(Disclaimer: Above picture is copyright Quest and Conjaku. Picture is used for reference purposes only, as Kei is too lazy to create an original picture.) Name: Ethelia Sreda Cervickova Age: 24 Gender: Female Nationality: Ylisse Allegiance: Ylisse (tentatively) Class: Pegasus Knight Level: 10 Weapon Levels: Lightweight Lances C (0/5) Weapons Kaninchenbau Lightweight Pilum, Ridersbane, Glass, Killer Kaninchenbau is an elegantly-crafted lance designed specifically for aerial fighting but also very suitable for ground combat, its perfect length allowing for complex maneuvers and graceful duels. Resembling a glaive more than a lance, both slashing and piercing maneuvers are possible with the pilum. It is just as effective against humans as it is against their mounts, and hungers after an opponent's blood, sending any enemy combatant deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole. Phantomschmerz Lightweight Javelin, Thrown, Iron, Enchanted Enchanted with arcane magic, Phantomschmerz is a highly accurate thrown polearm with good penetrating power and durability. Upon making contact with its intended target or the target's defenses, the javelin's magic simulates an explosion, as if detonating a phantom spear, creating a controlled explosion that not only devastates its opponent, but also launches pseudo-shrapnel through shields and armor. Appearance Height: 178 cm / 5'10" Weight: Not Telling Hair: Brownish-Gray, Waist-Length, Braided Eyes: Brownish-Gray, Slightly Sharp, Relaxed Skin Tone: Light Build: Slender A slightly taller-than-average young woman, Ethelia Sreda Cervickova possesses a lithe physique, wiry muscles in a slender frame that betrays an athletic build that manages an excellent compromise between strength and speed. A slightly angular face ends with a pointed chin, her features relatively pretty yet sharp when she needs them to be, set against a fairly light skin tone. Ethelia's hair is a very bright shade of brown, practically gray in color, the ends of her hairs reaching her waist while two braids dangle down at the sides, accompanying the rest of her free-flowing hair. Her eyes are of a similar color, looking constantly amused and inquisitive. With an attractive appearance, elegant poise, and approachable aura, Ethelia is entirely capable of appearing charming to those she wishes to interact with. Ethelia is most commonly seen in armorweave robes, relatively soft but durable fabrics comfortable enough to be classified as everyday wear but also tough enough to mitigate some damage from weapons, its color a dark purple, almost black in color, with red edges at its collar. Its hem ends beneath her abdomen, where the concerto of fabric continues downward with darker trousers of similar material, ultimately ending in knee-high boots. Above this Ethelia wears a loose blue jacket that could almost be classified as a small caplet, a combination of apparel that she eventually completes with a very light set of armor in combat, plates that generally provide the most protection for her chest, shoulders, elbows, and knees. Personality The very first impression of Ethelia Sreda Cervickova may be roughly in line of the ideal Pegasus Knight: Serious, competent, and contemplative. Indeed, Ethelia represents an excellent combination of concentration, thoughtfulness, and bearing often attributed to the elite women-of-arms associated with knighthood. Being a well-read bibliophile and an amateur academic, as well as the recipient of extensive training in skill-at-arms and tactics, she is considered an excellent staff officer, capable of leading fighting troops at the front or directing their movements from the rear, possessing enough daring to carry out sophisticated maneuvers yet also enough level-headedness to know when to pull back. Yet a longer, closer observation of Ethelia's personality out of the fray reveals a relatively cynical knight prone to severe pessimism, detached indifference, casual irreverence, and tentative loyalties. Much of what she has seen and experienced through her life has given her a very good idea of what the world has to offer, and she, too, carries a realistic assessment of what humans can do when the push comes to shove. Much of Ethelia's personality is based on the belief that people must learn to live with the choices they have made, and although events in her life may have been beyond her control, she still feels that key choices were ultimately hers to make, resulting in at least some degree of self-loathing. Considering herself more as a consummate, professional soldier rather than an idealistic, chivalric knight, Ethelia is capable of acts of ruthlessness, calculated courses of actions meant to secure the most important benefits despite its high costs; this is made easier by Ethelia's ability to temporarily disengage her inner moral compass, allowing her to listen to her head and not to her heart. Despite this, however, Ethelia is largely a well-meaning person who does not wish anyone ill, so long as they do not threaten her or those she cares about. She enjoys the company of friends and close ones, particularly those of her same gender, and her companions generally describe her as a cool, keel individual who enjoys teasing others a little. By no means is she an overly serious person; in fact, Ethelia's everyday persona displays an interesting paradox, in which her casual cheerfulness and polite bearing coexists with unmasked irreverence and pessimistic worldview, resulting in a pleasantly witty and elegantly wry demeanor. Despite her unenthusiastic interpretation of duty and patriotism, Ethelia has managed to develop a liking towards fighting upon a pegasus as a knight simply because of the thrill and because she's good at it. While not necessarily a sadist, she has learned to embrace and even enjoy the fighting, although anyone would remark that she likely enjoys the flying best, the ability to soar across the skies and brush her hands across the clouds, diving towards the ground at breakneck speeds before leveling out into a graceful glide. A natural in both riding a pegasus and fighting with a lance, Ethelia possesses innate talents that make her a deadly opponent on the ground but especially in the air, where she is capable of pulling off complex aerial maneuvers ending with a spearhead in an opponent's body. Her fighting style is a surprising mix of both pragmatism and chivalry; while Ethelia is not the least bit aversive towards killing if she has to and actively goes for lethal attacks by default, if the opportunity sufficiently presents itself, she would rather deal a non-lethal, incapacitating blow. Although she serves as a Pegasus Knight to the Halidom of Ylisse, Ethelia's loyalty and enthusiasm towards her native country is lukewarm at best, with her service to the halidom really more about economic prudence rather than patriotic fervor. Her losses and experience in the previous war has left her jaded, and she has neither forgotten nor entirely forgiven her country's responsibility in the religious conflict. Perhaps due to the nature of the war, Ethelia is not a particularly spiritual person and does not engage in any form of worship, an ironic fact considering she came from a family of priestesses. She bears no dislike for her Plegian neighbors, although she herself does not feel any guilt in particular over the war that ended fifteen years ago. Backstory Ethelia Sreda Cervickova was born third out of four children in the western reaches of the Halidom of Ylisse, daughter to the village priestess in the relatively quaint Delway. As the second daughter of the family, it was very likely that she would have grown to take up the duties of their local altar along with her two sisters. Being the daughter of a family that had tended to the altar for generations had its blessings; in a world where public education was not commonplace, religious institutions were centers of learning and record-keeping, and it was under her family's guidance that Ethelia became a relatively educated girl, learning to read and write at a young age. Gaining a love for books and a natural affinity for reading, Ethelia spent her early years learning as much as possible from the altar's library, reading on all kinds of academic subjects and adventurous legends, of the continent's history and the quests of ancient heroes, even though a war beyond her understanding started when she was only four years of age. The Halidom of Ylisse declared war against the Theocracy of Plegia over the latter's worship of the Fell God. As it was in Delway, the decision was highly unpopular with the common people, but the decision was enforced at the tip of the army's spears, as men and women alike were drafted to the frontlines against Plegia. Ethelia's father and older brother were drafted as healers for the war effort, and she never saw them again. At first, victory seemed assured, with Ylisse taking the initiative, achieving surprise, and conquering large swathes of Plegian territory. However, a conflict that was expected to be over in months, if not weeks, instead stretched out over the years as a ferocious Plegian defense and counterattack stalled the Ylissean advance. Eventually, the main line of resistance returned to the border with repeated skirmishes on all sides in an attempt to achieve breakthrough in a five-year-long stalemate. For Ethelia, however, the war was a relatively distant thing; although Delway was in the western half of Ylisee, it was still far enough from the actually battlefront. Not so far, however, that Ethelia did not witness the effects of the war across the years. At first, confident, well-supplied soldiers marched across Delway on their way to Plegia in the first months of the war. As the conflict slowly turned into a stalemate, however, less-trained conscripts instead made hasty passes through the town, reinforcements to join the conflict. Soon, the wounded Ylissean soldiers were being evacuated back, where the Cervickovas, who managed the altar and therefore were expected to be healers, had to tend to an increasing amount of wounded and dead that made it back from the front. It terrified Ethelia at first in the same way all four-year-olds were terrified at the sight of blood and gore and corpses, but as years of conflict passed, she, too, became accustomed to healing dying men, to dig fingers through sundered muscles and crushed organs in the attempt to save someone's life. But the war never actually reached Delway, and as both sides became exhausted by the conflict, it seemed as if it never would. But in the fifth and last year of the war, the Plegians made an unexpected final push, a startlingly fast and overwhelming offensive campaign that attempted to break the impasse draining both combatants. The Ylisseans, having grown complacent and believing that the rest of the war would consist only of garrison duty and minor skirmishes, were caught completely off-guard, and even as reinforcements were being scrambled from the Ylissean heartland, the western reaches fell before a lightning-fast offensive by Plegian soldiers. Delway was caught in the flames of war before any word even managed to reach the village about the enemy breakthrough, and in a single night, the town was in flames. Within hours, a nine-year-old Ethelia lost the rest of her family, her mother and two sisters, with Ethelia herself being only being spared by a stroke of luck, fleeing eastwards with flocks of refugees attempting to reach the Ylissean heartland for refuge. They finally managed to escape to Mondel Pass, a town perched upon a geographic chokepoint that invading Plegian forces would have to squeeze through if they were to continue their way northeast. The commander of the garrison stationed at Mondel Pass knew that if the Plegians could be held here, then everyone behind her would be saved from devastation, but if they could not hold the pass, then the Plegians would be able to spill into northeastern Ylisse and wreak havoc across the countryside, putting reinforcements at a disadvantage and possibly even extending the war for months. However, the garrison was only minimally manned, and reinforcements were still days away. The commander declared Mondel Pass the point that had to be defended at all costs, and forcibly conscripted all refugees attempting to pass through into the defense regardless of age, bolstering her forces with cannon fodder, promising the punishment of death for any who dared to desert the defense when their country was counting on them. Children such as Ethelia were forced to be runners, responsible for scouting, passing messages, retrieving supplies. The Battle of Mondel Pass went badly for both sides. The Ylissean refugees, caught between Ylissean soldiers demanding they fight and Plegian soldiers out for blood, paled before the might of trained Plegian soldiers, but there were so many refugees that the Plegians were overwhelmed by the enemy's sheer numbers. The entire battle started from the afternoon and lasted until the next morning, but when the dust finally settled, the Ylissean defenders remained, victorious, but only barely. Mondel Pass was littered with dead, almost all surviving Ylisseans had been wounded in one way or another, and there was a significant manpower shortage. With nothing else to do, Ethelia did what she did best, what her mother taught her to do as a healer of the faith, and began to search for survivors in an attempt to heal them, regardless of their nationality. But the commander of the garrison, knowing that they were severely undermanned, that their first priority needed to be the healing of their own forces, and that they did not have the manpower to provide security over the Plegian wounded who could still easily turn against the defenders, ordered all surviving Plegians in Mondel Pass to be killed as a precaution. Told that it was an order by a military commander whose word was absolute, Ethelia was forced to carry out their demands, thus drastically changing her personality for the rest of her life. Days later, Ylissean reinforcements finally arrived, putting an end to the Plegian counterattack. Ethelia would have simply been one of the thousands of unnoteworthy refugees displaced to eastern Ylisse, homeless and orphaned, except in an attempt to escape Mondel Pass before the garrison commander could force her to do something else, she tried to ride away on a pegasus whose rider had perished in the previous battle. She was intercepted and caught by the reinforcing Pegasus Knights that happened to be arriving at the pass, but the commander of the knights, knowing how fickle pegasi were about whom they allowed to ride them, suspected that Ethelia was a "natural" for being able to even take off and fly on a pegasus she had never seen before, and offered her a deal: She could continue to go east with all the other refugees and resort to begging on the streets, or she could serve for four years as a squire for the knights where she'd earn a place to sleep and food to eat before receiving formal Pegasus Knight training herself. With no surviving family, no idea where to go, no future to look forward to, and a great desire to leave Mondel Pass, Ethelia agreed to the offer. The girl from Delway spent the next four years serving various Pegasus Knights as the war ended months later. She traveled with the knights on their peacekeeping missions, cooked their meals, fetched their wine, washed their clothes, tended to their equipment and pegasi. She also acted as a scribe and personal assistant to several knights, as Ethelia learned that many of their number were actually illiterate, and reluctantly required a girl only having recently reached double-digits in age to read documents and missives for them. True to the deal, the Pegasus Knights eventually began training her in their ways as soon as four years passed and she turned thirteen, and the girl who would've likely grown up to be a Cleric instead took up a spear upon a pegasus, pledged into service of Ylisse's defense. Yet Ethelia herself saw it merely as a job, an occupation, a source of decent income, and less as a duty or responsibility, for she had never entirely forgiven her country and its leaders for leading them into a pointless war all those years ago. The next eleven years of Ethelia's service as a Pegasus Knight was viewed with both approval and wariness. Her track record was excellent, a soldier who approached any mission with efficiency and success foremost in mind, who was flexible about how she accomplished her goals and capable of operating in a large variety of environments, both in the air and on the ground, in battles and within intrigue. But concerns also existed, for some worried that she was far too much of a soldier, far too results-orientated and far too ruthless in her pursuit of success, and lacked the chivalry to become a true knight. Others noted that as she grew, her casual disdain for the powers that be also increased, never to the point of outright disloyalty, but still somewhat discomforting to those who felt the halidom could do no wrong. But while concerns mounted, Ethelia's service record remained excellent, for she was fulfilling her duties and protecting Ylisse from harm, and so her superiors felt absolutely nothing wrong with keeping a highly talented staff officer around, even if she lacked the undying loyalty common amongst those who have taken their knightly vows. As bandit attacks across the Ylissean border began to increase exponentially, Ethelia was amongst the first to suggest to the chain of command that there was a strong possibility that the "brigands" were in fact Plegian regulars attempting to provoke a new war between the two countries, which she eventually helped confirm after "interrogating" several captives. Despite this, she had herself rotated further away from the border, focusing instead on areas of administration and intelligence instead of out in the field where she might lead patrols in person. However, this luxury could no longer be afforded when the Exalt Emmeryn was abducted from Ylisse, forcing the country to mobilize most of the Pegasus Knights, including Ethelia, in a rescue that ultimately ended disastrously. With the Exalt missing, and all forces across the continent retreating back to their borders in what seemed to be another long impasse, Ethelia returned to Ylisse along the rest of the knights, only casually wondering what the next step in the waltz of war would be. Timeline Changing Neighborhoods Brigands, Bandits, and Outlaws, Oh My! Notes N/A Approved by Darth
