Fish Girl
10-14-13, 11:34 AM
Name: Nadia Reefkeeper
Age: 19
Race: Mermaid
Hair Color: Seafoam Green
Eye Color: Turquoise
Height: 5'4”
Weight: 110lb
Class: Water Mage
Personality: Nadia doesn't like humans. They pollute the ocean, they dump waste in the rivers, chop down the forests of the Soud, and are ugly and loud to boot. She's naturally misanthropic and comes off as loud and abrasive to some strangers. She has very little concern for rules or regulations, or even laws in some cases. For these reasons, the mermaid sometimes has trouble making friends on land. That said, she remains kind at heart. Her misanthropy stems from pessimism rather than cruelty, and she has a deep concern for right and wrong. Once another person has won her trust (even a human) she's incredibly loyal.
Appearance: First of all, let's clear up some common stereotypes. Mermaids do not have tails. While Nadia may swim so fast that you'd think she has a tail, she walks on two legs just like any human. She also has a head, a neck, two arms and all the other expected parts. From a distance she looks like a slender, slightly fae young woman.
That said, some features mark the sea-girl as other than human. Her skin, while beige, has a slight greenish tint to it. Gills pulse on the sides of her neck. Most of the time her gills are concealed by fluffy, back-length green hair that's pulled to one side with a starfish clip. Her fingers and toes are slightly webbed. Her eyes are dark turquoise with a ring of gold around the pupil. Her smile reveals large canines. Having hatched from an egg, she has no belly button. Her skin is tougher than a human's, has a scaly feel too it and shines in direct sunlight.
As for clothing—Nadia picked up the long, flowing robes popular to a Raiarian port village and wears those above-ground. Her robes are a pale pink and make a complex wrap around her shoulder and torso and are cinched at the waist with a cloth belt. Her dress then expands into two poofy pantaloons, which stop at the ankle and are followed by practical leather sandals. She wears large earrings, bangles, bracelets and anklets, all of which were crafted from yellow and white sea-shells.
Skills:
Master Swimmer: No one can swim as fast as Nadia. She may be clumsy on land, but in the water she moves like an angel. She can breathe on water as well as she can on land.
Journeyman Tailor / Apprentice Jeweler: In her home village, Nadia was actually quite the craftswoman. Given the right tools and equipments, she can make jewelry with skill equal to an average apprentice or clothing with skill equal to an average journeyman. She can make basic repairs to cloth or leather armor.
Apprentice Healer: Nadia was a skilled healer of other mer-people. However, physiology between the races differs more than a little. Did you know that humans don't even have a glub-popper or a splidney? Neptune only knows what's going on inside the body of a High Elf. On top of that, the herbs, berries and roots humans and elves use to heal their wounded differ more than a little from the corals and eel oils used by Nadia's people. To make a long story short, despite being a skilled healer underwater, Nadia's skills can only be ranked as average while on land. This skill applies to healing done by natural means (the knowledge of anatomy, bandaging and illnesses used by a medic to nurse a wounded or sick person back to health) and is completely separate from magical or supernatural healing.
Archer: Nadia can wield a bow with a manageable level of skill, maybe equivalent to your average town guard or a low-level recruit in the army.
Close-Close-Combat Fighter: Nadia knows how to grapple and wrestle in hand-to-hand combat. She also has a certain slippery quality that makes her hard to hold on to. On top of martial skill, Nadia is pretty adept with a dagger and has no qualms about using it. However, her strength and dexterity are the same as a normal human.
Prestidigitation: Using water magic, Nadia can do parlor tricks like manipulating a ball of water around the room or changing the state of a small quantity (less than a gallon) of water between solid, gas and liquid. She can also change similar quantities of water from salt water to fresh water (or vice versa). She cannot use this ability on moving bodies of water like rain or rivers--that would be too complex. This skill has no combat applications.
Abilities:
Racial Abilities
Tough Skin: Nadia's skin is 1.5 times as tough as a human's, and she therefore takes somewhat less damage from weapons like a sword or bow. Her skin will still break, but wounds won't be as deep and should heal faster. Magic will affect her the same, as will crushing attacks like a hammer or fist. Tough skin only applies to minor wounds.
Water Magic Abilities
As an undine, Nadia has a special affinity for the element of water and can tell it to do her bidding. The scope of her water magic is defined below.
Arrow of Ice: In combat, she can create ice arrows out of thin air and shoot them with her bow. These are only a bit more dangerous than normal arrows, but the main advantage is that she doesn't need a quiver and won't run out of ammo as long as moisture remains in the air. She can summon about four ice arrows before becoming dehydrated. That being as it is, she cannot use this ability at all in a desert or other arid place. Arrows are equivalent to steel strength.
Frostbite: By laying her hands on a person, Nadine can instantly give them frostbite. Frostbite only affects surface tissues and not deep-level ones, and cannot be considered a serious injury. However, it causes immediate swelling, itching and serious pain, and can be more than a little distracting in the middle of a fight. If a single area is frostbitten multiple times, the area may develop chillblains (blisters). She can only activate this ability three times before becoming dehydrated. It takes two seconds of contact for Frostbite to take effect.
Nadia's water magic is dependent on the moisture in her own body. If she becomes dehydrated, she can no longer cast spells. Her own hydration acts like a mana pool in this way—as she loses water over the course of a fight through sweat and spellcasting, her strength drops in a proportionate amount. For this reason, she drinks much more water on an average day than a normal person.
Equipment:
Sharktooth Dagger: Made from the fang of a leviathan shark, this dagger is as hard as iron. The blade is one foot long and carved with ornate mer-people runes.
Coral Shortbow: Made from petrified coral and treated with anenome oil, this bow is as flexible and durable as oak.
History: Nadia was born in a coral reef off the coast of Raiarea. Her parents were craftsmen, and she picked up some of their respective trades helping out as a child. From her father she learned the basics of sewing and making clothes, and from her mother she learned the intricate art of making jewelry from shells and stones.
At twelve years of age, her magical abilities began to manifest. The Village Elders assigned her to an apprenticeship with the town Healer. In patriarchal mer-person society, it's considered standard for women with magical abilities to become healers and men to become warrior mages. Nadia, however, found her skills more suited to fighting. She trained her ice magic in secret, sparred with boys her age and hunted sharks and krait for practice. While her activities did not engage the active scorn of the Elders, she did start to argue with her parents and felt the general disapproval of the town adults.
Nadia's first conflict with humans came when her sister was snatched up by accident in a fishing vessel's net. Nadia split the net open with her dagger and caused a fat ton of tuna to escape. The humans were furious and jumped in the water after her, but Nadia and her sister escaped. For the Village Elders, this was the final straw. While they liked the humans no better than Nadia, they disapproved of her tactics, which betrayed centuries-old treaties between the port villages and the reef people. At age seventeen, Nadia left the oppressive atmosphere of her village in search of adventure. Since then, she's traveled from town to town, putting on magic shows for copper and looking for older witches and wizards to mentor her arcane skills.
Age: 19
Race: Mermaid
Hair Color: Seafoam Green
Eye Color: Turquoise
Height: 5'4”
Weight: 110lb
Class: Water Mage
Personality: Nadia doesn't like humans. They pollute the ocean, they dump waste in the rivers, chop down the forests of the Soud, and are ugly and loud to boot. She's naturally misanthropic and comes off as loud and abrasive to some strangers. She has very little concern for rules or regulations, or even laws in some cases. For these reasons, the mermaid sometimes has trouble making friends on land. That said, she remains kind at heart. Her misanthropy stems from pessimism rather than cruelty, and she has a deep concern for right and wrong. Once another person has won her trust (even a human) she's incredibly loyal.
Appearance: First of all, let's clear up some common stereotypes. Mermaids do not have tails. While Nadia may swim so fast that you'd think she has a tail, she walks on two legs just like any human. She also has a head, a neck, two arms and all the other expected parts. From a distance she looks like a slender, slightly fae young woman.
That said, some features mark the sea-girl as other than human. Her skin, while beige, has a slight greenish tint to it. Gills pulse on the sides of her neck. Most of the time her gills are concealed by fluffy, back-length green hair that's pulled to one side with a starfish clip. Her fingers and toes are slightly webbed. Her eyes are dark turquoise with a ring of gold around the pupil. Her smile reveals large canines. Having hatched from an egg, she has no belly button. Her skin is tougher than a human's, has a scaly feel too it and shines in direct sunlight.
As for clothing—Nadia picked up the long, flowing robes popular to a Raiarian port village and wears those above-ground. Her robes are a pale pink and make a complex wrap around her shoulder and torso and are cinched at the waist with a cloth belt. Her dress then expands into two poofy pantaloons, which stop at the ankle and are followed by practical leather sandals. She wears large earrings, bangles, bracelets and anklets, all of which were crafted from yellow and white sea-shells.
Skills:
Master Swimmer: No one can swim as fast as Nadia. She may be clumsy on land, but in the water she moves like an angel. She can breathe on water as well as she can on land.
Journeyman Tailor / Apprentice Jeweler: In her home village, Nadia was actually quite the craftswoman. Given the right tools and equipments, she can make jewelry with skill equal to an average apprentice or clothing with skill equal to an average journeyman. She can make basic repairs to cloth or leather armor.
Apprentice Healer: Nadia was a skilled healer of other mer-people. However, physiology between the races differs more than a little. Did you know that humans don't even have a glub-popper or a splidney? Neptune only knows what's going on inside the body of a High Elf. On top of that, the herbs, berries and roots humans and elves use to heal their wounded differ more than a little from the corals and eel oils used by Nadia's people. To make a long story short, despite being a skilled healer underwater, Nadia's skills can only be ranked as average while on land. This skill applies to healing done by natural means (the knowledge of anatomy, bandaging and illnesses used by a medic to nurse a wounded or sick person back to health) and is completely separate from magical or supernatural healing.
Archer: Nadia can wield a bow with a manageable level of skill, maybe equivalent to your average town guard or a low-level recruit in the army.
Close-Close-Combat Fighter: Nadia knows how to grapple and wrestle in hand-to-hand combat. She also has a certain slippery quality that makes her hard to hold on to. On top of martial skill, Nadia is pretty adept with a dagger and has no qualms about using it. However, her strength and dexterity are the same as a normal human.
Prestidigitation: Using water magic, Nadia can do parlor tricks like manipulating a ball of water around the room or changing the state of a small quantity (less than a gallon) of water between solid, gas and liquid. She can also change similar quantities of water from salt water to fresh water (or vice versa). She cannot use this ability on moving bodies of water like rain or rivers--that would be too complex. This skill has no combat applications.
Abilities:
Racial Abilities
Tough Skin: Nadia's skin is 1.5 times as tough as a human's, and she therefore takes somewhat less damage from weapons like a sword or bow. Her skin will still break, but wounds won't be as deep and should heal faster. Magic will affect her the same, as will crushing attacks like a hammer or fist. Tough skin only applies to minor wounds.
Water Magic Abilities
As an undine, Nadia has a special affinity for the element of water and can tell it to do her bidding. The scope of her water magic is defined below.
Arrow of Ice: In combat, she can create ice arrows out of thin air and shoot them with her bow. These are only a bit more dangerous than normal arrows, but the main advantage is that she doesn't need a quiver and won't run out of ammo as long as moisture remains in the air. She can summon about four ice arrows before becoming dehydrated. That being as it is, she cannot use this ability at all in a desert or other arid place. Arrows are equivalent to steel strength.
Frostbite: By laying her hands on a person, Nadine can instantly give them frostbite. Frostbite only affects surface tissues and not deep-level ones, and cannot be considered a serious injury. However, it causes immediate swelling, itching and serious pain, and can be more than a little distracting in the middle of a fight. If a single area is frostbitten multiple times, the area may develop chillblains (blisters). She can only activate this ability three times before becoming dehydrated. It takes two seconds of contact for Frostbite to take effect.
Nadia's water magic is dependent on the moisture in her own body. If she becomes dehydrated, she can no longer cast spells. Her own hydration acts like a mana pool in this way—as she loses water over the course of a fight through sweat and spellcasting, her strength drops in a proportionate amount. For this reason, she drinks much more water on an average day than a normal person.
Equipment:
Sharktooth Dagger: Made from the fang of a leviathan shark, this dagger is as hard as iron. The blade is one foot long and carved with ornate mer-people runes.
Coral Shortbow: Made from petrified coral and treated with anenome oil, this bow is as flexible and durable as oak.
History: Nadia was born in a coral reef off the coast of Raiarea. Her parents were craftsmen, and she picked up some of their respective trades helping out as a child. From her father she learned the basics of sewing and making clothes, and from her mother she learned the intricate art of making jewelry from shells and stones.
At twelve years of age, her magical abilities began to manifest. The Village Elders assigned her to an apprenticeship with the town Healer. In patriarchal mer-person society, it's considered standard for women with magical abilities to become healers and men to become warrior mages. Nadia, however, found her skills more suited to fighting. She trained her ice magic in secret, sparred with boys her age and hunted sharks and krait for practice. While her activities did not engage the active scorn of the Elders, she did start to argue with her parents and felt the general disapproval of the town adults.
Nadia's first conflict with humans came when her sister was snatched up by accident in a fishing vessel's net. Nadia split the net open with her dagger and caused a fat ton of tuna to escape. The humans were furious and jumped in the water after her, but Nadia and her sister escaped. For the Village Elders, this was the final straw. While they liked the humans no better than Nadia, they disapproved of her tactics, which betrayed centuries-old treaties between the port villages and the reef people. At age seventeen, Nadia left the oppressive atmosphere of her village in search of adventure. Since then, she's traveled from town to town, putting on magic shows for copper and looking for older witches and wizards to mentor her arcane skills.