Karen Moraius
As a word to all those reading this, this is the original version equivalent of my other character, Karin Kokiri. Since I never got a clear answer to my question about whether I should just post this in the fanfiction version's thread, I just thought I'd create a new one.
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Name: Karen Moraius
Race: Half human. Neither she nor anyone else knows what the other half is.
Gender: Female
Age: “Almost nineteen.”
Vital statistics: 5'8", 142 lbs
Sexuality: Pansexual
Hair: Karen’s hair is a light shade of grey kept cut to only just above her neck in order to better hide to avoid being recognized.
Skin: Much paler than that of the average human. Veins of silver blood are clearly visible up her arms and legs where magic flows through her mixed with the normally bodily fluids.
Eyes: Karen has no pupils. In fact, her eyes don’t seem to have much of anything. To the outside world, they appear to be nothing but unseeing walls of white.
Build: Athletic and fairly flat-chested. Constant evasion of guards and mercenaries has left her with little to do other than build up so that she might stand a better chance at survival. While her upper body strength is certainly not up to par with her lower, she is more than capable of holding her own.
Family: Karen had only one known blood relative, her father Geoffrey, now deceased. Before his death, he served as a personal bodyguard to Lord Hilleon, a noble in the upper region of the country. According to the public and all eyewitnesses, he was murdered in cold blood by his own daughter. According to Karen, he was killed by a doppelganger shortly before Lord Hilleon was killed, someone who was imitating her appearance. Her mother was never mentioned and no one is even sure where Karen was conceived.
Birthplace: Only father knew her exact birthplace and he didn’t live long to pass on the knowledge. She spent most of her life living in the guards’ barracks of Lord Hilleon’s estate.
Appearance: In a crowd, Karen would stand out about as much as a turtle with a bright red shell. With hair that seems to glow in the light and eyes that reflect it just as much, she often has a difficult time blending in. With this in mind, she only ventures into public with a thick and heavy cloak that effectively masks the odd parts of her. Even with this, recognition seems to come more often than not. But there is one trait that cannot be hidden so easily: her wings; ingrown, insect-like wings. No matter how much she tries to tie them down, they always manage to form a lump on her back. Even if she wanted to use them, constant pressure put on them and a total lack of use would probably prevent her from doing more than hovering for a split second.
Strengths/Skills: Nothing worth noting.
Weaknesses: Despite carrying a sword, Karen is not trained with it. All of the moves she uses and techniques she attacks with are purely self-taught and improvisational. She has no weapon experience and has relied purely on running up to this point in time.
History: No one has any idea who Karen’s mother is. Since the beginning, her father withheld the knowledge from her. In fact, it was one of many things that were kept from her. She was kept in the dark to outside conflicts and much of her own county’s history in an effort to protect her innocence and to allow her childhood to go on without such burdens being forced upon her young mind.
Her childhood went on almost without a hitch. As was policy for all guards who raised children on their own, she stayed in the guard barracks with the two other children who were living there at the time. They were her reluctant playmates. While common courtesy said they were to relate to her, parents were another story. To the others, she was “that other girl”, the one who was accepted into the group only because her father was the highest ranking officer on duty at the time.
As she grew older, she became more and more inwardly reclusive. Comments from her grew fewer and farther between while her personality went from rambunctious to docile, hyperactive to shy. Less and less she tried to force her way into a higher opinion from the two boys. She finally began to realize that they really didn’t like her or even want her around. This did little for her enthusiasm. Several days later, her father found her playing with his spare sword in a manner that shocked the hell out of him. Over and over again, she would point the blade at herself and then pull it away.
Despite this, he let her make the choice of deciding whether her life was worthwhile. Out of sight, he waited and watched. When his daughter finally chose life, he let out a sigh of relief.
The rest of her childhood seemed to fly by without a hitch. She spent little time with the others anymore, preferring her isolation and her delving into Lord Hilleon’s collection of books to try and find out anything that could pertain to her mother. While searching, she found some rather... unpleasant aspects of humankind that had been forever engraved into history. The Human-Elvin War. A dispute fought over purely physical differences… and instigated by humans. As she grew older, she looked deeper into the history of the conflict, though there wasn’t much to see.
Several months from her nineteenth birthday, someone had decided that her place was no longer in the castle of Lord Hilleon; nor was Lord Hilleon’s for that matter.
She exited his library, prepared to go have dinner with her father in the Great Hall. When she arrived… things were less than what she expected. Everything felt off the moment she stepped in. There was no smell of roasted big or pouring of mead; there was only silence. Then she saw the bodies. There were half a dozen. All the people expected to attend the dinner… and her father. She saw the woman standing over him, face completely blank, hardly acknowledging the deaths. Throwing a dark short-sword aside, she looked at Karen once before vanishing.
Witnesses said that Karen was the killer. There was no one who could side with her. No one else had seen the doppelganger but her. She had no way to prove her innocence. All she could do was run. Before the entire castle had been alerted, she had gathered some of the food together and ran. There was no time to pack, no time to prepare, only time to escape.
To this point, she is still running, still surviving on the edge. Her ultimate goal is to somehow barter passage to Merkua, to the Elvin territory in the hopes that humans would have no jurisdiction there. She doesn’t know if that goal could even be considered plausible.
Personality: Since the incident, Karen has become increasingly paranoid. She doesn’t trust humans. In her eyes, they have proved their stubbornness as a species in their unwillingness to allow her to explain herself. She is shy, reclusive and antisocial. Even if she does make it to Merkua, part of her wonders if there would be any way to undo the trauma she has already endured. She has, however, become prone to occasional bursts of openness, as if she has two different ideas about how she wants to act around people. The other part only appears occasionally and usually in only a small, whispered plead for understanding, but there is no doubt that it exists.
09-15-2009, 10:15 PM
