Welcome to the Ashen Ark

[Snowrose]

Here you will find nothing but the best assortment of mercenary fighters I have gathered in my travels. We are one band, a ragtag family of sorts, but we share a commonality: we wear our trials as badges of honor to show that we have been through the ring of fire and did not stepped out unscathed. From our wounds we have grown strong. Here you will not meet any two alike, for we are all the Ashen creatures of great power and might.

I would welcome you to introduce yourself as a member of my guild, proud and honest.
The Ashen Dragon,
Snowrose.

Note: Use this topic for basic character development. Introduce yourself by name, and we can work on backstories from there.

[Snowrose]

Here is my story, as we venture forward together you will learn more of my tale as our stories weave and intertwine.

I was a gypsy child, one of the many in a great family that traveled far and wide. Over the years I took up my place in the caravan like all the other parentless children did. You see, we had no parents, but had all of the adults as our family, no brothers and sisters, yet we were all siblings of a kind. I showed a certain prowess with spoken tongues at an early age, and was picked by one of our wise women-- she was likely over a hundred years old, or so we all thought. I was groomed into the role of a future leader, along with a few of my siblings. Now, a leader in our band meant something very different than what I later learned was common understanding of a leader. In our case, the leader was a powerful conman in truth. Capable in oration, the perfect charmer to distract as deft hands picked pockets. They navigated the land, kept ledgers, insured food was rationed and properly prepared, hunted, and spoke all the languages of man. I started out by picking up the languages from each town we passed, so sharp was my ear that, had my clothes not given me away, I would have passed as a native in each town.

As I grew my skills of coercion, charm, inspiring the masses, penmanship, money counting and oration improved. But that was not all that was needed, I learned to hunt with my bow, clean and cook meat, find vegetation that was not poisonous, and learn some basic healing techniques. I cooked with my three knives, and developed my "show talent" of knife juggling and throwing, as well as dance and song. some of the ways we earned our coin were legal. We weren't just a band of thieves. Now, I wasn't the best in the group, but I caught on fast and knew that over time I could hone any skill-- so long as I stayed determined.

In one instance my charm betrayed me, however. We were in a towns local tavern, and unbeknownst to me, this town had been proving it had a difficult bout of luck with corrupt city guards. In the tavern I put on my best charming face just as two rather raucous, grim and dimwitted guardsmen entered. They saw me and decided they were going to have there way with me-- later I learned this was nothing knew in the town, but the townsfolk had been so sick of their tiresome abuses of power they had hired mercenaries to "resolve" these issues... No matter the means.
I... Got knocked out. Yes, as embarrassing as that may be, I awoke in an unknown chamber on a rather comfortable bed. I snuck as quietly as I could (completely aware of the bells on my ankles-- a gypsies stealth is blending into the crowd, not silence), and peered through a crack in the door down the hall. There a rather fearsome woman spoke to a dark clad man, I listened for what seemed like hours, dumbfounded that they had not seemed to hear me, when the woman called out "child get in here, tell me what you've heard"... Shocked I stepped in with disbelief plastered in my face-- and I recounted it, word for word. At first she looked angry, and the man looked almost aghast. Then she started to smile.... I'm not sure which was more frightening, the anger or the smile.
From that day I earned my keep with those who had saved my life. I learned to fight-- clumsily, I must admit, and I learned what actual stealth meant. I rose quickly, and on the day I was pronounced a member of the elite Silver Dragons, I was awarded with a beautiful new set of dragon daggers to replace my knives I had so stubbornly refused to give up. The where balanced perfectly, and though they hasn't been the prettiest, they had kept me alive in many occasions. The new knives were forged with the exact balance of the old, I was truly astonished at their quality-- including the detail of the serpentine dragons heads on the pommel of each knife.
From that day, I worked as the intelligence agent and book keeper for the silver dragons. I was sent out on contracts as an archer and intel gatherer, though on most occasions I kept up with my work on base-- I actually enjoyed the paper work and the time I could spend lightening the load for the leader Momma J. Coldfire, the man who had saved me, and I developed a romance, but it was not meant to be, on one mission I had been separated from the group (as I often would be) doing reconnaissance when an explosion had set off. I'm certain they all thought I was dead, but somehow I had survived the blow. To my good fortune, an old companion from my childhood I'm the gypsy caravan (a mercenaries daughter of age with me who had traveled with her father-- whom we had hired as a sword on numerous occasions) had been in the area and had found me. She lifted me carefully and nursed me to health once more. I owed her my life, and vowed I would repay her.

I learned that her father had been slain in combat, a sad tale as I had known him well in my childhood, and she had been traveling as a freelance sell sword-- no allegiance or contract to any guilds. I decided it was my duty to remain a mercenary, as you are always a silver dragon once you've been sworn in, but I could not return to them. And so I took on the name of the Ashen Dragon, and with the aid of Nikolina later to don the title of the Ashen wolf, we began our slow journey to build the forces of the Ashen Ark.
We have braved the fires, been burned and tarnished, and wear our past as a trophy to remind us of how it has made us strong.

Now, in my tale, I've not mentioned something important-- a small hint as to why I survived the blast. In the silver dragons, each member had been assigned a new name as they entered the guild-- save momma J, Coldfire and myself. The elite team comprised of individuals with certain... Gifts. Some call it magic, others miracles. But one fact is certain, Momma J and Coldfire were well and truly dragons... And man does not name a dragon.
My particular brand of gift was a manifestation of my ability to charm. I am the Ashen Dragon, as you know, but I am not so fierce as I am charming. I held in my possession a book, in which what ever I had written, the reader would be compelled to do. Lets call it a trick of a faedragon. Coercion is my skill.

--The Ashen Dragon

[Crystal]

Hello :)my name is Crystal the Warrior Poetess.

I was born as Crystal McKenna, an unremarkable girl who lived in a bookstore and loved to read. Then one day as a child I met a gypsy woman who gave me a magic necklace with a clear crystal pendant shaped like a candle flame. Later that same afternoon, my two best friends and I discovered a secret cave behind a waterfall where we created a portal to a fantasy world that we invented. Thus I became the goddess Crystal Flame.

The more I wore that necklace and traveled to my fantasy world, Farisis, the more I began to change into the magical version of myself. Every time I used magic, my brown hair would lighten a little to red, and flecks of gold would appear in my brown eyes. The change was so subtle that no one noticed it from one day to the next, but eventually, over the course of several years, my hair had turned bright red and my eyes were pure gold.

But the price of all this fire magic was that I cast a shadow in Farisis: Ice Crystal. She was my opposite in every way, as cold and dark as I was bright and warm. Her skin was as pale as snow, and her hair and eyes were blue. She wore a copy of that magic necklace too, only on her the crystal pendant had the form of a snowflake. She was beautiful, but also moody and volatile, with more power as a goddess (or anti-goddess?) than she knew how to use wisely. When we first met she hated me so fiercely that I feared she would destroy me. I had to find a way to reconcile these two sides of me, Ice Crystal and Crystal Flame, in order to survive and keep Farisis safe.

So I went to the Institute InVerse, using a different name so the teachers would not know I was their goddess, and studied to become a warrior poetess. It was only here, studying magic, poetry and swordfighting for the first time in an academic setting, that I realized how little control I had over the powers I had been using all these years. I had always known that my emotions affected my magic—things tended to burst into flame when I was angry, for example—but it never occurred to me that I could learn to control the magical aspect of this; my solution had been to try and keep my temper unless I wanted the extra power to cast a spell. With great effort, after many lessons at the Institute InVerse and battles with Ice Crystal, I learned how to restore my inner balance.

When I became Crystal the Warrior Poetess, I combined the magical and physical aspects of Ice Crystal and Crystal Flame into one person. My hair is purple (from the combination of red and blue) and I have green eyes (from blue and gold). That magic crystal necklace also transformed once again, this time into the shape of a heart. The ice and fire magics mostly cancel each other out, and most of the spells I use are from what I learned at the Institute InVerse. The balance between the ice and fire within me is still fragile, and if at any moment I lose that balance again I could become Crystal Flame or Ice Crystal. In order to avoid the danger of either side of me taking over at the expense of the other, I must practice poetry and meditation daily—if I don’t, well, the transformation might be obvious from my appearance and personality.

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