Alaya Enkarie

[Alaya]

Name:
Alaya Enkarie
Age:
17
Race:
Human
Description:
Alaya stand at a lowly 5'3, her lengthened blonde hair flowing down well past her shoulders. Her small and skinny figure hint towards her lack of physical strength and endurance but what she lacks in these traits it is plain to see she makes up in beauty, she is considered by many a figure of spectacular allure.
She often carries a sweet expression across her face and almost radiates the happiness she openly possesses.
Possessions:

Lute: Alaya almost always carries her lute with her as she often finds herself performing in the strangest places, it is to her, the sole embodiment of herself, representing her carrier and creating melodies reflecting her inner most thoughts and feelings. With it she creates tunes that whistle through the air in a swift motion of talent as she plucks at the strings and her voice echoes around her.

Hidden blade: She has known violence in the past, and as such carries a dagger with her at all times, whether in her boot or up her sleeve, she always is armed with this concealed instrument of death.

Entertainers outfit: She often finds herself dressing in bright and colorful garments intended of drawing in an audience to gaze at her magnificent splendor, as such she has many an outfit for such an occasion.

Powers or Strengths:
Music: Alaya has an inborn talent for music, this provides her with a beautiful singing voice, rarely matched by any she has ever come into contact with, and also an incredible inborn talent with many instruments she has trained with since her early days.

Emotional reflection- Alaya has a general sense of the attitude of whoever she speaks to, this gives her the ability to intuitively detect lies and genuine faithfulness in the tone of whoever she finds herself conversing with. It also gives her, in turn the ability to probe the mind of someone and read whatever is on the top of their mind.

Persuasive dialect- When conversing with Alaya, most find themselves drawn to her, lingering on every word that escapes her mouth, this innate ability grants her the trait of being extremely persuasive and deceitful, most cannot tell when she is lying and believe every word she utters and also in turn find themselves inclined to agree with her, as such she can convince people to do almost anything for her as long as it does not go against their own personality or beliefs.

Knife fighting- Although not a master of the craft in anyway, Alaya has a certain talent with short blades such as knives, dirks and daggers, this is partially due to the necessity of self defense that has been implanted in Alaya's mind and partially due to the excessive amount of training she has put in over the years, although she could probably only use her skills to the extent of say, injuring an opponent to allow for an easy escape, she is confident that she can rely on this skill to defend herself when necessary.

Weaknesses and Flaws:
Young: Her young age means she lacks in wisdom and experience, finding herself quite confused by things that may seem trivial to those of a more advanced age.

Haunting of the past: Alaya still finds difficulty sleeping, even after that fateful night was many years ago.

Overconfidence: Alaya is overconfident in herself and those around her often leading to rash actions with harsh consequences as she doesn't usually think her actions through.

Faya: Although the only spark of light in Alaya's life, Alaya counts Faya as the only thing that she truly cares about in this world and would do anything to protect her.

Problem with authority: Alaya likes to be in charge or at least to have a fair say of what goes on, as a result she finds herself with a problem with authority, from a boss barking orders at her to the town guard themselves.

Fire: Due to seeing a man burn alive in her youth, Alaya has a certain uneasiness when confronted with fire, a simple torch or house fire can make her feel uneasy sometimes but anything larger seems to bring her mind back to that night, leaving her nauseated and sometimes stunned in the horror that clouds her thoughts.

Views on magic: Although not specifically against it, Alaya does not trust magic, it may have saved her life once before but this nefarious force condemned her brother to death and mostly likely torture, judging by the stories. Although she uses magic herself, it is often a passive effect without her consciously activating it, she may just get a strong feeling about something as a result of her "Emotional reflection" or just may seem extremely persuasive due to her "Persuasive dialect" so she doesn't always know she is using it, she is aware of her powers but tries to suppress them most of the time as she knows that if she is taken away for using it, Faya would not survive on her own.

History:
Born the oldest child to a mother of three, Alaya had no father and her mother was constantly working to provide for the family of four.
Consequently Alaya found herself looking after her younger siblings, her brother Roland and her sister Faya. Tutoring them in what little she had learnt herself of the ways of the city and in her short time in education,preparing food for them and keeping them out of trouble. Things went on like this for years, until she reached the age of twelve, when things, as the are like to do, changed.

It was a cold night, the chilling air whistled through the damaged door when he arrived, a man clad in black, a disgruntled customer of her mother's, he brought the door down with one strike of his boot against the rotten wood and stepped inside, sword in hand, he claimed that mother had stolen from him, taken his coin purse in the middle of the night, stole away with it like a common thief,
looking back on it, that tale would explain a few things, the money troubles the family was suffering from had seemingly, or at least partially vanished over the previous few days. But mother would never steal, or at least, that was what Alaya thought.
The man grabbed her mother by her hair, throwing her across the room, and leaving her face bloodied and her eye black, with one might swing he cut her from cheek to waist, leaving only the stain of blood on the wall. He was about to leave when it happened, without thinking, Roland did what he promised never to do.
Magic can be a rare sight, but both Alaya and her brother had these, gifts. Although hers were of a mostly, charismatic and influential nature, Roland's abilities were much more practical, in conjuring up laps of flames from his hands and sending them rushing towards the assailant, catching his fur coat and setting it alight in a blaze of intense heat.
He sent his own sword flying across but missing Roland and sticking into the wall. It wasn't long before he fell, and left this world. Leaving Alaya, cradling the screaming baby Faya in her arms and Roland, staring down at the blackened palms of his hands. Then the guards came, taking Roland away to the Justice Hall and executing him for the unauthorized use of magic.

That was five years ago, now Alaya lives alone with Faya, playing her music for money enough to keep the house she has and put food on the table for Faya. At the age of 8, Faya has to almost completely rely on her older sister for food, shelter and all other basic necessities. However, despite how it appears on the surface. Alaya relies on her just as much. Faya always seems to keep a smile on her sisters face. Faya also helps with supporting money, even though she is only 8, she went through a time where she took up petty theft with a natural talent but that all ended when Alaya caught her, at least that's what Alaya hopes. She is mostly content with her lot in life, although, she has always aspired to more, she wants to be known for something, something great, not for the simple sake of fame, and not for the glory of fortune, but for, something, to feel like she has achieved something with even her simple beginnings.
She barely finds the time for other interests though, but when she does, she often practices with the blade she carries in secret, maybe out of a hidden interest deep down, or maybe for the fear, that something like that tragic night may happen again, and if it does, she is determined to stop it, that man took her mother, her brother, no one will take Faya from her, not if she has anything to say about it.

She is however, content in her current situation, she is not overly wealthy but makes enough earnings to provide a comfortable life for her and her sister, she has many friends, mainly those she lives close to, and has made little to none in the way of enemies, everyone she converses with seems to like her, she has no difficulty making friends and has many due to this, but has little in the way of family, Faya is the only living family member that she is aware of.

Alaya has a strange relationship with those around her, she is well known by her neighbors. By name if not it person, they generally offer her compliments and sometimes gifts for her talent in music that they have become accustomed to, they also often mistake her for Faya's mother, making both the sisters laugh. But her life is hard, she often struggles for money and for the time to spend with her sister, but she has learnt to take, still, a happy outlook on life in hopefulness that things will get better...

...After all, they can't get much worse.

[Katona]

Welcome to Thar Shaddin, Jessica! Thank you for the application.

The core concept - a girl who is supporting her younger sibling by performing - works for me, but what I'll need is for some more depth to the character, before she's ready to be put into a thread. I want to see some elaboration on the details of who she is as a person and how her life has affected her.

First thing: weaknesses. The naivety is good, but I'd like to see at least 2 or 3 significant and relevant weaknesses added to this character to give a better grasp of her flaws, and to give you more to work with when writing her. I mean, think about any normal person in real life - even people with good, happy lives tend to have things about them that are big flaws that cause obstacles for them in life - so surely someone who's in Alaya's position would have even more than that. I recommend taking a look through some of our approved applications to get an idea of what we look for.

Does/did Alaya attend school? What kind of relationship does she have to the community? How about friends, relatives, or enemies? Does she have any career ambitions besides what she's doing now? How much does her sister rely on her? How much spare time does she have to be away from her sister? What are her plans for the future? What are her interests, besides music? There are plenty more things that could be asked - people are complex and interesting, and characters generally should reflect that - but I'll leave you with these to consider for now, and I'll review the app again after you've updated it.

Just reply to this thread again once you've edited it. If you have any questions or concerns, you're welcome to PM me, reply to this thread, or catch someone in chat. Have fun writing.

[Alaya]

I have made some changes but was not sure where to put her ambitions so I will just add a paragraph below.

Alaya was always indecisive, changing her mind about everything multiple times before coming I a conclusion she felt content with. Her career choices are no different, she always loved performing and will continue with this for as long as possible, but what she really wants, has always wanted was to have the money to start something, anything. An establishment such as an inn or tavern, a business. Anything that she could walk down the streets with the children she eventually wants to have and be proud to point to something and say "You see that? I made that, it's mine and no one can take it from me."

[Katona]

Sorry for the time it's taken me to reply at the moment, Alaya. It's been a pretty busy week for me.

First thing: you'll need to add all edits and additions to the main application, rather than in subsequent posts. This is for the sake of keeping everything together in one post so it's easy to keep track of.

Secondly, there are a few things mentioned in my original review that you haven't really addressed or responded to, which I would still like to see either added to the application or, otherwise, I'd like some reasoning for why you can't include them.

Thanks, Alaya. Let me know when you're ready for me to take another look.

[Alaya]

Okay, I have edited the master post taking your suggestions into consideration and added more to the character.

[Kitan]

Hello Alaya! Welcome to Thar again. Jason (Katona) asked me to take over reviewing your app because he’s suffering some unexpected real-life complications. He didn’t want to keep your application waiting and asked me to finish up for him.

You’ve made a lot of progress! There are still just a few more hurdles left to really bring out Alaya’s character in the setting. Soon you'll be good to go.

First of all, you imply that Alaya has some level of talent with her knife at various points, such as when you mention her practice with it in the history. You’ll need to add this to her strengths and outline more specifically how good she is with her knife. I’d recommend treating her as one step above a novice: presumably she lacks access to much in the way of training equipment, instructors, and other relevant resources, which would severely limit her potential in the world of knife fighting.

I’d like some idea of how Alaya regards her magic. As she was born and raised in a Puradyne-dominated region, she would have been told by almost everyone around her that magic is an evil, corrupting force (and to be fair, magic is correlated with mental instability in the setting). If she has an opposing view, you’ll want to consider why. Plenty of roleplaying opportunities could arise out of this bit of expansion!

As a minor final note, you’ll want to consider easing up on your use of ellipses in future writing. In a creative writing course, I once wrote a character who spoke in a slow, ponderous way. When handing the assignment in, the instructor I had at the time told me I got one ellipses every two pages at most. It is sound advice; they lose quite a bit of impact when overused.

As usual, post in this thread when you are ready for me to look at the application again!

[Alaya]

Okay, I have made editions to the Master post and added a few things mainly to the "Strengths and Powers" and "Weaknesses" section, but I've also edited the history somewhat.

[Kitan]

This looks pretty good now. Just one more thing, then I'll probably approve you.

I'm afraid you overestimate the ease with which a person bests three separate combatants in a melee. That'd be difficult for a well trained soldier in the Guard, much less somebody like Alaya. This is basically why I had you elaborate on her skill with the knife. Remember, NPC thugs are people too!

I'd ask you to reevaluate her performance to reflect her skill on an individual level. You describe her as "more skilled than a common thug" which is okay, if unlikely. It's logical to expect your local neighborhood tough would have a large part of his life occupied by brawling and dirty fighting, unlike Alaya, who has to devote her time to music and socializing. Don't fall into the trap of treating NPC thugs like dimwitted incompetents! On Thar Shaddin, you'll want to get used to the idea of treating every NPC as a capable individual.

Tone it down to being able to best (or even just stall/injure and escape from, if you want brownie points) just one opponent, and you'll probably be done!

[Alaya]

OKay, yeah sure I see what you mean, I have toned down her skill somewhat to a more realistic level.

[Kitan]

Approved! Welcome to Thar Shaddin!

The best way to get into a thread is hanging out in chat, but you can also:
Look here in thread tracking to find characters you'd like to thread with: http://www.tharshaddin.com/rp/viewforum.php?f=48
Or you can try posting here: http://www.tharshaddin.com/rp/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=1497

Best of luck finding a thread!

[Alaya]

Thanks.