Brunhild

Name: Brunhild, Savior of the Villagers
Age: ???
Gender: Female
Nationality: Born Valmese, refugee in the Halidom of Ylisse
Allegiance: House Temple

Class: Troubadour
Level: 10
Weapon Levels: C 1/5
Weapons:
Wish
- A tall, white staff with obscure origins. The tip ends in a sort of rimmed cup with jagged "wings" that ornately curve to the base of the cup. Above the cup floats a steel-violet orb that resembles an atom because of two crossed orbital meridians. It casts a spell that seems to do nothing at first. A half a minute to a minute later, the target will suddenly be greatly healed without knowing what happened.
(Delay, Potency, Range)

Wormwood Staff
- A staff that resembles a wooden cane, riddled with pores shaped like small tunnels. It has the ability to send someone into a murderous rage, or remove that effect from them if they happen to be afflicted with it magically. She claims to use it for restorative purposes. . .
(Undo, Potency, Range)

Oppressive Armor
- A featureless steel bar with a silver ball at the end. Casts "Lead Armor" on a close target. When cast, the target's armor becomes three times heavier. Light armored foes such as Pegasus Knights will hardly be affected while heavily armored Knight/General units will suffer a weight that can stop them from moving altogether. Brunhild has to focus to make this a lasting burden, however.
(Selfspell, Potency, Constant)

Laevateinn
- A blood-red staff that looks like an ordinary heal staff but recolored. In fact, it is. Brunhild calls this staff "Laevateinn" and uses it to hit people, claiming it is a sword of repentant hellfire. It surprisingly hurts a lot to be hit with, while it never injures because it heals at the same time. An effective but roundabout way of getting someone to do what you want. It does have the practical use of lightly healing herself and another at once, however.
(Selfspell, Fighting Fit, Doublespell)

Appearance:
A Woman in a dusty colored cowl and mantelet. Her head is covered, though a pale face and violet-auburn hair can be made out from between the cloth. Brunhild is covered in a dress that reaches her thighs, cautiously outfitted with a small breastplate. She treads in thigh-high boots of an iron grey color, lightly plated in steel on the fores. She has an alternate color of her outfit from her previous life, and a newer set custom made for her service in the Temple Knights. The former sports bright shades of grey and lavender on the dress, with grey dominating the boots and breastplate, and finally dusty brown for the cowl. Her service clothes include a dusty green cowl/boots, with a blood-red gold trimmed set of plating for her breastplate and boots. Her dress remains light lavender and grey at all times, as she considers the near-white dress to be how she can be spotted as the healer in a crowd.

Brunhild's physique is oddly squared and rugged for a healer. She looks like she could be in her forties by her muscle tone and the rigidity of her brow. However, she doesn't have the hips of someone who has had a child. More curiously so is what is under her hood. Atop two long, sharp ears is a feathered circlet inlaid with a precious round stone. She refuses to talk about them and gets angry if the subject continues for long. In public, the cowl is never be removed.

Brunhild's brown horse is outfitted in Temple Knight colors. He can be distinguished by the lightness of his hide and milk-chocolate quality of his mane. He's branded with a strange and alien marking.

Personality:
Brunhild is a stoney woman with an aged sort of maturity and low patience. While she can be silly at times, she won't acknowledge any of her actions as being such. Her low tolerance for injustice often brings her to the battlefield. Though she will generally aid anyone, as her enthusiasm for healing everyone and keeping people alive often surpasses her concern for justice. When innocent people die, she is triggered with a rage the likes of which many fighters have never experienced. In her fury, the enemy army will soon experience more violence.

She has a penchant for dominance and will attempt to take action if something important to her isn't being allowed. While not fully intending to seriously hurt anyone, she will find brutally violent ways to get others to submit to her. One such example is the use of her staff to bludgeon someone while healing them repeatedly, much like an elder would bop someone over the head with their cane to discipline them. She discovered a cruel magic that makes objects much heavier, which she will use out of combat to sit on someone if they aren't being cooperative.

Brunhild, who has seen the likeness of Mad King Gangrel, finds him incredibly attractive. She will not admit this for obvious reasons. In fact, she finds her attraction to him repulsive and wishes him dead. This fact by itself could tilt her toward opposition to Plegia, though her harboring by House Temple accentuates it to a point. On that matter, she claims to know something about the Divine and Fell dragons that leads her to not support religions made in their name. As such, the questionable practices of Grima worshipers infuriates her. She believes that if an innocent's death can be prevented, it should be.

Brunhild doesn't like speaking about her family or heritage. For that matter, drawing attention to any of her features or attempting to guess at her heritage is likely to get her to stop talking to you. Likelier so, she wasn't talking to you to begin with. While notably silent, she is not at all shy or meek. Confusing her for a delicate and vulnerable maiden won't come with consequences, as she is confident in her abilities enough to give pests the cold shoulder and get away with it. She thinks "Cold Shoulder" might even make a good name for a staff.

Backstory:
Long ago, Dragons ruled the world. These days, such stories only make it into bedtime stories for children. Brunhild grew up in the mountains on a central border somewhere in the continent that is currently Valm. In those days, such stories were not myth. In fact, the truth of the matter made the daily news as dragon fought dragon for dominance. While Brunhild's mother was a daughter of Man, the one who fathered her was not quite. As such, the infant Brunhild was a Manakete. This was however, an idea that didn't sit very well with the common-folk. Her human mother, caring for her safety and acceptance, outfit her with a cowl to hide her slightly awkward features as a precaution. Brunhild quickly found that being known as, and transforming into a dragon made the villagers uneasy. Swiftly disgruntled with getting stoned by children, she formed a habit of not transforming. On that point, she eventually wore out her dragonstone while transforming at home. While not fond of being used for chores, she felt a connection with the stone and had it inlaid on a circlet which she rarely removes.

With help Brunhild would become indistinguishable from other villagers. She found that so long as her circumstances were concealed, she could walk the streets and help others without incurring any sort of hatred. As her mother would tell her, she was human too and was meant to treat others kindly as she should hope to be treated. Many adults would catch on to her secret and find her saintly treatment of them to be a sign that she should not be feared. So it was that nobody of sound mind would ever pry her about her secret. Even with the occasional bully, Brunhild much preferred the town life to a life of isolation in the mountains.

As expected, it took much less than a hundred years for Brunhild's mother to pass on. The village chapel, ever devoted in caring for Brunhild, taught her in the ways of restoration. She became something of an honorary sister there, being given her own staves and told to patrol the village to treat everything from fall injuries to scraped knees. The village couldn't afford any of the expensive staves, so she didn't quite learn much more about magic. Year after year it seemed to be the same shouting at kids to not play so rough. After all, it was better to prevent the injuries from happening altogether.

One day, something was much different than usual. The air itself seemed thick and bloated with ominous whispers. But it wasn't until after supper that anything seemed really off. That's when the fog rolled in. Brunhild felt a sickness wash over her, while everyone else seemed fine. They seemed happy, even. Too nauseated to stay inside, Brunhild went out for air. A way's out in the fog, that's when she saw it begin. She choked on the fog and almost threw up when she saw it. She grasped at the wall and stumbled when she saw it. Lights began to pour up on the horizon like a rising sun. Voices resounded off every house and echoed across the village. Howls and cackling, screams and whimpers, the hunters and the hunted. Bandits.

Brunhild sickly grasped at the dragonstone on her forehead. Nothing, not even a single spark threatened to come out of it. Brunhild knew at this moment she would be powerless to stop them. She ran back into the chapel and hid. She hyperventilated, threw up on the floor, and crawled into a cabinet. The chapel was made entirely of stone, so they wouldn't be able to burn it, right? She despaired in that cabinet as the screams and crackling of flames amplified. It was only a matter of time before they came to the chapel and took everything valuable, right? The monks could do nothing. They all huddled under a table, not so differently from Brunhild. But they were much younger than her, weren't they. The older monks rivaled her own age, sure. Why couldn't Brunhild do anything? She hoped and hoped for a way. The staves, those would have to do.

Brunhild took an armful of healing staves and trotted out of the chapel with the swiftness of a steed. The girl ran through the blazing streets, searching for someone to aid. It wasn't too long before she found the writhing bodies of bloodied victims. "By the grace of Mila, RISE!" she shouted. The townspeople reacted to the power of the staff. Wounds that wouldn't normally be treatable reversed and closed up by the will of the divines. With coughs and sputters the men and women rose to their feet. "You can't just let them trample you like that!" shouted the little girl to the refreshed countrymen. The townspeople were rallied into a justice-fueled rage and took up arms with anything they could find. Out into the streets they went, hungering for bandit blood.

"It. . . it worked! I can't believe it. The gods must let no sin pass in the midst of the faithful." Brunhild speculated. She no longer felt powerless, she felt like she was now in charge of the fate of the village. She made the rounds of the entire settlement, casting spell after spell. Some of the staves were even able to extinguish the flames. All but those who had been killed instantly were able to get back onto their feet. It didn't take long for the bandits to find out that she was undoing all of their hard work. The group of pillagers stopped her in her tracks. "We'll drop you where you stand, wench! Better start praying to Duma for strength!" One barked at her. The others laughed with him. "Ha! Ha! Let's see the gods save you when you're choking on your own blood! Hey, let's pull her arms off first for good measure!"

And pray, she did. She dropped on her knees and requested the help of both Mila and Duma. She prayed to every god in every teaching at once. She even prayed to the dragon Naga, who had been praised for her sealing of the Earth dragons in Archanea when she was very young. But she didn't notice that the bandits were no longer paying attention to her. There was something behind her that had caught their awe and attention. Twenty, then thirty, then fifty or more villagers and locals and even those who were just passing through had all crowded behind Brunhild. The bandits turned and began to flee. However, the valuables they had looted from the village had begun to weigh them all down and they couldn't run quite as fast as the contempt-riddled flock gaining behind them. Soon they were poked and ripped at with pitchforks and hoes, until they no longer looked like the scary charismatic warriors they were before.

However, Brunhild began to heal their wounds. At first, nobody had noticed. They whacked and hacked at the fiends, but they discontinued getting any more injured. Finally, the villagers noticed the small girl weeping and repairing the villains. "'Ey! She's got the right idea! Let's not kill 'em. We'll Lock 'em up and force them to eat bugs! Stench-weevils and blight-centipedes. The worst of the worst!" a farmer intently outburst. "Nay! We feed 'em their own fingers how 'bout?"

Regardless of what each villager wanted, the bandits were soon imprisoned and shackled to the walls. Brunhild was titled the village Savior, and soon was showered with gifts. Despite their protests, Brunhild had decided to help everyone rebuild the village. Brunhild felt the need to get stronger as well as help return the village to normal. Never would she hide and allow such a thing to happen again. The honest townsfolk were her family. She would make it her duty to protect any village in need for the rest of her days. Which would prove a challenge, as she had quite a lot of days to look forward to.

Decades, even centuries passed as she rode mule after pony after horse, aiding the common-folk and the downtrodden. Each mount, usually donated to her, would die out as she continued living. She became cold and jaded, but never gave up her passion. Wars came and went. Brunhild had seen things she only wanted to forget. But as hard as she tried she could never stop riding to aid of the grievously injured. After so many years, her muscles hardened and she took to wearing light armor at all times.

Over one thousand years pass. The continent smoked with the din of war once more. But this was unlike previous transgressions. The war ended very soon. In fact, it was the fastest war she had ever seen with her own eyes. The atrocities were countless and the entire continent was now ruled by a pompous psychopath, never sated of his huger for blood. Brunhild couldn't take it any more. She gathered up several villages worth of refugees, and shepherded them onto stealthy and quick blockade runner ships. This was war to Brunhild. It was something you must go out and fight yourself, in your own way. Soon they approached upon the coast of Plegia.

Something was horribly wrong, however. Though she had planned for the landing to be a bit bumpy, she could never expect the people to be so curiously fixated on them. Droves of Plegians surrounded and watched the outsiders. What could possibly be going on? They weren't doing something expected like forcing documentation or drawing their spears to weed out spies. They just stood there. . . and watched.

Soon enough, it became clear what was going on. Several authority figures pushed their way through the seemingly hypnotized crowd. A rather shaky looking man stepped out, and began to read a royal decree off a scroll. "W-welcome to our humble and gracious nation. If you would like to join our happy family, come see me personally at my castle. Signed, King Gangrel" as soon as he announced it he scurried away. Brunhild wasn't sure what kind of joke this was. All she knew was it sounded like a trap. However, many of the refugees were very excited to meet the king. A number of them strayed away from the group immediately. Not wanting to draw attention to the crowd of creepy onlookers, Brunhild silently ushered her flock along.

The band of refugees approached the border of Plegia. It was almost certain after some waiting. Those who strayed off to meet the king were not coming back, ever. A chill went down Brunhild's spine. That gorgeously handsome man she saw on the posters was not in fact someone to be trusting. They had to leave the country as soon as possible.

As soon as they crossed the border, they were ambushed from behind. Packs of Plegian shock troops carnivorously drizzled down on the refugees. Unable to help everyone at once, Brunhild panicked. They were in the Halidom now, however. As soon as the Plegians came, so too did the Ylisseans. An elite team of trusted warriors known as the Temple Knights clashed with the force. They beat down upon the fiends like a massive wave. The struggling Brunhild simply couldn't save everyone. She mended and mended as the two sides tore through each other. Refugees were cleft in twain as they tried to escape. Soon, the knights had won. The bloody landscape stood as a testament to what terror these brutes were capable of.

In recognition of Brunhild's efforts and abilities, Lord Jacob accepted her into their circle. She was given a new horse and set of armor so that she may help them. The cost of blood dissuaded Brunhild but she knew she could save lives working with a band with such pure goals. After all, they did selflessly rush out to aid her lowly refugees. What strange things would she encounter in their service? Only time would tell.

Notes:
Supposed to meet a certain Randall at some point, decided not to put that story here.

Approved by Darth