Aloisia Novenski
03-30-14, 11:54 PM
Name: Aloisia Alexandrovna Novenski
Nickname/Alias: ‘Sia, Sarge, “my Lady” (as a joke)
Age: 27
Race: Human
Gender: Female
Height: 5’7” (~170 cm)
Weight: 150 lbs (~68 kg)
Occupation: Salvic Druzhina, Drill Sergeant
Personality:
Aloisia is a confident (some might say overly so), outgoing woman with a penchant for bawdy jokes and innuendo. Her years of service in the army have rendered her inured to the coarse humor of her fellow soldiers and little in the way of crassness offends her anymore. She was born a commoner, and has retained the simple tastes of her class despite having risen through the ranks to the low nobility. If anything, she is too laid back, and her lackadaisical approach to manners, to say nothing of courtly protocol, have caused her quite a few problems over the years. Although usually sociable and lighthearted, she takes her career very seriously; few things upset her more than dereliction of duty, and more than one new recruit can attest to her harshly disciplinarian view towards professional indiscretions. Her own father having turned to a life of crime and addiction, Aloisia takes a dim view of drunkenness and lawless behavior, and she flat-out refuses any offer to drink.
History:
Aloisia was born on a small holding on the coast belonging to a minor lord several hours’ ride from Pestovo. Her mother, Alexandra Novenski, was an emancipated serf who found work where she could at the local fishery and sold what little extra produce her small field produced. She was a simple woman of few words and still fewer outward expressions of love, but her daughter was her world and she took care of Aloisia as best she could with her limited means. Aloisia had never known her father when she was growing up, and her mother flatly refused to speak of the man whenever the topic came up. She would only frown and mutter darkly about how she hoped he was in Haida. Still, there were countless nights during her youth when Aloisia lay awake on her pallet wondering who the man who broke her mother’s heart was as she ignored her mother’s stifled sobbing in the dark. In her dreams she imagined him as a conflicted man who made an impossible decision to leave his family for some ill-defined reason which no doubt was to their benefit. Why else would he have left them there to fend for themselves?
Unfortunately, life in the hamlet was not an easy one for any of its tenants, and even less so for a lone, little, bastard girl. Aloisia was frequently the target of harassment by the other children and teenagers who took out their frustrations with their own situations on her. The adults, weary from the day in and day out toil that came with serfdom ignored her plight, often drowning themselves in cheap liquor as soon as they could to forget their own problems. She learned to fight dirty, and equally importantly, to run away when the odds were against her. Aloisia began working with her mother as soon as she was able, mending fishing nets with deft fingers and laboring in the fields for a few coppers each day. Every little bit helped, but it was becoming clear that soon it would not be enough; her mother was growing older even as Aloisia was coming into her prime, and she would not be able to make enough to support the two of them on her own. It was not a difficult decision when the recruiters passed through, calling for able-bodied citizens to join the Sway war effort. They did not conscript her, but she went nonetheless; as a free woman she had the right to join up or not as she chose. Those years would come later as the war dragged on. She had no deep and abiding love of her people’s faith – what had the Sway ever done for her, or her mother? – and she would have joined up with the Monarchists had they arrived first; the politics and ideologies went over her head. All she knew was that the pay for a soldier could help her mother lead a safe and relatively comfortable life that she could provide no other way.
Aloisia quickly found her niche in the army. The discipline was not foreign to her, and the constant drilling, while exhausting at first, became a sort of meditative experience. She made friends with the other soldiers, sharing stories of home and promises that they would watch each other’s backs. She also lost them, and wept bitterly over each one until eventually the tears came no more. During what little free time she had, she listened to the skalds telling their stories and singing their songs by the campfire, and slowly she began to pick up on the nuances of their art. Aloisia showed promising skill and zeal in her training, and was assigned to one of the vanguard regiments charged with breaking the enemy lines with heavy weapons before the rest of the infantry moved in. Skirmish after skirmish she came out alive and hardened, her mettle successfully proven in combat. A year into the conflict, she found herself in her first pitched battle with the Monarchist forces and found that all of her prior experiences could not truly have prepared her for the horrors of war. After serving with distinction at the Battle of the Four Roads where she successfully rallied a broken warband to protect the army’s exposed flank, Aloisia was elevated to the status of Druzhina by Lord Sigvar Petrovich Pastok himself, one of the generals of the Army of the Holy Church.
While on leave in Archen one year she heard news of a man by the name of Novenski who lived there. None of it was good. Determined to finally meet the man who had sired her, she sought him out in the crowded city, only to be bitterly disappointed when the rumors proved true. Her father, Vladimir Novenski, was a known slave trafficker despite his pretense of being an honest merchant, and he was a drunk with a vile temper and a cruel streak. He told her to her face that he had never wanted a child and that he had sold her mother to the lord as a serf when she had told him that she was with child. It was only by drawing on all of the years of discipline that had been drilled into her that Aloisia was able to prevent herself from pulling a knife and ending his miserable existence then and there. Aloisia turned her back on him, and as she left Archen she promised herself that one day she would make sure that he never did to another woman what he had done to her mother so many years before. One way, or another.
Although shocking to most of the highborn citizens of Pestovo, Aloisia chose to stay on with Lord Sigvar after the war and train the cadets of his personal retinue. Title or no, she was a soldier, not a patrician, and she found solace in working to ensure that the next generation of bright-eyed, eager young recruits would not end up in a shallow grave after being gutted by a marauder. She does so to this day, biding her time until she can go back to Archen and fulfill her oath.
Appearance:
Aloisia’s most striking feature is her slightly tilted, grey eyes which seem to shine with mirth at an unshared joke. She is well muscled and has excellent stamina from her long hours of practice in the yard, a trait she takes more than a little pride in. She has kept her silvery blonde hair cropped nearly to her scalp for years, both to keep it from interfering with protective headgear and to minimize the amount of hygienic care she needs to take while away on campaign. Aloisia moves purposefully, carrying herself with the unconscious gravity of one who has spent countless hours drilling efficiency into every fiber of her being. This has lead more than one snide comment from noble women about her lack of feminine grace, but Aloisia has always been more amused than hurt by their barbed words. After all, many of them would not know an honest day’s work if it slapped them across the face.
Skills:
Weapons Proficiency, Bardiche and Combat Knife: Polearms are Aloisia’s favored class of weapons, and she specializes with the bardiche / long-axe. When her primary weapon becomes too cumbersome, or quarters are too tight, Aloisia is also moderately skilled in using her trench knife.
Experienced Campaigner: Aloisia’s time served during the war taught her not only military discipline and skill with arms, it also showed her the importance of being self-sufficient when supplies are hard to come by on the march. Aloisia knows the fundamentals of logistics and is adept at wilderness survival.
Woman of the People: “Once a commoner, always a commoner” the saying goes, and to a certain extent it rings true with Aloisia. However, she is also charismatic, and knows how the right words to say to bolster the morale of the everyday man or soldier.
Singing: Although never formally trained, Aloisia has a voice for singing and a head for composing verse on the fly. She is uncharacteristically shy about this, however, and rarely sings where others can hear except for her battle-songs.
Abilities:
Battle Skald: Pro: Drawing from her both her own experiences in the field and the innumerable war songs she has heard over the years, Aloisia can inspire the warriors under her command with ballads and sagas or strike fear into the hearts of her foes with grim dirges once per battle. Practically speaking, opponents below her level will strike only half as hard as they normally would for two minutes as they suffer anxiety over her dark promises.
Con: Words only go so far, and everyone has their breaking point. If Aloisia pushes her soldiers too far, they are like as not to lose faith in her.
Conditioned: Years of drilling, first under her trainers and then at her own discretion, as well as wielding heavy weapons have given Aloisia the will to press on past the point where a normal person would be winded. Because of this, Aloisia is able to fight for twice as long as an average soldier.
Heavy Weapons Specialist: Two-handed weapons like polearms or the famed Salvic greatswords have a well-deserved reputation for the carnage they can wreck on a field of battle, particularly against lightly armored foes. Aloisia is capable of putting extra strength into the first strike from her bardiche in order to sunder a simple wooden shield or stagger an opponent blocking with a weapon.
Con: Using two-handed weapons means that the warrior is sacrificing the defensive opportunities presented either by a shield or a lighter, more agile weapon. When Aloisia opts to swing her axe with great strength, she leaves herself partially open to the next attack.
Weaknesses:
The Ties that Bind: Addiction is an insidious snare, and the trait for it has run in Aloisia’s family for generations. As such, she avoids alcohol and all other drugs like the plague. Unfortunately, in a nation like Salvar where sharing drinks like mead and spirits is a sign of good faith and hospitality, this can be both physically dangerous for Aloisia and socially risky as well; if she acquiesces and accepts the drinks, she runs the risk of falling prey to alcoholism like her father, but if she rebuffs offers, she may offend the wrong person and end up in a sticky situation.
Meteoric Rise: Although not unheard of, few commoners ever join the ranks of the nobility, and fewer still can manage to hang on once there. While Aloisia has the ambition to make “House Novenski” a true noble family, many of the older lines see her as just a jumped-up peasant and are eager to see her dreams burn and will actively work to hinder her efforts.
Fatherless: Although she now knows about the paternal side of her lineage, Aloisia grew up with the stain of bastardry literally on her name. Heritage is an important part of the nobility, and if being considered an illegitimate daughter was not bad enough, the truth about her father’s criminal background could ruin her chances of ever making a name for herself within their ranks.
Faux Pas: Aloisia is not a woman to mince words or to adhere to proper niceties; although her frank demeanor may go over well with the commoners and soldiers she is used to, it often gets her into trouble in situations where a more tactful approach is called for.
Equipment / Weapons: An iron-bladed, oak hafted bardiche, carefully maintained. An iron trench knife as a sidearm. A leather and iron-scale jerkin and iron spangenhelm.
Languages: Salvic, Tradespeak
Note: Aloisia is an alt of Astrid Whitepeak
Nickname/Alias: ‘Sia, Sarge, “my Lady” (as a joke)
Age: 27
Race: Human
Gender: Female
Height: 5’7” (~170 cm)
Weight: 150 lbs (~68 kg)
Occupation: Salvic Druzhina, Drill Sergeant
Personality:
Aloisia is a confident (some might say overly so), outgoing woman with a penchant for bawdy jokes and innuendo. Her years of service in the army have rendered her inured to the coarse humor of her fellow soldiers and little in the way of crassness offends her anymore. She was born a commoner, and has retained the simple tastes of her class despite having risen through the ranks to the low nobility. If anything, she is too laid back, and her lackadaisical approach to manners, to say nothing of courtly protocol, have caused her quite a few problems over the years. Although usually sociable and lighthearted, she takes her career very seriously; few things upset her more than dereliction of duty, and more than one new recruit can attest to her harshly disciplinarian view towards professional indiscretions. Her own father having turned to a life of crime and addiction, Aloisia takes a dim view of drunkenness and lawless behavior, and she flat-out refuses any offer to drink.
History:
Aloisia was born on a small holding on the coast belonging to a minor lord several hours’ ride from Pestovo. Her mother, Alexandra Novenski, was an emancipated serf who found work where she could at the local fishery and sold what little extra produce her small field produced. She was a simple woman of few words and still fewer outward expressions of love, but her daughter was her world and she took care of Aloisia as best she could with her limited means. Aloisia had never known her father when she was growing up, and her mother flatly refused to speak of the man whenever the topic came up. She would only frown and mutter darkly about how she hoped he was in Haida. Still, there were countless nights during her youth when Aloisia lay awake on her pallet wondering who the man who broke her mother’s heart was as she ignored her mother’s stifled sobbing in the dark. In her dreams she imagined him as a conflicted man who made an impossible decision to leave his family for some ill-defined reason which no doubt was to their benefit. Why else would he have left them there to fend for themselves?
Unfortunately, life in the hamlet was not an easy one for any of its tenants, and even less so for a lone, little, bastard girl. Aloisia was frequently the target of harassment by the other children and teenagers who took out their frustrations with their own situations on her. The adults, weary from the day in and day out toil that came with serfdom ignored her plight, often drowning themselves in cheap liquor as soon as they could to forget their own problems. She learned to fight dirty, and equally importantly, to run away when the odds were against her. Aloisia began working with her mother as soon as she was able, mending fishing nets with deft fingers and laboring in the fields for a few coppers each day. Every little bit helped, but it was becoming clear that soon it would not be enough; her mother was growing older even as Aloisia was coming into her prime, and she would not be able to make enough to support the two of them on her own. It was not a difficult decision when the recruiters passed through, calling for able-bodied citizens to join the Sway war effort. They did not conscript her, but she went nonetheless; as a free woman she had the right to join up or not as she chose. Those years would come later as the war dragged on. She had no deep and abiding love of her people’s faith – what had the Sway ever done for her, or her mother? – and she would have joined up with the Monarchists had they arrived first; the politics and ideologies went over her head. All she knew was that the pay for a soldier could help her mother lead a safe and relatively comfortable life that she could provide no other way.
Aloisia quickly found her niche in the army. The discipline was not foreign to her, and the constant drilling, while exhausting at first, became a sort of meditative experience. She made friends with the other soldiers, sharing stories of home and promises that they would watch each other’s backs. She also lost them, and wept bitterly over each one until eventually the tears came no more. During what little free time she had, she listened to the skalds telling their stories and singing their songs by the campfire, and slowly she began to pick up on the nuances of their art. Aloisia showed promising skill and zeal in her training, and was assigned to one of the vanguard regiments charged with breaking the enemy lines with heavy weapons before the rest of the infantry moved in. Skirmish after skirmish she came out alive and hardened, her mettle successfully proven in combat. A year into the conflict, she found herself in her first pitched battle with the Monarchist forces and found that all of her prior experiences could not truly have prepared her for the horrors of war. After serving with distinction at the Battle of the Four Roads where she successfully rallied a broken warband to protect the army’s exposed flank, Aloisia was elevated to the status of Druzhina by Lord Sigvar Petrovich Pastok himself, one of the generals of the Army of the Holy Church.
While on leave in Archen one year she heard news of a man by the name of Novenski who lived there. None of it was good. Determined to finally meet the man who had sired her, she sought him out in the crowded city, only to be bitterly disappointed when the rumors proved true. Her father, Vladimir Novenski, was a known slave trafficker despite his pretense of being an honest merchant, and he was a drunk with a vile temper and a cruel streak. He told her to her face that he had never wanted a child and that he had sold her mother to the lord as a serf when she had told him that she was with child. It was only by drawing on all of the years of discipline that had been drilled into her that Aloisia was able to prevent herself from pulling a knife and ending his miserable existence then and there. Aloisia turned her back on him, and as she left Archen she promised herself that one day she would make sure that he never did to another woman what he had done to her mother so many years before. One way, or another.
Although shocking to most of the highborn citizens of Pestovo, Aloisia chose to stay on with Lord Sigvar after the war and train the cadets of his personal retinue. Title or no, she was a soldier, not a patrician, and she found solace in working to ensure that the next generation of bright-eyed, eager young recruits would not end up in a shallow grave after being gutted by a marauder. She does so to this day, biding her time until she can go back to Archen and fulfill her oath.
Appearance:
Aloisia’s most striking feature is her slightly tilted, grey eyes which seem to shine with mirth at an unshared joke. She is well muscled and has excellent stamina from her long hours of practice in the yard, a trait she takes more than a little pride in. She has kept her silvery blonde hair cropped nearly to her scalp for years, both to keep it from interfering with protective headgear and to minimize the amount of hygienic care she needs to take while away on campaign. Aloisia moves purposefully, carrying herself with the unconscious gravity of one who has spent countless hours drilling efficiency into every fiber of her being. This has lead more than one snide comment from noble women about her lack of feminine grace, but Aloisia has always been more amused than hurt by their barbed words. After all, many of them would not know an honest day’s work if it slapped them across the face.
Skills:
Weapons Proficiency, Bardiche and Combat Knife: Polearms are Aloisia’s favored class of weapons, and she specializes with the bardiche / long-axe. When her primary weapon becomes too cumbersome, or quarters are too tight, Aloisia is also moderately skilled in using her trench knife.
Experienced Campaigner: Aloisia’s time served during the war taught her not only military discipline and skill with arms, it also showed her the importance of being self-sufficient when supplies are hard to come by on the march. Aloisia knows the fundamentals of logistics and is adept at wilderness survival.
Woman of the People: “Once a commoner, always a commoner” the saying goes, and to a certain extent it rings true with Aloisia. However, she is also charismatic, and knows how the right words to say to bolster the morale of the everyday man or soldier.
Singing: Although never formally trained, Aloisia has a voice for singing and a head for composing verse on the fly. She is uncharacteristically shy about this, however, and rarely sings where others can hear except for her battle-songs.
Abilities:
Battle Skald: Pro: Drawing from her both her own experiences in the field and the innumerable war songs she has heard over the years, Aloisia can inspire the warriors under her command with ballads and sagas or strike fear into the hearts of her foes with grim dirges once per battle. Practically speaking, opponents below her level will strike only half as hard as they normally would for two minutes as they suffer anxiety over her dark promises.
Con: Words only go so far, and everyone has their breaking point. If Aloisia pushes her soldiers too far, they are like as not to lose faith in her.
Conditioned: Years of drilling, first under her trainers and then at her own discretion, as well as wielding heavy weapons have given Aloisia the will to press on past the point where a normal person would be winded. Because of this, Aloisia is able to fight for twice as long as an average soldier.
Heavy Weapons Specialist: Two-handed weapons like polearms or the famed Salvic greatswords have a well-deserved reputation for the carnage they can wreck on a field of battle, particularly against lightly armored foes. Aloisia is capable of putting extra strength into the first strike from her bardiche in order to sunder a simple wooden shield or stagger an opponent blocking with a weapon.
Con: Using two-handed weapons means that the warrior is sacrificing the defensive opportunities presented either by a shield or a lighter, more agile weapon. When Aloisia opts to swing her axe with great strength, she leaves herself partially open to the next attack.
Weaknesses:
The Ties that Bind: Addiction is an insidious snare, and the trait for it has run in Aloisia’s family for generations. As such, she avoids alcohol and all other drugs like the plague. Unfortunately, in a nation like Salvar where sharing drinks like mead and spirits is a sign of good faith and hospitality, this can be both physically dangerous for Aloisia and socially risky as well; if she acquiesces and accepts the drinks, she runs the risk of falling prey to alcoholism like her father, but if she rebuffs offers, she may offend the wrong person and end up in a sticky situation.
Meteoric Rise: Although not unheard of, few commoners ever join the ranks of the nobility, and fewer still can manage to hang on once there. While Aloisia has the ambition to make “House Novenski” a true noble family, many of the older lines see her as just a jumped-up peasant and are eager to see her dreams burn and will actively work to hinder her efforts.
Fatherless: Although she now knows about the paternal side of her lineage, Aloisia grew up with the stain of bastardry literally on her name. Heritage is an important part of the nobility, and if being considered an illegitimate daughter was not bad enough, the truth about her father’s criminal background could ruin her chances of ever making a name for herself within their ranks.
Faux Pas: Aloisia is not a woman to mince words or to adhere to proper niceties; although her frank demeanor may go over well with the commoners and soldiers she is used to, it often gets her into trouble in situations where a more tactful approach is called for.
Equipment / Weapons: An iron-bladed, oak hafted bardiche, carefully maintained. An iron trench knife as a sidearm. A leather and iron-scale jerkin and iron spangenhelm.
Languages: Salvic, Tradespeak
Note: Aloisia is an alt of Astrid Whitepeak