Post by makimonster on Feb 5, 2013 6:22:01 GMT -5
Name: Aaliyah
Player: Makimonster
Spoken Quote Color: "Justice not dealt swiftly is not justice at all."
Skimming the Surface
Age: 23
Race: Aven, Planeswalker
Gender: Female
Appearance: Standing at nearly 5'10" (1.78m) with long running/stomping limbs and an even longer wingspan a little over 1.5 times her height (8'10"; 2.7m), Aaliyah's size and features alone already make her a physically strong contender against most any human who dares to pick a fight with her. With speed and power in mind, Aaliyah keeps her clothing and armor lighter and more minimal than most denizens of Bant (and in fact incorporating some elements from Naya - her next favorite place in Alara) serving mainly to protect and reinforce her legs while allowing her to move and fly (not that aven really need clothes as much, anyway). Her belongings are also minimal - only a reasonably-sized leather bag filled with nothing but survival and job necessities: a dagger, waterskin, coin satchel, tightly rolled-up cloak, foodscraps to keep her satiated until her next stop and meal, flint, rope, and in some cases maps or wanted posters.
Delving Secrets
Home Plane: Bant - Alara
Mana Alignment: White (philosophically White-Red?)
Specialization: A martial artist who augments her style with war magic and flight, Aaliyah is swift, light on her feet, and capable of executing continuous series of small, quick, but altogether devastating kicks. Given enough room to fly up high during a fight, she is also capable of bone-crushing aerial drop-kicks - however, missing her target can cause equally devastating damage to herself if she gets too cocky, and power-attacks leave herself open to enemy response. Heavy on offense, speed, and evasiveness, but lacking in defense and endurance, it is critically important for the aven to win a fight quickly and efficiently - which is exactly what she does well.
To make a living across planes and make use of her abilities, Aaliyah takes on jobs and contracts as a bounty hunter and a soldier-for-hire, but does so less for the gold and more for her ideals of justice, as well as training.
Personality: Morally at odds with herself, Aaliyah often finds herself torn between swift, brash action and meditated decision-making; she believes wrongdoers should be brought immediately to justice, but also wishes to be merciful and ensure that the innocent are not wrongly accused - a sort of thing that, to her ire, requires time and investigation. All too many times across planes, the young aven has found that the law and bureaucracy have a tendency to slow the very service of justice that they try to uphold, and sometimes even create policies that demonstrate the exact opposite of it. To some, she's a hero; to others, she's a vigilante who herself needs to be brought to kneel before the law.
It can also be said that the aven-knight takes her self-imposed duty too seriously; still lofty-eyed and aloof like her elders before the rebirth of Alara, but without the restraint as far as meddling in the affairs of others, Aaliyah has more than once had to deal with messes that she made herself by prodding at things she should have left alone. On a lesser, more everyday scale, this combination of attitudes and lack of tact has earned her somewhat of a reputation for being nosy yet being ignorant when it comes to cultural references and implications. In short, she often butts into things she doesn't understand, and lets jokes, snide remarks, and hints to go the hell away fly over her head.
A war orphan - among a generation of many - as a result of the Conflux and the events that followed, she is particularly sympathetic and protective of children, families, and refugees. Otherwise, she has a tendency to be aloof and neutral in tone and attitude; Aaliyah prefers to carry as little baggage in her heart as she does in her satchel, keeping eyes focused on the big picture that is the vast infinite sky of the Eternities, and appreciate but not overly root herself to small details, even if they are pleasant and endearing. Still, being young and self-conflicted, and having seen the plights of many across the planes, such a task of emotional and sympathetic suppression proves to be a difficult one for her - there are simply some days when she breaks this, wanting to live as peacefully, freely, and unworriedly as she tries to make sure others do.
Backstory: Aaliyah faintly but fondly remembers the days before the Conflux, barely a fledgling when the halcyon days of a peaceful Bant ended and the chaotic rebirth of Alara began, and when those Aven old enough to fight descended from their secluded, lofty lives in the clouds to protect their home and fellow denizens from the chaos that threatened to encroach upon the former shard's peaceful bastions.
Even more, she remembers the days of helpless waiting and watching early in the war that broke out, when she - old enough to fly and want to fight but too young to go - and the other fledglings were left to watch over their younger nestling brothers, sisters, and friends dreading the return of night, which would bring with it the dead among their people carried back from Alara's seams - the first to fall to the new and foreign magic and tactics broken from the shard so long ago. Night would bring this, along with the news that theirs was a generation - the first in centuries, if not millenia - that would have to learn how to fly and fend for themselves, a humbled and disillusioned generation without the wisdom and insights of their once proud-standing elders.
It goes without saying that the day Aaliyah remembers the most is when her own parents came back home on one such night, turning her fears into fact and counting her among the oldest of this generation of war-orphaned Aven.
This generation would also be the first among their people to grow up preparing and prepared to fight against these outside forces of chaos, knowing more intimately than their predecessors the means by which to counter them - and use them to their advantage. They learned to strike faster and harder than ever before, armor themselves more lightly and humbly, and fight with or without weapons; with both the mercy and wisdom of their predecessors, and the efficient destructiveness of their enemies; and on the ground as well they did in the sky. Aaliyah, with her clan's hereditary disposition toward both the soaring wings of eagles and the long and heavy-powered stomping, kicking, and running feet of ground birds, as well as her later-found potent talent for war magic - augmenting her own physical abilities as well as those of her allies - naturally made her a top candidate for some of the finest post-Conflux knight orders in Bant.
Eager to finally take part in the sacred duty of protecting their homeland and people, Aaliyah joined up as soon as she could - but found that warfare and knightly duties were even less glorious than she had anticipated, knowing even from the loss she'd experienced before; not because of the horror of battle itself, but because the knights, even after the Conflux, still deeply rooted themselves in their ideals of honorable, ritualistic combat and ceremony. This strict and overzealous sentiment with ideals of the past was one she respectfully disagreed with - justice, if served, had to be served swiftly and efficiently if the people of Bant were not to fall to the same fate of those who fell before them.
With this in mind, she respectfully left the service of the knights, who (despite this) gave her their blessings to strike directly at the sources of chaos emanating from the reborn world (not that the lack of such blessings would have stopped her, anyway). In exploring the Alara that now existed beyond her home, however, Aaliyah found company and hospitality in some of the least likely places - and that, even in light of her own pain, that the denizens of these shards - these people she'd grown up knowing as outsiders - were just as fearful for their own lives as her people were, and many had never known the kind of peace that she had the privilege of being old enough to remember. Many of these people wanted an end to the war just as much as the people of her own shard did - thus, it became a point to her that she needed to find the true culprits perpetuating the war that its people did not want to fight.
Aaliyah returned to Bant to seek wisdom from the Rhox monasteries as she tried to decide on her new direction. In her time there, she furthered her martial prowess but tempered it and her youthful brashness with discipline, increasing her precision and efficiency ever more but allowing her the insight needed to become a proper servant of justice, and not just a xenophobic, self-righteous knight. In a moment of deep meditation combined with intense physical training and her new resolve, Aaliyah's spark ignited, flinging her even further away from home than she had ever been.
In the Blind Eternities, the young aven was fortunate enough to run into the rare probability of running into another, older Planeswalker on their own way, who guided her back home and on the way explained the nature of the spark and her ascendance into the infinity of the Multiverse, as well as the true nature of her home plane (and then tried to sell her new clothes, an offer which she kindly declined -cough-). Knowing immediately that this meant that she now had the power to discover and track down the catalyst and engineer of Alara's chaotic rebirth and its ongoing war, as well as find even greater wisdom on other planes to help create peace, Aaliyah thanked the older 'walker and returned home to prepare for the long journey she was about to embark on.
In the few years since then, Aaliyah has traveled across the planes, seeking to bring individual wrongdoers to justice and create peace for the worlds she comes across, opening her mind even more to people in need of protection, wherever they might be.
Player: Makimonster
Spoken Quote Color: "Justice not dealt swiftly is not justice at all."
Skimming the Surface
Age: 23
Race: Aven, Planeswalker
Gender: Female
Appearance: Standing at nearly 5'10" (1.78m) with long running/stomping limbs and an even longer wingspan a little over 1.5 times her height (8'10"; 2.7m), Aaliyah's size and features alone already make her a physically strong contender against most any human who dares to pick a fight with her. With speed and power in mind, Aaliyah keeps her clothing and armor lighter and more minimal than most denizens of Bant (and in fact incorporating some elements from Naya - her next favorite place in Alara) serving mainly to protect and reinforce her legs while allowing her to move and fly (not that aven really need clothes as much, anyway). Her belongings are also minimal - only a reasonably-sized leather bag filled with nothing but survival and job necessities: a dagger, waterskin, coin satchel, tightly rolled-up cloak, foodscraps to keep her satiated until her next stop and meal, flint, rope, and in some cases maps or wanted posters.
Delving Secrets
Home Plane: Bant - Alara
Mana Alignment: White (philosophically White-Red?)
Specialization: A martial artist who augments her style with war magic and flight, Aaliyah is swift, light on her feet, and capable of executing continuous series of small, quick, but altogether devastating kicks. Given enough room to fly up high during a fight, she is also capable of bone-crushing aerial drop-kicks - however, missing her target can cause equally devastating damage to herself if she gets too cocky, and power-attacks leave herself open to enemy response. Heavy on offense, speed, and evasiveness, but lacking in defense and endurance, it is critically important for the aven to win a fight quickly and efficiently - which is exactly what she does well.
To make a living across planes and make use of her abilities, Aaliyah takes on jobs and contracts as a bounty hunter and a soldier-for-hire, but does so less for the gold and more for her ideals of justice, as well as training.
Personality: Morally at odds with herself, Aaliyah often finds herself torn between swift, brash action and meditated decision-making; she believes wrongdoers should be brought immediately to justice, but also wishes to be merciful and ensure that the innocent are not wrongly accused - a sort of thing that, to her ire, requires time and investigation. All too many times across planes, the young aven has found that the law and bureaucracy have a tendency to slow the very service of justice that they try to uphold, and sometimes even create policies that demonstrate the exact opposite of it. To some, she's a hero; to others, she's a vigilante who herself needs to be brought to kneel before the law.
It can also be said that the aven-knight takes her self-imposed duty too seriously; still lofty-eyed and aloof like her elders before the rebirth of Alara, but without the restraint as far as meddling in the affairs of others, Aaliyah has more than once had to deal with messes that she made herself by prodding at things she should have left alone. On a lesser, more everyday scale, this combination of attitudes and lack of tact has earned her somewhat of a reputation for being nosy yet being ignorant when it comes to cultural references and implications. In short, she often butts into things she doesn't understand, and lets jokes, snide remarks, and hints to go the hell away fly over her head.
A war orphan - among a generation of many - as a result of the Conflux and the events that followed, she is particularly sympathetic and protective of children, families, and refugees. Otherwise, she has a tendency to be aloof and neutral in tone and attitude; Aaliyah prefers to carry as little baggage in her heart as she does in her satchel, keeping eyes focused on the big picture that is the vast infinite sky of the Eternities, and appreciate but not overly root herself to small details, even if they are pleasant and endearing. Still, being young and self-conflicted, and having seen the plights of many across the planes, such a task of emotional and sympathetic suppression proves to be a difficult one for her - there are simply some days when she breaks this, wanting to live as peacefully, freely, and unworriedly as she tries to make sure others do.
Backstory: Aaliyah faintly but fondly remembers the days before the Conflux, barely a fledgling when the halcyon days of a peaceful Bant ended and the chaotic rebirth of Alara began, and when those Aven old enough to fight descended from their secluded, lofty lives in the clouds to protect their home and fellow denizens from the chaos that threatened to encroach upon the former shard's peaceful bastions.
Even more, she remembers the days of helpless waiting and watching early in the war that broke out, when she - old enough to fly and want to fight but too young to go - and the other fledglings were left to watch over their younger nestling brothers, sisters, and friends dreading the return of night, which would bring with it the dead among their people carried back from Alara's seams - the first to fall to the new and foreign magic and tactics broken from the shard so long ago. Night would bring this, along with the news that theirs was a generation - the first in centuries, if not millenia - that would have to learn how to fly and fend for themselves, a humbled and disillusioned generation without the wisdom and insights of their once proud-standing elders.
It goes without saying that the day Aaliyah remembers the most is when her own parents came back home on one such night, turning her fears into fact and counting her among the oldest of this generation of war-orphaned Aven.
This generation would also be the first among their people to grow up preparing and prepared to fight against these outside forces of chaos, knowing more intimately than their predecessors the means by which to counter them - and use them to their advantage. They learned to strike faster and harder than ever before, armor themselves more lightly and humbly, and fight with or without weapons; with both the mercy and wisdom of their predecessors, and the efficient destructiveness of their enemies; and on the ground as well they did in the sky. Aaliyah, with her clan's hereditary disposition toward both the soaring wings of eagles and the long and heavy-powered stomping, kicking, and running feet of ground birds, as well as her later-found potent talent for war magic - augmenting her own physical abilities as well as those of her allies - naturally made her a top candidate for some of the finest post-Conflux knight orders in Bant.
Eager to finally take part in the sacred duty of protecting their homeland and people, Aaliyah joined up as soon as she could - but found that warfare and knightly duties were even less glorious than she had anticipated, knowing even from the loss she'd experienced before; not because of the horror of battle itself, but because the knights, even after the Conflux, still deeply rooted themselves in their ideals of honorable, ritualistic combat and ceremony. This strict and overzealous sentiment with ideals of the past was one she respectfully disagreed with - justice, if served, had to be served swiftly and efficiently if the people of Bant were not to fall to the same fate of those who fell before them.
With this in mind, she respectfully left the service of the knights, who (despite this) gave her their blessings to strike directly at the sources of chaos emanating from the reborn world (not that the lack of such blessings would have stopped her, anyway). In exploring the Alara that now existed beyond her home, however, Aaliyah found company and hospitality in some of the least likely places - and that, even in light of her own pain, that the denizens of these shards - these people she'd grown up knowing as outsiders - were just as fearful for their own lives as her people were, and many had never known the kind of peace that she had the privilege of being old enough to remember. Many of these people wanted an end to the war just as much as the people of her own shard did - thus, it became a point to her that she needed to find the true culprits perpetuating the war that its people did not want to fight.
Aaliyah returned to Bant to seek wisdom from the Rhox monasteries as she tried to decide on her new direction. In her time there, she furthered her martial prowess but tempered it and her youthful brashness with discipline, increasing her precision and efficiency ever more but allowing her the insight needed to become a proper servant of justice, and not just a xenophobic, self-righteous knight. In a moment of deep meditation combined with intense physical training and her new resolve, Aaliyah's spark ignited, flinging her even further away from home than she had ever been.
In the Blind Eternities, the young aven was fortunate enough to run into the rare probability of running into another, older Planeswalker on their own way, who guided her back home and on the way explained the nature of the spark and her ascendance into the infinity of the Multiverse, as well as the true nature of her home plane (and then tried to sell her new clothes, an offer which she kindly declined -cough-). Knowing immediately that this meant that she now had the power to discover and track down the catalyst and engineer of Alara's chaotic rebirth and its ongoing war, as well as find even greater wisdom on other planes to help create peace, Aaliyah thanked the older 'walker and returned home to prepare for the long journey she was about to embark on.
In the few years since then, Aaliyah has traveled across the planes, seeking to bring individual wrongdoers to justice and create peace for the worlds she comes across, opening her mind even more to people in need of protection, wherever they might be.