Antonia Lasair

[[ Another one of of Olivia's characters~]]

Character Name: Antonia Lasair
Age: 32
Sex: Female
Race: Half-Elf

Class: Mage
Specializations: Arcane Warrior/Battlemage
Favored skills: Flaming Weapon, Fireball

Hobbies: Reading, mostly, when she’s not tending to her sword and armor. Tales of Andraste, or the history of Ferelden, or even the books sacred to the Chantry, even if she doesn’t hold with them as much as she did in her youth. Sometimes she’ll even pick up a pencil and try her hand at a doodle on an old scrap of parchment, though she’s never been very good at it – when asked, she’ll smile fondly and say that an old friend of hers taught her how, and he was always frustrated that she could never draw anything beautiful enough.

Background: In a small village along the southern coast of Ferelden, the local Chantry is the most splendid building for miles. The town is by no means modest – street lamps and cozy, two-story thatched-roofed houses line the cobbled streets, leading to any number of shops or fountains or public gardens – but an extra care was spent on its Chantry, so that it stands out among even the enviable homes and well-stocked stores. The sisters there are particularly devout, believing in earnest in Andraste’s message, and some of the most authoritative texts concerning her life and miracles have been written there.

Living in such a town, it was no wonder that Antonia would grow fascinated with the stories of that legendary woman. She would often borrow texts from the Chantry’s massive library, reading them in her room until her candle burned down to its last life just in time to meet the morning sun. In her dreams, she listened with a loving ear to the Bride of the Maker as she preached her promises of the Maker’s forgiveness, fought at her side as she subdued all of His enemies, and even carried her Ashes to their sacred hiding place, as the final devotion of a beloved follower. Her father, a shopkeeper of little importance, kept his sword from his service in the war with Orlais, and she would sneak it out of its sheath when he was busy to play at being a Templar, a knight dedicated to remain in Andraste’s service until the end of her days.

But her dreams of being a Templar were dashed when the first sparks of fire flashed from her hands at the age of ten. How could she be one of them when it seemed that she’d been born to be their bitter opposite? Like so many her age, she dreaded the day when she would be discovered, ripped from her home to be kept away in the Circle for ever. Antonia hid her powers, did all she could to secret them away from her father’s notice. It worked, for a time, but by the time she was eleven, she knew that her flares of magic were becoming too difficult to contain. Sooner or later, she would hurt someone, and it would be blood on her hands. After all, was it not Andraste herself who had said that magic should exist to serve man, and never to harm him? It would only be an insult to her devotion to ignore one of the Chantry’s cardinal rules, and so, shakily-mustered bravery emboldening her quaking heart, she confessed what she was to her father, and though he no more wished to send her off than she wished to be sent off, he was a man of the Chantry as well, and so the Templars came for her, and with one last hug goodbye, she turned away and never saw him again.

Antonia refused to be beaten down by her newfound circumstances, however. Stripped of the familiarity and safety of home, she was nevertheless surrounded by the books she so loved, many of them being texts entirely dedicated to Andraste alone. When she had difficulty with the words (she was not, for all that she spent so much of her time reading, an exceptionally skilled reader), she would simply look at the pictures, admiring them, and she would piece them all together to form a picture of Andraste in her head. Perhaps her most trying loss, after the loss of her father, was her inability to practice with her father’s sword. It had always been her dream to be a swordswoman, but now she found herself to be an entirely different creature altogether. She struggled with her magic, found it difficult to complete even the simplest of spells – magic, quite simply, was not imbedded in her mind as deeply as it was, apparently, in her body. Again, she turned to reading as an outlet for her frustration, and more and more found herself drawn to stories of Andraste’s death. Immolated by sacred fire – a painful and cruel way to die, fire had nevertheless become one of her symbols: fire and the sword of mercy that saved her. So, it became apparent to Antonia that if she had once pursued the sword, she would now pursue the flames instead.

After focusing herself in such a way, her magic grew exponentially. Her teachers were so impressed with her growth that they offered her leniency in realizing that fire spells were the only spells she seemed capable of casting – in the other schools of magic, she made only marginal progress. Soon enough, she managed to balance her lack of variety with sheer skill and power in her one favored area, to the point that she was allowed to enter into her Harrowing at the age of seventeen.

If the seven years she had trained in the Circle had been lonely but peaceful, content, they were no longer. The moment she stepped into the living Fade, the mage prison was lost in her favor. Looking back, it might have been a demon that had come to her, or maybe just a spirit of neutral benevolence, but Antonia will always believe that it was a remnant of Andraste’s soul that came to her then. With sad, beautiful eyes, the very image of the Andraste she saw in her head, the Bride of the Maker explained to Antonia all that was wrong with the way the Chantry had fallen in the many thousands of years since her death. Mages were not meant to be kept away like this, were not meant to live in shackles; the elves were not meant to be scattered, moving constantly for the sake of their lives; her life was not meant to be used as a tool that justified violence and hatred. She had saved the crumbling, god-ravaged land that had been her home – nothing more. If the Chantry had twisted that act to suit their needs, then it was not of her doing. After saying its piece, the vision faded, never once asking to borrow Antonia’s body or offering her power to right any wrongs, real or imagined.

She woke, and the smiling face of the First Enchanter told her that she had passed her test, which the grim faces of the Templars around her grudgingly confirmed, but she felt no comfort in it. She was not angry, per say, but she knew, deep in her heart, that she no longer belonged here. It took time, and she gathered herself to steel her conviction, to prepare herself for the hunted life that would follow, but a year later, she escaped from the Circle.

At first, she had no idea where to go. It had been seven years since she’d seen the world outside of Lake Calenhad, and the world was different. She knew, at least, that she could not go back to her father – as much as she missed him, that would be the first place the Templars would look. So, the first thing she did was cut her long, blond hair off, trade her robes in for leathers and traveling clothes, and concentrated on sealing her magic deep inside of her. She had controlled her flames well enough to comfortably know that they would never flare against her will, and she was so poorly versed in the other magics that it hardly mattered if they did, and she took up the sword instead, as she had once dreamed. Antonia the mage became Antonia the traveling sword, one of many that walked the roads of Ferelden. She trained, with all of the vigor she had once devoted to learning her fire magic, and soon she was the swordswoman she had always dreamed of being. The few times she stumbled upon Templars who actually recognized her for what she was (rare, considering how completely she had changed herself from the time of her escape), it didn’t matter that they used their skills to dampen her magic – she fought them off just as easily sword to sword.

She had an aim, too, besides simply honing her skills with the blade. Andraste, whether it had actually been her or not, had freed her from the Circle, and more than that, she was everything to Antonia – it then only stood to reason that she would go on to exist for her, with every fiber of her being. She would follow in her footsteps, from those places claiming to be her her birthplace to the forests where she gathered her first Ferelden devout, to the fateful Tevinter city of her demise. In her dreams, she would visit the Fade and stand along the craggy cliffs, staring off into the distance where the omni-present Black City loomed, the once Golden paradise the resting place of Andraste’s shining soul, and she would reach her heart out to it in longing. All the while, she gathered all the knowledge that she could about the woman, her life, her death, and even sought the location of her immortal ashes.

Sometimes she would meet people here or there, travel with them, her dear friends and companions, and then she would move on, holding them as closely in her heart as she did Andraste herself as she continued to pursue the goal which seemed for ever just out of reach. Then the Blight came to Ferelden, and she fought with a ferocity she hadn’t known she’d had, for her own safety and for the safety of others. If she happened upon a caravan of refugees overwhelmed by darkspawn, she would lend them her blade in their defense, and other times she wold go out of her way to offer her services to towns that were just barely managing to keep the monsters at bay.

And then the Hero came, shining with a light so close to Andraste’s own that the stories Antonia heard of her made her weep. She saved them all, a little dwarf who had risen from nothing to save a world that probably didn’t deserve it, and then, the world returned to a shaking and tired equilibrium.

Perhaps the most wonderful thing to come from the Blight, if anything wonderful can come from so much death and carnage, was that the Hero had unearthed the elusive Ashes of Andraste. She had received the news in Denerim from a zealous brother, and it had sent her shaking from head to toe, her mind so disconnected from her body that she felt liable to faint. With a reverence built of a lifetime of devotion, she visited that holy place, almost too frightened, at last, to approach the Altar.

She had a vision, then, much like the one that had spurred her on from the Circle so many, many years ago. This time, though, Andraste was smiling, those sad eyes vanished in the shine of that brilliant light. She said nothing, only watched as the spirit smiled and faded away light sunlight, and then and there, Antonia could feel her magic flare within her. Flames burst like waters from a dam in all directions, so ill-used in the last dozen years that they felt like an old friend returning home. She knew then that she would never hide who she was again. Andraste had gifted her with a courage that she hadn’t known she was lacking.

After that, what could be left for her? It seemed that the end-goal of her lifelong journey had been reached; Andraste would never not be a part of her life, but the acceptance that had come with seeing her at the Ashes, like the approval of a beloved person, had eased her restless soul. So, she turned her sights to the other great woman of their world, more easily attained and served in this living world, and set off to find the great Hero, hoping that, with luck, she would be able to offer her her blade and flame as she could never offer it to Andraste.

Personality: Duty-bound and filled with a sense of devotion so strong that it has altered the course of her entire life, Antonia is a good-natured woman with a firm moral compass. She believes in doing what is right no matter the cost, even if what is right is not necessarily what is smart, or, in some cases, legal, and she always believes in taking responsibility for ones actions (her escape from the Circle was her one defiance). She is confident in her abilities without being proud, acutely aware of the constant need for improvement, and she’ll often blush or sputter in the face of compliments. Despite her intense personal devotion, she never much saw the point in attempting to convert or preach to others, feeling, instead, that her beliefs are her own, and that others are entitled to their own beliefs, whether they match hers or not.

It would be easy to call Antonia boring or stuffy, especially if one was an exceptionally energetic individual, but she doesn’t tend to see it that way. She’s just as willing to have a drink with friends in a tavern as anybody – she’s just not interested in having five or six drinks (unless there are special circumstances); she’ll gladly listen to a good story or joke, but her response is much more likely to be an honest smile or amused huff than it is to be a loud or raucous laugh. Most of her time is spent looking over the small collection of Andrastian texts that she carries with her, or tending to her sword or armor or training, but she can be easily pulled away from such things if someone needed an ear to listen or a piece of solid advice (or a shoulder to cry on).


Weapons/Armor: What is a swordswoman without her trusty sword, an extension of her very arm forged in sharp, unforgiving steel? Made of starmetal salvaged from a meteor hurtled to earth, her greatsword’s blade shines a soft, luminscent blue, runed with protective enchantments that encourage flame to lick upon its edge when swung in battle. It has no name itself, but Antonia loves it all the same as the constant companion of her many travels. The blade is almost as long as she is tall, and the guard and hilt make up the rest of the height. Using her magic, however, she lifts the weight of it with no more difficulty than she would lift a longsword.

Besides her greatsword, Antonia carries little else in the way of weaponry. Like most travelers she keeps a small knife on her, should she require it, but otherwise keeps her trappings light and easy to bear. Unlike most mages, she carries no staff with her – staves are both highly conspicuous (not ideal for one who has spent so long avoiding the notice of Templars) and ill-suited to her fighting style. She manages to channel her magic well enough with her sword, and enough simple spells can be cast by hand alone that a staff would be extraneous.

Her armor is sparse but well-crafted for durability. Not overly intricate or decorated, her breastplate, vambraces, and greaves are scarred but obviously cared for greatly. The rest of the ensemble is completed with black leathers, which allow for some measure of protection and a greater ability for movement, and a travelers cape. When asked why so sparsely armored, considering her charge-in fighting style, she’ll blush and mention that its based off of an illustration she saw once, of Andraste leading her army to victory against the Tevinters. Such delicacy doesn’t quite suit her, but for the sake of imitating that holy woman, she keeps with it.

Appearance: The only suggestion of Antonia’s elven mother’s heritage is in the lithe, firm line of her muscles, even after years of hard training, and her barely shorter than average height (standing somewhere around 5’6”). Her ears are every so slightly pointed at the tips, but such a detail would go unnoticed by all but the most observant of lookers, and all other signs point to her being completely human. In fact, she often thinks of herself as wholly human – her mother passed away when she was young, and she was raised by her human father in an utterly human way, so elven influences have been entirely absent from her life.

Her skin is naturally pale made tan by constant exposure to the sun, made more obvious when comparing the skin of her face and hands to skin less frequently touched by sunlight. Her hair, however, has been made lighter by a life spent constantly traveling under the sun – already blonde hair has been made even blonder, nearly white. Kept long in childhood, Antonia chopped it off upon her escape from the Circle, and since then has let it grow out again, until the point where it now hangs down to around her lower back (another obvious imitation of Andraste’s numerous depictions). Bangs are cut to end just above her blue-grey eyes, feminine features set in an almost boyish round face.

I like this, especially the part of the VVhantry twisting itself and the Mages not meant to live in Shackles. Really gives clear insight to what I'm trying to do with a character. If Antonia wants she can meet Elenri sometime. Meet a actual Elf mage from the time of Real elf mages. I'll let her burn down a bad chantry, Always fun. But good character and well thought out.

Very concise. Accepted and pm me to discuss set up.