Airen

[Airen]

Player Name: Léna

Name: Airen

Age: 19

Race: Human

Height: 1,73 meter

Weight: 65 kilo

Physical Description: She has dark orange coloured (almost red) hair that stops just below her shoulder blades. Her eyes are a dark shade of green. She has pale skin and a 1,5 centimetre scar over her right eyebrow. She is muscular, but has almost no fat, which makes her look unhealthy. Her face is very slim too. She wears a black hood with cape most of the time.

Personality: Airen is persistent and not easily persuaded. She is a lone wolf, always wants to figure thing out herself, never asking anyone's help. She pushes people away because she's afraid of caring for them, since strong emotions such as anger can affect her fire and cause huge disasters. She doesn't want to hurt innocent people, and doesn't want to get caught performing illegal magic, so she avoids forming any emotional bond. She never shows her weaknesses, always wants to appear strong and unbreakable. She is in fact scared though. She has no idea what she's doing with her life and what the future holds for her. She has given up trying to get into a better situation.

Possessions: She only owns a simple dagger, hidden behind her cape, and a silver ring, which she wears on a necklace around her neck, keeping it under her clothing, away from people's gaze.

Powers or Strengths: Airen has the power to control fire. She can light a fire by snapping her fingers, without a single problem or risk. She is also able to create fireballs in her hands with a diameter of generally a 10 centimetre diameter. This is quite risky though, since it's much harder for her to maintain control over these big fires. Once a fireball is created, she can throw them about 5 meters away. But sometimes the fireball doesn't exactly go the way she wanted and can set something else on fire by accident. Strong emotions, especially anger can affect her fire. It can enlarge a fireball significantly, until the point where she can't control it anymore. She doesn't need any spells to control fire. She can create about 1 fireballs per 5 minutes, but she still tries to avoid using them. Also, fire nor heat can hurt her. She can extinguish a small fire, about the size of a small torch. Bigger fires are impossible for her to fully extinguish.
She is quite skilled with her dagger. She toys with it almost all the time and uses all her free time to train with it. She can easily kill the average person with it, but doesn't stand a chance against the average person. She has killed thugs when they attacked her, but mostly due to the element of surprise, since not many of them expected her to carry a weapon and be ready to kill. She isn't worth much in a fight without her dagger.
She is also good at playing tricks on people and cheating with any game.

Weaknesses: When she doesn't have her weapon, she is quite harmless. She can barely fight with her bare hands, maybe throw a few punches and kicks, but she is far from skilled enough to hold her own against multiple enemies or a trained opponent, like a guard. She is rude, anti-social and doesn’t really like being around people. When someone makes her angry, she can easily get carried away by that emotion and make stupid decisions. It can also cause her fire to get out of hand. She is also very hungry for revenge when people wrong her. She doesn't really think much before making a decision. Also, she is afraid of her own magic because she doesn’t control it very well and want to avoid hurting innocents. She has a drinking and gambling problem, but never admits it.

History: She lived with her parents on a barn in Shim until she was 8 years old. At night, when she was having a nightmare she accidentally set the barn aflame. Her parents burned to death in the accident. There was no other family and no one to look out for her, so Airen was forced to survive on her own. She went to the city of Marn and made a few Bishani doing card tricks on the street. This is how she learned cheating and deceiving people. One day she met a man on the streets. His name was Falligan and he helped her survive for a while, giving her food and teaching her how to defend herself with a dagger. He only saw a lonely, harmless child in danger and couldn't just let her perish. He was kind to her and helped her survive, so after a while, he became like a father to her and she was quite happy. But one day, when he was attacked in an ally, she tried to protect him using her fire. Everything got out of hand and she ended up killing not only the attackers but also Falligan himself. At this moment, she really started fearing her powers and pushing people away to protect them. She grew older, and bitter. She started stealing to keep herself alive, but after a while that wasn’t enough and she had to go into prostitution to make money, she was 16 years old at this point. After a year, she quit. She now distrust every man and suspect them all of just wanting sex from her. She doesn't want to talk about it, because she knows what people would think of her, and she wants to maintain her image of a strong woman. For the last two years, she has mostly been stealing and conning people. Sometimes she delivers messages from one place to another, but only rarely. She now lives in the historical district. She rarely sets fire's accidentally nowadays, but mainly because she avoids emotions and conflict.

[Saruna]

Hey there, and welcome to Thar!

This is a good basic start to your character, but due to how we operate, we're going to need a bit more explanation about the character and some details about your strengths and weaknesses. Generally, we ask people to get very specific about how powerful their character is to ensure they aren't too powerful for the setting on their first character.

I would like to understand a bit more about who your character is and what she is capable of with her magic and weapons. In particular, you have a few contradicting statements, such as "She is also very skilled with her dagger" and "she's not a great fighter."

What I would like for you to do is to pick one weapon she is proficient with (the bow, fireballs, or the dagger -- even if you say she is afraid of her own magic, you stated that she has the ability to throw fireballs at her enemies, which is still a significant ability). Remember that in order to be good with something, you have to be practicing it frequently. If she is having to steal and con people to survive, she likely will not have much time or energy to be practicing.

I would like you to detail how good she is with each weapon. Remember that unless she's been able to spend a portion of each day practicing, she won't be able to defend herself against anyone but other street people; a guard or thug would still be likely to outfight her unless she got lucky. In order to detail her abilities, tell us things like how big her fireball is, how often she can create one, and how well she can control where it goes after its made -- if she is afraid of using her magic, then it's likely she's not very well able to throw fireballs at her enemies, you know? Similarly, how good is her aim with the bow? Is the bow even worth keeping? On the streets, a bow is a bulky and obvious object that is going to be worth money -- have people tried stealing it from her when she's vulnerable or sleeping? If she lives in the city, what use would it even really be to her?

I would also like you to explore who the man is who trained her, and what affect he had on her. You said she is rude, anti-social and doesn't like people -- why did she trust him? Why did he want to teach her? How did his death affect her? For that matter, how did her stint as a prostitute affect her? Does she accidentally set things on fire often, as when she was eight?

And, if she cannot be hurt by fire and doesn't really like people anyways, why is she so afraid of her magic? Also, keep in mind that magic is something that is illegal in Marn, so it would be something she'd want to keep hidden.

She just needs to be explained a little more and rounded out a little more, and then you'll be good to go.

Please leave a reply to this thread when you are ready for me to look at it again. If you have any questions or comments, please don't hesitate to leave a reply to this thread, send me a pm, or hop into chat.

[Airen]

Thank you for your feedback!
You are totally right, so I really appreciate this. I fixed most defaults, trying to be more precise and elaborate especially about the powers and strengths. I hope it's better this way!

[Saruna]

You're very welcome! We love seeing people who are invested in their characters. A lot of good thought into your app!

I would like you to remove this

Sometimes they grow bigger and get out of hand, burning everything around her

for the time being, until you've been here a little bit longer. A huge disaster has the ability to affect the city in a major way, and we would like our members to have been here for several months before their characters have bigger powers like that. Work up to it through roleplay (you'll be able to change the app later on after you've been in roleplay and your character's abilities and situation changes).

The amount of fire balls she can create is unlimited, but like I said before, she tries to avoid using them.

Given that she is skilled with her dagger, I would like to see a limit on this. Even if she tries to avoid using them, she still has them available for use. Maybe something like using them stresses her out to the point that she can't summon them anymore -- something that could be fixed through practice (roleplay), but for the time being limiting the number she's able to summon.

and has a big chance of winning from someone with a similar weapon, even if they're trained.

Keep in mind that someone who practices by themselves are not going to be able to really hold up to someone who has a master. If you were to start looking up karate videos (or pick whatever martial arts you're unskilled with) and practicing the moves, would you expect to be able to beat someone who trains with a master and trains against better opponents? Unless you got very lucky, they'd wipe the floor with you, simply by virtue of having more experience. It's one thing with a thug who uses his brawn more than skill to fight, but a whole other ball game with one of the guards or, say, someone who is ex-military. I'd like you to make that distinction here.



I want to make sure you understand that Thar isn't really a website that focuses on fighting. While our characters do occasionally get into skirmishes, the vast majority of roleplay focuses on character interaction and trouble that isn't usually able to be solved through violence -- which is why we require new players to have such low fighting skills. Once you've been around for awhile and have a better feel for the site those restrictions generally lift, however.

Anyways, after those things you should be good to go. Let me know again when you're ready for another look!

[Airen]

I adjusted my application again. Is it better like this?

[Saruna]

Thanks for your patience -- right now your character is still too strong. Rather than adding abilities (she can now extinguish fire), I would like you to remove some of her expertise with fire. Five to six fireballs per minute is still a lot of fireballs! Even if she isn't able to always aim properly, with that many fireballs she wouldn't really need to. I can definitely appreciate a desire to make a cool character with cool abilities, but we start off very low here and have our characters work their way up. So something more infrequently (one to two per ten minutes) would be more in line with the levels of power in Thar. If you're worried that she's going to get KO'd, I can assure you that will not happen; I'd say the majority of characters on site can barely fight, much less wield magic.

Also, don't be afraid to use paragraphs!

We should have you ready for action here soon.

[Airen]

I made her less skilled with fire (also a little with her dagger), but I would really like to keep her ability to extinguish a small fire, since this seems quite logical to me and just fits the magic she already possesses. I did small down the maximum size she's able to extinguish, just as a reduced the amount of fireballs, the diameter of those fireballs and the distance she can throw them. I hope this is enough to compensate for the new ability of extinguishing fire.

[Saruna]

Approved.

We strongly encourage new players to be proactive in looking for threads or other players to start a thread with. Too often new players will join only to sit for months until they finally give up. We also encourage new players to set up threads with others rather than just starting one themselves, as those threads tend to not get responses.

Some links to help get you started:

Plot Discussion
Characters Available for Plot
Looking for Characters

Happy writing!