Victoria Dunhelden
Aug 15, 2016 12:19:23 GMT -6
Post by Victoria on Aug 15, 2016 12:19:23 GMT -6
Name: Victoria (Tori) Dunhelden
Class: Pupil (Anima) -> Mage
Age: 15
Born in: Remi, Ilia.
Starting Location: Taras, Etruria.
Appearance: Victoria hasn’t yet escaped the clutches of puberty. As of yet she stands a mere 5’2” and is lucky to weigh 100 pounds soaking wet, and is the shortest person in her family. Wishing she was taller doesn’t make it so, but she does bear the cultured traits of breeding that would appeal to peerage - a fair complexion from a childhood spent learning genteel professions, a delicate frame with little more than lean muscle from her own efforts rather than necessary chores. Her blonde hair is often worn long and loose with a gentle fringe that softens her features, even if she ties it back for practicalities sake when playing with mage fire. One thing she has discovered, though, is a love of Nabatan khol - the dark make-up accents her green eyes nicely in her own opinion, and she often nibbles at her pale lips to bring more color to them.
Though Tori is used to wearing full skirts during the day, her favorite dress was actually designed for travel. The kirtle in question is a muted leaf green with short sleeves and canary yellow trimming threaded into the hems. It falls just shy of the tops of her boots in a single layer, while the boots themselves are a scuffed but supple brown leather with a reinforced heel. She pairs the comfortable linen with a robin’s egg blue cloak, and for the time being, will have to make due with what she has.
Personality: Tori is well aware of the fact that she’s the black sheep of her family, but she accepts it with a glib shrug and moves on with her day. She doesn’t feel that she should be an exquisite replica of her successful siblings, even if she still wrestles with the adolescent need to please her family versus pleasing herself. But then, the fact that her siblings have already accomplished everything that she feels is expected of her diminishes the reward. If someone else has already done it, there would be less recognition for her own efforts - and she wants to be recognized as an individual of renown, not just one of many.
Her ever sharpening wit and curiosity lend themselves to a spirit of adventure, and she has no doubt that she wants to be the master of her own fate. Her youth means that sometimes things escape her mouth that would be better off left unsaid, even if by now she has learned to curb her more biting remarks after no small amount of reprimand from her parents as she grew. As much as it pains Tori to admit it, even she’s aware of the fact her mouth could get her into a pickle. As such, she’s made the effort to further refine her social graces, to come off as older than she really is. Those efforts have led to her adopting an often formalized speech pattern more suitable for her parents than someone her age, even if she still has an occasional slip.
Nevertheless, Tori has an undeniable love of learning and a fascination for finding out how things work, perhaps even figuring out how to make her ideas a reality. Her studies could be taken further than just examining theorems and developing her own, though the foundation of empirical testing is building strong and sure the longer she devotes herself to her new craft.
Outside of her studies and the expectations foisted on her by others, though? Tori is still learning who she is. She has already learned to appreciate the nuanced layers that could be vivisected from older members of her social circle, even if she’s uncertain about many personal matters. She tries not to let herself take offense to a difference in opinion unless that opinion correlates with the harm or debasement of another, and in that she admits that she might have a threading of white knight impulses, but recent experiences have made her question her apparent pragmatism. She may be willing to do what she must to survive, but what does that say about her as a person?
Story: Port cities are often regarded as a place of beginnings and adventure, but also as a congregation of wealth or poverty. In Remi, that was dependent on which area of the port someone was from. For Victoria, it was a place of prosperity and the promise of more. She was the youngest of the Dunhelden merchant empire, but unlike the rest of the brood, Tori had little interest in crunching numbers with her siblings. She accepted it as something to do in order to mete her father’s approval, and was walked through the ins and outs of the trade with her brothers and sisters as she grew. Tori was still something of the black sheep of the family because of her deviant interests, but as children are wont to do, she still followed her siblings around with no shortage of adoration. Ultimately she learned how to calculate and haggle with the rest of the brood, but also how to carve out time for what made her happy after everything was tended to.
She discovered what truly sparked her interest during an adolescent test. As with her siblings, her father took her down to the port stalls to see how well she could apply what she had learned, and Tori was then tasked with selecting one item - preferably one with lasting market value - and haggling it down to a fraction of the original price. Loren Dunhelden expected her to pick jewelry or furs from how he lingered with her in the market, but it was something further down that snagged her and wouldn’t let go: A dark skinned man whose wares were beautifully bound books, and not just any books, but illuminated tomes that taught both the theory and form of magic. Her father tried to dissuade her, saying that it was too ambitious of an acquisition, but eventually yielded the point.
In the end, she wasn’t able to bring the man down too much, but her eagerness for the subject matter and exchange between adults - that being an amused glance and a long-suffering sigh - eventually led to a one-eighth victory. It wasn’t nearly the record that her oldest brother, Leon, had set, but for Tori, her victory was in the cloth wrapped package that soon nestled in her arms. She was fourteen at the time, and much to her parents chagrin, much of the next year was spent with her nose buried in arcane arts rather than more practical methods of acquiring wealth for the family name. It wasn’t until her fifteenth birthday that the time came to start discussing her marriage options, and while Tori knew that her parents would ultimately have say over what contract was sealed, she pushed for a candidate from Delfia. Even if the marriage itself turned out to be a chore, she would have access to some of the greatest magical minds in the neighboring country to learn from. It would be worth whatever trials sprang from her betrothal, at least in her mind.
Loren Dunhelden wasn’t a cruel man, though, and loved his children. It was only natural that he would want them to succeed, and for his youngest daughter, he eventually found two different mercantile families that he’d agree to bind their family to from the Etrurian capital of magic. There was even the benefit of having Tori’s oldest sister, Karina, situated Aquleia from her own marriage. It wouldn’t be a stretch for the siblings to check in on one another with regularity, to have something familiar in a strange country and with only short travels between them. They were to take a land route to meet and interview the families in person, and along the way, disperse some of Loren’s recent acquisitions. Not all families required a dowry - the prospect of combined familial wealth was often enough to forego one - but it never hurt to have additional funds on hand.
It turned out to be a misfortune that the family crest was so recognizable, though. The golden pegasus painted onto the side of their travel cart ended up attracting the attention of the wrong kind of person in Modlin. It hadn’t been Loren’s choice to stop in a city with such reputation, but when a horse throws a shoe, necessity comes before want. That they lingered enough for that brought brigands onto their heads days outside of the city. What gold Loren had on him wasn’t enough to satisfy their leader, knowing who the Dunhelden family head was - he was set free, at sword point, to collect a ransom fit for nobility if he was to get his dear daughter back.
Tori would’ve been lying if she had said her heart wasn’t in her throat as she watched her father ride away, but it wasn’t until the rest of their leader’s muscle dispersed to find other targets that she could risk acting out without risking her head or health - she may have been more valuable alive than dead, but the threats for misbehavior sat heavy in her mind. Which was why when she acted, it was with the sole intent of survival. Only one man was needed to transport a girl, but only one man was needed to meet his comeuppance. Complex spell matrixes weren’t something she had memorized off the top of her head, yet, but what she knew was enough. The stench of burned flesh would forever be entrenched in her memory, as would the man’s frantic spasms when she pushed magic charged electricity into his skull. There was no such thing as bad aim with full-bodied contact.
Tori ended up with blistered palms and a spooked horse that was soon no where to be found. What took more effort to grasp was the reality of what she’d just done. The twitching corpse that threatened to crush the air from her lungs hadn’t yet realized it was dead, even while other odors confirmed the fact. She managed to worm out from underneath it and collect what little supplies she could from the body - all the while trying to rationalize that it wasn’t looting, most of it had belonged to her in the first place - and began a long walk to the nearest town. Geography lessons had officially proven themselves useful.
Class: Pupil (Anima) -> Mage
Age: 15
Born in: Remi, Ilia.
Starting Location: Taras, Etruria.
Appearance: Victoria hasn’t yet escaped the clutches of puberty. As of yet she stands a mere 5’2” and is lucky to weigh 100 pounds soaking wet, and is the shortest person in her family. Wishing she was taller doesn’t make it so, but she does bear the cultured traits of breeding that would appeal to peerage - a fair complexion from a childhood spent learning genteel professions, a delicate frame with little more than lean muscle from her own efforts rather than necessary chores. Her blonde hair is often worn long and loose with a gentle fringe that softens her features, even if she ties it back for practicalities sake when playing with mage fire. One thing she has discovered, though, is a love of Nabatan khol - the dark make-up accents her green eyes nicely in her own opinion, and she often nibbles at her pale lips to bring more color to them.
Though Tori is used to wearing full skirts during the day, her favorite dress was actually designed for travel. The kirtle in question is a muted leaf green with short sleeves and canary yellow trimming threaded into the hems. It falls just shy of the tops of her boots in a single layer, while the boots themselves are a scuffed but supple brown leather with a reinforced heel. She pairs the comfortable linen with a robin’s egg blue cloak, and for the time being, will have to make due with what she has.
Personality: Tori is well aware of the fact that she’s the black sheep of her family, but she accepts it with a glib shrug and moves on with her day. She doesn’t feel that she should be an exquisite replica of her successful siblings, even if she still wrestles with the adolescent need to please her family versus pleasing herself. But then, the fact that her siblings have already accomplished everything that she feels is expected of her diminishes the reward. If someone else has already done it, there would be less recognition for her own efforts - and she wants to be recognized as an individual of renown, not just one of many.
Her ever sharpening wit and curiosity lend themselves to a spirit of adventure, and she has no doubt that she wants to be the master of her own fate. Her youth means that sometimes things escape her mouth that would be better off left unsaid, even if by now she has learned to curb her more biting remarks after no small amount of reprimand from her parents as she grew. As much as it pains Tori to admit it, even she’s aware of the fact her mouth could get her into a pickle. As such, she’s made the effort to further refine her social graces, to come off as older than she really is. Those efforts have led to her adopting an often formalized speech pattern more suitable for her parents than someone her age, even if she still has an occasional slip.
Nevertheless, Tori has an undeniable love of learning and a fascination for finding out how things work, perhaps even figuring out how to make her ideas a reality. Her studies could be taken further than just examining theorems and developing her own, though the foundation of empirical testing is building strong and sure the longer she devotes herself to her new craft.
Outside of her studies and the expectations foisted on her by others, though? Tori is still learning who she is. She has already learned to appreciate the nuanced layers that could be vivisected from older members of her social circle, even if she’s uncertain about many personal matters. She tries not to let herself take offense to a difference in opinion unless that opinion correlates with the harm or debasement of another, and in that she admits that she might have a threading of white knight impulses, but recent experiences have made her question her apparent pragmatism. She may be willing to do what she must to survive, but what does that say about her as a person?
Story: Port cities are often regarded as a place of beginnings and adventure, but also as a congregation of wealth or poverty. In Remi, that was dependent on which area of the port someone was from. For Victoria, it was a place of prosperity and the promise of more. She was the youngest of the Dunhelden merchant empire, but unlike the rest of the brood, Tori had little interest in crunching numbers with her siblings. She accepted it as something to do in order to mete her father’s approval, and was walked through the ins and outs of the trade with her brothers and sisters as she grew. Tori was still something of the black sheep of the family because of her deviant interests, but as children are wont to do, she still followed her siblings around with no shortage of adoration. Ultimately she learned how to calculate and haggle with the rest of the brood, but also how to carve out time for what made her happy after everything was tended to.
She discovered what truly sparked her interest during an adolescent test. As with her siblings, her father took her down to the port stalls to see how well she could apply what she had learned, and Tori was then tasked with selecting one item - preferably one with lasting market value - and haggling it down to a fraction of the original price. Loren Dunhelden expected her to pick jewelry or furs from how he lingered with her in the market, but it was something further down that snagged her and wouldn’t let go: A dark skinned man whose wares were beautifully bound books, and not just any books, but illuminated tomes that taught both the theory and form of magic. Her father tried to dissuade her, saying that it was too ambitious of an acquisition, but eventually yielded the point.
In the end, she wasn’t able to bring the man down too much, but her eagerness for the subject matter and exchange between adults - that being an amused glance and a long-suffering sigh - eventually led to a one-eighth victory. It wasn’t nearly the record that her oldest brother, Leon, had set, but for Tori, her victory was in the cloth wrapped package that soon nestled in her arms. She was fourteen at the time, and much to her parents chagrin, much of the next year was spent with her nose buried in arcane arts rather than more practical methods of acquiring wealth for the family name. It wasn’t until her fifteenth birthday that the time came to start discussing her marriage options, and while Tori knew that her parents would ultimately have say over what contract was sealed, she pushed for a candidate from Delfia. Even if the marriage itself turned out to be a chore, she would have access to some of the greatest magical minds in the neighboring country to learn from. It would be worth whatever trials sprang from her betrothal, at least in her mind.
Loren Dunhelden wasn’t a cruel man, though, and loved his children. It was only natural that he would want them to succeed, and for his youngest daughter, he eventually found two different mercantile families that he’d agree to bind their family to from the Etrurian capital of magic. There was even the benefit of having Tori’s oldest sister, Karina, situated Aquleia from her own marriage. It wouldn’t be a stretch for the siblings to check in on one another with regularity, to have something familiar in a strange country and with only short travels between them. They were to take a land route to meet and interview the families in person, and along the way, disperse some of Loren’s recent acquisitions. Not all families required a dowry - the prospect of combined familial wealth was often enough to forego one - but it never hurt to have additional funds on hand.
It turned out to be a misfortune that the family crest was so recognizable, though. The golden pegasus painted onto the side of their travel cart ended up attracting the attention of the wrong kind of person in Modlin. It hadn’t been Loren’s choice to stop in a city with such reputation, but when a horse throws a shoe, necessity comes before want. That they lingered enough for that brought brigands onto their heads days outside of the city. What gold Loren had on him wasn’t enough to satisfy their leader, knowing who the Dunhelden family head was - he was set free, at sword point, to collect a ransom fit for nobility if he was to get his dear daughter back.
Tori would’ve been lying if she had said her heart wasn’t in her throat as she watched her father ride away, but it wasn’t until the rest of their leader’s muscle dispersed to find other targets that she could risk acting out without risking her head or health - she may have been more valuable alive than dead, but the threats for misbehavior sat heavy in her mind. Which was why when she acted, it was with the sole intent of survival. Only one man was needed to transport a girl, but only one man was needed to meet his comeuppance. Complex spell matrixes weren’t something she had memorized off the top of her head, yet, but what she knew was enough. The stench of burned flesh would forever be entrenched in her memory, as would the man’s frantic spasms when she pushed magic charged electricity into his skull. There was no such thing as bad aim with full-bodied contact.
Tori ended up with blistered palms and a spooked horse that was soon no where to be found. What took more effort to grasp was the reality of what she’d just done. The twitching corpse that threatened to crush the air from her lungs hadn’t yet realized it was dead, even while other odors confirmed the fact. She managed to worm out from underneath it and collect what little supplies she could from the body - all the while trying to rationalize that it wasn’t looting, most of it had belonged to her in the first place - and began a long walk to the nearest town. Geography lessons had officially proven themselves useful.
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