Post by Mri on Jan 14, 2010 16:49:41 GMT -5
Age: Thirty-four (34)
Gender: Female
Profession: SWC
Appearance:
Gender: Female
Profession: SWC
Appearance:
As her name suggests, she looks like an angel with her slender form and willowy arms. Her skin is fair and her hair a light blonde. Her light bluish-green eyes hold the rays of what seems to be a hope that can never be distinguished. Her nose is small and button-like and her smile shines beautifully. She stands at a little over five feet and weighs only 108 lbs.Personality:
Though her face is beautiful, her back and torso are heavily scarred. Rugged lines run across them from where she was mawed by a wolf when she was six years old.
A man's silver ring sits upon her right ring finger (given to her by an old lover) and is laden with a rounded piece of oynx. Beautifully carved within the stone are intricate carvings lined in silver.
Regardless of her harsh past, she comes across as polite, opptimistic, and angelic. She's smiling and cracking jokes most of the time and seeking to soothe a troubled soul.History:
Chews on her tongue when thinking things over.
Angel came into a family that seemed to be spawned by the devil himself, especially her father. Though she appears to have had the perfect life, the truth couldn't be farther from it.Additional Information:
Her father, Brewt Faulkner, always wanted a son to carry on his legend. And a nasty legend he held. He was known only for his cruelty to both his servants and family - beating his wife repeatedly, even more so when she gave birth to a daughter. He would've killed her then and there had his best man not taking a liking to her. Knowing what kind of meat he favored, Brewt sold his daughter at the age of five, though kept her within the confines of his castle where he grew to beat her along with her mother.
A year after her selling, she accidentally displeased a man her father deemed of the highest importance and for that she paid dearly. Two weeks went without a punishment that she feared coming and as the fifteenth day passed, she began to think he'd forgotten. But he hadn't. Two days later, she was thrown and locked into a pin with a savage wolf, barely escaping alive and only so because her father believed he could make more money off her.
The year she was seven, she'd be forced down an even harsher path as her only friend and protector [mother]vanished off the face of the earth. She never knew why and cried for months, accepting beatings and punishment with a solemn vow of silence.
For nine years she didn't speak a word, running off whenever possible to hide amongst the trees in their backyard. She cried only there so as not to chance more beatings and there she learned the language of nature - learning to read the sign of the animals and plants, learning to read the sun and moon and clouds above. But her haven couldn't be visited until her father passed out from drinking or she risked an even greater beating at not being there when he wanted her.
She ran away when she was sixteen and old enough to care for herself by society's standards. In those years between running away and having her father killed, she took to fancy a set of golden claws (which were later stolen from her) she'd found on a raid she'd conducted with a group of bandits that had taken her in like family. They were later slaughtered though and she set back out on her own, with the knowledge of martial arts (whose grace was replaced by the harsher flow of life) and all the other tricks they'd taught her, along with those she sought to learn on her own.
She used those techniques to make her way back home, but she didn't do the job herself, instead letting a friend do it for her. She'd found him when he was only a babe and molded him into a kind of bodyguard after watching how they lived so she could better 'communicate' with him. And he did his job well.
Satisfied that her father would no longer bother her physically, though she knew she'd always dream about him, she enlisted herself in the army and then into the SWC where she offered her talent of talking to nature, along with her quick and neat ability to kill through accupressure. Though she favors the knife, she also learned the tricks of nature's secrets (poisons, remedies, and the mixing of earthly elements).
Posts she's in after history leaves off:
Seas :: The Ocean :: Lost At Sea (Open to Everyone Forever) *year before*
Gallica :: The Front :: Fear and Death (SWC Only)
Araluen :: Araluen :: Yule Ball (Open)
Though she believes her mother to be dead, she's always searching just in case she's wrong.
When the claws were stolen, she set out to learn the trade of knives and became highly skilled at it, always keeping at least six(two of them katars; one saxe; two throwing; one misericorde) on her at all times. She makes them herself, using secrets she'd learned of mixing metals.
Acupressure is the art of using the body’s pressure points to either heal or cause intense pain. There are two types of ‘pressing’ techniques. One is a simple press which can be either lightly held for a minute or so (healing), or can be jabbed (painful). The second is a tight counter-clockwise rotation of the finger or other small object and helps release blockage of chi (“spirit/life essence” of the body). The practice can be dangerous and sometimes fatal – especially if you don’t know what you’re doing (so please don’t try anything that I have her doing that’s related to acupressure).
Dim mak [one of the defensive uses of acupressure] is mentioned in this video:
She's 'afraid' of abandoned buildings for some reason. The only thing she's 'told' me right now [told you I have a tendency to actually play the character *grin*] is that it centers around a supressed memory/memories.
How she got into the SWC:
“Whatever it takes.”
Angel remembered the words from her own past, whispered into her ear by her ex-lover before she entered the band of bandits and learned that it was their motto. Justin had been idolized for his quick wit and originality, but late one night when the moon was full and he was relaxed he confessed that the motto they lived by wasn’t their own. He’d stolen it from somewhere, but though she asked, he said he didn’t remember. Content with his answer, she let it drop.
Until they were slaughtered. Feeling an emptiness in her chest she headed out to put an end to her revenge and later, sought to fill that hole. She enlisted into the army, but when that wasn’t enough, she listened for the motto that had been her one true family, thinking to offer them her services. Days of searching turned into weeks, weeks into months, months into a little over two years before she finally had a name to fit with the rumors. She followed it up to the top and having long lost the thrill and want of army life, she decided to meet this Dougal.
She agonized over how she would tell him, having learned of his suspicion of women started by a Rhianwen, whom she knew had been a spy for Morgaroth. That, and the fact that the SWC was supposed to be hidden too deep to find. Two days she dragged it out before deciding on a straight-out confrontation.
She thought to just slip inside his rented out room when he wasn’t there and wait for his return, but figured that if his guards heard the commotion they’d rush in to help and stack the odds higher against her. She did scope the place out though, checking for possible exits just in case it didn’t go as plain though she doubted she would have used them. She was stubborn in the area of getting what she wanted and would rather face death than defeat.
So she waited an hour after his return before hitting the guards. She didn’t bother to knock, deciding instead to just pick her way inside. Within seconds she flung the door open and dived inside, coming up in a roll directly in front of one of the guards. Since he was taken by surprise with the slamming of the door, she managed to dart and rise behind him, grabbing his arm in the process. She pulled it behind him, applying sharp pressure to his wrist to keep it there with the least amount of effort for her as she faced the other. He’d pulled his arm back, a knife in his grip, but hesitated at the blockage of his friend.
Taking the opening, she placed a leg between his and shoved him with her shoulder, not bothering to wait as he crashed into his ally before knocking them both out with the stool. An inner door opened as she did and she twirled around onto the balls of her feet to face the captain.
She cursed herself as she dropped quickly to the floor at the swing of steel. She rolled to the left and back onto her feet, eyes darting to the two crumbled guards as she did so, checking to make sure they really were knocked out. Neither moved.
Her attention was back on the man standing before her as she rolled back onto her feet.
“Whatever it takes.”
She watched as his eyes narrowed at her words, but he wasn’t shocked into hesitation, not that she actually thought he would’ve been. In fact, he moved quite fast after that and she muttered another curse before pulling out the long, thick knife she’d molded herself. Though she’d been trained in the sword and had excelled at it, her love laid within the shorter blades of the knives, a love she’d mothered during her time with the bandits.
She gritted her teeth at the force of his strike as she just managed to block it. Her arm felt numb, but she ignored it, having been taught by her father to use limbs that she could no longer feel. It was a weird sensation for those not used to it, but she never thanked her father for the advantage.
But she thanked the heavens after taking another few of his blows and seeing him realize that the closed quarters were too small for truly effective strokes. No doubt, he’d be able to lope off a limb of hers eventually, but that time would be long in coming and he wanted to finish it quickly. Probably because of business that still needed to be attended to she thought, along with the thinking of his surprise when she put up enough of a fight to qualify for a 'man'.
She sheathed her own knife as she jumped back to give herself time to put feeling back into her arm. She applied release to the points between the muscles of her biceps and nearly sighed in relief as the numbing abided though nothing on the outside showed it.
The time consumed cost her though and she took a grazing punch in the jaw. Her eyes watered, but she shook it off as she reeled backwards. Only her tripping over a piece of furniture saved her from being decked again. She worked her jaw as she rolled backwards and back onto her feet, darting to the left before rising on the balls of her feet. Satisfied that it wasn’t broken, she moved in.
She repeated the mantra to herself as she gave blows and took them in equal measure. She learned quickly to not let him land a full-on blow, rather to try her hardest to get them to glance off her flesh. They would leave bruises, but not broken bones. Though she could fight well enough with either, that applied only to those that weren’t masters of the art of combat like Dougal was. She doubted that if he managed to break one of her bones, she’d be able to win this blasted fight, let alone get accepted into the SWC.
“Whatever it takes,” she murmured to herself before risking a chancy opening.
She moved; dodging a punch by turning sideways and bringing her back leg up as she did so. It cracked somewhere on his body, but she didn’t bother to check where as she was too busy spinning back around to face him before he recovered in that quick way he had of doing. She slammed her fist into his stomach, striking up to better knock the breath out of him before elbowing her other arm into his face and shoving him backward with the palm that issued the first blow.
She hissed in sharply as managed to kick out as he fell, catching her shin with his boot. Though most of the force had been lost in the fall, hitting bone always hurt like the dickens. She tested her weight on it and nearly sighed as it held in the fraction of a second that she’d wasted.
He was already hurrying back onto his feet when she she moved to slam her foot into his chin. She doubted she had enough power to do anything but knock him out, but that’s what she wanted. Unfortunately it didn’t happen. He moved faster than she anticipated and had turned his head so she only grazed the side of his face. And as her foot kept rising he tackled her to the ground, quickly rolling on top.
Luckily, her hands were still free and she smashed her palm into his nose. She heard it crack and watched the blood, but it did little to deter him. Still, it was enough for her to slip out from under him and regain her footing. She was heaving from the force of the battle and aching in too many places to distinguish individually. The pinkie of her left hand especially hurt and she didn’t doubt that it had been broken in the fall.
If she had any chance of winning, she needed to end it quickly. But how?
Whatever it takes
Her physical answer came a minute later. They were fighting hand-to-hand again and she now nursed a bleeding lip and swollen cheek – both from the same grazing punch. His nose was the only thing she could see wrong with him and he didn’t act as if he felt it in the slightest.
With each block of his punches, her forearms numbed further with the force. With each aimed kick of his legs, she either jumped back or blocked with her forearms or shins – each throbbing at each contact before disappearing into the complete numbness of her body.
It was after one of these pains that she managed to gain another immediately after. She ignored both flashes as she closed in. His left arm came up for another blow, but she darted underneath it and aimed two quick punches to pressure points in his back. He toppled, his strength unable to help him this time.
She took a step toward him when one of the men behind her groaned. Without further hesitation, she escaped out the window, hanging from her fingers before dropping the remaining ten feet below. She rolled as she fell and though a rock jammed into her side she was too hurt to notice the fresh pain. After meeting his glare from the window, she took off through the winding alleys shadowed by the night, vowing she'd return until she'd gained acceptance.
She looked up at the sky before and was surprised to see that nary twenty minutes had passed since she’d entered the inn. Aching, she decided to hide until daybreak before making her way back to the battleschool's grounds.
A day later she received a visit from one of Dougal’s men. Thinking the worse and feeling it, she readied herself for a fight that never came. Instead she was given the message of acceptance.