thinking father.

Thanks to her father and her upbringing she does have a strong faith in the true Church of St. Elimine. She prays before, during, and after every mission, and she keeps count on how many undead she has slain, in order to make offerings for their damned souls in hopes that they'll find retribution and peace in finally being laid to rest. She regrets having ever taken another human life, even in defense of her country's dignity, and swears she will never do so again, only using her blade against the undead and monsters that plague Lycia, and it is an oath that would be nigh impossible for her to break.

An unfortunate side-effect of being so moved by her passions is how angry she becomes when things go awry. She is hot-headed, which makes the young woman even less rational and more short-sighted. Her failure with the Loyalists has left her with a constantly simmering anger towards her warped and twisted homeland, often making her seem dour, with something negative always on her mind. She is least surly after a successful mission, spending time with the men, women, and children she had helped, which has thankfully been a frequent result as of late, beginning to build the young woman’s confidence again.

She has become a loner in recent years after the failure of the Loyalists, though she does still yearn to find connections with the types of men and women she’d had during that time. She doesn’t care for prestige, power, or trophies, but rather does her best to fight for what is right. She feels a duty to do anything she can to quell the pain and suffering felt by those affected by the Prophet and the destruction he has left behind him, to the point of risking her own life on countless occasions for the sake of others.

Story: Sonia Zobek was born to Edward and Asthore Zobek, of the viscounty of Ligure. The second of the future Viscount’s three children, Sonia was an unexpected birth, conceived just before Edward left on his second tour to the Western Isles and not confirmed until after he’d already been gone. A letter was sent to her father as soon as she was born, but Sonia would not meet him until she was nearly four years old.

Her father’s return brought much joy and happiness to the small family of four, but the loss of their loving mother was hard on them. While only seven at the time, Sonia still remembered the confusion and anger she felt at the lovely woman being taken away from them. For a short while the young girl even blamed and secretly hated her sister, Iadra, who the higher powers had determined was more important to keep alive than their mother. An unfair grudge, but those formed by children often were.

Much of Sonia’s childhood was spent idolizing the combat knowledge and training that was being bestowed upon her older brother, Gabriel. She thought him to be a master of weaponry, though he may have only been a mere apprentice in reality. A constant nuisance, the young girl would beg to watch his lessons from afar. He refused to oblige her requests to teach her to spar, but Gabriel didn’t mind telling her about all of the different types of blades and bludgeonry that existed for one to use.

Her father, at first, did not approve of Sonia’s interests in her brother’s training, and insisted she take to being a proper lady as her sister, Iadra had done. It was no secret to the young lady that Iadra too had the same desire to be beside her brother and father in combat, but never did she vocalize it to them. Sonia couldn’t stifle her growing love for the knighthood - especially what she considered the beauty of good blademanship.

While she knew she couldn’t become a proper knight, she spent her teenage years arguing with her father - who eventually grew to resentfully accept his daughter’s love for combat - and finding every which way to train with a sword in between her usual lessons. She started with simple fencing lessons, learning to bout with simply a rapier, but worked her way through all manner of weaponry until she found she was good at and what she uses to this day: a double-fullered short sword and buckler-sized teardrop shield. She took an interest in learning to fight with a chain whip like her brother had, but her mentors always convinced her to focus her efforts on becoming great at what she already knew before taking on more of a challenge.

Sonia still tried to convince her brother to spar with her when he wasn’t too busy with his own training, but he still wouldn’t take her offer. He’d begun to take a mild interest in the politics of their region, though this would not truly take hold until the Prophet took control just before their father returned from his three year tour. Their father having been away, he hadn’t seen much of the build-up that led to the coup on the throne. While the Zobeks hadn’t had to witness the bloodstained streets of Aquelia and the king’s execution, there was no way to avoid hearing of it.

The middle Zobek child was infuriated by the betrayal and sided with Gabriel, supporting him in his outspokenness against their new “Prophet.” The fact that her father’s reply to the mess he hadn’t been here to try and help stop was to simply roll over and resign infuriated Sonia even further. It didn’t matter that he was trying to protect their family, and it didn’t matter that he didn’t believe in any of the Prophet’s lies. With all of the injustices and heresy he was spreading, how could her moral, righteous, loyal father turn his back on his country as he had, simply fading into the background?

Twenty-one at the time, Sonia was devastated when Gabriel was exiled for his dissent and protests against the prophet’s reign. Still living in their home in Ligure, as there hadn’t been time to find a husband for the young, rebellious maiden, Sonia cried out in protest when Edward insisted she abscond to the mountain convent alongside her then-sixteen-year-old sister Iadra. She begged and pleaded with her father to let her stay and fight against the Prophet’s tyranny, in any way she could, but he denied her requests outright. “A fool’s errand,” he had called it at the time. That fight was the nail in the coffin that caused Sonia to resent her father, believing him to be too passive in protecting their country and their faith.

The young woman went with Iadra to the convent, though she proved to be a black sheep amongst the holy men and women, many of whom practiced the same Light and healing magic that her sister had begun to master. Iadra truly was a the strong, compassionate woman her father had hoped her to be, while Sonia remained angry, looking for ways to leave so she could lash out against the people who tore her family apart. The one letter that came from her father during the year and a half Sonia forced herself to remain in the convent for Iadra’s sake, Sonia refused to acknowledge, still cold towards her father from their parting.

But Sonia could no longer take being cooped up in the convent any longer. Taking up her sword and shield once more, she absconded in the night, having corresponded with a few of Gabriel’s old friends who hadn’t been found or killed by the Prophet’s men yet. Frustrated by the state of their once respectable nation, they planned to disrupt the Prophet’s men in whatever way they could, taking action when others were too weak or scared to do so. They simply called themselves The Loyalists, as all had been devotees to the former Etrurian crown.

They started small, ambushing and killing the Prophet’s men as they passed through small countryside villages the military had no business being in. The more they lashed out, however, the harsher the punishment on the villages themselves became. Too, the small but slowly growing group was now a target for the Prophet’s men, as they’d become a nuisance that needed dealing with.

In an attempt to lose some heat, the Loyalists split into a few smaller groups to hide out for a short time. Sonia went to Ostia with three other knights, one of whom she had fallen in love with over the past two and a half years. The feelings were mutual, with the two secretly musing plans of marriage and a family once they’d succeeded in their quest to upset the Prophet’s regime. It was the future she could look forward to amidst all the suffering they experienced.

But the romance and their group’s dreams of becoming a true threat to the Prophet’s dictatorship would be relatively short-lived. The other groups were each found by Etrurian military and intelligence alike, and the men and women swiftly executed for their disloyalty to the Prophet. Sonia’s group was in Ostia at the very time Kraft’s men razed the city, leaving only a crater remaining in its stead. Sonia barely escaped with her life, but her brother’s friends and her lover had not been so lucky, swiftly being killed by the powerful magic forces after trying to retaliate.

Her dreams of a better future crushed, Sonia was consumed by her anger once more, and she stubbornly tried to stay to help the others who had survived the assault. Instead, she was witness to the very raising of the dead. Revenants decimated the majority of the citizens who hadn’t made it out of the war-torn city yet. Sonia again barely survived, using the last of what energy she had to fight her way through the undead masses that had risen up before her very eyes.

Sonia couldn’t help but feel like a failure. Despite their best efforts, her friends hadn’t been able to do anything to make the Prophet’s power even falter. And now, his reign of terror had brought honest to goodness monsters into Lycia, which would no-doubt torment the territories and cities who had never had to prepare for an undead army before. She’d failed her country, and now the effects were not only felt by her kinsmen, but by their neighbors as well.

Now unable to return to Etruria for fear of her life and no allies to her name, she decided to do the only thing she could: do her part to eradicate the demons that the Prophet and his tyranny had unleashed onto the world. The past three years she has traveled through any place that has called for help against the revenants and other monsters that now pester various parts of Lycia. Often fighting the undead forces alone, she has honed her skills and is quite adept in facing the demons, but refuses to ever take another person’s life again, not wanting to condemn them to the same curse of the beasts she dedicated herself to fight. She has yet to return to Etruria, and while she wonders where her brother might be in all of this, she thinks little of the rest of her family, still stubbornly upset with her father after all these years.

[Richter Abend]

Accepted