Shanuri Laleonalia

[Shanuri Laleonalia]

Player: Breda
Name: Shanuri Laleonalia
Gender: female
Age: 27
Race: elf

Description: Blonde hair down to the curve of her back, blue, almond-shaped eyes. Slender, muscular body of a dancer. Dresses in reds and blacks, wears elegant jewellery with colourful stones and often hidden containers. When not on stage, she is outwardly stoic and serene in the best elven fashion, sharp-witted, and despite everything that has happened, not entirely without a sense of humor.

[see reference picture here]

Possessions:
Fans: A whole collection. Innocent ones for different social, decorative and dancing purposes, and quite a few with hidden metal reinforcements, sharp enough to cut a throat.
A collection of poison rings and lockets
A collection of outfits for performing: Some cut to the most current fashion, while some are classical Zackonspierre style, inherited from her mother. All classy and elegant, but at the same time quite suggestive.

Powers and Strengths:
Minor magical abilities (registered): Limited scrying, reading weather patterns, sensing magic
Poisons: While she is no apothecary, she knows how to pick the right poisons and to make sure the target ingests them at the appropriate moment and in the appropriate place.
A trained fan dancer: With some bonus skills on the side.
Skilled infiltrator: Specialises in the upper classes.

Weaknesses and flaws:
Personal vendetta: Against the Vyaduka family, which she blames for the downfall of her family.
Family troubles: An ill father, a homebound caregiver mother, and a big bother in all kinds of trouble.
Overconfidence: She is good at what she does, but that has lead to certain level of carelessness. She also has a tendency to take unnecessary risks to reach her goals sooner than necessary, which has earned her some criticism from the higher-ups.
Unhealthy attitude towards food: She is fond of good food, and gains weight rather easily. At the same time, she is a dancer, and staying fit is a rather fundamental part of her life. Spending years watching her homebound parents gain weight hasn't particularly helped either, and she alternates between binging during stressful times, and dieting between them.

History:
Illarion Laleonalia was the heir of a wealthy merchant family in the small but cultured city of Zackonspierre. His long and intricate courtship with Elizaveta Yelisarov was followed with benevolent curiosity by the upper class, as Yelisarov was the city's most distinguished fan dancer, and the two dashing young elves were considered to be meant for each other.

The fan dancing practiced in Zackonspierre was heavily influenced by the arts of the far east. Sensual and seductive, yet classy and elegant enough for the most distinguished banquet room, it was the favored entertainment form of the upper classes. The dancers, most of whom were women, were celebrated public figures, to be admired, but not to be touched. In fact, it was rumored that the fans of the fan dancers were metal enforced, and almost everyone in Zackonspierre had a story of someone who had become too forward during a performance, and had been swiftly castrated by the dancer, who had not missed a step in the process.

When the wedding of Illarion and Elizaveta finally took place, was the big social event of the year. Elizaveta, with the full support of her new husband, made it clear she would not quit dancing, and it was said that she performed the night before the birth of her first child with exactly the same grace and agility as always. She also returned to the stage a week after giving birth to a healthy son. The family happiness was completed a few years later, when a daughter, Shanuri, was born.

The inevitable misfortune finally struck when Shanuri was five years old. The famine that struck Zackonspierre after several unusually cold years was minor news in Eyropa, but many were forced to leave the city and move south. While the Laleonalia family was affluent enough to survive, the business withered and it pained Illarion and Elizaveta to see the formerly so glorious city to waste away. After a long and difficult discussion, they packed up their family and joined the steady flow of people heading south.

Unwilling to live too far west, they decided to head to Marn, attracted by its reputation as a blooming business city. Unfortunately, what they were not aware of was Marnians' suspicion towards foreigners, particularly those of magical persuasion. Both Illarion and Elizaveta had some magical abilities, so minor that in their past life it had barely been a factor. In the upper end of the Residential District of Marn, they suddenly found themselves branded by that ability, bullied by their neighbors and even the guard.

Determined to earn their place in the society, and unwilling to move again, Illarion and Elizaveta set to work with elfin determination. Illarion started to train their son, Arkadi, in the secrets of the trade, while Elizaveta introduced the young Shanuri to fan dancing. While fan dancing was not quite as big in Marn as it had been in Zackonspierre, especially when performed by a foreign elf who was a registered magic user, it gave her an escape from the new hardships of her life, and a way to bond with her daughter. Shanuri turned out to be a natural, and the young girl was fascinated by the upper crust of Marn, which seemed to greatly enjoy her mother's dancing, and later also her own, yet looked down on them on the street.

The ultimate disaster struck the Laleonalia family when Shanuri was seventeen years old. Unbeknownst to the ladies of the family, Illarion and Arkadi had been involved in a conflict with a local noble. Believing they had been cheated, they had tried to find supporters to start an investigation on the man in question. However, they had failed to see how weak exactly their position as magic-using foreigners was. Within weeks, they found themselves being accused of fraud.

The already hard-pressed family business collapsed, along with did Illarion's health. Arkadi and Shanuri, barely in their teens by elven standards, watched in despair as their father became bedridden, and their social, outgoing mother homebound as his caregiver.

To feed their family, Arkadi started doing assorted jobs to assorted traders in the city, and Shanuri danced. Angry and bitter, she strived to perform in every upper class event possible, planning for revenge on the noble who had doomed her family.

It was her insufficiently concealed hatred towards the establishment that caught the attention of the Rebellion - at least that's what she was led to believe. Given a change to fight back, she did not think twice. She was taught to turn her dancing into a martial art, to move among the upper classes without attracting attention, and to spread little liquid gifts from inside the prominent jewellery of the fan dancer. Motivated and skilled, she quickly rose in the ranks of the Paragon, eventually landing as the Hammer coordinator. Today, she leads the infiltrators specializing in the upper classes of Marn, while the mysterious head of the organization provides her with the names of the targets to be eliminated. Meanwhile, she has no intention to forget her own personal target.

[Metarie]

I judge this... as an awwww yeah