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PLAYER

Name: MJ
Age: 35
Contact: unbeliever
Other Characters: Bastien, Kostos Averesch (side), Redvers Keen (side)
Interests: Spelunking and Druffy.

CHARACTER

Name: Xiomara Asaaranda Novoa
Canon/OC: OC
Journal: biggame
Race: Elf
Nationality: Rivaini
Occupation: Lord of Fortune
Division: Scouting
Mage or Not: Not
Age: Late 20s

History

Xiomara grew up in a small town called Iverranfar, built into a canyon on the lush western edge of the Rivaini mountains, south of Seere and east of Kont-arr. Its bridge is part of a shortcut route to Rivain's southern cities, so it sees a steady trickle of travelers willing to go through the mountains to save some time. It's heavily rooted in ancient Rivaini traditions—pantheism, Seers, etc.—and pressure to convert comes from the Qun far more strongly than the Chant. Elves are not equals, but there's no alienage, exactly. Just a half-voluntary cluster of elven families on one less-desirable patch of land.

Xio's family is two moms, one deceased step-brother, and two cousins adopted as siblings. One of her mothers (Ramona) is an elf-blooded hunter who grew up in Iverranfar; the other (Asaara) deserted the Qun while pregnant with Xio to avoid giving her up. Now she makes brandy from fruit and berries that grow in the Rivaini mountains. They get by trading skins and spirits to merchants passing through and eating off of a garden and some goats and chickens. Xio assisted with all of this from the time she could toddle. When she was old enough, she took to hunting in particular.

For a few years of Xio's youth, Iverranfar was terrorized by a dragon. It burned her family's house half down and killed (among other people) her older brother and the parents of two toddler cousins who Xio's moms took in afterwards. The town used pooled resources to hire a Lord of Fortune to help them deal with it. Xio helped from a distance, picking off dragonlings with Ramona. The Lord of Fortune let her keep some scales and told her to look him up later.

Once she was old enough to set out on her own without being dragged home by the collar, Xio did indeed look him up. He was much less enthusiastic about a real teenaged elf who needed real training and a real cut of his income than he had been about his dashing exit quip, but he kept his word, in a sighing way, and initiated her into the guild.

After his semi-timely death, Xio eventually found herself in a squad of four: Fivera, Evelyn, and their beloved human, Fabrizio, who did the talking and dealing with everyone who wouldn't have worked with three elves. They were excellent! Fame and glory! She raised a bear cub! But lately: problems.

Personality

Xio's mother claims she dove head first out of the womb and landed on her feet. Or sometimes the story is that that she landed on her head, if she's being difficult. She's been a daredevil her whole life, with each occasion she should have been maimed or killed but was not only adding to her sense of invincibility. Someday her luck will run out, but in the meantime she'll be cliff diving and swinging across canyons and swimming into murky underwater caves and, if she finds something that does scare her, doing it anyway to prove it wrong.

She's possessed with more cheeky, feet-on-the-table swagger than elves can typically get away with. Sometimes she doesn't get away with it, either, and she's not oblivious to her station. Given sufficient motivation—a job, obvious immediate danger—she can even convincingly play at being meek and beaten-down. But she's earned her confidence through a decade of successful adventuring, and her upbringing imbued her with enough personal dignity to make her core fairly impervious to abasement. Attempts to put her in her place will make her mad or sad, maybe even for prolonged periods of time, but no one's succeeded in making her believe it.

Xio has an energetic presence—often cheerful, sometimes furious, occasionally despairing (usually about how bored she is). She's capable of being still and quiet, but even that tends to have an intensity to it: fiercely somber when sympathizing with a friend's problems, tautly silent when waiting for prey to come closer. Her feelings are usually obvious, and if she keeps secrets, she'll do it by announcing something is none of your business, not by lying or wiggling around it. She's clever enough but particular about what's interesting enough to warrant her attention. She cannot keep the elven gods straight. She will yawn and groan through the histories of the artifacts she's stealing. She'll occasionally ask someone to read out loud to her, but the odds are good she's just trying to fall asleep. But mention the Executors or the Scaled Ones, for instance, and she'll become instantly capable of a degree of focus and specificity that previously seemed unlikely.

Her real passion is for the physicality and hands-on problem solving of hunting and surviving in Thedas' wilds, finding her way in or through or around things, tracking and outsmarting wyverns and dragons and dinner. She loves the work. She'd have to, to keep doing it while keeping barely any of the riches for herself. There's some of the Qun in her dedication to it; she thinks it's what she was made for, her place and purpose, what she is in addition to what she does, etc., and to be anything else would be unnatural.

Opinions & Affiliations

RELIGION: A pantheist who believes in the Natural Order (with some Qun influence in her philosophy about it) and that god is the universe itself. Other faiths are part of the universe and therefore also part of her god. Checkmate. She's more familiar with the Qun than the Chant; her mother has some nostalgia for parts of the Qun that she's passed down along with her distaste for the reasons she left it. Her other mother is several generations removed from worship of the elven gods but did tell her some very inaccurate bedtime stories.

NATIONS: All seemed very far away and possibly made up, when she was a child. She's very well-traveled now but still considers Rivain one thing, culturally, and the rest of Thedas (except maybe Tevinter) to be a single place with slight variations. Orlais and Ferelden are both cold and Andrastian, so ??? why fight.

HUMANS: Some of her best friends.

DWARVES: Some of her best acquaintances.

ELVES: Bothered by how bad a lot of elves have it, but considers herself Rivaini as much as an elf and therefore somewhat apart from it all. She's had minimal contact with the Dalish; Iverranfar is a place where it's entirely plausible to believe they're fictional boogeymen, and until she met one, she did.

MAGES & TEMPLARS: Grew up far away from the Chantry or Circles, in the Rivaini tradition of respecting and intermingling with their mages. She's not afraid of mages until they give her a reason to be, and then it's still a coin flip.

Strengths & Weaknesses

ROGUE: In Dragon Age she would be classified as a rogue, with an emphasis on archery but a couple talent points in dual weapons, with the ranger specialization. She has one well-trained wild animal companion, she is good at surviving outside, and she knows how to set traps and use the environment in a fight.

MONSTER HUNTER: Tracking, identifying, and trapping or killing rare and dangerous beasts is her specialty. It's been less of her Lord of Fortune work by volume compared to treasure recovery, but she's gotten good enough that people with scary and/or valuable animal problems will sometimes come looking for her and her pals specifically for help.

TREASURE HUNTER: She knows her way around ruins. Her knowledge is mainly practical; she only remembers history when it's cool, and identifying the markings on this or the enchantment on that is a job for someone else.

OUTDOORSY: Navigating, camping, tracking, spelunking and cave diving, rock climbing, gardening, foraging, skinning/dressing hunted animals, etc.

MISC: Contacts and former clients throughout Thedas, most often wealthy collectors with weird and/or arcane interests. Speaks Rivaini and Trade, understands and can haltingly speak some Qunlat, and knows exactly enough Antivan to maybe clue in if Antivans are scheming in their native tongue to screw her over.

WEAKNESSES

OUTDOOR CAT: All her instincts for finding things and stalking prey in patient silence seem to evaporate once she's in an enclosed space. All the halls look the same! Picking locks is the worst! Why must populated areas have populations! It's not bad enough to make her a useless hinderance in a heist, but enough that she's more error-prone when thinking on her feet.

CLOSE COMBAT: She can do some dashing swashbuckling, but it's like half for the aesthetic and as a emergency back-up plan if someone gets too close for arrows. Both heavy hitters and sneaky backstabbers are very difficult for her to deal with if they get close enough to strike. And mages, obviously.

RECKLESS: Volunteers for work she is not sure she can do, just to find out. In an emergency, given a choice between searching for a door or dramatically diving through a glass window, her instincts scream window. Only needs like half a drink to start doing stupid things for the vine. Will not hesitate to smash historically interesting but financially worthless things in pursuit of a goal.

MISC: Gets so seasick on open water. Can only read and write in a halting and unpracticed way (except for numbers, she's gotten good at those) that will make her hand off any literacy-requiring task to someone else if possible.

Inventory

• An assortment of colorful clothes and jewelry (mostly trophies from past finds, which she will wear all at the same time).
  
• A bow and arrows, an ornate rapier and matching dagger (looted), a utility knife, and a bag of traps and related supplies.
  
• Bedroll, rope, pot for cookfires, and other basic survival gear.
  
• A 6-year-old Lesser Rivaini Forest Bear. Lesser Rivaini Forest Bears look like black bear-sized brown bears. Compared to Southern bears, they’re relatively shy and docile. They eat a lot of bugs and lizards. His official role, as a Bear of Fortune, is to play scent hound (did you know). Xio would never deliberately involve him in a fight, because he is her baby, but he'll claw and bite if threatened. His name is Caballero.

Motivation

Recently the squad took a contract to find a powerful artifact for the Venatori. Upon finding it, they decided they weren't evil enough to hand it over after all. But their attempts to avoid doing so resulted in the Venatori tracking them down and abducting Fabrizio. They're coming to Riftwatch to make amends and to maybe get some help getting their human back.

SAMPLES

I. Practice.

II. I have—

[ I have echoes twice in the background. Other people's crystals. ]

That is not what I sound like. That isn't—oh, put it away. That's awful. Is that what I sound like?

[ All of this also echoes. ]

Go away. Or I'll go away.

[ She is going away, leaving her companions and their crystals behind. ]

I have an announcement, Riftwatch. I've just arrived, and my bear is in your garden. The little one with the three trees. It's only until I have somewhere else for him to stay, but for now: beware of bear. He should be nice as long as you do not surprise him. And if you carry something in your pockets to toss him if he needs a distraction, that is not a bad idea. He likes lizards. He might also like snack-sized dogs. I would not take them there for their business right now, to be safe.

That's all! Now someone tell me if this worked.

practice round.